On motivations

When a topic becomes a part of you, could you really not be a part of it? 

Cyprus, my home, and its contested context, has deeply marked me, and my ongoing personal, professional, and political journey to explore instances of spatial practice transforming divisive narratives. 

My own journey is closely linked to the trajectories of many others that inspired, supported, and grew with me. Particularly, the flourishing and development of my ideas, situated explorations, and initial hypotheses, can be attributed to my involvement (since 2015) with Imaginary Famagusta (IF), an informal bicommunal Cypriot initiative of architects advocating for the democratisation of urban reconstruction.

A first version of the Radical Spatial Futures project was formed around 2017 and has been brewed and reconstructed, along with me crossing and transgressing boundaries of both disciplines and of conflicts. It now more explicitly focuses on the theorisation and praxis of radical imagination. This shift is connected with a thought, a provocation, a belief, an ideological stance, or even a manifesto, that has remained with me through the years:

There is always an alternative;

even when we believe that nothing other is possible;

even if the alternative is only speculative, (utopic), or ‘imaginary’. 

Even when the systems that oppress us, divide us, and dictate our social, spatial, and temporal belongings are so powerful and entrenched that we cannot blink; we can imagine the ‘otherwise,’ the ‘otherhow,’ the ‘common,’ and the seemingly impossible. What this necessitates is not only the acceptance that these current systems which oppress us are ‘not fit for purpose’, but a shift in collective imaginations, a total flip of perspective, or even turning one’s whole existence upside-down. 

This research after all stems from an inherent curiosity, but also love and a duty of care, towards reimagining a world, a discipline, and an academia, were pluralism, difference, and conflict can be understood as a positive dynamic, were powers are negotiated, and co-existence is imagined away from neoliberal and neocolonial pursuits. And whilst others might call this utopic, I choose to call it prefigurative. A radical imagination of a future that I hope to bring back to this present, even in glimpses, writings, or conversations.