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Notes on Manoeuvering: Ports of Service

Gloria Pavita

2019

Supervisors:

Sumayya Vally

Unit:

12R - An African Almanac

Heterotopia

Spaces that function in non-hegemonic conditions, spaces of otherness.

Becoming Other

Other : one who is fluid in identity

:

hijra


Daniel Libeskind, wrote, “Space is not one, but space is plural, space is a heterogeneity, a difference” (Libeskind 2000: 68).

This notion of space makes itself most evident in the idea of the event, which Hannah (2017:121) describes as being able to transform the built environment when actualized in architectural space. She goes on to suggest that through the element of time the event allows for architecture with its supposed homogeneity or object nature to become something more uneven, contracting and expanding.

I am for this reason interested in event spaces as microcosm of experience. Hannah defines event-space as a compound term combining the disciplines of performance and architecture through the hyphen, “a punctuation mark that simultaneously separates and joins while enacting a break or interruption.” (Hannah 2017:122)

Architecture, no longer recognized as a fixed, eternal entity, is rendered performative, realigning it as active becoming rather than passive being (Hannah, 2017:124)

Waiting

The condition of staying in one place in expectation of something.

The primary performance of this event space is the everyday act of waiting – a condition of the (im)migrant, where a person’s mobility is in constant suspense, in lapse, stuck between departure and arrival. In the context of waiting an interchange occurs between appearance and performance wherein one’s immobility is on display for all to see.

Appearance, speaks to participation in an event. In the context of Lhola Amira’s practice, it is expanded to constitute an engagement with the past and present.

Becoming Other

Within this realm of the waiting the possibility of becoming other is presented. Rajchman (2000: 97) suggests that Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming other’ is the ‘process in which we depart from our given or constituted selves without knowing quite who or what we may become. The state of being that this MDP focusses on is that of waiting, those in lapse, a state of immobility.

Through the tool of appearance, my MDP hopes to make these realities visible, through this visibility this MDP hopes to create a platform from which to become other.

Perhaps even who is able to partake in legislature.