Negotiating Spaces: Time, Knowledge, Place, Material

Theatrum Mundi

Negotiating Time: Can the temporary leave a trace?
Time is an enduring concept in architecture and the city. In fact, Lewis Mumford wrote that the city makes time visible. Time is made visible as the context and condition of performance. Music, for example, exists only through time. Recently, there has been a reemergence of the notion of the temporary, or pop-up, meanwhile or interim use, as a more flexible, more variable, and more ‘democratic’ space for culture in the city. Some of this, however, might be due to neoliberal changes meaning that funding and space constraints align with increased social burden on the arts and cultural practices to be more nimble, more engaged, and yet much more precarious. While the large, costly and bureaucratically thick legacy cultural organisations and institutions still preoccupy the cultural landscape, and are being reproduced in global circuits of cultural policy that favours expensive, permanent icons. But what would a shift to the temporary mean for architecture? Is the temporary vs. distinction a false one? Can temporary structures, performances or events in the city translate into legacies of knowledge and relationship? How do we negotiate time? Can the temporary leave a trace?