{"id":843,"date":"2020-06-20T10:40:41","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T10:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/?page_id=843"},"modified":"2020-09-08T07:36:28","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T07:36:28","slug":"commoning-concrete","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/projects\/commoning-concrete\/","title":{"rendered":"commoning & concrete"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

These pages accompany Elona’s doctoral thesis at the University of Brighton Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics<\/a>, started in October 2016 and successfully defended on 19 August 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultivating Relational Worlds in Concrete Environments: Learning with commoning projects in Paris and London.

Tisser des relations \u00e9thiques dans des univers de b\u00e9ton\u00a0: apprendre avec des projets de \u2018commoning\u2019 \u00e0 Paris et Londres.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is the abstract for the thesis et le r\u00e9sum\u00e9 en fran\u00e7ais<\/em>. The website also hosts creative practices developed with this project, include sound compositions<\/a> (in the form of a soundtrack) and poetic samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to Juanchila <\/em>for dedicating this mat\u00e9man<\/a> to the project and the many people and things that have been part of the journey! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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mat\u00e9man, habemus thesis: a requiem to miasma<\/strong> Juanchila, 2020.06.26
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Abstract<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This research stems from a concern about how to respond to the dramatic impacts of dominant technological, economic, and productive systems on the planet and those bodies that inhabit it. More precisely, it asks how we might cultivate ethical and emancipatory modes of existence in hard places, in Western European cities, contexts where the uneven effects of capitalism, neoliberalism and colonialism are created and sustained. I call these contexts concrete environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thesis shares insights learned with alternative urban projects that work with ideas of the common(s) as guides to experimenting with practices that welcome otherness and difference while challenging structures and relations of exploitation. Such projects are increasingly referred to as sites of \u201ccommoning\u201d, shifting attention from the notion of the commons as resources to manage, to commoning as a set of entangled more than human practices. Commoning also nurtures an awareness of politics and power in collective practices, in ways that differ from nation-state derived ideas of the public and are grounded in international solidarity and place-based initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commoning projects I have been learning with are Les Grands Voisins in Paris and The Common House in London, two sites that have different characteristics and sizes but where people are interested in exploring ways of existing otherwise, of redefining and departing from normative imaginaries of a \u201cgood life\u201d. Les Grands Voisins is a large temporary project set up on the site of an old hospital, while The Common House is run out of a small flat by a range of non-partisan radical left groups. With both sites, my research involved sensing and attending to a range of material relations with people, spaces, objects, animals, (infra)structures, atmospheres, expectations, attachments \u2026 This enabled me to study collective affective experiences, and particularly those that might be generative in cultivating ethical relations with otherness in the troubling contexts of concrete environments. In doing so, this thesis contributes to and extends research on commoning by examining the affective qualities of commoning practices and their political and ethical dimensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attending to affective conditions in my fieldwork led me to hear the echoes of three troubling affective experiences: discomfort, urgency, and ineffable affects. My analysis involves exploring these affects and how practicing them might cultivate ethical relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discomfort echoes. I show how discomfort, when felt as collective affective resonances, accentuates the power and politics entangled in commoning projects and identify practices that can make discomfort generative. Such practices involve challenging feelings of