This is a presentation I gave with architect Stine Avlund at the Culture Mapping conference in Coïmbra, Portugal, on May 30th, 2014. The Eco Island Amager project started from a "horisontal" perspective, seeking to involve people without closing too many doors from the outset. This means it moves slowly, in a gentle zig-zag motion towards considering how Amager, part of a large city,could become "eco" - yes even how it could become an island. You can read more about the project here: http://ecoislandamager.dk - or ask me!

1. la
possibilité
d'une
île
Eco Island Amager // Oleg Koefoed & Stine Avlund // Cultura21
Coimbra May 2014 // Mapping Cultures Conference

3. Maps
“Maps and theories guide
intelligent action, yet they are
invariably abstracted and idealized
representations.”
Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther (2014):
When Maps Become the World.
University of Chicago Press.

6. a Capital
an island
eco's
metodos
lives
Canvas
interventions

7. Context
Eco Island Amager is a project undertaken by Cultura21 in
Copenhagen, on the island of Amager: 180 000 inhabitants;
about twice as many commuters every day due to the
presence of the airport of Kastrup and a number of
workplaces; 96 sq km of space of which about 1/3 is landfill
from after 1920, and 1/3 is green today, quite unusual for an
island in a capital; the island is in perpetual change since
the 14th century and contains every historical era in the
practical history of the capital; recently, it holds the tensions
between car invasion, airports, ruthless developing
cynicism, but also revitalized and turned-creative
neighborhoods, rising hipster and green culture, urban
gardens, green communities and projects....
Amager is multiplicity in Copenhagen if you ever find it. No
easy description, no easy solutions. It is also flat, making it
the target of many plans on storm flood precautions and
other adaptation strategies. Resilience broadly speaking
remains equally important: how to make communities
connect, how to build social and cultural cohesion and a
sense of willingness to go out of one's way for the sake of
the place, the species, the other?

9. Eco
Ecology and ecologies
Eco: this project is most of all about two matters:
ecologies, that we see as the circulation of matter,
information and life in open systems. We work with
ecologies in an urban setting, so we are not only looking
at trees or bees, but also at the ecologies of cars, chewing
gums stains on pavements, spaces between buildings,
and human movement, to mention a few. We try to build
deeper attention towards the ecosystems, the places, and
the exchanges of life and matter. Economies are equally
important, as organizations of values and circulations of
value. They work through agents and interact with the
ecologies. They create paths that supersede everything
else. Together, economies and ecologies reshape the
world in which they work. We seek for paths where they
can be redirected. We try to map different paths of value
and values, in the places and with the people. Looking for
agencies of other economies, and potentials for more
life-giving ecologies.

10. A question
..can we make way for
agency – eventually
connecting us to the
possibility of an
eco-island?

11. Eco Island Amager

12. “The pharmacological question
haunts planetary consciousness
and the planetary unconscious,
just as it haunts the immense loss
of trust that inevitably results from
loss of care.”
Bernard Stiegler (2010)
What Makes Life Worth Living. On Pharmacology.

14. ..agency – but who are the actants?
humans
places
houses
fluids
forests
vehicles
streets
policies
rats

17. Non-human agents
As we walk on the island, we unavoidably interact
with its other inhabitants. Some of them let us pass
by unnoticed, such as the jellyfish in the harbour.
Some are created by our peers, like the sand on the
beach that was not there ten years ago. Others pass
between our fingers: coins, receipts, pebbles, butts.
Others still rise above our heads, taller than all of us,
and able to contain us. They carry the promise of
hundreds, thousands, of new inhabitants, in the
coming years. How will they sense the island, how
will they make their presence felt? A metro line has
cut the coast in two, slicing away a part of the
eco-system that was connected. It will re-connect,
eventually. A new town has created new ecologies
and economies. They will stabilize, but in which
formations? What are the in-compossibilities of the
island as it changes its surface?

20. ..agency – first step: humans
interventionists
(ab)originals
immigrants
developers
nurses
homeless
students
civil servants
artists

22. Metodos (road, path)
A path of care and action
What we try to find, is actually a way to reinforce two paths and
bring them together. The mapping is part of trying to discover these
paths, walking and working with population, volunteers, and
professionals, in the city and/or on the island.
The first path is one of nænsomhed (roughly = tenderness and
careful attention), generated through listening and handling, where
we are and walk. This path is hidden to many, as they move through
their habitats.
The second path is the one of handlekraft (roughly = agency).
Reflective agency that tries to understand its connectedness with
the world in which it takes place. This is about creation that looks for
life enhancement rather than fearing negative consequences. There
is a culture of fear of mistakes that inhabits our part of the world. But
hand in hand with careful attention, this creativity can be nurtured.
Both paths are sought for in collective actions, such as mapping
workshops, walks, and conversations. Eventually, we will seek to go
further into joining efforts and co-creating.

