Situated Knowledge Production: Urban Biopsies, Frameworks of Perception and Critical Spatial Practices.

In my ongoing Ph.D. (2013-2016) I explore the infra-ordinary (as coined by Georges Perec) as spaces for social interaction and encounters. People coexist and interact through these everyday and unregarded spaces in real-time and through spatiomaterial deposits over time, using the architecture as a medium.
The research is facilitated through a series of urban biopsies, where a range of spaces considered infraordinary are explored from within - some emerging directly from my own subjective life-world. Here the specificity of the given situation is embraced, rather that trying to create an objective account and universal claims. Through using various probes and frameworks of perception, being artistic and critical spatial practices, the intention is to get at distance of the well-known and explore it through an analytic apparatus and thus by-pass the usual hierarchies of perception to gain new knowledge. Hence, there is a constant interplay between submersion and distance. Parallel to the design-driven experiments, there is a constant dialectic between practice and theory, which serve as ‘relays’ to move the overall understanding and project forward.
In this paper this is exemplified by three of the urban biopsies that I did during my Ph.D. and reflect upon the various approaches, techniques and methods used, including photographic devices, interactive installations, creative writing, moving
pictures – and briefly discuss how these contributed to the overall sum of knowledge, informed each other and have their own specific nature, potentials, surprises, failures, and pitfalls. Finally, I argue that through their situatedness these critical spatial practices take on a socio-political and prospective character.