Intent:
non-practice views the act of meeting over everyday programs of gathering such as meals, walks, screenings, readings as an architectural practice. The gatherings are an arena where discussion, story telling, mediated by the performance of entering a shared space, sitting at a shared table and eating foods and/or sharing ideas together produces discussion that conventional “educational and cultural institutions" are not afforded due to the "unimaginable levels of evaluation, monitoring, homogenization and financializing." we felt the urge to create this project because, "Such immediate conditions negate hard-fought battles within cultural practice and research concerning race and migration, gender and sexuality, impoverishment and welfare, the need to decolonize knowledge and the need to include social justice within questions of epistemology.” non-practice would reconfigure our ways of gathering and produce thought about what valorized knowledge production looks like in the context of Johannesburg.
Soundbite from a dinner, we shared intents and fleshed out what this projects life could look like, how it would walk, nourish itself and communicate its needs and desires.
1. Striving to introduce new ways of practice/pedagogy/research (At an epistemological level)
J. Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, Vintage, 2001
2. Creating open and accessible gatherings, allowing for interaction from many different walks of life
3. The architectural and photographic visualization and documentation of non-visual strings of thought, prompting for further discussion from a number of points of departure. For both architecture and other participating industries
this is definitely a placeholder. I wanted to portray the idea of documentation creating entry points for other conversations or ways of thinking
Spatialization:
Yan and Lele both believe that knowledge is never localized, and believe that it is instead assembled, disassembled and effervescent. non-practice "are forms of embodied research, lived experience informed and social knowledge, challenged by contesting speeds, defying cohesions and made by producers from different disciplines, locations, accesses and languages."
non-practice asks for those involved, including its founders, to open our understanding of practice within architecture to allow for new ways of coming together under the objective of practicing architecture. The production of architectural knowledge and subsequently production of our cities, which are dependent on ways of coming together, discussing and exploring architectures that are highly regulated and driven by systems which are beginning to prove non-transformational. Non-practice investigates new ways of knowledge production, as two architects, trained in tertiary institutions that look to transform the educational provision and with one of us situated in the Graduate School of Architecture, we have identified a sense of disconnect between where we envision architectural practice and discourse to look like and what opportunities for practice and discourse look like currently. The exorbitant programming of opportunities for practice and discourse creates a stagnant pool of knowledge production, defined by the ecosystem that the pool sits in. This effort looks to introduce a new, small stream. Open to being fed by many different sources, open to anyone entering. What’s prioritized is the oxidation of ways of working, constantly looking to find new modes of practice. Relieving us of the limitations that “antiquated notions of disciplinary knowledge” might keep us in.
These ecosystems are contextualized by physical context. Gatherings are envisioned to happen in intentional sites that contribute to the activity that takes place during the experiences. Curated by non-practice
/experiences ... non-practice
Guiding principles:
1. Being open and accessible
2. To not search for binaries or right answers but rather to broaden perspective and search for understanding
3. To constantly and impartially question conventional practice. With questioning being the propositional form of practice
4. Accepting a broad definition of life, practice and research
Format:
non-practice would curate dinners and other experiences in between and around other disciplines and forms of practice to create instances of embodied research. Through a combination of inviting particular practitioner/researchers/artists, putting out open calls to audiences we believe would contribute to the principles of non-practice and holding the experiences in environments where chance encounter with lives in the city are possible.
bimonthly - 1 every 2 months - experiences
ongoing - documentation of experiences - online publication
annual - synthesis of publication - zine/exhibition/performance
Yan & Lele:
Yan is ......
Lele is ......
Potential Collaborators:
The European Forum for Advanced Practices
GSA
m'lk
Keleketla!
The Library
Dinnerclub
Dlala Nje
escola da cidade
Teatro Lucido
Fuckup Nights
Nayah
Afer
Plot gallery
room19isafactory
this list is more for our conversations at the moment