sovereignty and ownership, acknowledging the role of material assemblages, the existence of otherness, the awkwardness of uneven power relations, and the constant work of questioning worldviews while also clarifying certainties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urgency echoes. Urgency, felt as affective atmospheres, involves attending to temporalities that are not only about immediacy, speed, or futurity. It can be reclaimed with collective practices that bring the urgency of bodies into contact with larger-scale urgencies, such as climate change. Such practices draw on the intensity of intervals while being temporally grounded in more than human rhythms that exceed the \u2018now\u2019 of social projects. Reclaiming urgency involves recognising it as an ethical affect rather than only a regime of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enchantment isn\u2019t cool. I show how poetic commoning practices, resulting from disconnection and dispossession, can offer a way of materialising spirit-full and non-instrumentalist relations, tethering potentially volatile affects into the crummy, messy, contradictory, uncomfortable, urgent, imperfect\u2026 experiences of European metropoles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thesis offers a way to embrace, reclaim and invite troubling affective experiences as collective practices. In doing so, it also untangles the implicit ethos of commoning and offers ways of cultivating critical relational ethics in concrete environments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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R\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ce projet de recherche est n\u00e9 de questionnements sur comment r\u00e9pondre \u00e0 l\u2019impact dramatique des syst\u00e8mes technologiques, \u00e9conomiques et productifs dominants sur la plan\u00e8te et sur les corps qui l\u2019habitent. Plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, il s\u2019interroge sur les possibilit\u00e9s de cultiver des mani\u00e8res d\u2019exister qui soient \u00e9thiques et \u00e9mancipatoires dans des environnements urbains d\u2019Europe de l\u2019Ouest, environnements coriaces et durs o\u00f9 les effets irr\u00e9guliers du capitalisme, du n\u00e9olib\u00e9ralisme et du colonialisme se d\u00e9veloppent et perdurent. J\u2019appellerai ces environnements des \u00ab univers de b\u00e9ton \u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cette th\u00e8se pr\u00e9sente des perspectives m\u00fbries avec des projets urbains alternatifs de \u00ab commoning \u00bb.<\/em> Ces projets explorent les id\u00e9es de \u00ab communs \u00bb et du \u00ab commun \u00bbpour exp\u00e9rimenter avec des pratiques ouvertes \u00e0 l\u2019alt\u00e9rit\u00e9 et \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence, qui remettent en question les structures et les relations d\u2019exploitation. Venant plut\u00f4t du contexte anglo-saxon, terme indique des pratiques qui visent \u00e0 passer d\u2019une approche des communs comme sites \u00e0 g\u00e9rer au commoming<\/em>, con\u00e7u comme un ensemble de pratiques humaines et mat\u00e9rielles qui cr\u00e9ent le commun. Ces pratiques de \u00ab fabrique du commun \u00bb sensibilisent aussi aux politiques et aux rapports de pouvoir au sein des pratiques collectives, d\u2019une mani\u00e8re distincte \u00e0 la notion de public provenant de l\u2019\u00e9tat-nation, et qui sont ancr\u00e9es dans les relations de solidarit\u00e9 internationales et dans l\u2019espace urbain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Les projets de commoning<\/em> avec lesquels j\u2019ai travaill\u00e9 pour cette th\u00e8se sont Les Grands Voisins \u00e0 Paris et The Common House \u00e0 Londres. Cesdeux sites ont des caract\u00e9ristiques et des tailles diff\u00e9rentes mais les personnes impliqu\u00e9es s\u2019int\u00e9ressent dans les deux cas \u00e0 d\u2019autres modes d\u2019existence, et r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissent \u00e0 comment rompre avec et red\u00e9finir les imaginaires normatifs de succ\u00e8s et bonheur. Les Grands Voisins est un grand projet temporaire situ\u00e9 sur l\u2019ancien site d\u2019un h\u00f4pital, alors que The Common House est organis\u00e9 dans un petit studio par divers groupes non partisans de la gauche radicale. Ces deux projets m\u2019ont permis de d\u00e9velopper des m\u00e9thodes pour affiner ma sensibilit\u00e9 et mon attention envers tout un ensemble de relations mat\u00e9rielles, avec des personnes, des espaces, des objets, des animaux, des (infra)structures, des atmosph\u00e8res, des attentes, des attachements \u2026 J\u2019ai ainsi pu analyser les