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Iker Gil Participates in What Criticism? at Harvard GSD

February 13, 2014

On Friday February 14, MAS Context editor in chief Iker Gil will take part in the “What Criticism?” symposium at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The symposium is organized by Florencia Rodriguez, Harvard GSD Loeb Fellow 2014 and editorial director of PLOT.

Mas news 2014 iker gil participates in what criticism harvard gsd 01

What Criticism? © Harvard GSD.

Iker will be part of The Impossible Friendship panel along with Jimenez Lai and Uriel Fogue, moderated by Matthew Teismann.

Below is the description of the symposium:

“How do we embrace these new properties and opportunities without losing significance? Do we need to achieve some intellectual or formal constitutions to give sense to this practice? What are its new possible forms? Where does the difference lie between simple dissemination and the active distribution and commitment to the transformation of our environment? Are there multiple forms of criticism? Can we think critically about architecture and cities without the aim for sense and virtue? Does criticism need to be useful?

This symposium intends to pose these questions and confront the idea of a single way of practicing or understanding criticism nowadays, as well as it shamelessly suggests the impossibility of its pure existence. As Foucault pointed out already in 1978, critique is by nature “condemned to dispersion, dependency and pure heteronomy,” and its contemporary forms emphasize those conditions in many aspects that urge for conscious reflections and a renewed vocabulary.”

Full list of participants

Michael Abrahamson
Anthony Acciavati
Uriel Fogue
Iker Gil
Urtzi Grau
Michael Kubo
Jimenez Lai
Alexandra Lange
Andres Lepik
Ciro Najle
Troy Payne
Camilo Restrepo
Florencia Rodriguez
Inga Saffron
Meredith Tenhoor

The event runs from 9:30 am until 6 pm at Room 112 , Gund Hall, Harvard GSD. It is free and open to the public.

For more information, please visit the official page: whatcriticism.com