Section 3: Matters of Bodies

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ARC3016Y Assembling a molecular architecture

Tuesdays 9am – 1pm and 2pm-6pm; Thursdays 2pm-6pm
Adrian Blackwell
Adrian.blackwell@utoronto.ca
Office Hours: By appointment


TERM PROJECT assembling a molecular architecture

SECTION 3 Matters of bodies - program


METHODOLOGY

Pragmatics as a whole consists in this: making a tracing of the mixed semiotics, under the generative component; making the transformational map of the regimes, with the their possibilities for translation and creation, for budding along the lines of the tracings; making the diagram of the abstract machines that are in play in each case, either as potentialities or as effective emergences; outlining the program of the assemblages that distribute everything and bring a circulation of movement with alternatives, jumps and mutations.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus, 146-147.

The problem… is to tip the most favorable assemblage from its side facing the strata to its side facing the plane of consistency or the body without organs.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus, 134.

In section one you produced a tracing and a map that described a specific regime of signs enveloping a specific geography – York South / Weston. This project is about developing an abstract machine, or diagram, for the site, which anticipates a specific program and the assemblage which will practice it. Programs are tied to specific arrangements of power. Do they constitute reversible and mobile relations of power or fixed states of domination?

Following the discussion with community members at Mount Dennis United Church you will develop a program and diagram for a molecular architecture that could engage issues of environmental sustainability, social life and creative production. What organic ecological assemblages are being imagined and constructed within the Mount Dennis neighborhood? How could an architectural plan stimulate social events and plug into this ecology? What forms of creative experimentation can this facilitate? What desires animate this diagram, how can we connect them together, so they don’t remain separated and powerless, but combine to create new compositions.

In this project you will be working in groups, each group will be responsible for opening up a conversation about one aspect of the plan, this conversation will include everyone in the studio. Here you will try to express your ideas as a collective assemblage of enunciation, as a group without separate parts, or individuals. One possible arrangement of persons is as follows:

a) Organizing territory – 2 people – 2 proposals
b) Mobile architecture - 6 people – 3 proposals
c) Garage / greenhouse – 3 people – 2 proposals
d) Docking surfaces – 2 people – 2 proposals

However other organizations are also possible, and these may be discovered through the preliminary discussions.

You will make diagrams and develop programs to discuss with the community, as the first stage of an iterative, circular and repetitive design process, in which each repetition produces new differences.


SCHEDULE
Week 5 – Matters of bodies – program

Tuesday February 5
9:00 – 10:00 – rearrange the studio
10:00 - 1:00 – discussion starting from Friday’s meeting:
2:00 – 4:00 – Discussion: D&G 587 B.C.--A.D. 70: On Several Regimes of Signs, 111.
4:00 – 5:00 – division of labour

Wednesday February 6
7:00 – 9:00 - meeting of the Emmett Avenue Residents Association

Thursday February 7
2:00 – 4:00 – group pin-up of the elements, presentation and engagement of the group in the discussion.
4:00 – 6:00 – smaller group conversations

Week 6 – February 12, 14
Matters of bodies - diagram

Tuesday, February 12
9:00 – 1:00 –
9:00 – 1:00 – general discussion
2:00 – 4:00 – group discussions
4:00 – 6:00 - Discussion: November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? 149.

Thursday, February 14
2:00 – 6:00 – Review: Matters of bodies

Friday February 15, presentation of diagrams and programs to the Community kitchen - 7-9pm meeting at Mount Dennis United Church


SECTION DUE DATE

Diagram and Program - due February 14 - 10% 2:00pm.