25. first steps of mapping
Conversations
Walks
Drawings
Maps
Workshops

28. Human agents
We encounter with human agents. Some of them tell us stories of
the past, some tell us hopes of the future. Some have never
thought about the island, they find themselves in the paths around
their block. Some find their essence in communities, sharing,
buying, building, fearing. Others seek to establish new
commonities, or do so simply by stepping into the flesh of the
island, searching for its resources.
We search for zones, where mainly human agents - or their
inhuman actants – have altered the landscapes, economies, and
ecologies. We seek to invite agents into the cracks, to see what
lurks there. Some of them already do this, others make new
cracks. They seek to find their selves in the spaces and the
economy-ecologies. Some of them have lost something, or some
of their selves. They feel it and express it. Others don't. Mostly,
the agents express a great deal of care when we walk with them.
But they find it hard to re-discover what was lost, even when they
feel the pressure of the loss.
When in simple conversation, agents have been heard expressing
practical reason. Where can we live, how far will the shadow fall
of the new building?

33. perceive
make
give
eco-auto
poïetic
encounters
places selves
feel
own
dwell
mapping
encounters

34. Eco-auto-poïetic encounters
We ask for visions of an island, the actual as well as the potential,
even the virtual. The selves that mirror themselves in the
drawings show us islands, spaces, mimetic often, at times
utopian, often containers of questions or observations of slices
between life and non-life. Structures and movements. Topologies
become narrative, shapes tell stories. Coastlines are retraced,
caressed, felt. Non-humans are created in the virtual: horses,
parks, trams, gardens.
We walk with them along the lines or cross them, we pause by
structuring shapes and draw them into a conversation around
commonities. Not that many are visible, yet that is probably a
character common to commonities. They are not often to be seen
by the one who only passes by.
How close do we have to go, and how slow, to make the
impression become a lasting mark and an attachment to action?

71. two trajectories (or one)
utopia khora
hypomnesis
re-membering
nostalgia
re-subjectivation
loss of ontology
emergence
re-connection
community ? comm(o)nity ?

72. Hypomnetic, re-membering trajectories
What is lost is lost. What is here, is so present that its
in-compossibles seem almost impossible to touch, even in the
mind. The hypomnetic journey passes through items, places,
maps, pens, and conversations, in words, lines, or walks. Their
trajectories work as appropriations, surely, but how hard it is to
appropriate the incompossible.
For this to happen, two alternative paths seem to offer themselves
(perhaps both, perhaps an amalgamation of the two).
From the utopian and nostalgic corner, a call comes forth for
re-subjectivations, giving way to me and through me, to an us that
finds its new being common. It calls for someone, out there, to
listen and hear.
From the topic, khoric side, emergence is sought within the place;
only possible through the re-membering of memory through
reconnection. It listens for a call to voice itself, and will find its way
through en-actments that form new attachments between agents
and spaces, actions and matters. Commonity may offer itself
here, maybe they are just a way to re-phrase who we are without
being strangers to the place and its non-human agents?

77. - and a sense of agency?
nænsomhed handlekraft

78. Agency in unknown territory
At this point, in July '14, we have drawn and walked, we have talked
and touched. We can see a certain diversity already, in topoï, in
agents, in ecologies and economies, and their encounters.
We see a vague contour of an island, and a number of sharper lines
around and through smaller spaces. We sense the hardness of
change rushing over fragile lands and people. And we sense the
stubborn presence of the virtual trace, in a track, a stone, a deserted
house. Memories that wither, but remain.
We observe countless bits of change, and we notice the invisibility of
some questions: what about the water on an island in a city? What
about the soil on island with so much waste? What about the value of
diversity and the commonities that are numbed?
We have been confirmed in the importance of nænsomhed, and in
looking more carefully at handlekraft. But care is a call for listening
that goes beyond observing, a handling and caring for is calling.
Attachments will form only where the cracks are opened long enough
for someone who would care, to be touched by something that could
matter.

80. next steps of mapping
Reflections
Transects
Challenges
Collections
Conversations
Maps
Connections
Projections
For references, more words, pictures,
Calls, attachments, Eco-Creation Camps,
Publications, and more:
http://ecoislandamager.dk