The “Sensitive Observation Seminar Series” organized by Ila Bêka, Louise Lemoine and Gili Merin within their diploma unit at the AA School of Architecture in London, will host during the year a series of guests from different fields – architects, filmmakers, photographers, artists, philosophers, writers, anthropologists and other outsiders of “categories” – who will discuss their own practice, research and working methodology.
In close relation to the unit’s studio work and production of films, the seminar will attempt to define what sensitive observation means in order to enlighten the social, political and poetical importance of such practices within architectural education and our profession at large.
—-
Senstive Space: a Lecture by Emanuele Coccia
The author of “Life of Plants,” “Metamorphosis” and “Sensible Life” questions space and perception: is space the object of our perception or matter that perceives in itself?
“We usually imagine space as the object of perception: extended and inanimate matter that the five senses allow us to transform into experience. Instead, I would like to try to demonstrate that what we call space is an immense sensorium that does not wait for our senses to open up to transform the world into experience. The whole space feels and all that it feels lives spatially”.
Emanuele Coccia is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and formerly taught in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, Columbia University in New York, and the Universities of Buenos Aires, Dusseldorf, Tokyo and Weimar. He has worked extensively on aesthetics and biology, and has written about contemporary art and fashion, and was appointed scientific curator of the exhibition Trees at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (2019). His publications include Sensible Life (New York, 2016), Goods: Advertising, Urban Space and the Moral Law of the Image (New York, 2017), The Life of Plants (London, 2018) and Metamorphosis (London 2020). With Giorgio Agamben, he edited an anthology covering angels in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
24/11/2020
—-
This masterclass is the second session of the Sensitive Observation Seminar Series hosted by “AA Diploma Unit 16: Homo Urbanus”, taught by Ila Beka, Louise Lemoine and Gili Merin.
Find here the whole series:
bekalemoine.com/teaching.php
