voi Cesthe critical positions for performance activity and art in the processes of performativity
(processes of dominance, subjugation and marginalization). Correspondingly, a critical
re- positioning can be turned towards the research process itself, to challenge one’s
own operations. From initial explorative experiments, for instance, you may try out a
change of game rules: a subversive perspective, inverted hierarchies, placing yourself
in a subordinate or marginalized role, or switching the material, as indicated in the
section on modelling and simulation.
What you do then, is actually to bring an architectural, design or abR situation
into discourse theory – or the reverse, to bring discourse theory into the designerly
configurations, staging it in space and time, materiality and positioning of actants.
going back to michel Foucault and The Archaeology of Knowledge (l’archéologie du
savoir), one finds a terminology that is conspicuously spatial and therefore applicable in
architectural modelling situations. Foucault speaks of systems of formation; discursive
formations; points of diffraction; statements as acts of formulation from certain
positions; and context- consequence as networks of relationships between different
statements. The statement, says Foucault, is
a function of existence that properly belongs to signs and on the basis of which
one may then decide, through analysis or intuition, whether or not they ‘make
sense’ [...] a function that cuts across a domain of structures and possible
unities, and which reveals them, with concrete contents, in time and space.
(Foucault 1972 [1969]: 86–7)in accordance with his many references to geography, one may stretch his concepts
and apply them to abR and architectural thinking. Systems of formation is defined by
Foucault as ‘not only mean the juxtaposition, coexistence, or interaction of heteroge-
neous elements (institutions, techniques, social groups, perceptual organizations, rela-
tions between various discourses), but also the relation that is established between
them – and in well determined form – by discursive practice’ (Foucault 1972 [1969]:
72). The obvious analogy to this is the construction- configuration of the abR research
situation. a discursive formation, says Foucault, ‘presents the principle of articulation
between a series of discursive events and other series of events, transformations, muta-
tions and processes’ (Foucault 1972 [1969]: 74). parallels can be drawn here to critical
modelling. Points of diffraction are ‘points of incompatibility’ where two incompatible
parts are formed by the same set of rules and ‘instead of constituting a mere defect of
coherence, they form an alternative’ (Foucault 1972 [1969]: 65). These are similar to
key points in the spatial construct, or may also be identified as elements (actors) with
strategically interesting agencies. such connections between discourse theory and ar-
chitectural thinking could be explored further, not the least through modelling or other
non- verbal modes of communication.
seeing the research situation and problem, or the modelling set- up, as a landscape
where key points of different character (points of diffraction or convergence) create
configurations of tensions and generate power relations, one may investigate them in
terms of the spatial analogy to discursive formations, bringing the discursive, critical
analysis in direct parallel with a spatial, even bodily, experience of tensions, relationships,
positions, etc. Thus modelling has an analytical- innovative- critical potential to stage