Utopian Designs Research Articles

Reports and Conjectures on Kylwiria

AbstractThe code word “Kylwiria” was mentioned by György Ligeti from time to time since the 1970s. At first, it functioned rather abstractly as a working title for the opera that had been in the making since the mid-1960s and eventually mutated into Le Grand Macabre. Later, Ligeti also shared details about the imaginary land of his childhood, providing glimpses of brightly colored maps of that land and underscoring the importance of his childlike fantasy world. This article explores the dimensions of this “private mythology” and its impact on the composer's creative thinking and work. Its documentary evidence – the description of the land of Kylwiria recorded in 1950 in a booklet of more than 70 pages – is presented in examples and examinated for its particularities. On the one hand, it seems that the pioneering exploration of geographical spaces is transferred as a model to the creative exploration of sound spaces. On the other hand, Ligeti's concept of a fantastic counterworld is to be seen in a literary and cultural-historical context, in which it is to be located somewhere between expedition report, travel guide and utopian design. Such an outline sharpens the meaning of Kylwiria as a cipher for creativity in a characteristic mixture of ratio and fantasy.

Utopian methodology: Researching educational interventions to promote equity over multiple timescales

ABSTRACT Background This article explores the methodological foundations for a utopian methodology as a form of Design-Based Intervention Research (DBR) that can guide the process of envisioning, implementing, sustaining, and critically evaluating the more radical forms of educational activity systems that prefigure the utopian goal of an equitable and humane education system. Methods We examine, guided by a utopian methodology lens, the examples from three national traditions for designing and implementing equitable educational activities. Each illuminates critical phases in the process of conducting DBR, combining social theory and cultural-historical activity theory. Findings We propose methodological principles for a utopian methodology as a form of DBR: a) Some conditions for sustaining and re-generating the utopian goal should be explicitly considered; b) Examine the recurring challenges to viability and achievability of the utopian design in its learning ecology that emerge for observation over multiple times scales; c) Self-critique and collaborative re-design for a new iteration. Contribution Taken as an ensemble, the cases analyzed here illustrate the broad usefulness of the utopian methodology that we propose in order to maintain the light of the utopian goal and challenge domestication process embedded in any process of change and transformation of the status quo.

Learning the Treatment Impact on Time-to-Event Outcomes: The Transcarotid Artery Revascularization Simulated Cohort.

Proportional hazard Cox regression models are overwhelmingly used for analyzing time-dependent outcomes. Despite their associated hazard ratio is a valuable index for the difference between populations, its strong dependency on the underlying assumptions makes it a source of misinterpretation. Recently, a number of works have dealt with the subtleties and limitations of this interpretation. Besides, a number of alternative indices and different Cox-type models have been proposed. In this work, we use synthetic data, motivated by a real-world problem, for showing the strengths and weaknesses of some of those methods in the analysis of time-dependent outcomes. We use the power of synthetic data for considering observable results but also utopian designs.

Moving beyond linguistic bordering: Utopian designs for new futures

ABSTRACT We examine learning as movement as a utopian methodological approach that reorients how we shape and understand literacy learning ecologies with youth who are racialized as non-white. Understanding linguistic practice as integral to learning, and to common beliefs of what it means to be human, we consider how static notions of language are deployed as border-marking tools within settler coloniality, supporting a logic that justifies pernicious racial subordination. Within education, these ideologies frame certain learners as illegitimate and deviant, with particular implications for literacy learning. The learning sciences are uniquely positioned to re-signify what it means to be a literate body and to design learning ecologies in which youth move across these borders. Aligning ourselves with decolonial scholars, we argue that utopian methodology with a learning as movement frame allows us to forefront expansive learning design as we work alongside youth from otherized backgrounds toward alternate epistemic futures.

