la possibilité

d'uneîle

Eco Island Amager // Oleg Koefoed & Stine Avlund // Cultura21

Coimbra May 2014 // Mapping Cultures Conference

“Maps and theories guide intelligent action, yet they are invariably abstracted and idealized representations.”

Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther (2014):

When Maps Become the World. University of Chicago Press.

Maps

a Capital

an island

eco's

metodos

lives

Canvas

interventions

Context

Eco Island Amager is a project undertaken by Cultura21 in Copenhagen, on the island of Amager: 180 000 inhabitants; about twice as many commuters every day due to the presence of the airport of Kastrup and a number of workplaces; 96 sq km of space of which about 1/3 is landfill from after 1920, and 1/3 is green today, quite unusual for an island in a capital; the island is in perpetual change since the 14th century and contains every historical era in the practical history of the capital; recently, it holds the tensions between car invasion, airports, ruthless developing cynicism, but also revitalized and turned-creative neighborhoods, rising hipster and green culture, urban gardens, green communities and projects.... Amager is multiplicity in Copenhagen if you ever find it. No easy description, no easy solutions. It is also flat, making it the target of many plans on storm flood precautions and other adaptation strategies. Resilience broadly speaking remains equally important: how to make communities connect, how to build social and cultural cohesion and a sense of willingness to go out of one's way for the sake of

the place, the species, the other?

Eco

Ecology and ecologies

Eco: this project is most of all about two matters: ecologies, that we see as the circulation of matter, information and life in open systems. We work with ecologies in an urban setting, so we are not only looking at trees or bees, but also at the ecologies of cars, chewing gums stains on pavements, spaces between buildings, and human movement, to mention a few. We try to build deeper attention towards the ecosystems, the places, and the exchanges of life and matter. Economies are equally important, as organizations of values and circulations of value. They work through agents and interact with the ecologies. They create paths that supersede everything else. Together, economies and ecologies reshape the world in which they work. We seek for paths where they can be redirected. We try to map different paths of value and values, in the places and with the people. Looking for agencies of other economies, and potentials for more life-giving ecologies.

A question

..can we make way for agency – eventually connecting us to the possibility of an eco-island?

Eco Island Amager

“The pharmacological question haunts planetary consciousness and the planetary unconscious, just as it haunts the immense loss of trust that inevitably results from loss of care.”

Bernard Stiegler (2010)What Makes Life Worth Living. On Pharmacology.

..agency – but who are the actants?

humans

places

houses

fluids

forests

vehicles

streets

policies

rats

Non-human agents

As we walk on the island, we unavoidably interact with its other inhabitants. Some of them let us pass by unnoticed, such as the jellyfish in the harbour. Some are created by our peers, like the sand on the beach that was not there ten years ago. Others pass between our fingers: coins, receipts, pebbles, butts. Others still rise above our heads, taller than all of us, and able to contain us. They carry the promise of hundreds, thousands, of new inhabitants, in the coming years. How will they sense the island, how will they make their presence felt? A metro line has cut the coast in two, slicing away a part of the eco-system that was connected. It will re-connect, eventually. A new town has created new ecologies and economies. They will stabilize, but in which formations? What are the in-compossibilities of the island as it changes its surface?

..agency – first step: humans

interventionists

(ab)originals

immigrants

developers

nurses

homeless

students

civil servants

artists

Metodos (road, path)

A path of care and action

What we try to find, is actually a way to reinforce two paths and bring them together. The mapping is part of trying to discover these paths, walking and working with population, volunteers, and professionals, in the city and/or on the island. The first path is one of nænsomhed (roughly = tenderness and careful attention), generated through listening and handling, where we are and walk. This path is hidden to many, as they move through their habitats. The second path is the one of handlekraft (roughly = agency). Reflective agency that tries to understand its connectedness with the world in which it takes place. This is about creation that looks for life enhancement rather than fearing negative consequences. There is a culture of fear of mistakes that inhabits our part of the world. But hand in hand with careful attention, this creativity can be nurtured.

