On Friday, March 15, Joseph Heathcott (The New School) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Space, Time, and Infrastructure”. Together let us think infrastructure, not so much about it, but with it. In this masterclass, we approach infrastructure both as an overlapping series of socio-material networks, as well as an unevenly dispersed and connected space-time of dreaming, of conjuring worlds. In this way, we can think with infrastructure in order to deepen our understanding of how our landscapes and built environments emerge, collide, entangle, fragment, unravel, and emerge anew.
From the Silk Road to the trans-Siberian highway, infrastructure shapes flows of movement, communication, and exchange. It is at once material, composed of more or less durable substance, and at the same time ideal, reflecting our desires for a connected world. Over the centuries, infrastructure has provided for the spread of languages, ideas, and things. But infrastructure is not some smooth, neutral field of experience. Roads, bridges, dams, docks, pipes, rail lines, and other artifacts also exert control through webs of physical and epistemic violence. Even as infrastructure connects, it divides; even while it serves as a mode of control, it also affords lineaments of resistance.
Participants in the seminar engage with pre-circulated texts and share reflections on infrastructure based on their own scholarship, practice, and experience. It will be of particular relevance for graduate students and researchers in humanities/social research with an interest in cities, urban planning, art and architecture, environmental and infrastructure studies.
Joseph Heathcott is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School in New York, where he directs the Laboratory for Urban Spatial and Landscape Research (urbanspacelab.org). His scholarship and creative practice converge around comparative urbanism, urban spatial production, and the design of cities, realized through writing projects, photography, mapping, and collage. Over the last 20 years his work has appeared in a wide range of venues, from books and edited volumes to journals, magazines, exhibits, and juried art shows.
Readings
- Heathcott, Joseph. “Infrastructure Designs: Dreaming and Building Worlds.” In The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Designs: Global Views from Architectural History (New York: Routledge, 2022). 1–16.
- Heathcott, Joseph. “Time: Acceleration and Deceleration in Paris.” In Worlding Heritage: Historic Urban Landscapes and the Conservation Imaginary (forthcoming).
The readings can also be accessed via this link.
Credits
1 ECTS – reading preparation, attendance and active participation in the discussions
The session takes place on Friday 15 March 2024, 10.00-12.00 in room 0.16 (E-lab), Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@uva.nl). Following the Masterclass, Joseph Heathcott will also give a guest lecture as part of the ASCA Cities Seminar on “Material Cities”.