STAYING WITH THE TROUBLE
The theme of the architecture festival Opening is ‘Staying with the Trouble’: an appeal to current and future practitioners of the architecture profession to jointly formulate a viable path into the challenges of the Anthropocene. A professionally qualified, activist position in between blind technological future optimism based on technofixes, on the one hand, and a shrill but often unproductive doomsday escapism on the other. With the title ‘Staying with the Trouble’, inspired by Donna Haraway, we will send a signal to future generations of architects that the ones who created the monumental challenges do not automatically have a monopoly on the solutions. The architecture festival Opening sets the stage for a cross-generational meeting of critics, practitioners and thinkers who dare to engage through architecture.
The two-day festival programme is structured around the motto of ‘think globally, act locally’ in recognition of the connectedness of the profession in the task of delivering credible answers.
Day 1
Day one is going to outline the main contours of the wide-ranging global problems that have led to justified concern for our planet and our possibilities of imagining a common future. Problems that have also inspired a hopeful counter-movement, with a growing engagement and various forms of activism, that is manifested around the world. Driven, not least, by the young generation of architects who dare take on the challenge by ‘Staying with the Trouble’.
As an effort to address the most pressing issues and debate possible solutions, the architecture festival has invited leading architects, thinkers, politicians and opinion leaders. Based on their own teaching, research and architectural practice they contribute with new critical perspectives on both the challenges and possible solutions.
Day one features keynotes, talks, panel debates and project presentations by Eyal Weizman, Andrés Jaque, Anupama Kundo, Elke Krasny, Jenny Osuldsen, and Niklas Maak among others, with contributions from employees and students of Aarhus School of Architecture and from external architects that put the architecture festival’s overall theme of ‘Staying with the Trouble’ into perspective.
Day 2
Day two of the festival focuses on how Aarhus School of Architecture can act locally as an educational institution, a knowledge producer and a creative powerhouse in the city. Through talks with actors from the cultural scene, construction professionals, practising architects and politicians, the architecture festival seeks to outline specific paths forward for the profession, the city and the educational programme.
Among others you will meet Bjarke Ingels, Anne Mette Boye, Rune Kilden, Lars Juel Thiis, Ellen Braae, Marianne Krogh, Signe Kongebro, Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Flemming Rafn, Aysha Amin, Sarah Jarsbo, Tom Nielsen, Keld Albrechtsen, Ricelli Laplace Recende and Mette Tony. Opening is concluded with the TIME100 List 2021 most influential architect shaping the future generations, Sumayya Vally from the South African studio Counterspace.
Both days also feature performances, films, readings, guided tours and rich opportunity for networking in a festive setting.
Invitees include leading architects, researchers and, of course, the 700 students at Aarhus School of Architecture.
NO SIGN UP AT THE MOMENT
Opening Architecture Festival took place in October 2021,
and it is not possible to buy a ticket.
THE CURATORS
The architecture festival is curated by curator and Programme Director Karen Kjaergaard in collaboration with architect Boris Brorman and philosopher, architecture critic and Director of Arkitektens Forlag Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss. On both days, the panel debates and discussions with the audience will be moderated by Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss and Boris Brorman Jensen.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
