Symposia
Discrepant Circulations
Circulation is more than a synonym for the zones where people or things move; it locates a set of tensions between movement and arrest, passage and capture, flow and containment. What the discipline of architecture calls circulation concerns more than smooth, fluid, and efficient movement: it names operations that organize, differentiate, and channel people and things by means of pathways and diversions, openings and closures. In adjacent fields, including art history, anthropology, global history, and film and media studies, the concept of circulation has a different meaning, denoting the currency of images, signs, or commodities moving through global networks. At a moment when a concern for mobility has become more prominent in architectural history and theory, it is time to think across the complex histories of this concept. The field might begin by unlearning the habit of treating circulation as a thing, a discrete aspect or element of a building’s composition or program. Doing so calls for critical attention to what might be called “discrepant circulation,” the question of how mobilities are organized within a field structured by socio-technical differences, differences constituted by historically unequal relations of power and knowledge. Through what processes have doors, stairs, passages, gates, signals, or screens mediated and differentiated the mobility of humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans? How have conceptions of circulation through buildings been structured by formations of class, race, caste, ability, or gender? How have concepts of circulation themselves been informed by changing techniques for the opening and closing boundaries?
This two-day gathering, organized by Craig Buckley, aims to refresh attention on concepts of circulation at a moment of political uncertainty. The discussions will bring together an interdisciplinary group of leading historians, architects, theorists, curators, and designers to think together about the opportunities and hazards of this pervasive yet under-examined concept in the discipline.
Speakers include Ross Exo Adams, Tim Anstey, Francesco Casetti, Swati Chattopadhyay, Keller Easterling, David Gissen, Samia Henni, Francesca Hughes, Kishwar Rizvi, and Mark Wasiuta
Symposia at the Yale School of Architecture are supported in part by the J. Irwin Miller Fund. Discrepant Circulations has been generously supported by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund at the Macmillan Center, the History of Art Department, and the School of Architecture.