This anthology presents work on cultures of assembly. It stresses the relevance of small-scale and decentralized spatial formats of local knowledge production to community building and embedded political decision-making in the context of the socio-ecological transition. It reinforces the role of both individual and collective action while proposing distributed assembly and proximity as core attributes in the production of the contemporary and future city. It calls for a revised form of spatial politics.

“Miessen’s new book depicts in a challenging and projective manner the problem of politics in times of conceptual indeterminacy, where ‘participation’ of the civil society seems to become the salvation for the political mess we are in, especially in Europe.”

—Ulrike Guérot, political scientist, founder and director, European Democracy Lab, Berlin

This book presents a study that conceptualizes, tests, and practically applies the spatial strategy for the European Kunsthalle. The investigation is the result of the activities incorporated into a two-year work practice from 2005 to 2007, an iterative “applied research” informed by resonances between theory and practice.

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium at the Gothenburg Design Festival in November 2017—form the core of this collection: journalist Hannes Grassegger on Trump and Brexit; architectural theorist Stephan Trüby on spaces of right-wing extremism in Germany; and Christina Varvia on Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the murder of Halit Yozgat. 

The Nightmare of Participation calls for a format of conflictual participation—no longer a process by which others are invited “in,” but a means of acting without mandate, as uninvited irritant: a forced entry into fields of knowledge that arguably benefit from exterior thinking. Sometimes, democracy has to be avoided at all costs.