Columbia GSAPP announces the launch of AFFIRMATIONS: an eight-month series of discussions with designers, researchers, planners, preservationists, and activists to affirm and interrogate how to think and redesign the built environment at the intersection of climate, ecological, societal, bodily, and technological crises and defiance. It also announces the AFFIRMATIONS OPEN CALL to select its cohort of respondents across the world. 

As a project convened to practice the reworlding of societies and ecosystems now, AFFIRMATIONS is intended to align evidence and aspirations. It will summarize and state underrepresented histories and possible futures that emerge from the cracks in the structures of power built on the interdependency of carbonization, extractivism, colonization, racialization, anthropocentrism, inequality, patriarchy, and technocracy. 

Structured through ten conversations among speakers affiliated with a broad spectrum of geographies and organizations, the series intends to reflect pluralism, heterogeneity, and dissent. Organized as interdisciplinary summits, they will be hosted in person at Columbia GSAPP and streamed online. AFFIRMATIONS will include the participation of GSAPP faculty as well as numerous guests: Vicki Been, James Bridle, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, T.J. Demos, Keller Easterling, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jack Halberstam, Christopher Hawthorne, Samia Henni, Sandi Hilal, Olalekan Jeyifous, Mireia Luzárraga, Rob Nixon, Fuminori Nousaku, Alessandro Petti, Elizabeth Povinelli, C. Riley Snorton, Paulo Tavares, Mio Tsuneyama, Albena Yaneva, Eyal Weizman, David Wengrow, and others.

As a key part of the AFFIRMATIONS project, Columbia GSAPP announces an open call for students, practitioners, researchers, activists, and educators from all around the world to become part of the AFFIRMATIONS Cohort of Respondents. This cohort will play a key role in shaping the discussions around each AFFIRMATION. They will be selected from applicants through an open call and will be asked to attend all AFFIRMATIONS sessions online. They will be provided with readings to prepare the sessions in advance and can submit comments and questions. Respondents joining AFFIRMATIONS and participating in all sessions will receive a GSAPP certificate of participation. 

Those interested in joining the Cohort of Respondents can apply by submitting their CV and a 300-word statement of interest in Columbia GSAPP's website by September 3, 2023. 

Selected candidates will receive notification by September 8. We invite participants from all over the world to engage in this planetary project. In order to receive a GSAPP Certificate of Participation in the AFFIRMATIONS project, participants must attend online and respond to all of the AFFIRMATIONS throughout the Fall and Spring semesters. Certificates will be issued in May 2024, and there is no cost associated with this. 

AFFIRMATIONS is curated by Andrés Jaque, Dean, and Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia GSAPP.

Apply to participate in AFFIRMATIONS. 

Top graphic image © Nick Sheeran, courtesy of Columbia GSAPP.

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