Oslo Architecture Triennale Pamphlets
Series Editor Library Stack
Authors Esther Choi, Shannon Mattern, Rory Rowan, Erik Wysocan, Edgardo Civallero, Sara Plaza, Sam Hardy, Hannes Grassegger, Jem Bendell, Danica Brozowski, Jacob Davey, Benjamin Green, Roy Scranton, David Wallace-Wells, James Ferraro
Design Bryce Wilner
Authors Esther Choi, Shannon Mattern, Rory Rowan, Erik Wysocan, Edgardo Civallero, Sara Plaza, Sam Hardy, Hannes Grassegger, Jem Bendell, Danica Brozowski, Jacob Davey, Benjamin Green, Roy Scranton, David Wallace-Wells, James Ferraro
Design Bryce Wilner
For the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale, Library Stack has compiled a series of essays that map a notional ‘right to loot’ across the urgency of climate crisis and the demand for degrowth. How or when does an unfolding catastrophe manifest a new moral right to dismantle, seize or inhabit the archival, technological, educational, or economic systems producing that crisis? The series finds Shannon Mattern speculating on deep storage archives and their horizon of futurity; Esther Choi on the falsehoods of architecture’s sustainability discourse; Edgardo Civallero and Sara Plaza on the role of libraries in shaping a public consciousness; Rory Rowan on the phantom biostratigraphy of consumer convenience; Sam Hardy on the antiquities black market and extra-legal economies; and Hannes Grassegger, along with an assortment of guests, on the emergent subjectivities and political formations of ecological disaster.
Series Titles
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The discourse of sustainability in architecture is often associated with eco-capitalism: the theory and practice of a free-market economy in which natural resources are regarded as capital. Since profits are partially dependent on environmental protection, nature is treated as a commodity that needs to be restored after it is exploited for economic growth. This results in a looped accounting cycle of checks and balances… Likewise, the economic incentives for using “green technology” to create new markets rarely consider how these competitive, profit-driven scenarios will necessitate (new) forms of social mistreatment in order to flourish. Herein lies the crux of the ... -
This pamphlet transcribes and reformats 3GRADPLUS: A Journey to the End of the World, a public performance by the Swiss journalist Hannes Grassegger, produced by the 2019 International Summer Festival Kampnagel in Hamburg. For the event, Grassegger re-enacted his reporting process for the piece “Der Fall Benjamin Green” [“The Case of Benjamin Green”] in the Swiss weekly Das Magazin, interviewing the writers, scientists, researchers and characters from the piece in the contingent and unpredictable setting of live theater. Some participants were present via video link; a few of Grassegger’s illustrations are reproduced here. Across its three hours, the event moved ... -
Virtues Impracticable and Extremely Difficult: The Human Rights of Subsistence Diggers Oslo Architecture Triennale PamphletsIn the bloody and destructive aftermath of the U.S.-led Coalition’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, cultural heritage workers debated how to prevent or suppress the looting of museums and archaeological sites. At the Fifth World Archaeological Congress, held in Washington, D.C. three months after the invasion, the destruction and looting of Iraqi cultural property, and the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists, were central concerns. Troubled by the explicit statements of some archaeologists and the implicit tone of others, I submitted Proposition 15. It cited the human right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and ... -
In 2015, the American Library Association adopted the Resolution on the Importance of Sustainable Libraries; since then, other international organizations have been quick to go along with the proposal, reporting on the potential relationship between sustainability and libraries. However, such documents (which, in general, support the role of librarians in building “sustainable, resilient and regenerative” communities and making “sustainable decisions”) remain purely statements of intent… that include a handful of trendy topics in their paragraphs, and fall short of being credible action plans. It is worrying to note that, despite the seriousness and urgency of the discussion, these statements tiptoe ... -
The iPhone 3G, this innocuous and already slightly outmoded little cluster of minerals and marketing, is an emblematic meeting point for the material and symbolic processes shaping the contemporary entanglement of social and geologic stratifications: both product and engine of the great cleavages of the global economy, those geopolitical fractures that Marxist critics refer to with euphemistic kid gloves as “uneven development;” a treasured possession bound up with resource wars and environmentally destructive extraction practices driven by a rapacious global system of neo-colonial corporate-feudalism; the consumer excretion of a world where exhausted Chinese factory workers are driven to suicide satisfying ... -
Extract and Preserve: Underground Repositories for a Posthuman Future? Oslo Architecture Triennale PamphletsUnderground nuclear and military materials have been the subject of international commissions, tribunals, and wars. Yet subterranean facilities also commonly inventory a similarly volatile, though less noxious, resource: information. SubTropolis’s central location, solidity, and security have drawn technology companies, who host data centers in the mine’s massive pillared rooms. Many underground garrisons and command centers of the Cold War era have likewise become “data bunkers.” Given that industrial metaphors of “mining” and “smithing” have long pervaded the discourses of intellectual labor, it should be no surprise that we’re now data mining inside our mines. And alongside the subterranean servers and ...
