Noun. (plural logistical nightmares) A military situation for which it is difficult to plan or organize the logistics.

In 2017-2018 the Centre for Research Architecture launches a year-long programme of events, workshops, pedagogical experiments, and field investigations that explore the increasing ubiquity and prominence of logistics as a mode for organising social life and politics

Organised by Lorenzo Pezzani and Susan Schuppli

Visit Logistical Nightmares website

In 2016, a group of MA and PhD students from The Centre for Research Architecture embarked upon an investigation into the proposed mining of Rare Earths, which affected great extensions of land in La Mancha, Spain. Using their collective skills and insights, the students mapped, modeled and visualized the physicalities of the project, thus demonstrating the potential impacts that such rare earth element (REE) extraction would have upon the region. Of particular effectiveness was the re-configuration into visual language of the systemic, abstract data used by the mining industry to measure the territory affected. The maps that resulted from this process were shown in 20 Spanish towns and villages affected by the mining, and published in national newspapers. The tools created by the students had the effect of promoting wider public participation in the many key discussions that took place in Spain, this ultimately helped to thwart the project, which was eventually blocked in October 2018 due to social opposition.

Articles in El País and Le Monde contain further information on REEs

Image © Plataforma Sí a la Tierra Viva

A Public Hearing was a research residency undertaken by students from the MA Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in 2016. It consists of fragments of material collected over a two-month period in Kings Cross, London, during which time a series of interviews were conducted with people and institutions local to the area. These accounts and re-tellings of local history, along with materials generated from three workshop events and several self-initiated walks, were presented in the gallery's two spaces where a recording room with six microphones mirrored a listening room with six speakers.

The dedicated website serves as a new iteration of this work. 

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich has not only played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, but more importantly set the groundwork for the expansion of the temporal matrix that is Western modernity. How has the standardisation of time originally intended as a political tool for capital expansion colonised our daily routines which now continously reproduce this hegemonic order? This alternative guide to time seeks to explore contemporary conditions that have materialised through the standardisation of time and question the linear temporality that they postulate. Where are the spaces in which time can be resisted, reconceptualised or decolonised?

TIME: An Alternative Guide

Xeno.Earth is a media platform that invetsigates the proposed mining of Rare Earth elements in the region of La Manch Spain. Leading the viewer on a quixotic passage through hypergeopgraphies that weave complex and often competing cultural and environmental narratives, the project aimed to demonstrate the potential impacts that such rare-earth mineral extraction will have upon the region. It also worked to create tools for promoting wide public participation in the many key discussion now taking place. Xeno.Earth video trailer Xeno.Earth web platform

Post-graduate students from the Centre for Research Architecture based in New Cross have created an evolving urban platform for conducting research and developing imaginative new forms of community building within the Kings Cross area. During the Spring the students will run a series of "Public Hearings" organised around key issues that move across these two rapdily changing London neighbourhoods—New Cross & Kings Crss. Commisioned by the Arts Catalyst. 

Mineralia is an audio accompaniment to the Natural History Museum’s mineral collection. This collaboratively composed sound work mimics and subverts the museum audio guide in order to explore alternative ways of interacting with the display. Using the intimacy of a textured acoustic experience Mineralia gives space to the histories and politics of display, specific to the Museum, which have somehow escaped representation. Embalmed in glass cabinets—for the purpose of illumination—they are consecrated to realm of the museological, made to act as testimony to discovery and enlightenment. Mineralia is an attempt at considering these spaces of silence, and to excavate and preserve the histories and stories that cannot be heard in the Mineral Gallery. Together the audio tracks endeavour to summon stories untold, present unfamiliar histories and create an alternative space of listening.

Working with materials sourced from a wide variety of archives and contexts, CRA PhD students created an exhibition that explores the intellectual, activist, and pedagogical contributions of Stuart Hall. Along the ground-floor corridor the students questioned what it means to name a building after a person. This is investigated through an examination of the architectural blueprint of the former New Academic Building now re-named the Professor Stuart Hall Building as well as the Goldsmiths Master Plan 2009-2019. On the lower-ground floor the exhibition interrogates the “Research Excellence Framework” which quantifies and evaluates academic outputs, assesses their impacts and ranks the university. These schematised metrics, that increasingly define contemporary academic work, are counter-posed by a broad range of materials drawn from Stuart Hall’s influential career as a founder of cultural studies, teacher, writer, publisher, and activist to raise questions about the nature of the “new academic”.

Neoliberalism has defined a brave new capitalist world in which financial markets preside over the allocation of resources. Under neoliberal capitalism, investors are not only allowed to reap an exorbitant rent from the production of others, they are also invested with the power to decide what is worth producing. In addition to siphoning off wealth, financial institutions establish the criteria that shape the business plans of corporations and the budgets of elected governments.

This lecture series sponsored by CRA, VC, and FA argues that the rule of investors proves as transformative of personal motivation and conduct as of corporate management and statecraft. Just as with previous shifts in governing practices, a new representation of human potential and human frailties—a distinctively neoliberal perspective on the human condition—is implicated in the financial turn of capitalism. 

Listen to the audio recordings of the 8 Lectures

The purpose of this workshop (run over the duration of Michel Feher's time at Goldsmiths as Visiting Professor) was to delineate the domain of “investee activism”: identifying the specific mode of social antagonism defined by each financial market—stakeholder activism in the stock market, borrower activism in the bond market, collateral guarantor activism in the derivatives market—surveying the existing cases of social movements predicated on the investor vs. investee nexus, especially in the wake of the real estate and banking crises of 2008 and speculating on the potential development of such activism. 

Forensic Architecture is a European Research Council project and agency led by Eyal Weizman. It includes a team of architects, scholars, filmmakers, designers, lawyers, and scientists who undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal as well as political forums. The team provides evidence for international prosecution teams, political organisations, NGOs, and the United Nations in various processes worldwide. Additionally, the agency undertakes historical and theoretical examinations of the history and present status of forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth.

Kivalina is an Iñupiaq village of 400 people situated on a barrier island in the Arctic, on the northwest coast of Alaska. In recent years global warming has been postponing the formation of sea ice, exposing the shore to autumnal sea storms and thus placing the existence of Kivalina increasingly under threat. The lack of basic infrastructure compounded by erosion and flooding, have pushed the village into seeking relocation. In 2006 Kivalina sued the twenty-four largest oil and gas corporations, maintaining that they should be held accountable for the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore contribute to relocation costs. Following the failure of the legal forum to address Kivalina’s claims and the standstill of governmental relocation attempts, the Modelling Kivalina group comprised of CRA MAs traveled to Alaska to conduct a series of interviews with village residents, scientists, and political representatives.