Into the Black Box collaborated togheter with other several expert on platform urbanism to the exhibition of Austrian Pavillion at 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.
The curators Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer focused on platform urbanism, its consequences on our lives and the resistances this phenomenon produced.
All the materials are accessible on the website Platform Austria, a precious collection of analyses, pictures and perspectives on the future of our cities and on platform capitalism.
Below you may read the opening general statement and the exhibition statement. Moreover, it is possibile to read Niccolò Cuppini’s, Mattia Frapporti’s and Maurilio Pirone’s essays that contributed that has been transformed into visuals for the pavillion exhibition.
OPENING STATEMENT
We began working on our Biennale project – which is titled PLATFORM AUSTRIA and addresses the rising phenomenon of what we call platform urbanism – well before the start of the current global health crisis. Of course, this crisis has brought about many changes. And these include a new level of awareness of the increasing “platformisation” of our lives. Indeed, we are now perhaps more aware of this phenomenon than we would like to be.
Over the last year, we’ve all learned a lot about digital platforms. Having to stay at home because of the current pandemic has meant having to get used to these platforms in order to be able to get on with our lives. As a result, we’ve seen how platforms have completely changed the way we interact – the way we work, learn, shop, entertain ourselves and socialize. Wherever we are in the world: The way we use platforms is not only having a massive impact on us as people. It is also transforming our cities.
— Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer
The rise of platforms to become the decisive form of social and economic interaction in the 21st century is more than just a question of technological progress. While we are slowly becoming accustomed to the operators of digital platforms breaking records on the financial markets, they themselves are already focusing on overriding systems and organisational forms in spheres such as politics, education and healthcare, but also on designing new life-worlds and building completely restructured cities
A type of platform mentality – characterized by constant circulation and networking, by stylised aesthetics and an emphasis on imagery, and by sensorially controlled environments – is gaining increasing influence on contemporary architecture and town planning. The wish for immediate gratification in a “city-on-demand” is fuelling an obsession with speculative urban development and increasingly displacing long-term planning.
Under the title of PLATFORM AUSTRIA curators Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer are taking up two fundamental aspects of the new platform culture and using them as conceptual guidelines for the exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2021:
- The focus on conversation: The possibility of being actively and continually “in conversation” with innumerable participants is the life blood of platform economies. This uninterrupted connection offers the guarantee of being able to register changes rapidly and react to them flexibly.
- The promise of future potential: By offering access to the capital of continuous conversation – whether in the form of virtual communication networks or built environments that bundle encounters – platforms present themselves as the optimal structure for access to future potentials.
In order to stimulate reflection and debate about the changes initiated by platform urbanism – global technology monopolies, the digitalisation of private life, changed forms of work, new social exclusions – the Austrian Pavilion will be transformed into a conversational space focusing on future potentials and their architecture and will thereby itself become a platform for the duration of the exhibition.
EXHBITION CONCEPT
The world of platform urbanism in seven chapters
The curators have invited more than 50 national and international experts to produce images and texts, short videos and podcasts for presentation in the Austrian pavilion and on the website. These contributions deal with questions of who participates in platform urbanism and in what way, and of the alternative paths (beyond online shopping, gig work and dating apps) we could take with digital platforms in order to make life in the city fairer.
Together with the invited experts the curators sketch the new world of platform urbanism in seven chapters. With Saskia Sassen, for example, they explore how technology firms are drastically changing life in global cities; with Edgar Pieterse, the director of the African Centre for Cities, they track the advance of digital platforms into African cities; with the urban researcher Vyjayanthi Rao they study the self-initiated public platforms that support social life in the undersupplied areas of Mumbai; with the architecture studio run by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman they try out educational platforms in the American-Mexican border region; and together with their many further guests they shed light on a wide range of facets of the convergence of platform technologies and urban development.
Access: Access is the new capital
The question of access is central to digital platforms: Who gains access to the possibilities offered by a platform and who is denied these services? Are we heading for a new class society in which differently equipped variants of urban space can be rented with different subscription packages?
Service city: city on demand?
Thanks to their capacity to synchronise data across large networks and numerous devices, platform-steered cities promise their residents optimal services. But what wasteful service worlds have to be developed so that everything is available on demand?
Scale: the collapse of scale
Platforms are increasingly replacing scale – a basic constant of architecture – with logistics, infrastructure and circulation. But can the finely tuned interplay of scaling, positioning and distribution in space really so easily be changed into a new form of living independent of social conventions, institutional frameworks and political traditions?
Emotions: the platform is my boyfriend
Platforms seduce us with a promise of proximity, intimacy and community. Affective computing and the personification of tech gadgets motivate us to form close ties to intelligent objects and platform environments. All this turns platforms into personal companions that help to communicate, record and evaluate our emotions – while extracting considerable profits. Can we really trust likes, followers and smileys to the same degree that we can trust our loved ones?
Circulation: monuments of circulation – “I” is everywhere
Platforms need clear signs of activity – tweets, comments, clicks and data traffic – in order to prove their success and their potential for investors and users. And in the urban space we see such activators, which seem like monuments to circulation: fleets of e-scooters at tourist sites, colourful slides in office environments, and DIY furniture in public space that are intended to promote activity. Doesn’t being permanently in motion also mean never arriving anywhere?
Data: data is relation not a property
The generation, recording and analysis of data are central to platform urbanism, and for this reason we have seen a rise of staged encounters that help to generate data – informal lounges in company environments, low-threshold meeting points in corridors and lobbies, relaxed roof terraces, free coffee bars. Who does the data belong to when it is generated by our relationships?
The public sphere: the future is public
Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are means of mobilising and steering public communication. They stimulate our emotional and cognitive capacities in order to transform them into an informational commodity and use them privately. Can the city and its architecture withstand this attack on the public sphere? What is needed to make the quality of future living spaces a public matter again?
