Intrigued by the neologism “xeno-architecture” and curious about its progressive potential for spatial practice, Perhaps It Is High Time For A Xeno-Architecture To Match collaborated with Armen Avanessian, Markus Miessen and others on further developing the philosophical concept of the “xeno”—risk, uncertainty and the unknown—and investigate how it could be thought of in relation to architecture. With “Scaling” as its theme, the third, and for now final, program of Perhaps It Is High Time For A Xeno-Architecture To Match, reflects on the most important critical question that was brought to the fore within its process: (How) can you go from a stagnant “what is” towards a dynamic and ambitious “what could be,” while still being held accountable for “what actually happens”? How does an interface between the local and the global, the concrete and the abstract, the ordered and the disordered, the digital and the physical, look like? How do we both upscale local practices, and progressively downscale abstract spatial phenomena?

Perhaps It Is High Time For A Xeno-Architecture To Match invites Diann Bauer and Jeremy Lecomte to reflect on this question of scaling and relate it to their philosophical and architectural research. This public presentation, moderated by René Boer en Arif Kornweitz, is organized in collaboration with Failed Architecture on Thursday May 3, and is followed up by a closed expert meeting on Friday May 4.

Diann Bauer is an artist and writer based in London. She is part of the working group Laboria Cuboniks, who in 2015 wrote ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics of Alienation’ and the collaborative research project A.S.T. focusing on the idea of the global city, viewing Miami as a case study. The aim of A.S.T. is to conceive possible futures that are both reactive and propositional with regard to the shifting set of legal, economic, cultural and environmental forces that confront us. Bauer will focus on the prefix ‘xeno’ and link this, whilst reflecting on the methodology of scaling, to her more concrete architectural research in Miami.

Jeremy Lecomte is a researcher and theoretician working between political philosophy, art, architecture and urban studies. He is the co-founder of Glass Bead, an art journal and a research platform dedicated to the relations between art and other domains of thought, and to their political ramifications. Lecomte's work aims to question what a site is today, from its local inscription to its global uprooting. He will elaborate on the findings of his PhD thesis exploring the history of urban modernisation in Lagos, Nigeria, from the colonial period until today.

Perhaps It Is High Time For A Xeno-Architecture To Match is a Brussels-based curatorial and research project initiated by Lietje Bauwens, Wouter De Raeve, and Alice Haddad in 2016. The dynamic relationship between research and practice constitutes both the form and matter of this project, which has resulted in a series of cultural productions and collaborations. www.perhapsitishightimeforaxenoarchitecturetomatch.org

With the support of: Creative Industries Fund NL, The Arts and Heritage Agency of the Flemish Community, The ministry of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region responsible for Mobility and Public Works