Imminent Commons
Citizens are increasingly aware that they inhabit ecosystems that transcend their specific urban realms and are crucially mediated by technology. For cities to address the challenges of the Anthropocene, in which the primeval elements —air, water, energy and earth— have become artificial, humanized and politicised, they will need to redefine themselves as a much broader entity: one that is concerned with machines, animals, plants and the collective of all their peer cities. Citizens will have to develop a cosmopolitical perspective of the world at large. Their cosmologies will no longer be constrained to the conceptualisation of the natural elements, but crucially mediated by the technologies that feed us, transport us, condition our environments, recycle our refuse, produce our clothes or connect us to each other. Like air, water, energy and living creatures, technologies are an integral part of the imminent urban commons.
Co-Directed by Hyungmin Pai and Alejandro Zaera-Polo.