In-depth discussion of the aesthetic, political, historical architectural, and passional dimensions of artist Yves Mettler’s work on urban squares whose names invoke a multitude of concepts and visions of Europe. With Mettler himself and Atlas Europe Square contributors Stephen Zepke, Teresa Pullano, Neil Brenner, and Reza Negarestani addressing the many dimensions of the project, and with designers Emmanuel Crivelli and Ernesto Luna of DUALROOM about the process of transforming it into a book.

This podcast is the first one of a series of three recorded during a short residency at the Miami Rail. It addresses the on-going photographic series that artist Adler Guerrier constructs around the performativity of the flaneur. From the romantic figure described by Walter Benjamin in his writings about Charles Baudelaire, to its anti-capitalist offspring as defined by the Situationists, Adler explains how the action of flanerie (aimless walk) is a means to gather knowledge. He tells us how the body of the flaneur is a nameless solitary figure that the film noir’s amnesiac embodies the best, looking for markers ...

This conversation is the first of three recorded in Cairo about Cairo. Beth Stryker and Omar Nagati, through the description of their research and design work, introduce us to the post-revolution city and its multiple forms of informal architectures. We begin by evoking the numerous passageways of Downtown and the work of CLUSTER to rehabilitate two of them. We then describe these forms of informality, the danger in romanticizing them—by systematically assuming that they advance the common good—and what can be learn from them. We then conclude by problematizing the act of cartographying what was not meant to be mapped, ...

There has been many things written about the urban transformations of Paris orchestrated by Napoleon III’s prefect, the “Baron” Haussmann; many of which address the militarized causes of these transformations, as I often did myself. This aspect of the transformations is admitted by Haussmann himself in his memoirs as part of the strategy. The first part of the 19th-century saw many insurrections and revolutions happening in Paris (1830 revolution, 1832 insurrection, 1848 revolution, etc.) and Napoleon III, after his 1851 coup, was certainly eager to transform Paris to be able to control it. The large avenues and boulevards were thus ...

In our last episode, we considered how institutions such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are managing the extinction of the bluefin tuna, which is emptying the seas and leading to the forced displacement of fisherfolk, namely, that are traditionally living from the wildlife in those seas. In this episode we consider how this resource depletion affects those communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of. Together with Dr Nishat Awan, who leads the research project Topological Atlas at TU Delft. Topological Atlas produces visual counter-geographies that combine ...

Lucie Bacon and I had this conversation only a few days after she finished her second field trip in Bosnia-and-Herzegovina where her research took her to study the European Union politics of “externalization,” i.e. the ‘subcontracting’ of its (anti-)migration policies outside of the Shenghen Space. Lucie has visited some asylum centers, where numerous migrants wait to be granted their legal status, and detention centers, where migrant bodies are imprisoned prior to their expulsion. She collected numerous testimonies from migrants themselves, but also organizers, activists, administrative officials, etc. and tell us about them in this discussion. We also talk about her ...

The the tenth and final episode of the Corona Under the Ocean series, with artist and filmmaker Su Yu Hsin, began with one of her many memories related to water, and how the appearance of light on water is indispensable for her when thinking with water. Su Yu Hsin’s homeland, Taiwan, is an island where water has a strong presence due to typhoons and the island’s atmospheric condition. In her artistic practice, she approaches ecology in its close relationship with technology, also investigating the ideology inherent to map-making throughout history and to this day. This podcast episode is the result ...

This book develops and encourages you to inhabit — through narratives or spatialized experiences — Deep Maps of places you want to understand in a robust, inclusive, and expansive ways, which is not possible with traditional mapping. Maps tell you more about yourself, the narratives you construct, and the values you explicitly or implicitly hold, than they do about an actual place. To get an understanding of an actual place, one must inhabit its multiple overlapping contradictory stories simultaneously. To this end, we began to construct Deep Maps. We were inspired by the American author, William Least Heat-Moon’s book PrairyEarth, ...

The word “geography” literally means “writing the Earth,” and the short pieces collected in this volume represent a wide variety of ways in which this can be accomplished. Each one, in its own way, is a testament to the miraculous coherence which can crystallize within incoherence.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BIRDWATCHING Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to ...

In opening the book The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (2015), Aileen Moreton-Robinson leads with an epigraph: “The problem with white people is they think and believe that they own everything.” In terms of a critique of the seven-centuries-long rollout and contestation of European dispossessive power, this citation is the alpha and the omega. It is incredibly hard to add anything that isn’t captured within its succinct analysis. Nevertheless, this special issue of e-flux journal goes to work amid the breadth of this statement—seeking greater insight into its truth and the counter-tactics therein through aesthetic study in particular. The essays, ...

Europa is a book created by a group of Magnum photographers and journalists who have been covering both the refugee crisis in Europe and the many contexts across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa that gave rise to these migrations. This book is launched in partnership with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) as the first project under its special program, the Arab European Creative Platform. The book harnesses the collective energy, skills and resources of its contributors to create Europa, a collaborative and independent book, the first of its kind intended for practical use by migrants and ...