 My name is Andreas Hacke and I would like to talk about Celica. Celica is behind the big part of the development of modern architecture in the US, but at the same time it's very obviously invisible. Celica is being segregated in different groups, and there's one particular type of Celica that produces a glass that is incredibly transparent. The ultra clear glass is made with a Celica that is extracted in Ottawa, and that Celica is exactly the same one that is allowed to increase the depth in which fracking can operate. The fact that the Celica is very resistant allows it to keep the holes in between the grains of Celica, even with the weight of three miles of grains, one on top of the other pressing to the ones in the bottom, and that allows the glass to flow to the surface. So I'm interested in the way ultra clear glass that is probably the material that is most clearly capturing the spirit and the kind of way for advanced capitalism to operate is also behind a big part of the environmental impact that cities have at this point in the US on the countryside. Basically, Celica, and that particular kind of Celica with very low iron content, is a Celica that is very strong, it has a very high load in capacity, and it's very rounded. And that means that when you see in its geological form, it allows the water to flow. It can be compressed, compressed, compressed, but it doesn't form, and therefore it keeps voids in between different grains of Celica, it works as a sponge. And then there's many many different species of plants that grow in it, and that of course grows in the kind of ecological cycles, and then there's insects, there's animals, and those particular Celica formations have been the place, the habitat of a number of First Nations that were developing balanced ways to hunt in them, to collect plants, to basically coexist with the ecosystem and not being extractive to it, but rather kind of negotiating their coexistence. But then we can easily see what is the way that advanced capitalism operates by extracting it, serigating the Celica from its ecosystems and doing such a refined product like the ultra clear glass. In a way it started after 1929, the New Deal had kind of a massive plan of mobilizing natural resources through extraction at a scale that was not that much known in the US before, and that was actually happening through modern architecture. When we see, for instance, Mies van der Rohe's buildings Chicago in other places, it's impossible to separate that from a history of basically mobilizing materials, putting it together with or assembling those materials to the mobilization of natural gas, transportation systems like the canals that were connecting all these different territories in the Midwest, and basically using architecture as a showcase that would seduce people to be part of that model of extraction. What is the building that somehow helped me start kind of approaching this is 432 Park Avenue. It could have been others. It could be the Apple stores, right? Because the Apple stores are quite obviously a monument to ultra clear glass. Basically, when we look at the way that that is translated into an architectural language, it's very much to this notion of a transparency that allows to own the exterior by owning the interior. It speaks of a larger way of channeling resources and extracting them from their ecosystems into an accumulation that is concentrated in a very unique part of society. Ultra clear glass and Celica in particular, it's clearly an enactor, like it's enacting this reality. But for me, it's clearly a material because of its resistance, its grain, its color, its many different properties that is connecting many of the worlds and kind of territories where contemporary realities are being produced. It's also been incredibly successful in creating the symbols for it or rather, providing an aesthetic to societal and ecological evolution that other materials have not been able to turn into a culture or aesthetic. Materials are always complicated by the way they expand into industry, into lines of production, into ways of management. And there's so much effort to make them look like if they never break, like if they never had to be replaced, like if they never changed. And I wonder if the way to deal with it is to give much more importance and to develop a culture about the broken glass. If you think of Godomata Clark, breaking glasses, there's a whole culture behind the culture of the shiny, clean glass of glass being broken as a site for politics, as a site for aesthetic experimentation, as a site for cultural action. And I wonder if those other cultures are the ones that we need now. In the last years, there's been a number of protests that have been identified glass as an element of protest all around the world in different conflicts. And I would say that probably that's not by accident. The way both why this happened and how also those images circulated so massively, I think it's telling us of the need to make visible glass and specifically ultra clear glass. I think that still there's a need to understand why the obsession with glass and why this kind of addiction to glass. In a way, when you have it in your hand, it's already very magnetic, making material like that is already telling us of the, I mean, it's very much referring to also the beaches that were selected as premium destination for tourism. So it's aesthetically, there's all these connections that are immediately being produced, and that we're very, very much trained to identify. So I think that kind of cultural load comes when we see a piece of glass like that. I remember I did an exhibition in Korea with a piece of glass like that, just like that. And people would gather to look at it. It's quite magic. It's really a kind of trigger's desire in a very clear way. We're addicted to glass, I would say, and we're addicted to certain extent to ultra clear glass. But my impression is that a way to undo that or to go around that will have to acknowledge the entire complexity of it. I think we can have shortcuts to that. And I think one is definitely a comparative methodology. If we put an image here of silica in its geological formation as the support of such a kind of rich ecological life, and then we put here the glass now as kind of the end of a system of exploitation that probably comes to colonization, displacement, racialization, destruction, refinement and abstraction of the materials and ultimately the creation of inequality through advanced capitalism. We see that basically from the rich ecosystems to these ultra refined but violent accumulations of systems of exploitation, there's a need to probably take a step back and say, okay, what have we lost on the way? And what are these violences that we have now to deal with and find something exciting in the cracks of this system that we cannot account for without acknowledging all the violence in between? And I think that that's a bit where we are. But of course, we're doing it now. And we're doing it as probably societies that are addicted to glass and to views and to transparency. But that's a kind of good condition to be in, because I don't think this is a moralistic, it's an ethical question, but not a moralistic one. I think that this is really something that we need to unpack as an evolution in the way we understand architecture, environment, societies, ecosystems. And that is actually something that requires much more work than just judging it. Following the thread, kind of following the dots in a way and in all directions, like following the why this glass is found here, what is it doing? How is it produced? And how far you can go in kind of following the thread of those questions? For me, it's what what probably allows you to reconstruct kind of a laboratory for anyone to operate in that. What is interesting is that probably that's the opposite of what in the past designers would do. Like basically it's about not knowing about not necessarily asking too much about just knowing exactly what is needed to use it. For a long time, architects have looked at materials from a very modern perspective. This is to say, basically, extracting them from their social, ecological, historical entanglements. I believe that that the approach that is probably most effective now and that responds best to contemporary defiance is one in which materials are understood as relational, as entangled with many of the realities and with basically no clear boundaries. And I think that that, let's say, notion of a material as part of an ecosystem that it's needed in order to understand its critical dimension. My opinion is something that it's actually not that much a choice, but rather kind of a way to mobilize materials as part of the discussions that are happening now. And I think that that is what I would advise someone that wants to work with ultra clear glass or with any material or with anything in this moment to ask questions beyond how to use it and to interrogate the realities that we're working on.