(Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the 30th of November 2014 © ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM / Rework: Daedalus Observatory, 2017)

On the Immobile

This semester we will take a seat in the ‘Daedalus Observatory’ – our space for observations and speculations; we will explore and invent, and we will give report, an architectonic report, on what it could mean to be immobile in today’s world.

www.daedalusobservatory.net

“A self […] exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before.”

(Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition - A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, 1984 (1979, in French))

1979 - 2018. Our knowledge has altered and yet life seems to gain in complexity, our world has turned and still the mobility appears to increase in it. And for real, could it even be different?! Even though these conditions seem so obvious, so clear and undoubtedly true for our today’s self, their own actual condition is different – remains actually very vague, very formless and somehow hard to get a grasp on! We reported "On the Mobile" (WS17), and now we wanna look out for its inversion: What is the Immobile, and what could it be for us? For sure not lesser complex!

In german language the adjective mobil (eng. mobile) forms the etymological root for the concept Möbel, whereas its english equivalent furniture leads us contrarily to the act of supplying or providing. Its linguistic opposite, immobil (eng. immobile), in turn informs our understanding of real-estate, which itself, conceptually, partners the german Immobilie with a rightful owner. Having a look into property law then, we can find the movable and the immovable as the basic division of things. Movability here is proofed when one can transport a thing without losing its substance. Which was also emphasised by Immanuel Kant in his ‘Philosophy of Law’ (1797, Die Metaphysik der Sitten), where he tells further: “The first acquisition of a thing can only be that of the soil” and “by the soil is understood all habitable Land. In relation to everything that is moveable upon it, it is to be regarded as a Substance, and the mode of the existence of the Moveables is viewed as an Inherence in it”. Astronomically instead, our ground counts as mobile itself since Copernicus (1543, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) and physically, since Newton (1687, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica), motion and rest are anyhow conditions of one and the same body… Bodies exist in the play of forces, are understood as being in negotiation - as in Vilem Flusser’s formulation (1993, Dinge und Undinge): “A country is apparently an immobile thing, but poland has moved towards the west. A bed is apparently a mobile thing, but my bed has moved lesser then poland did.” Lets ask again today: How can we think the Immobile, measure and calculate with it? Yes, architectonically!

Taking Daedalus’s perspective we will fill the concept with new energies and put it into play within our contemporary cosmos. We will think with our architectural tools and work together to articulate an understanding, a formation, of a possible Immobile. A thing or non-thing; absolute, relative or relational; planned or self-organising…
 

This course is part of the:
Mobile Yet Immobile Series