Both paths are sought for in collective actions, such as mapping workshops, walks, and conversations. Eventually, we will seek to go further into joining efforts and co-creating.

first steps of mapping

ConversationsWalks

DrawingsMapsWorkshops

Human agents

We encounter with human agents. Some of them tell us stories of the past, some tell us hopes of the future. Some have never thought about the island, they find themselves in the paths around their block. Some find their essence in communities, sharing, buying, building, fearing. Others seek to establish new commonities, or do so simply by stepping into the flesh of the island, searching for its resources.

We search for zones, where mainly human agents - or their inhuman actants – have altered the landscapes, economies, and ecologies. We seek to invite agents into the cracks, to see what lurks there. Some of them already do this, others make new cracks. They seek to find their selves in the spaces and the economy-ecologies. Some of them have lost something, or some of their selves. They feel it and express it. Others don't. Mostly, the agents express a great deal of care when we walk with them. But they find it hard to re-discover what was lost, even when they feel the pressure of the loss.

When in simple conversation, agents have been heard expressing practical reason. Where can we live, how far will the shadow fall of the new building?

eco-autopoïetic

encounters

selvesplaces

feel

give

perceive

dwell

make

own

mapping encounters

Eco-auto-poïetic encounters

We ask for visions of an island, the actual as well as the potential, even the virtual. The selves that mirror themselves in the drawings show us islands, spaces, mimetic often, at times utopian, often containers of questions or observations of slices between life and non-life. Structures and movements. Topologies become narrative, shapes tell stories. Coastlines are retraced, caressed, felt. Non-humans are created in the virtual: horses, parks, trams, gardens.

We walk with them along the lines or cross them, we pause by structuring shapes and draw them into a conversation around commonities. Not that many are visible, yet that is probably a character common to commonities. They are not often to be seen by the one who only passes by.

How close do we have to go, and how slow, to make the impression become a lasting mark and an attachment to action?

hypomnesis

re-membering

two trajectories (or one)

re-subjectivation

loss of ontology

re-connection

community ? comm(o)nity ?

nostalgia

utopia khora

emergence

Hypomnetic, re-membering trajectories

What is lost is lost. What is here, is so present that its in-compossibles seem almost impossible to touch, even in the mind. The hypomnetic journey passes through items, places, maps, pens, and conversations, in words, lines, or walks. Their trajectories work as appropriations, surely, but how hard it is to appropriate the incompossible.

For this to happen, two alternative paths seem to offer themselves (perhaps both, perhaps an amalgamation of the two).

From the utopian and nostalgic corner, a call comes forth for re-subjectivations, giving way to me and through me, to an us that finds its new being common. It calls for someone, out there, to listen and hear.

From the topic, khoric side, emergence is sought within the place; only possible through the re-membering of memory through reconnection. It listens for a call to voice itself, and will find its way through en-actments that form new attachments between agents and spaces, actions and matters. Commonity may offer itself here, maybe they are just a way to re-phrase who we are without being strangers to the place and its non-human agents?

handlekraftnænsomhed

- and a sense of agency?

Agency in unknown territory

At this point, in July '14, we have drawn and walked, we have talked and touched. We can see a certain diversity already, in topoï, in agents, in ecologies and economies, and their encounters.

We see a vague contour of an island, and a number of sharper lines around and through smaller spaces. We sense the hardness of change rushing over fragile lands and people. And we sense the stubborn presence of the virtual trace, in a track, a stone, a deserted house. Memories that wither, but remain.

We observe countless bits of change, and we notice the invisibility of some questions: what about the water on an island in a city? What about the soil on island with so much waste? What about the value of diversity and the commonities that are numbed?

We have been confirmed in the importance of nænsomhed, and in looking more carefully at handlekraft. But care is a call for listening that goes beyond observing, a handling and caring for is calling. Attachments will form only where the cracks are opened long enough for someone who would care, to be touched by something that could matter.

next steps of mapping

ReflectionsTransectsChallengesCollectionsConversationsMapsConnectionsProjections

For references, more words, pictures, Calls, attachments, Eco-Creation Camps,

Publications, and more:

http://ecoislandamager.dk