Art Metropole

#09390

Scapegoat Service 01

Date

2011

Publisher

Scapegoat

Format

Periodicals

Details

Broadsheet

Size

29 × 43 cm

Length

27 

Description

SCAPEGOAT is a new journal of architecture, landscape and political economy. It examines the relationship between capitalism and the built environment, confronting the coercive and violent organization of space, the exploitation of labour and resources, and the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits. Issue 00 focuses on Property, because it is the literal foundation for all spatial design practices. Architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design each begin with a space that is already drawn, organized, and formed by the concrete abstraction of the property lines. From our perspective, property stands as the most fundamental, yet underestimated, point of intersection between architecture, landscape architecture, and political economy. What is a “site” except a piece of property? What are architecture and landscape architecture but subtle and consistent attempts to express determined property relations as open aesthetic possibilities? How can these practices facilitate other forms of relation?

In our second issue (01), SCAPEGOAT looks to current practices to intensify our concept of Service—as a problem. That is, how can we develop new models for self-management and mutual aid that move beyond unidirectional forms of service as clientelism and dependency? How can we think through service provision beyond the State? How can we privilege voluntary association and ethical reciprocity rather than volunteerism? How can new approaches to training and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge be radically re-organized? How has the rise of the populist Right coincided with mechanisms of gentrification and the ideologies of the so-called ’creative city’? How can we counter the predominance of economic metaphors in our attempts to articulate values and commitments? How could design services work in solidarity with the labour of extraction, construction, and maintenance?

As a practice of composition and inquiry, SCAPEGOAT attends to both physical manifestations of and cultural and theoretical influences on design. Through architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism, the journal also engages mechanisms operating above, below, and behind these disciplines, such as infrastructure, governance, regional planning, land speculation, and militarization.

The editorial board of SCAPEGOAT includes Adrian Blackwell, Adam Bobbette, Jane Hutton, Marcin Kedzior, Chris Lee, Christie Pearson, and Etienne Turpin. SCAPEGOAT is designed by Chris Lee.

CBA

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