MuMaGi : ar/t/khitecture and musound

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Sanford Kwinter
Sanford Kwinter is a Canadian architectural theorist, writer, and editor. He is a professor of architecture at The European Graduate School / EGS, at The School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, New York, and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he heads the Institute for Theory and History of Architecture.Sanford Kwinter is a Canadian architectural theorist, writer, and editor. He is a professor of architecture at The European Graduate School / EGS, at The School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, New York, and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he heads the Institute for Theory and History of Architecture.

'Radical Anamnesis
One of the knowledge activisms that I have adopted I like to call "radical anamnesis." Radical anamnesis represents a deliberate (and difficult) performance of actively remembering what contemporary history has committed to forget, that is, of what never happened, but once could have. It means seeing our (human) past as a great reservoir of affects: "a pageantry in which a million spores lie, each representing a pathway once primed but not taken, along which human consciousness might today still travel, and free itself from the narrow trajectory on which it is otherwise embarked today." This commitment is not heroic as was the case of many past forms, but it is not as innocent either. While I personally remain highly committed to exploring and cultivating archaic modalities and intensities (i.e. remaining sensitive to the untapped revolutionary possibilities that remain enfolded within past worlds and objects), I would claim that on a broader scale such activities share the basic hope of all commitment in this age of spurious (ironic) detachment: it permits us to step outside of, and thus to better see and judge, the mediocrity of our present aspirations.'