[-empyre-] Thanks Maurice & Alice, Welcome Marcus & Teddy

[renate ferro <rtf9@cornell.edu>, timothy murray <tcm1@cornell.edu>]

We want to thank Maurice and Alice for leading the discussion of
their fascinating practices during the week.  Just as their art
practices embody new elaborations of technological space, Alice's
physical movement over the past week (from Berlin to Rio and Sao
Paulo) exemplifies the spatial range of the practices that have been
the subject of our conversation this month, from China and Japan,
North America, Europe, Latin America, and Australia.  Their inclusion
of blogging as part of their practice certainly highlights the
cyperspatial implications of the month's topic.

So to round things out (!), we're very pleased to end this month on
Critical Spatial Practice with guests, Teddy Cruz and Marcus Miessen,
whose practices range from Mexico and the Middle East to Europe and
the US.

Teddy Cruz is a Guatemalan-born architect and Associate Professor in
Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at the
University of California, San Diego.  With a practice concentrating
on the border between San Diego and Tijauna, Mexico, Teddy has been
developing a practice and a pedagogy that emerge out of the
particularities of this bicultural territory.  Teddy has been
recognized internationally in collaboration with community-based
nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar for its work on housing
and its relationship to an urban policy of more inclusive social and
cultural programs.  He was the first recipient of the James Stirling
Memorial Lecture on The City Prize by the Canadian Center of
Architecture and the London School of Economics and a recipient of
the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome.
Teddy's international exhibitions include "Archilab" in Orleans,
France,and the Architectural Biennials of Rotterdam and Lisbon.
Teddy is now coming up from air, just back from the Istanbul Biennial
where he was a featured artist.


Marcus Miessen is a German, London-based architect and writer who
leads Studio Miessen, an inventive, collaborative agency for spatial
strategy and cultural analysis.  We have been relishing his latest
book with Shumon Basar and Antonia Carver, With/Without: Spatial
Products, Practices, and Politics in the Middle East, which stems
from the Moutamarat Design Initiative in Dubai. Marcus is also the
co-author with Kenny Cupers, Müller&Busmann of Spaces of Uncertainty,
and editor with Basar of Did Someone Say Participate: An Atlas of
Spatial Practice. A Unit Master at the Architectural Association
(London), Marcus has supported General Public Agency and currently
acts as a spatial advisor to the European Kunsthale (Cologne), the
Department for Education and Public Programmes at the Serpentine
Gallery (London), and the London-based think tank for everyday
democracy "Demos."  His work has been recognized by awards and prizes
from the Flemisch Government, Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectur
(Amsterdam),and Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Berlin).  Marcus somehow
also manages to pursue studies as a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for
Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London, where he investigates
conflict- and non-consensus-based forms of participation as a means
of alternative spatial practice.

We're very much looking forward to this week with Teddy and Marcus as
we conclude this month of considering Critical Spatial Practice on
-empyre-. Welcome Teddy and Marcus!

Renate and Tim
--

Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderaters, -empyre-
Department of Art/Rose Goldsen ARchive of New Media Art
Cornell University