CONTACT: chandra_laborde@berkeley.edu
Transecological Imaginations is conceptualized as a working group that bridges spatial theory and transformative practices to imagine equitable futures. Transecological ethics is an embodied relation to place which is attuned to histories of difference in all its forms, especially the ones that challenge binaries such as nature/culture, female/male, etc. This framework aims to resist a planetary future centered on anthropic exceptionalism that hierarchizises life according to colonial, racial, and gendered forms of violence and perpetuates precarious life. We attempt to conjure a postanthropic vision to build a future where justice dwells.
We will focus on a building at the intersection of Turk and Taylor streets, in the Tenderloin neighborhood, San Francisco. This crossroads was the site of a queer grassroots uprising against police brutality, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966. The riot at Compton’s was spearheaded by street youth and gender-nonconforming people three years before the Stonewall Riot in New York. Today, the three-story building is operated as a “halfway house” by GEO Group, a for-profit prison company. Our goal is to research the material necessary to collaboratively envision a speculative design proposal that decarcerates the historic building and resurfaces its legacy of resistance.
