Existential homelessness. Placeless and nostalgia in the age of mobility

Abstract

Mobility is, of course, a huge subject matter extending from the movement cycles and patterns of the primordial human settlements of the world, the great expeditions and the European re-discovery of the world, to our characteristic bi-petal motion and horizontal gaze, and the mobility implied by countless human modes of livelihood, production and communication. This theme also contains matters such as our embodied mode of experiencing the world through constant motion, the fundamental human right of mobility as specified in the Declaration of Human Rights, and the significance of mobility for human interaction both on cross-cultural as well as social and intimate levels. The significance of human mobility also evokes essential ecological and ethical questions; we have already reached the very limits of unlimited and irresponsible mobility. We should not exclude the limitations in mobility caused by cultural conditions, gender, forced restrictions, economy, and physical incapabilities. I will, however, focus on the dimensions of mobility that are closest to my personal interests as an architect, cultural observer and frequent traveller: the notion and consequences of geographic mobility and, particularly, of motorized and increasingly accelerated movement that is one of the foundational phenomena of our concept and reality of modernity. I am intentionally going to valorize a very narrow strip of the spectrum of human mobility aware of the vastness of issues that I am excluding from my study.