Keller Easterling: Professor, Ysoa, Yale University, New Haven, USA

E a s t er l i n g
many
Keller easterling
Professor, Ysoa,
Yale University, new Haven, USA
Until recently, the sharing economy was

seen as a response to contemporary
capitalism, with atomization on a
massive scale as a resistance to the
corporate and state centralism. Today,
however, when those collaborative
platforms have been transformed into
global corporations, that hope seems to
have exhausted. This project recovers
the original expectations of network
economy to propose a solution to the
migratory crisis, replacing the massive
mobility of people by the massive
exchange of knowledge and skills.
many is an online platform designed to facilitate

migration through exchanges of needs.
Global infrastructure space has perfectly
streamlined the movements of billions of products
and tens of millions of tourists and cheap laborers,
but at a time when over 65 million people in the world
are displaced, there are few robust ways to facilitate
Keywords the migrations of people in response to political,
Platform economic, or environmental crises. The nation-state
Migration has a dumb on-off button to grant or deny citizenship/
Networking asylum. And the ngocracy offers as its best idea
Exchange storage in a refugee camp – a form of detention
Multi-glyph lasting on average 17 years.
Can the legal and logistical ingenuity that
26 lubricates trade or links millions of strangers in the
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A R Q 9 8 — S A N T I AG O , C H I L E
© MANY Team
sharing economy be applied to a global form of

matchmaking between the sidelined talents of
migrating populations and a multitude of endeavors
and opportunities around the world?
While existing help and exchange networks for
asylum seekers face intense opposition from nativist
right-wing groups, many proposes to diffuse or
outwit this opposition by more robustly networking
short term visas and exchanges that may not
involve travel. Deliberately positioned at a distance
from the sharp end of migration emergencies, the
platform serves those who want to resettle as well
as those who want to keep traveling – who never
wanted the citizenship or asylum that the nation
withholds or reluctantly bestows. Beyond national 27
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E a s t er l i n g
© MANY Team
identify, one-to-one relationships share a visual

language of exchange where there are no have or
have-nots. Instead needs and problems are assets to
be linked in non-market exchanges. many aggregates
an abundance of existing networks and reinforces
them with underexploited potentials embedded in
urban space. As it develops over multiple iterations,
the site hopes to alter habits and reduce the violence
surrounding migration. Rejecting the characterization
of migration as crisis, many asserts the reality of
migration as constant.
Might another kind of cosmopolitan mobility
organize around intervals of time or seasons of a
life to form a branching set of options that is both
28 more practical and politically agile? Can the platform
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© MANY Team
guard against the dangers that it critiques and avoid

association with the sunny, one-world vision of
the sharing economy? And might this exchange be
anticipated, celebrated, and accredited as the means to
global leadership credentials?
The platform asks users on either side of the
exchange to establish and name a group – something
like a no-tech blockchain of corroborating associates.
In addition to an accredited sponsor for visa
procedures, a group might include an educational
institution, commercial organization, congregation,
or group of citizens among many other things.
Each group expresses a need for special talents
or expertise in, for instance, education, farming,
industry, or other cultural practices. Each also 29
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E a s t er l i n g
© MANY Team
many
Equipo de proyecto / Project Team: Nilas Andersen, Matthew John Erlendson, Matthew Gordon, Megan Kearns,
Jacob Bendicksen, Heather Bizon, Santiago Del Hierro, Nikita Klimenko, Jeffrey Zhenhua Liu, Mariana Riobom,
Neil Donnelly, Keller Easterling, Adam Feldman, Paul J. Lorenz, Michael Rooney, Kellen Silver, Dina Taha, Lissette Valenzuela,
Radhika Singh, Maggie Tsang, Julie Turgeon Matthew Ward, Paul Wu, Shuyi Yin
Asesores / Advisors: Ayham Ghraowi, Bernd Kasparek, Apoyo institucional / Institutional Support: Yale School of
David Kim, Kim Rygiel, Pelin Tan Architecture, Dean Deborah Berke, Tsai Center for Innovation
Colaboradores / Contributors: Azza Abou Alam, Kate Altman, at Yale, Yale Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design
Michelle Badr, Davis Butner, Brian Cash, Deo Deiparine, Año de Proyecto / Project year: 2018
30
ARQ98_Libro.indb 30 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

offers opportunities or in-kind contributions like
housing, stipends or visa assistance. Initially many
is populated with entries from thousands of existing
exchange networks to offer a more palpable that
cartography of these organizations.
Countering the repertoires of prevailing
matchmaking and sharing sites, the images and
sounds contribute to a multi-glyph expression that is
used in displaying possible matches in the exchange.
Slightly cryptic, the multi-glyph is a language between
individuals that is stronger than the official languages
of nations. The graphic conceit nods to the work of
Fluxus member George Maciunas (Spell your name
with these objects), Paul Elliman’s typographies,
ransom notes, hobo code and cuneiform. The more
heterogeneous the multi-glyph, the more it expresses
a robust, secure spatial network.
The platform is designed to prompt activity in
spatial as well as digital information systems. Criteria
can be tightened or loosened to search in different ways
or to adapt a network to offerings on the other side of
the exchange. As designers forge new connections and
add more spatial variables to the situations shaping an
offer on the network is already an alteration and an
urban design. ARQ
Keller Easterling
<[email protected]>
Architect, Princeton University, usa . She has written the books

Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014),
Subtraction (Sternberg Press, 2014), The Action is the Form: Victor
Hugo’s ted Talk (Strelka Press ebook, 2012), Enduring Innocence:
Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (mit Press, 2005)
and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America
(mit Press, 1999). Easterling’s research and writing was included in
the 2014 Venice Biennale, and she has been exhibited at Storefront
for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Biennale, and
the Architectural League in New York. Since 1998 is a professor at
Yale University. 31
ARQ98_Libro.indb 31 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

Keller Easterling: Professor, Ysoa, Yale University, New Haven, USA

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Keller Easterling: Professor, Ysoa, Yale University, New Haven, USA

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What is the many platform trying to address?

How does many propose to facilitate migration?

E a s t er l i n g

Until recently, the sharing economy was

many is an online platform designed to facilitate

ARQ98_Libro.indb 26 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

sharing economy be applied to a global form of

ARQ98_Libro.indb 27 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

identify, one-to-one relationships share a visual

ARQ98_Libro.indb 28 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

guard against the dangers that it critiques and avoid

ARQ98_Libro.indb 29 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

ARQ98_Libro.indb 30 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

Architect, Princeton University, usa . She has written the books

ARQ98_Libro.indb 31 02-04-18 3:32 p.m.

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