ʻNOCH SIND ALLES NUR ANDEUTUNGEN…ʼ: DAS FRAGMENTARISCHE IN NOVALISʼ DIE CHRISTENHEIT ODER EUROPA

ABSTRACTNovalisʼ speech Europa is one of the most striking texts of early Romanticism. Against the background of an – ironically treated – ʻRomantic conservatismʼ, Novalis conceives of a religious utopia, the basis of which seems to be a return to an idealised medieval age. He finished the speech in 1799, but it was only published in its entirety in 1826, long after his death. The more precise published title Die Christenheit oder Europa, by which the work still goes today, is by an unknown hand, as is the addition, in the form of a sub‐title: Ein Fragment. What may seem like a philological transgression from todayʼs point of view makes sense when this sub‐title is placed in the Romantic context of Friedrich Schlegelʼs ʻProgressive Universalpoesieʼ and Novalis's own ʻFragmentästhetikʼ. Although it is a finished text, and one which the author himself had also delivered as a finished speech, this article shows that Die Christenheit oder Europa is indeed a fragment in the specific sense of Romantic aesthetics and, moreover, a prime example of such a fragment. Once this is recognised, new perspectives emerge for interpretation. Thus, Novalis's utopian design contains an openness pointing beyond itself, which elevates the text far beyond the religious fixation and levity that are often attributed to it.

Poetry in Utopian Prose

In ‘Politics and Passions: The Stakes of Democracy’, Chantal Mouffe has argued that passions, rather than merely reason and interests, motivate people to act in politics and the only way to confront the mobilization of passions towards non-democratic ends by the Right is to mobilize passions towards democratic visions. Although poetry does not hold central stage in contemporary cultural production, it continues to mobilize various passions. Therefore it comes as no surprise that in the world of real politics, poems (or strategically selected poetic fragments) serve to mobilize negative as well as positive passions, towards democratic as well as non-democratic ends. But what passions does poetry animate in imaginary utopian societies? And why is it featured there at all? These and other questions are probed in the pages below; and I conclude that poetry in utopian prose may open up spaces of negativity that contradict positive utopian designs.

The Holocaust and Humanity

The Holocaust and Humanity

Introduction: Fashion in Utopia, Utopia in Fashion

Editorial paper for the guest-edited special issue Utopia and Fashion “Utopia and Fashion” comes at a time when the fashion industry faces a self-inflicted crisis that forces it to fundamentally rethink its own future. The desire to address the wrongs of the status quo and imagine alternatives and future possibilities has always been the driving force behind utopian thinking. The production of this special issue, “Utopia and Fashion,” at a time when the future of our relationship with fashion is being so widely discussed is not motivated by a wish to find “a stick with which to beat contemporary fashion,” which, according to fashion historian Aileen Ribeiro, has often been the case in utopian writing.19 On the contrary, this special issue is intended to be an initial contribution to what we hope could become a long-term dialogue regarding both the role of fashion in utopian thinking and the potential of utopian thinking to reimagine and inspire better futures for fashion. Included in this issue are three articles with a historical focus; two of these examine the role of fashion in selected utopian and dystopian texts, while the third explores more radical early twentieth-century visions of nudity as liberation from the oppression of dress. The other contributions engage with the critical issues surrounding fashion production and consumption. In addition to the essays in the “Articles” section, we include contributions from contemporary artists and designers whose practices, in different ways, challenge how fashion and clothing are currently used, experienced,and appreciated. By including the “Artist Statements” section, we aimed to bridge the often unhelpful gap between theoretical discussion and practical implementation and so complement some of the discussion in this issue with tangible examples of how fashion and our relationship with clothes can be rethought through art and design practice.

