Friday, January 30, 2026

Socioplastics Urbanism and Systemic Sovereignty * Radical Pedagogy as Relational Infrastructure


The proposition that urbanism is not planning but an operational closure enacted upon territory marks a decisive rupture with technocratic models of spatial governance; yet it also risks reinscribing the very systemic totalities it seeks to dismantle. Framed through systemic urbanism, the socioplastic thesis mobilises sovereignty as a critical device, transforming territory into a semi-autonomous epistemic field governed by internal logics rather than external regulation. However, from the standpoint of contemporary art theory—particularly post-autonomous practices—the notion of sovereignty demands further destabilisation. Sovereignty here functions less as emancipation than as a performative fiction that stages control under the guise of critique. While the invocation of Luhmannian closure and Wittgensteinian logic foregrounds linguistic and systemic self-referentiality, it simultaneously narrows the field of indeterminacy where political agency might emerge. The urban palimpsest becomes metabolised, but also domesticated: an artefact of high-resolution critique that risks aestheticising domination. 



The challenge, therefore, is not to abandon systemic sovereignty but to expose its theatricality—treating it as a provisional dramaturgy rather than an ontological condition—thus reopening urbanism to contingency, conflict, and dissensus as aesthetic forces.Within this framework, urban taxidermy and social sculpture operate as powerful metaphors for intervention, suspending the city between life and display. Yet contemporary relational aesthetics and its critiques urge caution: preservation through incision can easily become a melancholic fetishisation of the commons. Socioplastics positions taxidermy as an act of recovery, but recovery presupposes a stable body to be salvaged. Against this, contemporary art theory—from new materialism to decolonial praxis—argues for bodies-in-becoming rather than bodies-to-be-saved. The relational infrastructure proposed here gains potency when understood not as a fixed mesh but as an unstable assemblage of affects, voices, and temporalities. Architecture of affection, when read critically, must resist its own tendency toward soft governance, where care becomes a technique of modulation rather than transformation. The civic ground, displaced from the classroom into the street, only fulfills its radical promise if it remains vulnerable to failure, opacity, and noise—conditions that exceed the smooth operability of systems and restore friction as a political aesthetic.


The insistence on pedagogy as praxis and the living archive reframes education as a durational artwork, aligning with expanded notions of artistic research. Yet the archive, even when declared alive, carries the inertia of accumulation. Contemporary art’s turn toward unlearning and refusal suggests that not all knowledge should be metabolised into networks. The socioplastic mesh risks overcoding experience through its dense epistemic nodes, where every action becomes legible, indexed, and theoretically productive. Against this saturation, a critical expansion would advocate for pedagogical dark matter: zones of non-knowledge, silence, and withdrawal that interrupt the metabolic flow. Radical pedagogy, in this sense, is not only about activation but also about strategic inoperability. By integrating feminist and decolonial critiques of productivity, socioplastics could further radicalise its pedagogical stance, shifting from networked learning toward fugitive practices that evade capture by cultural policy, creative-city agendas, and institutional validation. Finally, the convergence of epistemic art, tectonic austerity, and ecological transition situates socioplastics within a broader discourse on posthuman urbanism. The biodigital interface promises a reconciliation between body, matter, and code, yet contemporary art theory warns against the seamlessness of such integrations. Interfaces are never neutral; they script behaviours and hierarchies. The ethical gravity claimed by austere architectures must therefore be read alongside the politics of material sourcing, labour, and visibility. Ecological transition, framed through affective architecture, risks becoming a sensorial alibi if detached from structural redistribution. The true critical force of socioplastics emerges when its hyperplastic writing and spatial practices are understood as speculative propositions rather than solutions—open-ended scores that invite reinterpretation, misuse, and resistance. In this light, socioplastics is most compelling not as a system, but as a method for continuously undoing systems from within.



This collection of works represents a transdisciplinary inquiry into the contemporary habitus. By intertwining systemic urbanism, radical pedagogy, and tectonic austerity, these triptychs propose a shift from traditional planning toward a "socioplastic" practice. Here, architecture is no longer a static object but a relational interface—a living archive of resistance and an infrastructure of affection designed for the ecological transition of the city.


TRIPTYCH 1: Systemic Urbanism & Sovereign Territory - Urbanism is not mere planning; it is an operational closure upon the territory. We intervene through urban taxidermy and systemic sovereignty to reclaim the commons through an ecology of radical thought.

TRIPTYCH 2: Radical Pedagogy & Living Archive - Pedagogy as praxis shifts the classroom toward the civic ground. We build a rhizomatic vanguard where learning is a network metabolism and the archive serves as a living infrastructure of resistance.

TRIPTYCH 3: Tectonic Architecture & Sovereign Will - The architectural will manifests through tectonic austerity and gravitational ethics. We project porous architectures that operate as biodigital interfaces between the body and matter.

TRIPTYCH 4: Epistemic Art & Social Sculpture - The hyperplastic manifesto transforms writing into space. Through transdisciplinary entanglement, social sculpture ceases to be an object and becomes a relational semionautics of affection.

TRIPTYCH 5: Relational Infrastructure & Ecological Transition - We design critical infrastructures for nomadic and sustainable urbanism. The architecture of affection is the key element for ecological transition and spatial justice in the contemporary city.


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