Xholobeni Yards

In coincidence with the opening week of the 18th. International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale "The laboratory of the future", curated by Lesley Lokko, Ocean Space hosts the presentation of the project "Xholobeni Yards. Titanium and the planetary manufacture of lustre/powder" by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation.

Andrés Jaque, Architect and Founder Office for Political Innovation, Dean and Professor of Columbia University Graduate School of Planning and Preservation, will be in conversation with Farah Alkhoury, architect and researcher Office for Political Innovation, and Markus Reymann, director of TBA21-Academy.

Also joining the conversation, connected remotely, will be Nonhle MMbutuma Forslund (ACC Amadiba Crisis Committee), Sinegugu Zukulu (SWC Sustaining the Wild Coast), Siyabonga NNdovela (ACC Amadiba Crisis Committee) and Margie Pretorius (SWC Sustaining the Wild Coast).

Part of the cycle “Waves of Words”, encompassing conversations with artists, researchers, and writers interweaving poetry, science, and situated ecology in collaboration with local institutions and national initiatives. Spoken words will become waves to drift with and carry our thoughts, while we consider climate and cultural change with diverse voices from the Mediterranean shores.

New York’s high-end architecture is literally produced out of distant materials, bodies, and knowledge, extracted from their ecosystems to be rendered resources, circulating as commodities in an economy based on global accumulation.

Hudson Yards’ stainlessness, is made possible through the massive mobilization of the titanium extracted from the northeastern coast of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa, where the Australian mining company Minerals Commodities Limited, and its South African subsidiary Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM) are now planning to expand their mining activities to Xholobeni’s seabed.

Since 2008, through the development of songs that they sing together periodically as a form of activism, the AmaMpondo people have claimed “the right to say no” and have advocated against the mineral extraction in their land and on the seabed. This has been so far a successful way to stop these mining plans. The AmaMpondo people claim the ultimate interdependency of human and more-than-human life; and advocate for a transition from an extractionbased paradigm to one that promotes mutual care among different forms of life.

The Office for Political Innovation, alongside the AmaMpondo peoples of Xholobeni, present a 300 square meter multimedia installation at the Arsenale that claims the need for architecture to take responsibility for its distant social and environmental impact.