AHRA Conference: 'Architecture and Feminisms – Ecologies, Economies, Technologies' (Nov 17-19)

More information concerning the Call for Papers and more specific description of the conference themes can be found at www.architecturefeminisms.org  Deadline for abstracts of papers is 15 April 2016

ARCHITECTURE AND FEMINISMS: 
ECOLOGIES, ECONOMIES, TECHNOLOGIES
We are concerned with the exploration of ecologies of practice, the drawing out of alternative economies, and experimentation with mixed technologies, from craft to advanced computational technologies.

We situate this call amidst what has come to be known as the Anthropocene, a controversial term that calls for the recognition of the formation of a geologic age in which global environmental conditions have been radically altered by accelerating processes of human driven industrialization. Architecture has fully participated in these processes, and we believe that an exploration of feminist, critical, and radical epistemologies and ontologies, methodologies and pedagogies in architecture – especially in light of the rise of artistic, design or practice-based research – might enable us to shift the values and habits that produce our near exhausted existential territories. Amidst what can be deemed a generalized, world-wide depletion of our material resources, social relations, and environments, we invite researchers and practitioners to explore how critical concepts and feminist design tools might offer radical and experimental approaches to creating more sustainable and resilient mental, social and environmental ecologies.

We propose to open a space in which to exchange and collectivise current research on critical, radical and feminist approaches to architecture that can be applied by all to the relay between architectural discourse and practice. Although we acknowledge the historical and contemporary need for separatist spaces, we do not intend to create exclusionary places and practices, but to experiment with ways of ethically coping in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable and contested. We call for a thoroughgoing reengagement in histories and futures of feminist critical and radical practices toward reimagining our precarious environment-worlds. We invite participants to draw inspiration from the active archives of their feminist and radically engaged precursors, existing, and reimagined, whose diverse projects, manifestos, and concepts can be reinvented in opposition to arguments that declare the approach of the end-times.

CALL FOR PAPERS
We invite responses to our six thematic areas: Ecologies – Economies – Technologies – Histories – Pedagogies – Styles

We assume that each thematic area inherently organises diverse ecologies of practice, and that the question of precarious mental, social, environmental ecologies pertains to all. We likewise assume that across these categories there can be discovered many explorative and even performative approaches to architectural research and we encourage a sensitivity to intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, age, ability, ethnicity, and so forth. Each thematic area will be curated by a team of convenors who have a history or association with , KTH Stockholm.

Ecologies: Looks to our fragile and tenacious relational ecologies, including ecologies of practice across disciplines and practices. Here Peg Rawes’s anthology Relational Ecologies has been a great inspiration, as well as Félix Guattari’s essay, The Three Ecologies.

Economies: Searches for alternative economies that persist amidst the hegemonic forces of neoliberal advanced Capitalism and is much inspired by the work of economic geographers J.K. Gibson Graham.

Technologies: Acknowledges the relationship between craft and advanced technologies, and draws on thinking in Science and Technology Studies, including feminist technologies. The legacy of philosopher of science Donna Haraway can be acknowledged here.

We add to these key themes, identified in the subtitle of our conference event, three further themes:

Histories: Is concerned with the historical archive as an active force in the present and engages in critical histories of feminist theories and practices in architecture, including the theories and practices of overlooked minorities and communities.

Pedagogies: Directly addresses the crucial issue of the formation of architects and the potential of radical and critical pedagogies. This theme acknowledges the seminal work of bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, and also Gavin Butt regarding intersectional, queer, race, and post-colonial concerns contextualised in architectural education specifically, and in the practice and discipline of architecture more generally.

Styles: This theme explicitly invites a variety of presentation formats, such as papers, installations, pinups, exhibitions, dialogues, demonstrations, performances and places a central emphasis on queer spatiality and aesthetics, in order to take up the unfinished revolutions of such thinkers as Gloria Anzaldúa, Hélène Cixous, Audre Lourde, Eve Kosowsky Sedgwick.

ARCHITECTURAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
AHRA is a non-profit academic organisation that provides an inclusive and comprehensive network for researchers in architectural humanities across the UK and overseas. It promotes, supports, develops and disseminates high-quality research in the areas of architectural history, theory, culture, design and urbanism.

CRITICAL STUDIES IN ARCHITECTURE
investigate the histories, theories and discourses of architecture. In this context, architecture is considered as a profession, a discipline and a form of cultural expression (in terms of projects, fictions and built environments, for example). Important issues affect architectonic meaning and representation, the influence of different ideologies and power structures on architecture and, conversely, how architecture itself may reproduce ideological systems and power structures. Research methods are interdisciplinary and relate to a wider humanist field such as critical cultural studies, as well as artistic methods of investigation.

AHRA 2016 convenors: Hélène Frichot , Catharina Gabrielsson , Helena Mattsson , Karin Reisinger , Meike Schalk

AHRA Scientific Committee: Karan August ,  Brady Burroughs , Julia Dwyer ,  Katja Grillner , Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling , Daniel Koch , Elke Krasny ,  Jonathan Metzger , Jane Rendell , Kim Trogal ,  Josefin Wangel , MYCKET  (Katarina Bonnevier, Thérèse Kristiansson and Mariana Alvès)