Elisa Iturbe Conference | Madrid massacre

Life and death have one thing in common: a chain of conversions. Transformations and transformations of matter and energy that circulate in cycles and flows, crossing time and space. They leave behind deep traces that shape the earthly body, the bodies that inhabit it and their relationships. Over the past two centuries, these traces have been influenced by fossil fuels: geological substances composed of dense amounts of prehistoric carbon that contain such powerful energy. This carbon shaped the paradigms of time, space, movement, aesthetics, economics, architecture… The world of prehistoric carbon firmly retains its presence and significance among us, despite its disability and deep obsolescence.

Urbanization is a complex product of these chains of death and life. It has a close relationship with carbon. As fossil fuels colonized forms of energy consumption, society was organized around their availability. Our modern life, deep down, is fossil utopias which colonized the Earth, bodies and imagination. This utopia has the features of a dystopia for some and a utopia for others. We are sons and daughters of this geohistorical exception that is the fossil utopia, but we all carry within us a new world that must be born. Decarbonizing the carbon world, defossilizing the fossil utopia, is the most complex and important political, cultural and creative project that permeates our present and of which we are all a part.

What kind of life is left for the fossil utopia? Is he already dead? What gaps will allow us to overcome this and build something different than what exists? What will this new world look like?

After a master class by resident artist, “Summoning the Ghosts of a Fossil Utopia.” Gemma Bahr where the connection between attachments, everyday life and the energy regime of a fossil utopia was explored, on this occasion we will meet to continue the conversation with academic Elisa Iturbe in an urban and speculative way.

Elisa Iturbe is an architect, researcher and professor at Cooper Union University (New York). He teaches courses on fossil capitalism and carbon modernity at the Yale School of Architecture and Cornell AAP. His current research and writings focus on the relationship between energy, force and form. His works have been published in international journals such as Log, Perspecta, New York Review of Architecture or Antagonismos. She is the co-founder of the Outside Development space.