SPACE IS ALWAYS POLITICAL

SPATIAL PRACTICES

Third week (Friday, 11 OCTOBER, 2024)


As a weekly reading, students should have read first chapter of SPATIAL PRACTICES Modes of Action and Engagement with the city by Melanie Dodd, named Space is always political. When I first started reading, it seemed to be extremely challenging to understand so I tried to find answers for questions which had been shaped in my mind: How something is considered political? What politics means? When space can be political? and....

-When Something is political that it is a social activity linked to the existence of diversity and conflict and to a willingness to act collectively.
-Politics means Interactions amongst free and equal citizens acting in concert in search of processes of conflict resolution. 
-Space is political when Instead of acting as the mere backdrop for an unfolding time, it becomes intimately linked to lived experience.













On Friday, 11 October, 2024, tutors and students were supposed to be in St Mary's Church in Fratton at 10 in the morning. At St Mary's Church we students were asked to look around themselves for two minutes and then draw for ten minutes with our eyes closed, considering spatial sensations, sounds, and classmates sitting next to us. As I was drawing with eyes closed I was thinking how architecture can be seen from various sights, for example architecture can be heard, touched, and smelled, also I was thinking how the plan, design and furniture of the church acts as a powerful tool to create human hierarchy and control prayers or visitors' interactions.



 Also, we were asked to draw the tiniest objects in details which were around us as well as vertical and horizontal lines. Then we had to take a photo of some words seen at the church. 

In the afternoon in thinking and making studio, as our class discussion, Oren asked us to choose seven words from the text (space is always political), which we most resonated with. I chose interrelation, multiplicity, conceptualize, underway, implication, potentiality, and sociology. Afterwards, three of them had to be chosen which mine were multiplicity, underway and potentiality. We were asked to provide three verbs for those word, which I considered deploy, happen, and utilize. In the studio we had to manifest these three verbs using furniture and other stuff, considering the notion of space is always political. 























To demonstrated 'to deploy', I spread an object across a table in such a way that the concentration of these objects was higher in one area and lower in others. 
To show 'to happen', I placed a blue glass fallen in the center of a white sheet in such a way that it evoked the idea of an object being overturned.
To illustrate 'to utilize', I placed four chairs next to each other in such a way that three chairs were still unused, but one chair was used.
After this session I realized that almost every single word has their own specific meanings and can be manifest in objects...💭

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