Dr Helge Mooshammer

Helge Mooshammer, PhD, is director of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) research projects Other Markets (2010-2015) and Relational Architecture (2006-2009) at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Vienna University of Technology (www.othermarkets.org). He is co-founder of the architectural research group ThinkArchitecture (www.thinkarchitecture.net). In 2008 he was Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) Vienna and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. His current work is concerned with new forms of urban sociality arising from processes of transnationalisation, transient and informal land use, and newly emerging regimes of governance.

Teaching

MA special subject 'Transforming Critical Practices'

Television and video output

Networked Cultures (Network Creativity – Contested Spaces – Trading Places – Parallel Worlds), 105 min., dir. Peter Mörtenböck and Peter Mortenbock, 2008
Screened, amongst others, at Whitechapel Gallery (London), santralistanbul (Istanbul), Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York), Proekt_Fabrika (Moskau), Trafó Gallery (Budapest), Toronto Free Gallery (Toronto), Pro qm (Berlin), Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam), Open Space (Wien), Architekturzentrum Wien (Vienna), Vitrine Urbaine d’Expertise (Paris), School of ARCHitecture for All (Athens) and DanceTech TV, New York (http://www.livestream.com/dancetechtv, 2010)

Selected Publications

Monographs and edited books

• Informal Market Worlds: The Architecture of Economic Pressure (ed. with Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman and Peter Mörtenböck), 2 volumes. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2015

• Visual Cultures as Opportunity (with Peter Mörtenböck). Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015

• Occupy: Räume des Protests (with Peter Mörtenböck). Bielefeld: transcript, 2012

• Zwischen Architektur und Psychoanalyse (ed. with Insa Haertel and Olaf Knellessen), Zurich: Park Books, 2012

• Space (Re)Solutions: Intervention and Research in Visual Culture (ed. with Peter Mörtenböck). Bielefeld: transcript, 2011

• Netzwerk Kultur: Die Kunst der Verbindung in einer globalisierten Welt (with Peter Mörtenböck). Bielefeld: transcript, 2010

• Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space  (with Peter Mörtenböck). Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008

• Cruising: Architektur, Psychoanalyse und Queer Cultures. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2005

• Visuelle Kultur: Körper – Räume – Medien (ed. with Peter Mörtenböck). Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2003

Essays in books and journals

• ‘From Urban Talent to Commodity City: Encountering marketplaces in the informal economy’, in Jonathan Darling and Helen Wilson (eds.): Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. London: Ashgate, 2015.

• ‘Tent Cities, People’s Kitchens, Free Universities – The Global Villages of the Occupy Movement’, in Doina Petrescu and Kim Trogal (eds.): The Social (Re)Production of Architecture. London: Routledge, 2015.

• ‘Materials of Commemoration: The Changing Landscape of Mauthausen’, in Suzana Milevska (ed.): On Productive Shame: Reconciliation and Agency, Berlin: Sternberg, 2015.

• ‘Urban Resources at the Crossroads’, Social Text, Periscope (Radical Materialism), March 2015.

• ‘World of Matter’, Architectural Theory Review vol. 20 (1), Terra Firma, 2015.

• ‘Blendende Werte: Die globale Zirkulation von Architektur-Kapital’, Umbau 28 (Das Geschäft mit der Stadt: Zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie, Architektur und Stadtplanung), 2015.

• ‘Sammlungen des Protests: Von der Occupy-Bewegung zum Verwahren der Versammlung’, in Andreas Hudelist et al. (ed.): Protestgebiete: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Raum und Widerstand. Novo mesto: arte4, 2015.

• ‘A World of Matter’, in Inke Arns and HMKV (eds.): World of Matter. Berlin: Sternberg, 2015.

• ‘Strittige Öffentlichkeiten: Die Besetzung der Ökonomie’, in Andreas Langenohl and Dietmar J. Wetzel (eds.): Finanzmarktpublika, Reihe Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: VS publishers, 2013.

• ‘Platzbewegungen: Expeditionen in den Raum der Versammlung’, in Bastian Lange, Gottfried Prasenc and Harald Saiko (eds.): Ortsentwürfe – Urbanität im 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Jovis, 2013.

• ‘Performance des Protests’, in Kunstforum International 224 (Urban Performance II), 2013

• ‘From Supply Lines to Resource Ecologies’, Third Text 120 (special issue Art and the Politics of Ecology, ed. TJ Demos), vol. 27 (1), 2013

• ‘Informal Market Worlds’, Scapegoat – Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy, Currency, 4, 2013

• ‘Visual Culture’, in schnittpunkt (ed.): Handbuch Ausstellungstheorie und -praxis. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau/UTB, 2013

• ‘The Architecture of Informal Trade’, in Aleksandra Wasilkowska (ed.): Shadow Architectures, Warsaw: The Other Space Foundation/Fundacja Inna Przestrzen, 2013

• ‘The Political Aesthetics of Counter-Terrorism Design’, in Gary Boyd and Denis Linehan (eds.): Ordnance: War + Architecture and Space, Farnham and London: Ashgate, 2012

• ‘Occupy: Demonstrationen von Protest’, Malmoe 61, 2012

• ‘Not for Sale’, in Sabine Pollak (ed.): Superstadt! Zur Zukunft der Stadt zwischen Linz, London und Shanghai. Vienna: Sonderzahl Publishers.

