In this discussion, we consider the film Spirited Away (Miyasaki, 2001) and Low's (2015) The sensuous city: Sensory methodologies in urban ethnographic research. Through these materials we are then discussing how and why to engage with the intercultural in one's field.
What would be the importance of engaging with more-than-human cosmogologies for intercultural practices in your field/work/discipline?
In the field of Architecture, there is a very fundamental importance of engaging with more-than-human cosmologies first and foremost in the way human-built work interacts with the more-than-human aspects of the context we are working with. Often in Architecture, the common mode of working has been through a top-down, creation-mindset, where a given site is cleared of all natural things, foundations laid, and the building erected in isolation to its context in ecology and environment. I have recently started considering the opportunity of conceptualising architecture as growth rather than creation. Growth implies that it is inevitably born out of place, people, environment. This would mean sending out our senses to feel, hear, observe and smell our environment, understanding it, experiencing it through our senses and observing how it affects us, what it offers and seek to create through this reflexive outlook, a harmonious, balanced co-existence.
To quote on some feedback we got on the previous discussion on more-than-human cosmologies, the above would involve a type of approach “where being attentive to our senses, feelings emotions leads not only to enriching our engagement in such intercultural spaces, but also challenges the dominance of anthropocentric logics that also function as the heart of the hegemonic assemblage that Miller [2019] refers to where there is a hierarchical and power-driven relationship between the human and more-than-human.”
From your perspective, what are the requirements to engage in intercultural practices with cultures such as the Koguis or the people in the Bath House?
Considering the case of the bath house in Spirited Away (Miyasaki, 2001), Chihiro's intercultural practice seems to be grounded in how she engages with the new, 'strange' environment and the multiple epistemologies involved. What is also significant in the film is that it is important that Chihiro does not forget her name or where she comes from. Engaging with the intercultural seems for Chihiro to be grounded in being able to navigate, integrate and mediate the differences in cultural epistemologies and environments. Recognition for epistemological differences and acknowledging where we are and what brought us here seems to be an ever present aspect of engaging sensitively to intercultural practices. This kind of intercultural practices involves: a kind of respect that is imbued with a conscious knowing that subjective positionings vary and that these different worldviews or ways of life are in no way hierarchical and; the self-awareness to recognise the ways we are due to our background and beliefs.
Figure 1: Source: https://www.theanimedaily.com/spirited-away-ending-explained-will-chihiro-ever-meet-haku-again/
Do you think it is feasible to engage with such practices in your professional practice? If you think that it is not, what could you change to make it feasible?
I definitely think that engaging with such sensory, respectful, reflexive practices is essential in “creating” environments for and with people. The key points I’d like to move towards is that firstly the practice of architecture (and most things) moving towards embodying the more-than-human aspects of our life and this earth. Secondly, taking into its approach the sensorial aspects of space and place making. Thirdly is questioning whose agenda our work is serving, and whose knowledge is it privileging.
As we can see through the paper by Low (2015), the city and urban space can be assimilated, understood and analysed through the senses that come to us through the different environments we make our way through. As Merleau-Ponty notes, objects (and by extension what we build) are not neutral in the way that they are perceived (2004). Rather, as Low (2015) explains, the way people relate to their environment has to do with the reactions that are activated by the objects around them. Low’s work and that of Phenomenologists allows us to see how what we build is not a neutral technology that people live in. What we create materially is imbued with embodied knowledge that may differ in nature from one person to the next or other cultures.
I do not think it is always easy in certain settings to take all this on, especially in an office with a set way of doing things, but one can always incorporate it into the discussions we have, the questions we ask, the kind of clients we take on or the ‘problems’ we create – as sensitively as we can. In the end, I think listening to our emotions that come to us through our body, we can understand a lot, however, we also very often need to pair it with reflexive awareness of our subjective positioning and the preconceptions we have; this can be a very powerful duo in intercultural practices and more-than-human cosmologies.
References:
Low, K. (2015). The sensuous city: Sensory methodologies in urban ethnographic research. Ethnography, 16(3), 295-312. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138114552938
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004). The World of Perception. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203491829
Miyasaki, H. (2001). Spirited Away. Ghibli Studios. (video/movie). Viewed 21 August 2021.
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