The sociological dimension of concrete interiors during the 1960s

Almost all architects today have abandoned making prescriptions for how people should live. They have learned from the mistakes of Modernism, when architects sought to construct the ideal home for the family. The now nearly universal judgment is that they inhibited the very thing they promised because their ideals failed to understand that living is a continual process of growth and adaptation. Nevertheless, many modernist homes still exist, and many are strikingly beautiful, with unique aesthetic and sculptural qualities. Of particular note are homes built in the 1960s, when a series of architects used the booming trade in concrete to create buildings of the most imaginary shapes and forms. But how can the modern family make their everyday lives in a space that is itself a work of art? How are inhabitants making homes in these complex, concrete structures? How did the family unit grow and evolve in them? To answer the questions, the most proscriptive designs are the most interesting to study. They take us beyond formal analyses and into the praxis of art, where we must rely on sociology and psychology as much as aesthetics. This article will engage these broader questions through a specific focus on homes designed by Juliaan Lampens. The research draws from archival work, literature study, on-site visits and interviews. Lampens is significant not only for the boldness of his forms but for his insistence on limiting walls and creating extremes of openness within the home. This article argues against a pure ideological critique of Lampens’ homes and focus instead on an understanding of how the homes were actually inhabited. In this way this article seeks to restore to modernism its complexity as a lived reality rather than criticize it in terms of its own formalism. These are considered alongside other architects, contemporary to Lampens, who shared similar ideas about living and building. Together these dwellings constitute a constellation that highlights the international scope and variation of Brutalism and, furthermore, brings to light the often overlooked unique sculptural qualities, forms and characteristics that emerged within Brutalist architecture. The essay focuses on two homes: the Vandenhaute home, built for a family of six, and the Vanwassenhove home that had a solo inhabitant. Lampens proposed strict regulations for those in his homes. The essay traces how Lampens developed this position to the extreme, and, in so doing, really did change how people lived. At the same time, this paper insists that architecture is part of a social world, and we need to evaluate both its successes and failures in order to better understand the potentials for future utopian design. This article is published as part of a collection on interiorities.

Реальное и фантастическое в «Утопии» Т. Мора

<p>Статья посвящена рассмотрению соотношения факта и вымысла в романе «Утопия» Т. Мора (1478–1535), великого гуманиста, стоящего у истоков английского Возрождения и эпохи Модерна. 500-летняя годовщина выхода в свет Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia служит прекрасным поводом для переосмысления исторического места произведения в мировой культуре. В статье раскрывается диалектика реального и фантастического, правды и вымысла в «Утопии».</p><p>По устоявшемуся мнению, «Утопия» Т. Мора сформировала парадигму нового литературного жанра и нового способа размышления о будущем в форме фантастики. Само название острова, основанное на игре слов ou-topos / eu- topos; различных мест и действующих лиц (город Амаурот — «туманный», река Анидр — Безводная, Гитлодей — «сведущий в чепухе» и т. п.), а также многие характеристики идеального общества, слабо связанные с реальностью того времени, казалось бы, свидетельствуют об абсолютном господстве вымысла. Но ряд авторов считают иначе. Согласно Моргану книга Мора, взятая в целом — не фантастика, а рассказ о путешествии в Перу. Другие авторы историчность и реалистичность «Утопии» усматривают в описаниях острова Куба, третьи находят сходство обычаев утопистов с обычаями коренных народов Америки, четвертые обращают внимание на адресный характер критики социальных порядков.</p><p>Для выяснения соотношения реального и вымышленного автор принимает во внимание всю совокупность обстоятельств, связанных с написанием «Утопии». Среди них: пребывание Мора в Антверпене в 1515 г.; присутствие реальных исторических лиц П. Эгидия (Петр Жиль), кардинала Дж. Мортон, и т. д. Следует учитывать источники, которые могли послужить источником информации о Новом Свете: письма Х. Колумба, дневники путешественников, вышедшую 1503 г. книжку А. Веспуччи «Новый Свет», «Декады» П. Мартира де Англериа.</p><p>К разнообразной информации о Новом Свете, где реальное было перемешано с фантастическим, Мор относился критически и с долей иронии. Далекий от беспочвенного фантазирования, мыслитель четко очерчивал круг своих интересов: социальные факторы процветания государства и общества. </p>

Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in the China and the West

Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in the China and the West

Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

Scholars have long been interested in architecture and urban planning as a cultural battleground during the Cold War. What is less known, however, is how the ideological conflict over urban practices played out beyond the frontlines of Europe on other battlefields abroad. This paper transcends entrenched East/West binaries to examine architectural forms and principles of urban planning that traveled overseas to create experimental cities with new urban morphologies. Based on long-term research in Vietnam and Germany, I focus on the city of Vinh in north central Vietnam, rebuilt after its destruction by US air raids as a model city with the assistence of East Germany. My goal is twofold: to examine how GDR utopian designs were applied transnationally to build new urban futures in other geographies, and to examine how local cultural understandings of the city served to reconfigure GDR housing typologies and ideas of socialist modernity .

