conduction
Sara Davin Omar
”Out of Control When I Turn My Power On emerged from the assertion that the architecture of the industrial landscape of hydropower on Julevädno (Lule River, Sweden) is a product of extractivism and coloniality. As infrastructure, these switchgears and dams are parts of a network stretching all the way to the capital-intensive, congested realm of Stockholm, and consequently my own existence.
A conductor is an object or material that allows for the flow of electric current and conduction is the transmission between conductors. The word is derived from the Latin condūcō meaning to lead, draw together, assemble, and to connect or unite. It is also related to the word dūcō, meaning to guide. In a world shaped by Modern thought where knowledge has been compartmentalized into separate entities, I decided to trace flows that would highlight the interconnection between sites of this infrastructural network. Therefore, I have carved out a genealogy of hydropower and architecture within the Swedish nation-state firstly through a series of essays.
As a sort of circuit diagram of places, events, individuals, and ideologies, the essays visualize some of the flows of the colonizing apparatus of hydropower. Secondly, the project consists of a series of photomontages, where some of these sites and events are brought together on the same canvas.”
The fundamental pedagogical approach of the course Decolonizing Architecture is based on the articulation of sites, concepts, and people. Each participant is asked to choose a particular site, understood as a site of action and a site of knowledge. Concepts emerging from the research site provide a grounded theoretical approach to the practice.
During the spring semester Decolonizing Architecture shares the concepts that informed this year individual and collective research.