Hidden library: KRZYSZTOF NAWRATEK
Post-capitalist cities: spatial diversity and accumulation of agency
TIME: 06.09
VENUE: Contemporary for Art Ujazdowski Castle
"Holes In The Whole. Introduction to the Urban Revolutions" is in my opinion the most important book I have written. It is also the book I find the most disappointing – it is so dense that in places it becomes impenetrable. This is why I decided to write it again, but better. Maybe I will be always writing this one book, over and over again, trying to think of new, post-capitalist world and new, post-capitalist city in it. Perhaps this task will slowly become easier, because this new world is already emerging. There are visible cracks in capitalism and holes in its seemingly indestructible structure of Darwinian social ethics.
Interestingly, the new thinking that can be glanced through those cracks, is not much coming from Marx, Foucault or Deleuze (however their influence can be felt too), but more from an unexpected direction of Junger, Taubes and Bookchin. In an interesting and slightly ominous twist, the new, post-capitalist thinking is easier to be found on the intellectual right and among reactionist thinkers than on the left.
Despite this, the project on which I am currently working appears to be situated more to the left than anything that I have written before.
Bio:
Krzysztof Nawratek – Senior Lecturer in Humanities and Architecture Design at the University of Sheffield. Before joining SSoA he was an associate professor in Architecture, M.Arch. and M.A. in Architecture programme leader at the School of Architecture, Design and Environment, Plymouth University, United Kingdom. Educated as an architect and urban planner, have worked in Poland, Latvia (e.g. for Riga City Council and NAMS Architecture Office) and Ireland (Principal Urban Designer at Colin Buchanan, Dublin). He worked as a visiting professor at the Geography Department at the University of Latvia and as a researcher at National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, Maynooth, Ireland. He was Member of Board of Experts European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012 and 2014 and member of selection panel for the Polish contribution to the International Architecture Biennial in Venice in 2012 and in 2014. Urban theorist, author of City as a Political Idea (Plymouth, University of Plymouth Press, 2011), Holes in the Whole. Introduction to the Urban Revolutions (Winchester Zero Books, 2012) Radical Inclusivity. Architecture and Urbanism (ed. DPR-Barcelona, 2015) and several papers and chapters in edited books.
Organizer: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana / www.beczmiana.pl
Cooperation: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski / www.csw.art.pl
The project Synchronicty is carried out by the Bęc Zmiana Foundation with the financial support of the City of Warsaw and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. / www.synchronicity.pl
The lecture is carried out within the cycle „Część większej całości” – popularizing lectures and discussions concerning collections and collecting, in the context of library (knowledge, books) and works comprising Collection of Public Art of the Capital City of Warsaw, which are in deposit of Contemporary for Art Ujazdowski Castle.
+ Collection of Public Art of the Capital City of Warsaw ZOFIA KULIK, PRZEMYSŁAW KWIEK 16. Młot, dłoń, lód; Sierp, hak, cień. Sztuka w majtkach, (1978/1985), photography
This year’s edition of the cycle SYNCHRONICITY: CONCRETUM is devoted to the concrete possibilities of imagining anew the relationships that underpin the organisation of cities. The project concentrates on HOLES IN THE WHOLE, understood in the context of curiosity and searching for spaces that exist on the margins, left intact by the dynamics of the city-enterprise. There is a conscious reference here to the title of Krzysztof Nawratek’s book, Holes in the Whole. An Introduction to Urban Revolutions (Zero Books 2012). Conceived as a critical analytical project, this edition of SYNCHRONICITY aims to draw conclusions IN CONCRETE TERMS, and to reveal the role of architects, sociologists, politicians, urban activists, officials and residents in bringing about tangible improvements to the spatial organisation and quality of life in the city.