Ph.D. Course: Transformance and Event Management
Course Coordinators
Associate Professor Henrik Oxvig and Professor, Dr. Phil. Ole Fogh Kirkeby
Course period:
1.-3. November and 13.-15. December, 2006.
Enroll no later than: 2005.12.02
Application:
Application form MPP
Contact:
Karina Ravn Nielsen, Tel.: +45 38153782, E-mail:
Course content
Part I: Transformance (1-3 November)
Theory and practice are often described as two different domains. In that case the job given to theory is typically the construction of abstract models that practice subsequently realizes in a given context. Alternatively the practitioner believes himself in an intimate connection with a reality external to the theoretical domain and from which he derives his material without any need for a theoretical discourse.
Departing from a notion that the division between the two will result in a disembodied theory on one hand and a practice that uncritically reproduces outmoded ideas on the other, the course will explore another conception of the relationship between the two. It develops from a shift in concern with the definition of things as they are, to things as they emerge through a given process.
The concept of transformance is used to frame an experimental practice that transgresses the normal boundary between the laboratory and the external reality investigating different modes of actualization. The course will present and discuss various positions from writing practices through the architectural media of drawings and models to built examples with the intent to propose a series of bridges.
Part II: Management of the Event (13-15. December)
The event is the atom of our lives, a transparent hemisphere in which the manifold of phenomena are gathered in a permanent flow, and exhibited in an eternal present. The event happens in the realm of sense, but it is carried by material forces and processes of causation. The event frames everything, and is in all that is. However, it cannot be grasped as a substantial essence, but only as brute facticity and as an unfinished process of “eventing”. We are, so to speak, “evented”, and the true sense of what took place is postponed for ever. In the event we are crucified between time past and time future, deemed to the fata morgana of “what actually happened”, to a merciless displacement of the real into an always imaginary realm of sense.
The event is an ever changing diagram of forces, a place, where the diagonals of time and space intersect. However, we must be able to cope with it, even to handle and control it, if we shall ever succeed in being masters of our own lives.
The task of management does not differ from ordinary life in this context, rather it reinforces the importance of the event. The manager must be able to anticipate, predict, plan, explain, and prepare the event, in order to control it. However, he is also forced to be able to receive the generous work of the event, to be able to give chance a chance.
Event management is a new discipline casting the light of leadership as a process, which installs new movements, and new temporal patterns and rhythms, in space and time. He must be ready to co-create the inner architecture of the event.
The course shall examine the conceptual framework through which the event as a process, as an interplay between sense and force, and between meaning and matter, can be properly conceived of.
We shall also develop new concepts through which the tasks of leading and organising can be understood in the light of the event.
These efforts are important both to business economics and architecture, the first one trying to shape and control events, the other one constructing the physical framework of the processes of organising and managing.
Part I: Transformance: (1-3 Nov)
Day 1 - Writing
Writing is practice. By writing we create understanding: insight/outlook. Day one we discuss the order of things, created by words. The ambition is not only to discuss historical orders with impact on creation of things (buildings, art) and texts (treatises), but also to investigate and discuss what it means for the practictioners of drawing and/or writing today to be aware that any order is temporary and dependent on its ability to satisfy – and compose – a complexity of needs: social, technical, aesthetical...
Day 2 - Drawing
Often the architectural media as drawings and models are regarded as mere tools that capture and mediate the architectural intention, on either a conceptual or concrete level. To oppose and extend this view we will on the second day in the course turn the attention towards the transformational qualities of the architectural media.
Transformational in a sense where drawing or modelling can be regarded as acts of experience rather than as acts of expression. And the working process with a project can be regarded as a process of cognition.
This view will be explored through the presentation of different experimental and theoretical practices.
Day 3 - Building
The third day will present a series of built projects in which the relationship between the instruments that are employed and the given situations in which the projects are developed are particularly pertinent.
The focus is on the discussion of building processes rather that the presentation of buildings as finished works of architecture that successfully realizes an initial idea. The building is seen as an assemblage that grows in complexity through the interaction between the architectural motifs employed and the diversity of a given situation. The object is to trace different layers in the presented projects from practices connected to writing and the different architectural media and discussing them in relation to the actual building process.
Part II: Management of the Event (13-15 Dec)
Day-1:
We begin with introducing the theory of the event, as it is developed by the philosophy of Ole Fogh Kirkeby. The perspectives of Gilles Deleuze on the event are addressed too. Then we address the issues and the conceptual framework of event management on this basis. We end the first day by reflecting on the general political consequences of the presented approaches on the event, and reflect on the importance of event management for all the stakeholders of the firm.
Day-2:
The presentation and discussion of the criteria of developing a proper conceptual framework in which to understand the event, is continued. From this we proceed to analyse the ways in which the approaches to the management of projects and processes will change, when the event forms the focus. Finally we examine the consequences of event management for the development of alternative approaches to knowledge- and experience-production, especially what concerns design, architecture, and art.
Day-3:
We examine the dangers of event-management, especially its relation to ”governmentalité”, and to the new forms of “control through intimacy”.
We develop a critical platform from which to re-evaluate the narrative wave in management and organising, and its new, all-dominant role in the media.
Finally we discuss the possibility of developing a transdisciplinary didactics in relation to event management.