Matri-Archi(tecture)

This MA Peeling Away at Patriarchy features outer world musician Sun Ra and his timeless introduction and teachings on Afro-futurism as a space that transcends conventions, which he did through his music. In honour of Sun Ra and in his own words, before we begin “The first thing to do is to consider time officially ended…” Sun Ra offered an escape for Black people in pain, all over the world. This escape was more than just a sonic distraction - it was a healing, an injection of vibrations from another realm to wake Black people up to their true fates. Sun Ra is the seed that said it could, and sprouted into the ever-growing philosophy that is Afro-Futurism. Although most view this as a future of high-tech infrastructure and science spearheaded by Black people, the politics of it are often painted over with a single stroke idea of “Community and khumbaya”. However, if we were to truly transcend the oppressive matrix created by this world, an Afro-Futuristc reality would be free of these limitations and oppressions. Some say this is impossible, but this very same impossibility is the work of Ra, the work he wanted all of us humans to engage in. Sun Ra believed the way into this impossibility was through words… This episode is narrated by Khensani de Klerk and written by Lehlohonolo Ndlovu; originally published as an article on March 11th 2018.

Welcome to our Peeling Away at Patriarchy series, which seeks to contribute to the equality that feminism stands for by letting you know compadres and allies in privilege positions who are contributing to transformation and intersectionality in spatial discourse. We obviously aim at making the spatial links, revealing and sharing discourse so that the development of our situated knowledges can take effect in the spatial form. To inaugurate our Peeling Away at Patriarchy (PAAP) we are featuring Professor Mahmood Mamdani. An inspirational Ugandan academic, author and critic whose thinking speaks to the intersection between politics and culture with critical explorations reimagining colonial normative entities. This PAAP aims at emphasising that the power of intellectual sharing and acting is of great importance today, and should be practiced with caution. Collectively, as Africans, we have the ability to emancipate our local ways of understanding the world (past, present and future) in various mediums suited to supporting the value of situated knowledge. The aforementioned, all in pursuit of developing to not only breathe freely, but to live and navigate unimagined realities. This speaks directly to the inherent phenomenology that we have as humans, in whatever form we decide it to be. This humanly tendency to phenomenology is contravened through historical injustice and continues to be fettered by oppressive institutions. This episode is narrated and written by Khensani de Klerk; originally published as an article on March 14th 2018.

Although our existence is shaped by this violence (of coloniality, of patriarchy, the violent normalisation of heterosexuality (heteronormativity), the rule of capital), we also exist outside of this; we are not only oppressed beings, our resilience and agency cannot be silenced, that is a further source of dispossession. Once again, we are ‘reckoning with the artistic expressions of the marginalised’ (McCarthy), we are looking at doing what Saidiya Hartman does when she, ‘[makes] productive sense of the gaps and silences in the archive of trans-Atlantic slavery that absent the voices of enslaved women’. While the idea of our beings exists in this current form, this form is not the only way that we exist and we are not the only ones who are here functioning under a regimented regulated existence, how are the animals, the plants, the water, the rivers, and oceans and trees holding up and surviving? How are we (collectively) doing? There is a deep connection between the social and the ecological, living under the ‘coloniality of being’ (Maldonado-Torres, 2007). This episode is narrated by Khensani de Klerk and was written by Ndjha Ka; originally published as an article on February 28th 2018.

‘Anybody who thinks that they can understand how terrible the terror has been, without understanding how beautiful the beauty has been against the grain of the terror, is wrong.’  -Fred Moten (2014), The Black Outdoors. This MA episode is part 2 of a two piece article which features a talk between two scholars. As an extension of Part 1, Fred Moten, ‘in his work he has consistently argued that any theory of politics, ethics, or aesthetics must begin by reckoning with the creative expressions of the oppressed’ (McCarthy, 2018). Saidiya Hartman, has written about feeling the continual legacy of slavery and ‘[making] productive sense of the gaps and silences in the archive of trans-Atlantic slavery that absent the voices of enslaved women’. In this talk they lead us through various questions, musings, and lingering breakthroughs. How do we get out from under the regime of everyday violences? Being outdoors is premised on an inness, does the outdoors always exist or is it also because there is an in that has been made? And what happens when we finally get out? Can we get out? This episode is narrated by Khensani de Klerk and was written by Ndjha Ka; originally published as an article on February 21st 2018.

This MA episode explores interconnectedness and features as a Fruit of the Week article on our website. This episode shares the personal experiences of moving through the city through the lenses of Lehlohonolo and Neo in response to Lauren Hill’s Everything is Everything song. Describing the textures and sounds of Cape Town city, this episode is an intimate commentary on the network and emotional experience, the intangibility that gives a city its sense of place and zeitgeist. This episode serves as a detailed description of the place that Cape Town is in politically, socially and segregated 2018- yet with an optimism of the undeniable interconnectedness urban dwellers have as they cross paths. Infrastructure and interconnectedness are a contested combination in Cape Town and this episode gives a unique commentary on these realities of (in)tangible mobility. “How are we connected as human beings beyond just the physical?” - an important an often avoided question in spatial practice and education made to be objectified in an ever-present subjective urban landscape. This episode is narrated by Khensani de Klerk and was written by Lehlohonolo Ndlovu and Neo Twala; originally published as an article on February 14th 2018.