Eco-topia

Through the presentation of a design research project inspired by the narrative “Edilia, or ‘Make of it what you will’” in Spaces of Hope by the cultural geographer David Harvey, this article shows a contemporary resurgence of interest in visionary utopian design. Springing from Harvey's Neo-Marxist position, the design studio and ecotopia design presented explore an alternative relationship between nature and urbanization. That association is based not on exploitation of energy resources, but on the potential to create a sustainable ecology and community at the Jökulsárlón, a lagoon located at the base of the melting glacier, Vatnajökull in southeastern Iceland.

SGBD embarqué dans une puce. Retour d'expérience

Smart card is today the most widespread secured portable computing device. Four years ago, we addressed the problem of scaling down database techniques for the smart card and we proposed the design of what we called a PicoDBMS, a full-fledged database system embedded in a smart card. Since then, thanks to the hardware progress and to the joint implementation efforts of our team and our industrial partner, this utopian design gave birth to a complete prototype running on an experimental smart card platform. This paper revisits the problem statement in the light of the hardware and applications evolution. Then, it introduces a benchmark dedicated to Pico-style databases and provides an extensive performance analysis of our prototype, discussing lessons learned at experimentation time and helping selecting the appropriate storage and indexation model for a given class of embedded applications. Finally, it draws new research perspectives for data management on secured chips. MOTS-CLES : Bases de donnees embarquees, Confidentialite et protection des donnees, Carte a puce, Controle d'acces, Modeles de stockage et d'indexation, Evaluation de requetes.

The Mechanic as Twentieth-Century Mona Lisa: Modernism’s Utopian Designs at the Corcoran Gallery

The Mechanic as Twentieth-Century Mona Lisa: Modernism’s Utopian Designs at the Corcoran Gallery John Paul Riquelme Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., 1703– 2907, 2007; conceived by and first shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 0604– 2307, 2006. Essential Modernism. Philip Brookman, Paul Greenhalgh, and Sarah Newman . London: V&A Publications, 2007. 100 illustrations, mostly color. Pp. viii + 88. $19.95 (cloth). Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939. Christopher Wilk , ed. London: V&A Publications, 2006. Pp. 447. 360 color plates, 60 black and white illustrations. $85.00 (cloth). The Mechanic[by Fernand Léger] of 1923 just struck me as being the twentieth century's Mona Lisa, you know? He's a confident boy. —Paul Greenhalgh, Director, Corcoran Gallery of Art Exhibiting and Interpreting the Utopian Machine Aesthetic The memorable exhibition of largely European modernist art and design at the Corcoran Gallery (originally at the V&A) is the most recent [End Page 755]of several ambitious, exceptionally interesting exhibitions concerning late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century art and design that have traveled from the V&A to American museums. 1The objects and the argument of Modernismhave been presented with care in two beautifully designed books that provide important resources for anyone interested in modernism. The exhibition's range and diversity, a few exemplary objects and spaces, and the curatorial attitudes that shaped it are available in the streaming video of an eight-minute PBS segment from The Newshour with Jim Lehrer(19 April 2007). 2The segment includes a selective walk through, Jeffrey Brown's reportorial commentary, and excerpts from interviews with Paul Greenhalgh, Director of the Corcoran, and Christopher Wilk, Keeper of the Furniture, Textiles, and Fashion Department at the V&A and curator of Modernism. No brief report could communicate sufficiently Brown's accurate assertion that the exhibition was "huge." The books suggest more fully the show's monumental size and the stunning impact of many of the objects. The PBS interviews are revealing, particularly Greenhalgh's declaration concerning Fernand Léger that provides my epigraph. He continues: "He looks as though he knows what he's doing, and he looks in control of his life. And for me, it makes it this big, optimistic symbol." Greenhalgh and his coauthors put The Mechanicon the dust jacket of Essential Modernism. Wilk is equally declarative concerning modernist intentions: "When architects of this period got together, they tended to talk about three things, maybe four: housing—by which they meant public housing, social housing—housing, housing, and then how to build it. . . . the burning issue of the day was how to improve the plight of ordinary people by providing them with much better conditions." He points to Mies van der Rohe's influential sketch for the Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper Project(1921) as epitomizing with its glass sheathing the goal of "letting light in, and light is health-giving, and it's creating a sense of something higher." These claims about modernism's machine aesthetic, utopian aspirations, and Apollonian character articulate the exhibition's main directions and sharply defined focus. Although providing clarity for visitors is crucial, these claims beg many questions and leave the ostensible intentions of modernism largely uncriticized. Nietzsche, who was taken seriously in the period by Thomas Mann and others, had much to say about the limitations, delusions, and instability of cultural ideals that adopt the vocabulary of light, health, and the contrast of higher to lower. But we need not rely on Nietzsche's legacy to question Utopiaand its political implications. The term was widely understood to mean a Marxist-Leninist commitment to the establishment of communism by revolutionary means. It was not a universally admired term in debates concerning future social structures. This marvelous exhibition is conceptually weakened by not presenting more strenuously both the contemporary objections from the right to Utopia, a term with a contentious history, and the critique from the left that modernism was complicit with existing hierarchies of power. Understanding modernism depends on situating it in relation to these criticisms from its own time. Who sets the standards by...

