#eflux

[brakemolds]

Sarah Brahim, Untitled, 2021. Part of the group exhibition As We Gaze Upon Her at 421 Arts Campus. Courtesy of 421 Arts Campus.

[socialistarchitecture]

: . This ongoing research, titled “Insular Modernism,” aims to identify and document the artefacts and current state of socialist architecture that overlap a number of cities associated with the Silk Road narrative. An impressive network of roads and former trade nodes are currently involved in the BRI. Thus, the journeys and images are an attempt to unfold ongoing political and cultural influence that continue to cross and nourish the region. . Ştefan Rusu, "Knots, Stones, and Passes," e-flux Architecture, "New Silk Roads," February 2020. . e-flux.com/architecture/new-silk-roads/313105/knots-stones-and-passes/ . #eflux #efluxarchitecture . #insularmodernities #nationalmodernism #decolonisingmodernity #socialistarchitecture_tajikistan #socialistarchitecture . #socialistarchitecture_tajikistan #socialistarchitecture #insularmodernities #socialistcity_dushanbe #socialistcityandurbanism #dushanbe #tajikistan #archdaily #dezeen #sovmod #sovarch #sovietarchitecture #соварх #совмод #архитектура #модернизм #соцарх #соцархитектура #socialist #socialistcity . #stefanrusuprojects #stefanrusu . ©insularmodernities . (at Dushanbe, Tajikistan) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8qwPdSpHMo/?utm_medium=tumblr

[solarpunks]

Solarpunk’s utopian architectures

Solarpunk, a movement capable of providing solutions to the challenges that define our age, thinks and designs a world where prosperity, peace and beauty are an achievable goal.

Anja, the protagonist of Oval, which is a science fiction novel written by Elvia Wilk and recently published in Italy by Zona 42, lives on The Berg.

In the fiction of the book, The Berg is an artificial mountain built on what is left of Tempelhof airport. The Berg is an eco-friendly, zero-emission community run by the multinational corporation that controls the city and lives of the protagonists. The Berg is a rotting nightmare of inefficiency, malfunction and disruption. The Berg is a carbon neutral dystopia, overshadowed by the Green New Deal. It is ecology without any criticism of the production system – basically, it is gardening. Or rather, its urban equivalent.

Even in the world created by Wilk – which is our world, just a few minutes in advance – the ecological transition, or rather, the collection of practical recipes that should help us overcome the climate crisis we are experiencing, is irreparably compromised and lessened in the context of capitalist realism. What is presented to us as a solution in the renderings, statistical projections, and politicians’ speeches, turns out to be only one of the many dystopian futures among which we can choose. This should not surprise us. We live in such a problematic reality that dystopia is what best defines the mood of the visions of the future produced by our culture: whether it be cyberpunk, steampunk, or climate science fiction, our ability to imagine what awaits us is dominated by gloomy visions imbued with pessimism.

Solarpunk is an exception to this rule.

Pretty cool to see solarpunk written about in Domus Magazine.  The Magazine for Architecture professionals, Design and Art Lovers Wilk wrote the “Is Ornamenting Solar Panels a Crime?” piece for e-flux previously on the blog here. LARB review of Oval here

[insularmodernities]

: . "This visual essay was assembled out of partly spontaneous and short, and other carefully planned and longer trips through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The images swing between urban “archaeology” and documentary photography in order to build a comprehensive archive and understanding of post-Soviet road infrastructure, including post-industrial urban transformations in remote and high-altitude cities and villages in mountains or desert areas." -- Ştefan Rusu, "Knots, Stones, and Passes," e-flux Architecture, "New Silk Roads," February 2020. . e-flux.com/architecture/new-silk-roads/313105/knots-stones-and-passes/ . . #eflux #efluxarchitecture . #insularmodernities #nationalmodernism #decolonisingmodernity #socialistarchitecture_uzbekistan #socialistarchitecture #modernismtour_uzbekistan #modernismtour #modernism #khiva #bukhara #kyzylkumdesert #kyzylkumuzbekistan #socialistcity #architecture #architects . #stefanrusuprojects #stefanrusu . ©stefanrusu . (at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) https://www.instagram.com/p/B91_tcpJMbU/?igshid=1jhy9131ydp9

[mthvn]

Metahaven, Hometown (2018), 31’, two-channel digital film. Installation view at e-flux, New York, 2019. Photo Gustavo Murillo Fernández-Valdés

[detectability]

Hito Steyerl, 2016

[artandfeminism]

We've always tried to be responsive and responsible in our organizing, to be feminist in both name and practice. For these reasons, Art+Feminism will not be buying an Art & Education ad as we have in years past. Art and Education is a joint venture between e-flux and Artforum. The management of Artforum enabled the sexual predation of Knight Landesman for years, and has now made legal actions against the victims brave enough to speak out. We will not condone this behavior with our ad dollars. Further, we call on e-flux to live up to its stated politics, to upend the status quo and use their power in service of those impacted by systemic injustice: Suspend their relationship with Artforum until Knight Landesman is no longer a co-owner, and Artforum retracts its motion to dismiss Amanda Schmitt’s lawsuit.

in solidarity with Not Surprised

http://www.not-surprised.org/home/

[worldfoodbooks]

NEW IN THE BOOKSHOP: E-FLUX JOURNAL - ART WITHOUT DEATH : CONVERSATIONS ON RUSSIAN COSMISM (2017) Contributions by Bart De Baere, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Elena Shaposhnikova, Marina Simakova, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood, Arseny Zhilyaev, Esther Zonsheim According to the nineteenth-century teachings of Nikolai Fedorov—librarian, religious philosopher, and progenitor of Russian cosmism—our ethical obligation to use reason and knowledge to care for the sick extends to curing the dead of their terminal status. The dead must be brought back to life using means of advanced technology—resurrected not as souls in heaven, but in material form, in this world, with all their memories and knowledge. Fedorov’s call to redistribute vital forces is wildly imaginative in emancipatory ambition. Today, it might appear arcane in its mystical panpsychism or eccentric in its embrace of realities that exist only in science fiction or certain diabolical strains of Silicon Valley techno-utopian ideology. It can be difficult to grasp how it ended up influencing the thinking behind a generation of young revolutionary anarchists and Marxists who incorporated Fedorov’s ideas under their own brand of biocosmism before the 1917 Russian Revolution, even giving rise to the origins of the Soviet space program. This book of interviews and conversations with today’s most compelling living and resurrected artists and thinkers seeks to address the relevance of Russian cosmism and biocosmism in light of its influence on the Russian artistic and political vanguard as well as on today’s art-historical apparatuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and historical and temporal politics. This unprecedented collection of exchanges on cosmism asks how such an encompassing and imaginative, unapologetically humanist and anthropocentric strain of thinking could have been so historically and politically influential, especially when placed alongside the politically inconsequential—but in some sense equally encompassing—apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries. Available via our website and in the bookshop. #worldfoodbooks #eflux #sternbergpress #russiancosmi (at WORLD FOOD BOOKS)