In thousands of ways, we are taught to accept the world we live in as the only possible one, but thousands of other ways of organizing homes, cities, schools, societies, economies, cosmologies, have and could exist. The series of books Made Differently… is designed to play with possibility and to overcome the suspicion, instilled in us every day, that life is necessarily limited, miserable, and boring.
This room features collections of resources linked to the Made Differently… book thrilogy (MIT Press, Fall 2024) and is designed to be an interdisciplinary meeting platform for everyone who want to contribute and take part in the collateral events (talks, workshops, seminars and presentations).
What makes a city a city? Who says? Drafted over decades out of a dialogue between artist and author Nika Dubrovsky, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and Nika’s then four-yearold son, this delightful and provocative book Cities Made Differently opens a space for invention and collaboration. Fusing anthropology, literature, play, and drawing, the book is essentially a visual essay that asks us to reconsider our ideas about cities and the people who inhabit them. Drawing us into a world of history and myth, science and imagination, Graeber and Dubrovsky invite us to rethink the worlds we inhabit—because we can, and nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true.
With inspired pictures and prompts, Cities Made Differently asks what a city is, or could be, or once was. Sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? Buried in lava? What were those cities of long ago, and what will the cities of the future be? They might be virtual, ruled by AI, or islands of beautiful architecture afloat in seas of greenery. They might be utopian places of refuge or refugee camps as far as the eye can see. On land, underground or aloft, excavated or imagined, cities, this book tells us in provocative and funny ways, can be anything we want them to be—and what we want them to be can tell us something about who we are, what it is to be human, and what’s possible when we make way for wonder.
Cities Made Differently exists in two versions, one for reading and thinking, the other, downloadable at a4kids.org, for drawing and dreaming.
On December 6th, Nika Dubrovsky will be at Housmans to celebrate the publication of Cities Made Differently, co-written with the late David Graeber. Joining Nika in conversation will the inimitable organiser and writer James Schneider. For more information, please have a look at here.
