BNLMNTL 2014: Future Summit

Our Future Summit panel  for the BNLMNTL 2014 will focus on cities as vast inhuman systems, complex beyond our casual powers of perception. We assert that what is needed is not the far-off vision of some city in the sky, nor a nostalgic return to the peasant idyll, but a way to connect the immanent life of the city-dweller with the abstract forces which govern her everyday possibilities. We will use this as a point of departure, asking the panel to address questions about how major cities now function, examine the forces that shape them as linked nodes of global capitalism, consider the transition from the ideals of the modernist city to their current reality, and speculate on possibilities of how they could function given these realities and their potential for repurposing.

Panel participants are Marie-Pier Boucher, Keller Easterling and FtF organizers Joshua Johnson and Keith Tilford. The panel will be moderated by Diann Bauer. In keeping with FtF’s overall mission, the aim of the panel is to examine the current conditions of urbanism and speculate constructively on how best to proceed into the future.