• ‘Other Markets: The visual culture of informal trade’, Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art, vol. 2 (1), 2012

• ‘Trading Places: Architectures of Informal Markets’, in Andrew Ballantyne and Chris L. Smith (eds.): Architecture in the Space of Flows, London: Routledge, 2011

• ‘A Practice Without Discipline’, in Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Birgit Rinagl and Franz Thalmair (eds.): CONT3XT, Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2011

• ‘Shifting Waters’, in Güven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal (eds.): The Sea-Image: Visual Manifestations of Port Cities and Global Waters, New York: New Gray, 2011

• ‘Networked Cultures’, in H. Anheier and Y. R. Isar (eds.): Cultures and Globalization Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation. London: Sage, 2010

• ‘Going Astray: Network Transformation and the Asymmetries of Globalization’, Grey Room, 2009

• ‘Crossing the Mediterranean: Networked Agencies in Art and Culture’, in L. Grinin and A. Korotayev (eds.): Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations: Cultural Dimensions, Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2009

• ‘Spaces of Encounter: Informal Markets in Europe’, arq – architectural research quarterly, 2008

• ‘Operation Desert’, MONU – Magazine on Urbanism, 2008

• ‘Plan and Conflict: Networked Istanbul’, Third Text, 109, vol. 22 (1), 2008

• ‘Networked Cultures’, FeedBack 04, 2007

• ‘Trading Indeterminacy’, field – the free-journal for architecture, vol. 1 (1), 2007 [ PDF version ]

Research Interests

My research focuses on the entanglement of artistic and spatial practices with the changing social, political and economic landscape. In recent projects such as Networked Cultures (2005-2013), Other Markets (2010-2015) and World of Matter (2011-2016) I have collaborated with a worldwide network of artists, architects, curators, cultural and media scholars to investigate the interaction of such practices with resource politics, network creativity, global economies and informal urbanism. Together with Peter Mörtenböck, I am also currently working on new research around the notion of Capital Architecture – how architecture’s capacity to both materialise and signify the production of value is being enlisted in the creation of new geographies of investment.

Networked Cultures:

Departing from sites of geopolitical conflicts and social confrontations, the Networked Cultures project aims to reconsider the cultural transformations under way in Europe through examining the potentials and effects of networked spatial practices. The project, in particular, investigates art, architectural and urban practices located in contested spaces whose work allows for a multi-inhabitation of territories and narratives across cultural, social or geographic boundaries. In doing so, the project seeks to extend current debates of architectural and spatial planning by addressing the emergence of new forms of urban engagement, by re-evaluating the relationship between space and conflict and by establishing trajectories of an architectural culture geared towards network formation. Outcomes of the research have been distributed via conferences, workshops, reports and publications. Audio-visual reports and other components of the project have been presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide. Venues include the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, Toronto Free Gallery, Toronto, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, Trafó Gallery, Budapest, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Proekt Fabrika, Moscow, Pro qm, Berlin, santralistanbul, Istanbul, Open Space – Zentrum für Kunstprojekte, Vienna and Whitechapel Gallery, London.

See also www.networkedcultures.org and >>publications: Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space, NAi Publishers, 2008.

Other Markets:

Spurred by economic deregulations and the intertwined mobilisation of people and goods, informal systems have taken on a global dimension in structuring how we connect to each other, how we inhabit our environments, and how we engage in political and social operations. Nodal points of these transformations, informal markets entertaining long-distance relations have emerged on the fringes of major cities as well as on the borders between different states. Amidst the economisation of all aspects of life and the expansion of transnational spaces, these sites have evolved into prototypes of novel and extreme material configuration. 

The project focuses on the modalities of socio-spatial production in informal markets and their implications for new models of co-existence and exchange. While these globally distributed nodes of the informal economy are often effects of political upheaval, economic destabilisation, migratory movements and new labour situations, they shape complex systems of alternate relations wherever and whenever institutional protocols have come to a deadlock. The research approaches these dynamics through theoretical and empirical investigations into the visual culture of informal markets. It situates the architectures of informal markets as performative practices indicative of globally enacted juridico-political alignments and examines their workings by way of field studies and on-site transdisciplinary exchange in different world regions (Informal Market Worlds I, San Diego/Tijuana, February 2012 and Informal Market Worlds II, Shanghai, November 2012).

See also www.othermarkets.org and >>publications: Informal Market Worlds: The Architecture of Economic Pressure (Atlas & Reader), nai010 publishers, 2015.

World of Matter:

World of Matter is an international art and media project investigating primary materials (fossil, mineral, agrarian, maritime) and the complex ecologies of which they are a part. Initiated by an interdisciplinary group of artists and scholars, the project responds to the urgent need for new forms of representation that shift resource-related debates from a market driven domain to open platforms for engaged public discourse. World of Matter considers visual source material a valuable instrument for education, activist work, research, and raising general public awareness, particularly in light of the ever more privatized nature of both actual resources and knowledge about the powers that control them. Hence, the project acts through exhibitions, public events, publications and an online platform. By drawing connections between works that derive from artistic practice, journalism, philosophy, activism, and other realms of research, World of Matter provides a place of commonality for eco-logical imaginaries.

See also www.worldofmatter.net and >>publications: World of Matter, Sternberg, 2015.