Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 1But dense socio-matter also provides us with opportunities of experiencingrelief, says Østerberg; collective goods as electricity, running water, a sewagesystem, public transportation etc., relieves us from physical labor. Socialforms, conventions, ways of dealing with dense coexistence related to densesocio-matter, such as anonymity, typicality, and sub-individuality, are waysin which the crowd can relieve us from more direct confrontations with theothers.Still, Østerberg is far more occupied with the constraints of dense sociomatterthan its liberating potentials. I relate this to his overall perspective:1) By seeing the individual as a victimized or at least a determinedobject, the transforming power of individual socio-spatial practicesare overlooked.2) By conceiving the “city” and the “urban” through a formal logic,characteristics of urban form (socially and architecturally) are stuckto the characteristics of its content at a specific historical moment.By overlooking how “urban” qualities can be contrasted with characteristicsof the “anti-urban” (even if its content has changed), the possibility ofidentifying particular aspects of the urban which may make a difference inprocesses of transformation, become absent:In contrast to the creative, liberating, transforming power of individualpractices recognized by other theorists which I soon will return to, 36Østerberg’s individual is an object that passively experiences theenvironments more than a subject with projects. Østerberg’s socio-matter isnot a collective oeuvre, not a shared work of art produced by us, the othersand millions of individuals throughout history. Østerberg’s socio-matter is aproduct of political codes.Let me add some comments to what Østerberg seems to consider a delusionof “the urban”. He deliberately avoids concepts like “city”, “urban” and“urbanity”. Østerberg states that “the notion of Oslo as a “city” is outdated,and therefore only an image, an obsession, from which it is important toliberate oneself.” 37In his introduction, Østerberg argues that the distinction between city andcountryside, between the urban and the rustic, has been annihilated. Todemonstrate the argument, he refers to two (more than a hundred years old)classic works on the urban-rural distinction: Ferdinand Tönnies’36 I.e. the perspectives of making smooth space by Deleuze and Guattari, tactics by De Certeau, and socialpractice by Lefebvre.37 In Norwegian: “Oppfatningen av Oslo som en “by” er foreldet og derfor bare en forestilling, ja, entvangsforestilling, som det gjelder å befri seg fra”. (Østerberg1998: p. 34)31