Objectives for Reality Extensions
DIAGNOSIS
The conjuncture of being-ness, the immanent mechanism running our existence, is currently being dismantled on all levels and all scales. From a person to household, from a city to nation and to the entire planet, all is subjected to withdrawal of basic infrastructures of survival. The precarity and displacement metastasized through the systems characteristic for our time is foreclosing our right to space, the cities, the planet. The viability of human life form on the planetary surface is questionable.
SYMPTOMS
The symptoms of planetary system decay, which we observe, might create presuppositions that we need to act in a counteractive manner on the physical level. That we need to reassemble the form in order to avoid its own disassemblage. Yet, the mere reorganization of the matter in the field of visibility results in omission of the true constructive aspects of spatial reality. It is not the role of the form to breathe life into the invisible mechanisms, it is the mechanisms which conduct the visible physicality.
By outgrowing the overemphasis on urban morphology and instead focusing on the necessary parallel, relational quality and unification of the two — tangible realm of the physical form and intangible realm of the systemic mechanism, we allow a conception of the system and matter on the unified spectrum of tangibility and scale, and release it from the constraints of dualistic paradigm.
Laborious recomposition of spatial distortions in order to connect the fragments of a puzzle is, at this point, not only redundant, but contributes to further distortions. Identifying a fractured and fragmented system, disintegrating in its coherence and weakening in its structure, has thus a precise function. It puts a threshold to a different kind of conceptualization without being fatigued by the outdated notion of the form in matter as typologies of urban fabric bound in structured settlements.
MISSION
The emergent epistemology of the planetary and meta systems adds voice to the thesis on a large scale, intelligible and apprehensive of the contemporary status of planetary terrain.
Global megacities, densifying infrastructures, permeation of wilderness, rapid commodification of space and population increase are among the vast materialized forms of mechanism calling for reparation and extension of existing planetary networks and systems. Yet, we have maxed out the capacity for spatial expansion and that leaves us with no space for extensions, right? Although unevenly, the urban systems now blanket the planet, proliferating everything. There is no more outside, no more space. So where do we extend from here? We have two options:
beyond the planet
into the synthetic realm
These are the next operative territories. And the practice calls for transcending the established protocols, engaging with the former obscure and the new normal — to engineer new systems.