After successful completion of the course, students are able to engage in the task of working with different creative and critical tools of writing and designing. In order to achieve this, they will engage with bodies of discourse and works that range across different disciplines which, together; this cross-reading will allow developing a broader understanding of architecture as a practice of both thinking and making that concerns and connects material and ‘immaterial’ domains of articulation. In addition they will able to work with texts (writing and research), as well as primary forms of argumentation. Participants are able to perceive, structure, and organize a specific topic in such a way that it can be thoroughly, creatively, and critically discussed through numerous tools of communication. They will become aware of the overarching importance of theory and impossibility of the separation of theory and practice. This awareness enables those confronting any design assignment-regardless of medium-to think and articulate that transcends the artifact
Photo © Öncel Secgin
studio parasite: ¡conceptual interventions!
What? Embracing theory and practice, this is a polycentric studio lingering over the concept of parasite, rethinking the boundaries of aurality and spatiality through the blurred regions between music and noise. It allows participants both from architectural and musical backgrounds to follow transdisciplinary paths through philosophy, literature, architecture, and music. A path that never remains the same and the continuous questioning turns into a perpetuum mobile, a flux of critical and reflexive thinking-designing-thinking.
Derrda sets invention as the introduction of disorder. It is an interruption of the pleasant flow of being and time, or “the breaking of an implicit contract.” Like an intellectually distant yet temporally recent utopian thought, invention deforms the existent. This deformation, on the one hand, extends from the existing and, on the other, is the haunting reflection of the non-existent: unseen, but long awaited. Invention is the noise of its time. What, where or who is this noise? In the realm of the aural, some languages refer to parasite as an interruption: a noise that temporarily blocks flawless communication.
Lucian in his The Parasite dating from the first century, the protagonist explains a dazzled Tychiades that not only the survival of the parasite but also the “art” of being parasitic depends on the continuous exercise of knowledge. It is through this dependence on a daily diligence that differentiates it from other arts. The parasite is the legitimization of lateness. The centuries old concept parasitos generates multiple ambiguous dualities: visible and invisible; status quo and utopia; host and guest; friend and stranger; self and other; perfect and imperfect, harmony and chaos, noise and music. But which one is in reality the subject of exploitation?
How? The studio dwells on the quadripartite structure of thinking-reading-writing-designing. We will start by carving out tangible and conceptual niches and insert ourselves physically and intellectually through text and design collages. Accompanied by a series of exercises including reading, writing, and designing, participants are expected to raise individual questions laying the foundations of a structured research process. The outcome of these exercises will lay the grounds for the final submission, which will be a studio catalogue. As the studio aims the participation of students also from the University of Music and Performing Arts (MDW) the whole process will also include the input from the musical side, turning the studio into a collaborative experience for students of architecture and music.
An intellectual and physical displacement through fieldtrips is also part of the studio: the historical city center, Arnold Schönberg Center and a parasite-wandering around Wilheminenberg joining biologist Ken Luzynski. Finally, last but not least, the studio will also host brain-and-earstorming sessions with guests: composer Onur Dülger, and composer and sound artist Thomas Grill as guests to discuss electronic music and “noise” but also how the aural relates to the spatial.
Why? Outcomes of this studio could be set forth as a set of "awareness," starting by perceiving the overarching importance of theory and the impossibility of separation of theory and practice. As active contributors to the studio, participants get accustomed to theory in a-temporally and contextually-polycentric and transdisciplinary layout, getting the chance to think and design and think over. On the one hand, confronting clusters of ideas and learning how to mobilize them throughout research, on the other hand, being able to transform this process of critical thinking into a novel synthesis of text and object using different media and tools into without compromising creativity. Scheduled fieldtrips and meeting guest scholars aim participants to become aware of the importance of intellectual and spatial surroundings as inputs. Through a selected reader list and group participants get the opportunity to practice individual and group-working skills.
The studio dwells on the quadripartite structure of thinking-reading-writing-designing. We will start by carving out tangible and conceptual niches and insert ourselves physically and intellectually through text and design collages. Accompanied by a series of exercises including reading, writing, and designing, participants are expected to raise individual questions laying the foundations of a structured research process. The outcome of these exercises will lay the grounds for the final submission, which will be a studio catalogue. As the studio aims the participation of students also from the University of Music and Performing Arts (MDW) the whole process will also include the input from the musical side, turning the studio into a collaborative experience for students of architecture and music. Excursions are also part of the studio: the historical city center, Arnold Schönberg Center and a parasite-wandering around Wilheminenberg joining biologist Ken Luzynski. Finally, last but not least, the studio will also host brain-and-earstorming sessions with guests: composer Onur Dülger, and composer and sound artist Thomas Grill as guests to discuss electronic music and “noise” but also how the aural relates to the spatial.
Accompanied by a series of exercises including reading, writing, and designing, participants are expected to raise individual questions laying the foundations of a structured research process. The outcome of these exercises will lay the grounds for the final submission, which will be a studio catalogue. As the studio aims the participation of students also from the University of Music and Performing Arts (MDW).
Only participants attending the course and delivering the scheduled exercises will be admitted to final evaluation. Attendance and participation are therefore mandatory.
