From foaming exercises to scenarios of co-existencies – anticipating emancipatory practices of space

Abstract

The structure and dynamics of worldly spaces are neighbourhoodly. In them, different kinds of life forms are connected, in a sharing relation, whether they like it or not. The other facet of the same coin is co-isolation and a state of shared closure. Any position from loving and intimate to aggressive or forced, from solidarity to imprisonment, is detached to and depicted through spatial relations. Infected by the “interpretation of foams” in the final volume of Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy, I chose to take foam architecture onto a surgical table and take a closer look at its spatial, material, metaphorical and conceptual implications. I became driven in making inquieries on co-joined spatiality characterized by the “ontological nervousness of the co-existent, the other, the outer”.[1] The Foaming Exercises installation was part of one of the research cells of the Research Pavilion #3 and became the first part of an (ongoing) examination of spatial co-existencies. Since then, the study has evolved into an ongoing further study on co-joined spatialities in relation to the emancipatory potential of spatial practices in urban context.