Landscapes of Extraction
Visual Genealogy of Cultural Heritage Between Switzerland and Serbia
“Territory is a historical question: produced, variable, and fluid. It is geographical […] It is a word, a concept, and a practice, where the relationship between them can only be understood genealogically. It is a political issue, but in a broader sense: economic, strategic, legal, and technical.”
– Stuart Elden, Land, Terrain, Territory, 2010
Maps do not represent reality; they create it. As a fundamental part of the process, the act of mapping results in highly authored depictions of territory. By selecting characteristics, strengths, and flows to highlight—and implicitly, which to exclude—the cartographer first creates the reality in which their intervention will take place and be discussed. Due to the perceived credibility and certainty of maps, states and institutions can make claims to knowledge, as can private enterprises and special interest groups. However, with the advent of digital technologies such as Google Maps, GIS, and handheld devices, we have begun to adopt production methods from elite institutions and capitalist interests that have controlled map-making and cartographic knowledge for the last two centuries. The combination of open-source information and digital applications has provided each of us with the tools to create maps that may challenge the “purity” and “rationality” of academic cartography and architectural mapping. It is now crucial that each of us begins to develop both the intellectual and technical capacities for map-making as a means to examine dominant ideological networks and to develop our understanding of the built environment into something more holistic, intuitive, and less ocularcentric.
Landscapes of Extraction will illustrate the dependency of capital, culture, and intellectual production between the Republic of Serbia and Switzerland. Through the simultaneous unpacking of the physical and cultural conditions of a given territory via multidisciplinary collaboration, the installation will examine the dominant ideologies that have shaped its hard and soft contours. A series of maps that challenge the Cartesian certainty of traditional mapping will illustrate the fluid exchange between the “two” countries, while developing new techniques for exploring material contours in a way that will allow us to reconsider and question the very nature of how we “see” and design our built environment. A complementary multi-scalar physical map will define the terrain as an undivided landscape, or more accurately, a territory defined through extraction and the exchange of material and immaterial resources.
The ambition of Landscapes of Extraction is to illustrate the need to eliminate the “arbitrary” geopolitical lines that prevent the region from functioning properly. By identifying common resources, infrastructure, and cultural similarities, through new methods of representation, the work will visually depict the gradients that exist between nations and how territories operate, allowing us to transcend our Cartesian understanding of space and begin to discuss alternative political and economic systems that embrace inclusion and diversity.
Team
Djordje Bulajic
Mitesh Dixit
Sou Fang
Ryan Oeckinghaus
Eric Sanchez
With Elena Echarri, Danya Li, Hannah Rachel Michaelson
DOMAIN
DOMAIN is an architecture and urbanism studio based in Belgrade, Serbia, and Syracuse, New York, led by Mitesh Dixit. DOMAIN operates deliberately without a manifesto or agenda, but insists on a method that investigates the very nature of the question. Our aim is to discover “new” questions rather than repeat existing solutions. Our method of inquiry transcends scope. We describe this method as “unpacking”—revealing multiple layers, hard and soft, physical and critical, to identify new hierarchies or hidden actors. This process demands an intense investigation of the local, a humble submission to the existing, and the rejection of any singular ‘vision.’
The firm works internationally on projects ranging from graphic design, residential, public buildings, and master plans. DOMAIN operates within contemporary art and has collaborated with artists such as Wim Wenders, Armin Linke, Vincent de Rijk, Ari Versluis (Exactitudes), and Antonio Lopez Garcia, as well as curators including Chris Dercon and Julio Vaquero. Their work has been featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014), the Frac Centre Museum in Orléans, France (2014), and MIPIM Conference in Cannes, France (2014), the National University of Singapore (2012), the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015), and the STRAND Fifth International Conference “On Architecture” in Belgrade (2017). DOMAIN has been featured in numerous publications, including Domus, Metropolis, and Wallpaper.
Mitesh Dixit – Biography
Mitesh Dixit is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Dixit’s work focuses on the intersection of design with government policy, society, and culture. His research has analyzed the processes of region and border formation in the Balkans and along the U.S.-Mexico border, tracing the effects of ideology on the transformation of the built environment. Dixit was on the faculty at TU Delft in the Netherlands as a visiting professor of architecture and urbanism. He was also the head of the Complex Projects department and assisted in the development of the curriculum. Throughout 2016, Dixit lectured internationally, conducting workshops and seminars on behalf of the U.S. Department of State.
After completing his undergraduate and graduate studies in politics and philosophy, Dixit earned a Master of Architecture degree from Washington University in St. Louis, after which he began his career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco. Before founding DOMAIN, Dixit worked as a project director with Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture, where he led multiple international projects, including MahaNakhon Tower in Bangkok, Holland Green in London, East Block 30 in Cairo, and the Kuala Lumpur Financial District in Malaysia.