With my colleagues from the Utrecht University-based research group [urban interfaces], we’re organizing the 5th edition of our yearly graduate seminar series. This time the theme is The Magic City >>:
THE MAGIC CITY: Of technorationality and spiritual futures – [urban interfaces] Graduate seminar 2021-2022
Dates: 5 April (15:00 – 17:00), 26 April (15:00 – 17:00) and 10 May (14:00 – 17:00 with drinks)
Venue: MCW Lab, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 (theater space downstairs), Utrecht.
Credits: 3 ECTS (for RMa Students and PhD Candidates only, MA students are welcome to participate, but are not eligible for credits). The seminar series is open to (R)Ma students and PhD candidates
Organized by: https://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl.
More information: urbaninterfaces@uu.nl
Registration >> (open from February 21, 2022 onwards)
Modern and technical solutions to complex social problems have long configured urban imaginaries. Planners, designers, and policymakers have embraced the notion of the “smart city” to reshape urban life into a gentrified wonderland for the rich. More often than not, supposedly ‘smart’ technologies are presented as simple solutions to wicked problems, making them disappear as if by magic. But as smart cities developed, a growing number of theorists, activists, and curators have embraced more speculative and imaginative notions of magic, in order to open up a deliberately unreal what-if space for collective fantasizing about urban futures. Magical thinking in this sense, then, can provide a healthy antidote to Modernist hopes and projections of being able to govern cities by means of (quantified) rational managerialism.
This seminar brings together scholars, artists, and designers who have productively explored these “magical” modes of thinking in their work. In embracing the dreamlike, the mystical, and the irrational as central concepts, the Magic City seminar series inspires us to think about urban life and culture along trajectories that move away from – or reimagine – quantifiable and commodified technological solutions. Practices of healing and cosmic consciousness are rather approached as alternative ways of knowing that could offer new ways of relating to the planet in distress, and of strengthening urban life as an inclusive, diverse, and imaginative community.
URL
The seminar is organized by the [urban interfaces] research group at Utrecht University.
Seminar website: https://urbaninterfaces.sites.uu.nl/seminars/the-magic-city-urban-interfaces-graduate-seminar-2021-2022/.
On this website we will post the updated program and seminar syllabus.
Where/when
1) 5 april 2022 15:00 – 17:00
2) 26 april 2022 15:00 – 17:00
3) 10 mei 2022 14:00 – 17:00 + drinks
Venue: MCW Lab, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 (theater space downstairs), Utrecht.
ECTS
Research Master students can acquire 3 ECTS for the seminar, if they write an illustrated blogpost of about 1000 words for each seminar session (3 in total). The best blogposts are selected for publication on the [urban interfaces] website urbaninterfaces.net.
Session #1 From Technics to Magic – Tuesday 5 April 2022 15:00 – 17:00
How do we imagine and shape sustainable urban futures? Or as the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale humbly asked: “How can we live together?”. Oftentimes, new ‘smart’ technologies for cities are forwarded as the apex of our enlightened rational approaches to any societal challenge. But could it be that we need to change our attitude towards our living environments, each other, and other creatures at large, instead of applying ever-more technological band-aids onto a system that seems broken beyond repair? Perhaps what is needed is not less but more magic. Not the type of ‘magical thinking’ that claims to solve complex societal issues with a single tech-fix devised by Brilliant Visionaries. But the kind of magic that ascribes our living environments with agency and moral value, and that helps to instil a sense of veneration, reenchantment, care and respect for all that envelopes us, and that we may never fully understand or control. In this first session the 2022 [urban interfaces] seminar series, we ask the question how in this day and age we can take magic seriously in the face of great urban challenges?
Preparation To get the discussion going and collect input for brainstorm exercises, students are asked to send in advance one image of an urban artwork or situated performance, an everyday experience or encounter, etc. that represents “the magic city”, plus a very short statement. This will play a role in our discussion, so please send in no later than April 1 12:00 (noon) to urbaninterfaces@uu.nl.
Readings We will read sections of these two books:
- Federico Campagna. 2018. Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality (Introduction pp.1-11 & Ch. 3 “Magic’s cosmogony” pp.113-187 ; and quickly skim through Ch. 2 “Technic’s cosmogony”)
- Karl Bell, ed. 2019. Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality. (Introductory chapter “Mapping the Urban Mindscape: The City and the Supernatural” pp.1-21)
session 2 and 3 are still in the making:
Session #2 Technology and magic – Tuesday 26 April 2022 15:00 – 17:00
With special guests:
- Marc Tuters, curator of IMPAKT “Weird Gnosis” expo >>
- Telemagic Media Art Lab >>
Readings tba
Session #3 Magical Urban Futures – Tuesday 10 May 2022 14:00 – 17:00 (NOTE: we’re starting 1 hour earlier, and ending with drinks!]
The theme for this session will be the notion of hauntology.