P L U R A F O R M_V5 + HITLAB
P L U R A F O R M_V5 + HITLAB
Derek Kawiti & others
“The man-horse assemblage…which causes the lengthening of the dagger and pike, and made the
first infantry weapons, the morning star and the battle axe obsolete. The stirrup, in turn, occasioned
a new figure of the man-horse assemblage, entailing a new type of lance and weapons: and this man-
horse-stirrup constellation is itself variable, and has different effects depending whether it is bound
up with the general conditions of nomadism, or later readapted to the sedentary conditions of
feudalism.
The aim of PLURAFORM this semester is to explore the notion of the ‘assemblage’ and equally the
concept of ‘territory’ as set out by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their much theorized book “A
thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” 1980. Both territory and assemblage will be used
as a means to decipher specific local and emergent tendencies relating to a chosen animal behavioural
system. Much of the material we will analyze will include nests, burrows, caves and hives and the
wider issues of territory relating to a deep notion of context. Our main assumption will be to support
the notion of irreducibility – that is to say that the agent/animal is inseparable from the territorial
assemblage that they are actively a part of. This work will enable us to select or ‘read’ site identities
and characteristics. Students will be asked to consider the world of the animal within an architectonic
framework with analysis that includes and goes beyond that of the visual – animal markings of
scratching and lines/urinating or defecating as the most basic territory-making, to include the gestural,
postural (e.g. the bird of paradise), colouration, blending/camouflage/mimicry to verbal and oral
expressions.
