The arts of attention and Oslo Architecture Triennale

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/ar.5284

Keywords:

attention, architecture, critical spatial practice, degrowth, ecology, urban

Abstract

This paper starts from a two-fold observation: firstly, that attention rests at the core of our environmental challenges; and secondly, that by becoming (more) attentive to the modified, transformed, and controlled urban environments in which we dwell, we may be better equipped to attend to these challenges. The paper therefore develops and introduces “an urban attention ecology” that seeks to expand our ability to attend to urban form in ways that open possibilities to critically address and creatively negotiate the ways in which cities are built and inhabited. The potentials and challenges of the urban attention ecology are thought through in a practice-based account of a broad range of critical spatial practices centring around the theme of degrowth. These practices took the form of performances, installations, and other artistic projects that the author gathered, developed and presented as curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.

Cover photo: The Factory of the Future at the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture. OAT / Istvan Virag.

Author Biography

Cecilie Sachs Olsen, Oslo Metropolitan University

Cecilie Sachs Olsen is professor of art in society at Oslo Metropolitan University, Faculty of Technology, Art and Design, Department of Art, Design and Drama.

References

Andersen, B. & Røe, P. G. (2017). The Social Context and Politics of Large Scale Urban Architecture: Investigating the Design of Barcode, Oslo. European Urban and Regional Studies 24(3), 304 – 317. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776416643751

Bataille, G. (1984 [1933]. The Notion of Expenditure. In Stoekl, A., Lovitt, C. R. and Leslie, D. M. (eds.). Visions of Excess. Selected Writings 1927 – 1939. Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 302 – 320.

Bellacasa, M. P., (2017). Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnnesota Press.

Brochmann, G. (2019, October 18). Museet som tvangstrøye [The Museum as straight jacket]. [Newspaper article]. Retrieved from https://morgenbladet.no/kultur/2019/10/museet-som-tvangstroye.

Choi, D. and Austrheim, E. W. (2019, November 15). Oslo Arkitekturtriennalens slagferdige ideologi faller på grus i møtet med den løsningsorienterte arkitekturen [Oslo Architecture Triennale’s quickwitted ideology fails when meeting the solution oriented architecture]. Subjekt.

Citton, Y. (2018). Learning to derive. Financial Moves and Attentional Gestures in the Ecocidal Maleström. Movement Research Performance Journal, hal-02912300.

Citton, Y. (2017a). The Ecology of Attention. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press.

Citton, Y. (2017b). Restructuring the Attention Economy: Literary Interpretation as an Antidote to Mass Media Distraction. In C. Akdere & C. Baron. Economics and Literature. A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315231617-15

Demaria, F., Kallis, G. and Bakker, K. (2019). Geographies of degrowth: Nowtopia, resurgences and the decolonialization of imaginaries and places. Nature and space 2(3), 431 – 450. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619869689.

Fitz, A., Krasny, E. & Architecturzentrum Wien (2019) (eds.) Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Massachusetts/London: MIT Press.

Frichot, H. (2019). Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture, London: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350036550

Gordon, E. and S. Walter (2016). Meaningful inefficiencies: resisting the logic of technological efficiency in the design of civic systems. In E. Gordon and P. Mihailidis (eds.) Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, Cambridge: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9970.003.0020

Goulding, A. (2009). Engaging with community engagement: Public libraries and citizen involvement. New Library World 110(1/2), 37 – 51. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800910928577.

Graham, S. (2010). Cities under siege: The new military urbanism. London/New York: Verso. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444395105.ch11

Haraway, D. (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Arizona Press.

Harper, P. (2019). Introduction. In E. Attlee, M. Smith and P. Harper (Eds.). Gross Ideas. Tales of tomorrow’s architecture. London: OAT/AF.

Heikkurinen, P. (2019). Degrowth: A Metamorphosis in Being. ENE: Nature and Space 2(3), 528–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618822511.

Kallis, G. & March, H. (2015). Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(2), 360 – 368. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.973803.

