Purity and Security: Towards a Cultural History of Plexiglass
A chat session with Shannon Mattern
April 14, 2021
4-5 PM EDT
“Plastic walls legitimate our inclinations to seal off bodies and commodities into defensible zones, extending geographies and logics of quarantine and incarceration into quotidian spaces,” design theorist Shannon Mattern observes in a brilliant new essay on the cultural history of plexiglass.
Join us for a chat with Shannon about the essay, about plastic and design. We will convene for an hour in the Chat channel in our Commons on April 14th to hear from Shannon and chat with each other by text. This is the next of a regular series of low-carbon alternatives to video conferencing that we are planning; do get in touch with any ideas for future chats via collective@ecodesigncollective.org.
Shannon Mattern is a professor of anthropology at The New School in New York City. Her research and teaching address how the forms and materialities of media are related to the spaces (architectural, urban, and conceptual) they create and inhabit. Her new book, A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences , will be out this fall from Princeton University Press.