exp\u00e9riences affectives collectives, notamment celles qui pourraient favoriser le d\u00e9veloppement de relations \u00e9thiques \u00e0 l\u2019alt\u00e9rit\u00e9 dans les contextes pr\u00e9occupants des univers de b\u00e9ton. De cette fa\u00e7on, cette th\u00e8se poursuit et d\u00e9veloppe les recherches existantes sur le commoning<\/em> en examinant les caract\u00e9ristiques affectives des pratiques collectives urbaines, ainsi que leurs dimensions politiques et \u00e9thiques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u2019int\u00e9resser aux affects collectifs lors de ma recherche m\u2019a amen\u00e9e \u00e0 entendre les \u00e9chos de trois exp\u00e9riences affectives troublantes : l\u2019inconfort, l\u2019urgence et les affects ineffables. Mon analyse explore ces trois affects et comment, en les pratiquant, ils peuvent nourrir des relations \u00e9thiques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00c9chos de l\u2019inconfort. Je montre comment l\u2019inconfort et la g\u00eane, ressentis comme r\u00e9sonnances affectives collectives, font ressortir les questions de pouvoir et de politique li\u00e9es aux projets de commoning<\/em>, et j\u2019identifie des pratiques qui peuvent transformer l\u2019inconfort en un \u00e9l\u00e9ment constructif. Ces pratiques visent \u00e0 remettre en question les relations de souverainet\u00e9 et de propri\u00e9t\u00e9, ainsi qu\u2019\u00e0 reconnaitre le r\u00f4le d\u2019assemblages mat\u00e9riaux, l\u2019existence de l\u2019alt\u00e9rit\u00e9, le malaise g\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 par les d\u00e9s\u00e9quilibres de pouvoir, et le travail constant de la remise en question de visions du monde tout en pr\u00e9cisant ces certitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00c9chos de l\u2019urgence. L\u2019urgence, ressentie dans les atmosph\u00e8res affectives des projets, m\u00e8ne \u00e0 se pencher sur la notion de temporalit\u00e9, sans la r\u00e9duire \u00e0 des questions d\u2019imm\u00e9diatet\u00e9, de vitesse ou de rapports au futur. On peut se r\u00e9approprier l\u2019urgence au sein de pratiques collectives qui \u00e9tablissent une connexion entre l\u2019urgence des corps et l\u2019urgence de situations \u00e0 plus grande \u00e9chelle, telle que la crise climatique. Ces atmosph\u00e8res puisent dans l\u2019intensit\u00e9 des intervalles d\u2019action tout en restant temporairement ancr\u00e9s dans des rythmes qui exc\u00e8dent le \u00ab maintenant \u00bb du projet. Se r\u00e9approprier l\u2019urgence permet de la reconna\u00eetre comme un affect qui a un potentiel \u00e9thique et non seulement comme un moyen de contr\u00f4le.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u2019enchantement n\u2019a rien de merveilleux. Je montre comment les pratiques po\u00e9tiques du commoning<\/em>, qui r\u00e9sultent de la d\u00e9connexion et de la d\u00e9possession, peuvent aider \u00e0 donner corps \u00e0 des relations inexprimables, qui ne sont pas d\u00e9finies par leur objet ni par leur utilit\u00e9, tout en ancrant ces affects volatiles dans les exp\u00e9riences mis\u00e9rables, chaotiques, contradictoires, p\u00e9nibles,  imparfaites, tributaire de l\u2019urgence\u2026 des m\u00e9tropoles europ\u00e9ennes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cette th\u00e8se propose des voies possibles pour accueillir, se r\u00e9approprier et encourager, au travers de pratiques collectives, des exp\u00e9riences affectives souvent v\u00e9cues comme n\u00e9gatives dans les contextes contemporains. Ce faisant, elle d\u00e9noue l\u2019\u00e9thos implicitement associ\u00e9e aux pratiques de \u00ab fabrique du commun \u00bb,et pr\u00e9sente des fils nouveaux pour tisser des relations \u00e9thiques dans les univers de b\u00e9ton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"mateman
mat\u00e9man, dr badger<\/strong> Juanchila, 2020.08.19
<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These pages accompany Elona’s doctoral thesis at the University of Brighton Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics, started in October 2016 and successfully defended on 19 August 2020. Cultivating Relational Worlds in Concrete Environments: Learning with commoning projects in Paris and London. Tisser des relations \u00e9thiques dans des univers de b\u00e9ton\u00a0: apprendre avec des…<\/p>\n Read More<\/span> commoning & concrete<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":574,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"Layout":"1c","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/843\/revisions\/998"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesidewalks.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}