Krasny, E. (2019). Architecture and Care. In Fitz, A. et al. (eds.) Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Massachusetts/London: MIT Press, 33 – 44. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12273.001.0001

de Leeuw, S., Parkes, M.W., Morgan, V.S., Christensen, J., Lindsay, N., Mitchell‐Foster, K. et al. (2017) Going unscripted: A call to critically engage storytelling methods and methodologies in geography and the medical‐health sciences. The Canadian Geographer, 61(2), 152–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12337

Lorne, C. (2017). Spatial agency and practising architecture beyond buildings. Social & Cultural Geography 18(2), 268 – 287. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1174282.

Marris, P. (1987). Meaning and action: Community planning and conceptions of change. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Massey, D. (2007). World City. Cambridge: Polity.

Oslotriennale (2018). Open call for contributions. Retrieved from http://oslotriennale.no/uploads/images/Open-Call-OAT-2019.pdf.

Perec, G. 1997. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books.

Pinder, D. 2002. In Defense of Utopian Urbanism: Imagining Cities after the “End of Utopia”. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 84(3–4): 229–241. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2002.00126.x

Rendell, J. (2006) Art and architecture: a place between. London: I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755695812

Rodríguez-Labajos, B., Yánez, I., Bond, P. et al. (2019). Not So Natural an Alliance? Degrowth and Environmental Justice Movements in the Global South. Ecological Economics 157: 175–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.11.007.

Rogoff, I. (2006). Smuggling: An embodied creativity. [online article]. Retrieved from https://xenopraxis.net/readings/rogoff_smuggling.pdf.

Røe, P. G. (2015). Iscenesettelser av den kompakte byen – som visuell representasjon, arkitektur og salgsobjekt. In Hanssen, G. S., Hofstad, H. and Saglie, I-L (eds.) Kompakt byutvikling: Mulightere og utfordringer. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 48 – 57.

Sachs Olsen, C. (2023). From Architecture of Capital to Architectures of Care: The Arts of Dreaming Otherwise in the Oslo Architecture Triennale. In Haarstad et al. (eds). Haste: the slow politics of climate urgency. London: UCL Press, 27 – 38. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2rh2cgx.9

Sachs Olsen, C. (2022a). Towards an Urban Attention Ecology. In LaBelle, B. (ed.). Radical Sympathy. Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 12 – 23.

Sachs Olsen, C. (2022b). Imagining transformation: Applied theatre and the making of collaborative future scenarios. GeoHumanities 8(2), 399 – 414. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2021.2005467

Sachs Olsen, C. (2021). Curating change: spatial utopian politics and the architecture of degrowth. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46(3), 704 – 716. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12463

Sachs Olsen, C. & Juhlin, C. (2021). How to Engage Reflexively with Messy Presents and Potential Futures: An Audio Walk for Planners. Planning Theory and Practice 22(4), 595 – 609. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2021.1948599

Till, J. (2009) Architecture Depends. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tronto, J. (2019). Caring Architecture. In Fitz, A. et al. (eds.) Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Massachusetts/London: MIT Press, 26 – 32.

Vidler, A. (2011). The scenes of the street and other essays. New York: The Monacelli Press.

Weigel, M. (2019, 20 June). Feminist cyborg scholar Donna Haraway: “The disorder of our era isn’t necessary”. The Guardian. [Newspaper article]. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/donna-haraway-interview-cyborg-manifesto-post-truth

Yusoff, K. (2009). Excess, catastrophe, and climate change. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(6), 1010–29. https://doi.org/10.1068/d7407.

Yusoff, K. & Gabrys, J. (2011). Climate Change and the Imagination. WIREs Climate Change 2, 516 – 534. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.117.

Et rom med portretter på skjermer plassert i en sirkel

Downloads

Published

2024-01-31

How to Cite

Sachs Olsen, C. (2024). The arts of attention and Oslo Architecture Triennale. Nordic Journal of Art & Research, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.7577/ar.5284

Issue

Section

Articles, peer reviewed