Programming for exhibition concurrently on view at the 8th Floor:

http://the8thfloor.org/portfolio/sedimentations-assemblage-as-social-repair

“For our Fall 2014 Session in New York, Utopia School will create a schoolhouse in the Queen’s based collective, Flux Factory. The school will incorporate a series of theoretical and practical workshops, field trips, screenings, talks and games, and will house a group of dedicated participants, as well as the digital Utopia Library. We are seeking collaborators who may take on one or more roles including Makers, Builders Artists, Theorists, Writers, Documentarians, Researchers, Archivists, Learners, Remote correspondents, On-site Residents, Support Staff, and other roles we may have not yet envisioned.”

For my part, I will be facilitating a four-part class on architectures of desire:

“Picking up on the work of visionary architect Lebbeus Woods, architectures of desire will explore expanded conditions of a built environment beyond those intended by an ideologically-driven definition of urbanism pegged to for-profit development, imposed alienation, isolation, and other tropes of the capitalist regime. To imagine such an architecture is to expose the ideology inherent in the way we currently build the buildings in which we live our lives.

In doing so, we will construct a reader and reflect on writings by Rosalyn Deutsche, Lebbeus Woods, Jennifer Bloomer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paolo Salieri, Daniel Campo, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Marc Augé, Isabelle Auricoste, Jean Baudrillard, Henri Lefebvre, Deleuze and Guattari, Richard Serra, among others.”

I’ll also be helping to run a series of People’s Kitchen events at the Sunview Luncheonette.  Get in touch if you’d like to join in.

Class Schedule:

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 – 6:00pm to 9:00pm

General Overview: a/D + Anarchitecture, e.g.:  Lebbeus Woods, Matta Clark and the Anarchitecture Group, Richard Greaves, Spatial Agency, others by your suggestions.  Possible introduction by Kevin Clancy, or anyone else who wants to present.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 – 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Ecotecture(ures), e.g.: “How shall we live on/with the earth?”, Hundertwasserhaus, Arcology (ArcoSanti and Paolo Soleri), Earthship, Fuller, Venus, Makoko Floating School (Lagos) / African Water Cities, others.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014 – 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Combine class with Dena Al-Adeeb’s Contemporary Aesthetic Practices and Decolonial Architecture class.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014 – 6:00pm to 9:00pm

“Nomad, Collective, Autonomy, and Living Together”, e.g.: Krzysztof Wodiczko (v-a-v Neil Smith), actLab, Yurt, Camps, Mary Mattingly, others based on your suggestions/contributions.  (And wrap up/retrospective of the class.)

Go to the Utopia School / Architectures of Desire page and sign-up.

This September, 350.org and Mare Liberum partnered on a series of events around extreme energy and water as commons, to coincide with the annual UN high-level meeting here in New York City.

The initiative is called SeaChange – think of it as part protest, part art project, and an adventure all around.  We all live downstream, is our motto, and we’re building a fleet of hand-made, human-powered vessels as a protest against irresponsible forms of energy.

We are organizing a series of consciousness and momentum-building events all along the Hudson River, gathering a flotilla of DIY protest-boats between Troy and New York City, inviting others to build new boats, and journeying down the Hudson as a fleet of activists, artists, thinkers, and makers.  We’ll be stopping ports of call along the Hudson and organizing cultural events and dinners with local groups engaged in activism and advocacy campaigns against extreme energy.

These events will deal with various extreme-energy issues which affect the environment, both in NYS and beyond, including fracking, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy, and will include talks and workshops, campouts and dinners.

Once all the boats are down in NYC, we plan to get them on the waterways in a visible way during the UN meeting, including bringing local boat clubs to take part in a circumnavigation of Manhattan.

If you’d like to get on board the project, we’d love to have you at our second planning brunch on Sunday, February 23rd.  If you’re not in New York City we’ll have a conference Skype set up for you to listen/join in.  You can also join the seachange list (seachange-l).

Follow the project on tumblr.