A diverse group of seven thinkers and makers will explore the philosophical turn away from singular, knowable, stable, and metaphysical absolutes, towards a multitude of experiential, ambivalent, shared realities. Such ambivalent and unstable states have come increasingly to characterize our shared reality—from sites of contested memory and amnesia, to economic and identity politics in a globalized age of displacement, to scientific and technological revolutions.
The Beta-Real names a search for alternative frameworks of understanding that might allow us to confront the contradictions of our contemporary reality. How we deal with these contradictions has social, cultural, and political implications—not only for architecture, humanities, science, society, and culture at large, but also for everyday life.
Participants will discuss how architecture might address and negotiate these states of contradiction. Participants will present their own designs and research and discuss in round table format how they each confront and navigate the Beta-Real.
Participants
Linda Zhang, Boghosian Fellow
Ani Liu, Artist and speculative technologist, New York, NY
Biko Mandela Gray, Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University
Natalie Koerner, Ph.D. candidate, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark
Bryan E. Norwood, Ph.D. candidate in the history and theory of architecture, Harvard University; Visiting Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University School of Architecture
Irene Chin, Curatorial Coordinator, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Canada
William Stewart, Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University Department of German
Yolandé Gouws, Artist, Berlin