Social Status and Landscape in a Nineteenth-Century Planned Industrial Alternative Community: Archaeology and Geography of Feltville, New Jersey

Feltville is located in Union County, New Jersey. This small-scale planned industrial village was designed and operated by David Felt, a liberal Unitarian printer and stationer, from 1845 to 1860. Archaeological and documentary materials recovered over the last six years paint a picture of conditions in Felt’s rural industrial reformist alternative and provide a glimpse into the worldview of the community architect. Examination of Feltville and its historical context allows for the evaluation of the potential practical and theoretical contributions of historical archaeology in the study of utopian movements. Specifically, the diversity of sociopolitical ideals expressed prior to the advent of Marxian socialism calls into question the conflation of communalist and utopian social designs in some contemporary treatments.

Marxism‐Leninism as a political religion

This article describes Lenin’s utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosi as a typical political religion of an intelligentsia longing for an inner‐worldly salvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the Russian backward society at the outskirts of the industrialised and modernised Western Europe. The coup d’état of October 1917 accomplished the institutionalisation of a political religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals and stigmatised social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as a messianic and numinous leader, a process of iconographic work in progress which culminated after Lenin’s death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served as the monumental centrepiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinist orthodoxy. Stalin’s invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism‐Leninism qualified him as the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallible interpretation of the holy scriptures, summarised in his own dogmatic performances. In this sense, Stalin’s Leninism became itself a religion d’état (B. Souvarine).

The King in Lima: Simulacra, Ritual, and Rule in Seventeenth-Century Peru

The King in Lima: Simulacra, Ritual, and Rule in Seventeenth-Century Peru

Impurities all around? Some thoughts on Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Economics & Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is not the End of History

