Zoopolitics of Life and Death. Critical Animal Studies Graduate conference, THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & Institute of Philosophy, Kulturwissenschaften Faculty at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, 2023
Barns and warehouses for animal farming are some of the most common buildings in human landscapes... more Barns and warehouses for animal farming are some of the most common buildings in human landscapes at a global scale. Yet, these typologies are seemingly invisible, hiding at their core an industrial process which transforms living beings into commodities. The architecture of factory farming is largely anonymous, unsophisticated, and banal. However, it can be interpreted as the place of the utmost colonial project: that of human domination on non-human species. What are the historical roots of intensive animal farming and how did it become such a popular paradigm at a global level? Which technical literature (handbooks, publications) and what models supported the widespread application of factory farming to a great number of species and in different contexts? This talk aims at investigating the history of this invisible architecture, which has long sustained the development of our species since the industrial revolution and has tragically imposed our dominion on a vast majority of living beings on earth. This talk will discuss the research results of a two-month residency at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (July-August 2023) and the research project titled "Cages for non-humans: An architectural history of animal farming". The research will be based on archival documents owned by the CCA collection, which will allow me to trace the history of animal farming in North America and the twentieth-century architectural experimentations concerning this agro-industrial model. During the talk, I will put forward a few interpretations of the architectural model for animal farming. First, I argue that the architecture designed to host non-humans who are destined for production and slaughter swings between an aesthetic unsophistication and an utmost technological refinement, as it comprises complex machineries which limit the movements of the animals to maximize the economic results. When allowed, the movement of animals must follow strict rules; this is evident in a design case study collected at the CCA: the Westpen project by Cedric Price (1977–79), which includes several diagrammatic sketches controlling livestock movement for activities such as weighing, shearing, and cleaning (CCA Collection, Cedric Price fonds). Furthermore, I suggest that the limitation of livestock movement through architecture is aimed at transforming non-human entities into disabled bodies that are unfit for existence and ready for consumption (Taylor 2017). Finally, I touch upon the silent but pervading presence of the structures for animal farming on today’s industrial landscapes, where they act as efficient machineries that produce capitalistic goods and eject bones, liquids, and gasses – generating clear geological evidence of the Anthropocene.
Keywords: Animal farming; architecture; industrial landscapes; livestock; machines
References:
Alex Blanchette, Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm, Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us, London: Verso Books, 2016.
Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden, New York: New Press, 2017.
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Fifty years after its inauguration in June 1969, this essay aims at retracing the presence of the Futa-pass German War Cemetery in print sources. By including this project within a wider debate on the Postwar burial of the enemies of war, this text investigates the reasons of the long silence that has surrounded for decades the project, the construction and the physical presence of this cemetery on the Apennines between Florence and Bologna. On one hand, this research is based on the analysis of Italian newspapers, both on a national scale (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa) and on a local scale (La Nazione, Il Resto del Carlino), in order to understand how the Italian press dealt with the construction of German war cemeteries since the 1950s. On the other hand, this paper offers a history of the Italian and German architectural critique on the Futa-pass cemetery, with the aim of understanding the surprising indifference of the architectural publications and explaining the recent rediscovery of Dieter Oesterlen’s project.
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un progetto a cura di Enrica Sangiovanni e Gianluca Guidotti
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La lezione è disponibile qui:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehR5PWOCGrI&t=431s
http://www.ghirardacci.org/iniziative.asp#42
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8 giugno 2021 | h. 9–13.00 | aula virtuale
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A book series published by Firenze University Press
Promoters:
Mario Bevilacqua, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
Sofia Nannini, Università degli Studi di Firenze/Università di Bologna
Advisory board:
Antonello Alici, Università Politecnica delle Marche
Michael Asgaard Andersen, Royal Danish Academy
Mari Lending, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Johan Mårtelius, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Atli Magnus Seelow, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Sofia Singler, University of Cambridge
Saverio Sturm, Università di Roma Tre
GLAUCO GRESLERI (1930–2016). PAROLE, PROGETTI, RELAZIONI
A cura di Luigi Bartolomei, Marianna Gaetani e Sofia Nannini
Full issue: https://in_bo.unibo.it/issue/view/810/showToc
Una raccolta di saggi e ricerche, a firma di studiosi italiani e non, che inseriscono l'opera di Gresleri all'interno di molteplici questioni legate alla Storia dell'Architettura italiana (ed europea) del secondo Novecento. Il volume racchiude anche una ricca documentazione tratta dall'archivio privato del progettista.
Keywords: Animal farming; architecture; industrial landscapes; livestock; machines
References:
Alex Blanchette, Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm, Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us, London: Verso Books, 2016.
Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden, New York: New Press, 2017.