The gaps of architectural life: the affective politics of Gordon Matta‐Clark'sConical Intersect

Abstract

This paper contributes to a burgeoning concern with the 'critical geographies of architecture'. The central argument is that recent architecture-geography encountersinspired by non-representational approaches to material mutability and affective inhabitationare failing to connect with socio-political framings of the architectural. In this light, the paper aligns Gordon Matta-Clark's architectural artwork Conical Intersect (1975) with the Deleuzo-Guattarian axiom of micropolitics and macropolitics to re-insert the architectural subject as a microtexture of political forms imbued with (1) asymmetrical assemblages of material volatility, (2) restricted capacities of 'dwelling or being with' architecture and (3) bounded notions of living affectively. I suggest Conical Intersect foregrounds architectural space as a meeting of dreamworlds and institutional effects. In its piercing of that space of interaction, the artwork produces an architectural form freed from the conventions of legal and physical constraints to suggest the potency of alternative modes of living with and living in architecture that should be of primary interest to critical geographies of architecture and beyond.

Politics of dissensus in geographies of architecture: Testing equality at Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley

“…First, while accounts of buildings as a “relational effect” (Jacobs, , p. 11) have attempted to broaden the notion of politics (Dekeyser, , p. 187) by describing in intricate detail how it permeates both the “molar” and “molecular” dimensions of architecture (Kraftl, , pp. 274–275), this paper has considered politics beyond relationality in general and power relations in particular.…”

“…People with environmental intolerances, then, illustrate how contests over architectural space can occur "at the molecular level of preindividual states of things" (Rancière, 2009b, p. 285). This echoes geographical thinking on materiality as "a field of distributed and barely tangible forces" (McCormack, 2007, p. 372), which is patterned by particular practices of governance and opposition (Dekeyser, 2017;Kraftl, 2014). Rancière complements such work by asking how "impersonal, imperceptible, and indiscernable modes of being" can translate into an egalitarian community (Vallury, 2009, p. 235).…”

“…Other points of convergence and divergence between Rancière and enquiries into the becoming‐political of architecture can be found in an article by Kraftl (, p. 276), who explores sustainable housing schemes as “biopolitical regimes” where relations of power and knowledge organise “molar” and “molecular” entities and forces, including policies and material flows, to condition practices of design and dwelling. Likewise, Dekeyser (, pp. 181–182) describes how an intervention by artist Gordon Matta‐Clark into a residential building reveals urban inhabitation to be shaped by intersecting “micropolitical” and “macropolitical” processes, which range between embodied affects and state regulation.…”

“…181–182) describes how an intervention by artist Gordon Matta‐Clark into a residential building reveals urban inhabitation to be shaped by intersecting “micropolitical” and “macropolitical” processes, which range between embodied affects and state regulation. As with Kraftl (, p. 288; original emphasis), who investigates whether dominant dispositions of space might be destabilised by “ dissonant ” uses, Dekeyser (, p. 188) both critiques existing power relations in architecture and suggests ways of transforming these to generate alternative “geo‐imaginations.”…”

“…Rancière complements such work by asking how “impersonal, imperceptible, and indiscernable modes of being” can translate into an egalitarian community (Vallury, , p. 235). While authors like Dekeyser (, p. 185) affirm the “polyvocality and excessiveness” of architecture and “its capacity to operate as ‘a molecular affair,’” Rancière is interested in how the lively materialities of the world might serve as a site for testing alternative kinds of “basic equality” (Rancière, 2010b, p. 5). In this case, persons with chemical and electromagnetic sensitivities did not simply evoke the molecularity of architecture but used their knowledge to influence the selection and treatment of construction materials so as to expand the egalitarian potential of Ed Roberts Campus.…”