Fibreculture Journal (Jan 2012)
FCJ-141 Spaces for Play - Architectures of Wisdom: Towards a Utopic Spatial Practice.
Abstract
The paper speculatively proposes a critical artistic practice that takes utopia to be a dynamic and specifically spatial device for achieving social transformation, and allies this with the ability of locative media to create virtual ‘second worlds’ in real-world spaces. It sketches a ‘Utopic Spatial Practice’ that would, through the superimposition of speculative other-worlds, deliberately create distance and incongruity between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ in order to instigate a potential-generating dialectic. The paper explores parallels between Louis Marin’s utopics and Pierre Levy’s account of virtualization, as well as ideas about ‘nomadic’ space, and architectonic models for such a practice.