In his wide-ranging book, Geoff Hodgson fights his battle against the view that there is no future anymore for expounding and discussing utopian ideas about ideal socio-economic systems. The notion that we have reached the end of history, that the ideological clash between different utopian designs has ended in a glorious victory of the liberal--democratic capitalist system, Hodgson argues, is seriously flawed. For Hodgson this does not imply, however, that traditional contenders, such as the socialist utopian design, have not yet been defeated. The socialist utopia, with its characteristic market phobia, has effectively been dismantled. Hodgson goes beyond this, however, in arguing that the lesson to be learnt from recent geopolitical developments rather is that all pure utopian blueprints, the traditional socialist left-wing and neo-liberal, market individualistic right-wing utopias included, are unfeasible. Pace free marketeers Hodgson holds that there never has been, and there will never be a pure liberal --democratic capitalist system. What we always had and will never get rid of instead are impure systems. This does not render utopian thinking obsolete or superfluous. The future is not pre-ordained and ideas about a better world will continue to have an impact on how society will develop further. Lest we accept that unexamined ideas sneak in through the backdoor, we'd better engage in an explicit and critical debate about these ideas. More or less between the lines Hodgson indicates that such a debate has to be guided by a general notion of human flourishing. Meeting human needs and facilitating self-actualization of individuals are the summum bonum for Hodgson. To this end Hodgson puts forward his own evotopia in which substantial investments are made in human education and training. I can only hope that this somewhat captures the major ingredients in Hodgson's book. So many topics are addressed in the book that it is impossible in a review article to do justice to them all. In this review article I take the liberty to pick out themes and ideas that I have a special interest in. I shall mainly concentrate on economic theory and the light it is (un)able to shed on institutional variety in socio-economic systems. This means that I may not even touch upon what Hodgson takes to be the heart of the endeavour under consideration here. On the other hand, I draw some consolation from the fact that just like me Hodgson (perhaps surprisingly, given the overall theme of the book) is mostly concerned with the nature of economic analysis and its limits in coming to grips with issues that Hodgson puts center stage (Hodgson 1999: 11). (1) A prominent theme in the book is that both mainstream economics and Marxism tend to glance over the actually existing variety and diversity within socio-economic systems such as capitalism (or market society). Not only is the market itself an institution, different types of market institutions are possible (p. 94). This already defies proclamations that with present world-wide system of liberal-democratic capitalism we have reached the end of history. This is so for two reasons. First, since actually existing capitalist systems display considerable diversity, it is misleading to talk of our present world-wide system of liberal-democratic And, second, it is highly probable that the forms of capitalism that have actualized so far do not exhaust the full range of possible variants of capitalism. I find all this congenial. But it seems to me that there are various ways in which Hodgson uses the notions of variety and diversity. I think it would be helpful to keep them apart. First of all, I think we should distinguish more clearly than Hodgson does himself between variety in context en variety in substance. Context by definition refers to something outside the system, something in which the system is situated or embedded. …

Margaret Cavendish's Dramatic Utopias and the Politics of Gender

In a 1663 epistle addressed to scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, Margaret Cavendish compares herself and her female counterparts to [b]irds in cages... [that]... hop up and down in our houses, not suffered to fly abroad to see the several changes of fortune.17 Cavendish then associates women's exclusion from universities with their negligible influence in all public contexts. By an opinion, which I hope is but an erroneous one, in men, she observes, [w]e are shut out of all power and authority; by reason we are never employed in either civil or martial affairs.2 In this passage, iron bars are a prison, but, in other texts, Cavendish transforms such cages into arenas of civil possibility for women. In three of her plays-The FemaleAcademy (1662), Bell in Campo (1662), and The Convent of Pleasure (1668)-Cavendish reconfigures traditional distinctions between private and public by creating utopian heroines who take women's sequestration to extremes, completely insulating themselves from men's public spheres.3 The literal and ideological partitions they construct result in new publics in which women wield political power and authority. Like Cavendish's science fiction fantasy, The Blazing World (1666), the three plays demonstrate that utopia, as early modern men's texts construct it, is a highly conflicted space for her and for early modern women generally.4 In contrast to Thomas More and his seventeenth-century imitators, Cavendish does not situate her utopian designs in the new world. For the most part, early modern island utopias depend upon carefully controlled heterosexual reproductive economies.5 Because such utopian narratives valorize natural law and depend upon patriarchal paradigms for marriage, family, and the state, they seldom question women's nature and place.6