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Imagine our cities, hard and solid, becoming soft and sponge-like. Imagine a vast porous body (the city) made up of other porous bodies (you and us, and\u2026, and\u2026, and\u2026) that constantly flow into one another like chemical substances and electrical signals and toxins and molecules and bacteria and fungi and matter \u2013 a porous city, a poro-city. And what if our true epidermis were topological? [1] Or, more simply, what would happen when our bodies extend far beyond organic skin? How would we relate to the city if we saw ourselves as being \u201cof\u201d it rather than \u201cin\u201d it? We tried to imagine this during a five-day creative-relational urban research, but even more: if the city were a porous \u201cbody,\u201d would it also have a \u201cmind\u201d? After all, the two are not separate, are they? And if it existed, would it be \u201cporous\u201d? And would it have an \u201cunconscious\u201d? And if so, where would it be? So we went to search for it \u2013 or rather, to listen to it. In the search for the urban unconscious, we turned to the \u201cinfraordinary\u201d \u2013 the repressed matter of the everyday. A \u201ccolumn\u201d guided us on our walk. Then we (re)built it and brought it here, to stand, but not to stand still. We built the column to walk. [2] And as we did this, we asked ourselves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How well do we manage to remember people in their passing, but how do we do this for the passing of a species, a song, a being that is not ours? And\u2026 are we capable? [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We leave it to you to find out on your own \u201cwalk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Coordinated by Arcadie Botnaru & M\u0103d\u0103lina Ciocanu | RIZOMA, as part of a workshop held in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Co-authors: Delia Costea, Cristian-Gheorghe Chi\u021boran, Cristian-Emanuel Opri\u0219, Andrei Dr\u0103cea, Andreea \u0218te\u021bco, Luiza Alecsandru, Tudor Mutrescu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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[1] Mcphie, J. (2019). Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene: A Posthuman Inquiry<\/em>. Springer Singapore. Arcadie Botnaru<\/strong> is an emerging artist, educator, and independent researcher born in a small industrial town in northern Moldova. He holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology and a master\u2019s in experiential learning. Arcadie designs and facilitates non-formal educational programs that weave together experiential and artistic learning methodologies with theoretical perspectives from post-philosophies, feminist writings, and indigenous cosmologies, in an effort to create a posthuman pedagogical practice for a future planet. His ethical focus is on social justice and ecological equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[2] Nicholson, N. (1981). Wall. In Sea to the West<\/em>. Faber & Faber.
[3] Loften, A. & Vaughan-Lee, E. (2024). The Nightingale’s Song.<\/em> Emergence Magazine.
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