This MA episode is written to feature the work of two black queer womxn, as Djs they are interested in, and working on, using music as a political tool. This, while rooting the experience of the music in the feel and language that reveals itself when music is given space to breath by respecting its cultural and social setting. A conversation featuring bell hooks and Cornel West introduced opened the door to Lynnée Denise, a Dj scholar interested in creating sensory experiences rooted in cultural histories of marginalized people. That then opened the next door to a music mix, Soulful Critical Thought: bell hooks and the making of a DJ Scholar. A revelation! It is exciting to see how music can be used in relation to theory. This mix is framed in the politics of race, class, and gender, where hooks’s voice comes in and out of the mix, her words in conversation with and dancing alongside the music. From this, we are able to feel our way through how her words take from, give to, live with and alongside the music emanating from within the dynamic culture about whom the politics discussed are centered. This episode is narrated by Khensani de Klerk and was written by Ndjha Ka; originally published as an article on February 7th 2018.

This MA episode is a component of a written article which features a significant amount of images which we encourage you to visit in the original post at www.matri-archi.com for maximum understanding and relating. This episode focuses on the construction of west African city Djenne in Mali. The plastering process of applying mud annually in this comparatively rural city brings together its residents in a spiritual festival to physically participate. This episode speaks about participation, and the importance of treating spiritual activity as an important factor in spatial practice, through Djenne as a current example. The city of Djenne is a living city, that faces death in the case that its residents, its users, are no longer allegiant to its existence. This episode introduces themes of impermanence as African architecture. Furthermore, it describes not only the beauty of these participatory processes, but additionally, the sustainability and logic of these construction methods. This particular episode asks evocative questions, challenging and imploring traditional western architecture schools of thought to thinking with intersectionality at the core of context and construction to not only evolve local building, but to ensure that these cities do not disappear with a disappearing youth sitting on computers, where these forms of knowledge can sometimes only be stored in participation and demonstration. This episode is narrated and written by Khensani de Klerk; originally published as an article on February 4th 2018.

On locality: Women Facing Place This MA episode is an accompaniment to a greater visual collaborative piece co-created by 4 exceptional women who were travelling and dwelling in new and different cities across the globe. The episode can be found in our Matri-Archive on our website www.matri-archi.com . The series of stories speaks to the various perspectives of (non)locality that each of these women face. New and sometimes familiar place. These women include photographer Amy Braaf, designer and photographer Tshegofatso Mako, economist Gabrielle Cohen and architectural designer Josephine Dalberg. Exploring the choice and agency that urban dwellers have when deciding and identifying with various localities; this episode is prefaced with reference to Teju Cole and Taiye Selasi who speak about locality in different media. This episode thinks about the intersectionality of belonging: finding it, encountering it, naming it? Scales of locality become a topic of question. This episode is narrated by MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on August 6th 2017.

This MA episode is accompanied by a photomontage visual that compliments and evokes a greater understanding of the spoken/written content and so we urge you to visit the original post to gain a full understanding of the episode. With great reference to Landscape Architecture Professor Blake Belengar’s Situating Eidetic Photomontage in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, this episode speaks about the potential of using photomontages as a language that can enable maximum access to reading space by people who are not experts in the formal spatial industry. The accompanying image speaks to the political conflict of land tenure and evictions in Seapoint, Cape Town and is used as an evocative tool to give an example of the power of photomontage as a medium to articulate the lived, social, political and spatial dynamic of the contested site. This episode is narrated by the thoughts of MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on March 26th 2017.

This MA episode is the 8th in the archive. This episode follows a visual photo series and so we would urge you to visit the original article in order to get a full experience of the theme at hand. The analog photo series was captured by photographer Lehlohonolo Ndlovu who is also part of the MA collective. This episode is directed on the very personal experience of the author having cut all of her hair off as a self-statement reminding her and fellow women of colour around her of the need to unapologetically assert oneself in space in a way that detaches from the validators system of Western Cannon beauty ideals. This experience and story is used as an extended metaphor to describe the need for African and other marginalised spatial agents to do the same in the spatial sphere: to avoid the need for Western validation at all costs when developing African cities and engaging in educational exchange. This episode is narrated by the thoughts of MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on April 30th 2017.

This MA episode is a sequel to a coproduced short film which features in the original article exploring the experience of different public transport modes in Cape Town- produced by a group of City Planning researchers from the University of Cape Town. The episode essentially speaks to giving a snippet of a more detailed understanding of the complexity of public transport efficiency in Cape Town. At the centre of this is the relationship between Inter-modality and Access. Modal integration is an essential prerequisite for urban accessibility - typically prescribed by the norms of the Global North. And so, in Global South cities, where informal transport systems flourish and there is a distinctly different way of knowing, navigating and being - how do we begin to debunk and rethink inter-modality in the formal and informal transport system interface? Particularly in South Africa. This episode is narrated by the thoughts of MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on June 11th 2017.

This MA episode explores themes of audacity, authorship and validation when it comes to engaging in critique and contributing into the the knowledge pool of spatial and architectural literature and content. More specifically, the episode focuses on critique referencing 1960s feminist planner Denis Scott Brown’s writing on Having Words. Echoing Scott-Brown’s identification of the problematics in not just the content of planning and architecture but also and more importantly planning and architectural approaches. In an undeniably tightening global community and increasing boom in ICT technology, how do we evolve our thinking of access to information such that we don’t hold onto traditional norms of only professional critics but uphold the value of critical voice in and amongst the overproduction of content? This episode is narrated by the thoughts of MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on October 22nd 2017.

This MA episode was in fact the very first article ever released by Matri-Archi and inspired by architect, writer and critic Professor Lesley Lokko. In response to the political turbulence of decolonial student movements at the University of Cape Town and other institutions across the South African landscape; this episode hones in on the insight of Prof.Lokko when attempting to dissect and absence of African narratives in a predominantly white and Western-centric architectural education. Lesley Lokko has focused her critique around relationships on architecture, globalisation and cultural identity. The episode explores the idea of honing into local archival methods and practices as a means to retain local spatial knowledge. This episode is narrated by the thoughts of MA researcher, Khensani de Klerk and was originally published on March 5th 2017.