International Latsis Symposium — Open Forum
March 24–26, 2021
Deep City Latsis symposium is gathering people from around the world to discuss and present written, built, coded, drawn, filmed, or modelled work around the topics of data, democracy and sovereignty. From digital tools for urban governance to AI and new forms of design and spatial agency, we will explore emerging negotiations between the technological, the ecological and the social.
Big data and artificial intelligence will inevitably change the way we study, build, and manage our cities. Is the opposition of machine intelligence and democracy inevitable, or are shared trajectories possible? To consider this and other questions, we will host a series of keynotes and paper presentations, as well as an exhibition (WALL), workshops and roundtables, to collectively grasp the Deep City.
Wednesday, March 24
3pm Deep City Launch
4:30pm WALL Opening Session
6:30pm Opening Debate with Keller Easterling & Benjamin Bratton
Code, protocol, image, signal: (stealthy) grammars for new spatial systems.
Thursday, March 25
8:30am Hong Kong Sessions – Pt. I. The Real and the Reproduced
–Paper session 01: New Digital Tools for Urban Governance
–Project showcase 01: Machine Learning and AI as New Forms of Design Rationality
11am Hong Kong Sessions – Pt. II. Civic Landscapes
With Joanna Mansbridge, Peter AC Nelson, Sampson Wong & LAUSAN Collective
1:30pm Project showcase 02: New Digital Tools for Urban Governance
–Paper session 02: New Material Agencies
–Paper session 03: Making ground for new negotiations between the technological, the ecological and the social.
4pm DC Roundtable: Emerging Political Agencies in the Deep City
With Felix Stalder & Joana Moll
6:30pm Keynote conference: Yves Citton
Alterraforming the Deep City: the Hardening of Software, Negative Commons, and Collapsonaut Attention
Friday, March 26
8:30am Paper session 04: Resilient Cities and Territories in the Anthropocene
–Paper session 05: Machine Learning and AI as New Forms of Design Rationality
–Paper session 06: Data, Democracy and Sovereignty: Towards New Urban and Political Imaginaries.
11am DC Roundtable: The Cities Session
With Gesa Ziemer, Ariane Widmer, Francesco della Casa & Tan Shao Yen
2pm Project showcase 03: New Material Agencies
–Project showcase 04: Resilient Cities and Territories in the Anthropocene
4:30pm DC Roundtable: (dis)agreements
6:30pm Keynote conference: Shannon Mattern
–Arboreal Agency: Trees in Urban Ecologies and Computational Systems
Exhibition: WALL
WALL will be a processual exhibition, capable of transforming itself following discussion and dialogue. Throughout history, walls have been key devices for radical democracy, displaying information while gathering people in a shared experience of reading and nurturing of collective action.
Online workshops (3 days–10 hours)
Terra Forma
Sampling, mapping and recomposing the Earth
Organized by Alexandra Arènes and Axelle Grégoire (Studio S.O.C.)
Agitation and Propaganda:
Architectural narratives in the age of the image
Organized by Bartlebooth (Antonio Giráldez and Pablo Ibáñez)
Access to the different activities will be done through the Deep City digital platform, an interface for hybrid conferencing designed to expand the possibilities of the digital through a unique use and understanding of the spatial and the embodied. Through this platform, our global audience will be able to come together to discuss and exchange. It will also act as an archive of the event. All activities will be documented and post-produced along the way, allowing all participants to follow them live or at their own pace.
The Symposium will stream from the EPFL Campus in Lausanne (GMT+1), from March 24 to 26, 2021, with parallel and common activities in partner sites Singapore (in collaboration with SUTD Singapore University of Technology and Design) and Hong Kong (in collaboration with Hong Kong University).
Registration at: https://registration.deepcity.ch
