Radical Kinship
Radical Kinship was a four-part lecture series convened by the MRes Architecture Programme at the RCA between 2019–2020. It dealt with thinking how kinship beyond nation or family might be strengthened through the spatial disciplines. Invited speakers included Professor Joseph Heathcott (New School), Yara Sharif (University of Westminster), Stefan Jovanović (Studio Stefan Jovanović). The final lecture on ‘Diasporic Intimacies’ has been postponed.
Radical Kinship / Joseph Heathcott
Searching for Cosmopolis: Living Together, Apart
Interiority After the Industrialization of Metabolism
19 November 2019
This talk was based on a long-term project using photographic and fieldwork methods to come to grips with how social diversity shapes urban experience, and whether cities may serve as repositories of tolerance in this period of rising bigotry and xenophobia. The talk focused in on two such neighborhoods: Jackson Heights in New York City, and Belleville in Paris, and what lessons they might teach us.
Speaker’s Biography
Joseph Heathcott a writer, photographer, curator, and educator based in New York, where he teaches at The New School. In addition to his work as an architectural historian and urbanist, he has studied photography and printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, the School of Visual Arts, and the International Center for Photography.
Radical Kinship / Yara Sharif
Mapping the Invisible: Diaries from everyday Palestine
10 December 2019
“I became no longer able to live with the subtle acceptance of the ‘norm’ that existed. I needed to zoom out in search of a breathing space beyond the constraints of the Israeli occupation. I needed to search for a broader narrative where everyday life would be bigger than the city of Ramallah, where adventures might involve more than journeys across checkpoints, and where dreams could go beyond merely those of sneaking into Jerusalem (which, after all, is only 15 minutes away from my family home).
In this talk Yara Sharif shared a collection of the various thoughts and ideas provoked by her own journeys and narratives when she lived and worked in Palestine, and which were later transformed into projects. The work unpacked alternative means to re-read and redraw the Palestinian landscape — from a Palestinian perspective — by stripping it off the dominant power of lines. Sharif used speculation — and at times irony — as a mean to stretch the mental space beyond the constraints of the occupation. The work argues that there is a degree of power on the Palestinian side and weakness on the Israeli one that transforms contested spaces into spaces of creativity.
Speaker’s Biography
Yara Sharif is a practicing architect and an academic with an interest in design as a mean to facilitate and empower ‘forgotten’ communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Combining research with design her work runs parallel between the architecture practice Golzari NG Architects, London and the design studio at the school of architecture, University of Westminster. Sharif has co-founded Palestine Regeneration Team (PART). PART is a design-led research group that aims through speculative and live projects to search for creative and responsive spatial possibilities in Palestine to heal the fractures caused by the occupation.
Yara’s work on Palestine has won a number of awards including the 2014 Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction for the Middle East Region, RIBA President’s Award for Research 2013, 2016.
Radical Kinship / Stefan Jovanović
Radical Togetherness
4 February 2020
Through an exploration of systemic theory and audience participatory dance and theatre, this talk investigated ideas about tomorrow’s kinship and the needs of the inter-generational, the collective, the neurodiverse, the shamanic and the foolish. Jovanović argued that we must urgently interrogate how we think about metaphors of spatiality, temporality and built environments for coming together in order to reconstitute today’s socio-political climate with new spatial and social contracts. How do we work with affect, empathy and resonance? They suggested that we cannot address the fundamental crises of environmental collapse, intergenerational trauma and structural inequality from centuries of institutional discrimination, without also addressing the need to find new ways of being, moving, knowing through difference. In the middle ground between these sites, events and encounters are new forms of radical togetherness.
Speaker’s Biography
Stefan Jovanović is an architect, choreographer, therapist and the artistic director of dance-architecture company Studio Stefan Jovanović and therapy practice Kinship Constellations. While qualifying as an architect and establishing a career in the performing arts, he trained as a systemic family constellator and somatic therapist; integrating these therapeutic modalities into his choreographic practice. He creates spaces and performances about the kinships of tomorrow, ideas of radical togetherness and the healing of social and archetypal trauma.
