Architectures of Bipolarity

STATES OF EXHAUSTION Eds. Francisco Díaz, Anastasia Kubrak, Marina Otero Verzier Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, The Netherlands Directors Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director Josien Paulides, Managing Director Director of Research Marina Otero Verzier Principal Project Researcher Anastasia Kubrak Assistant Researcher Erick Fowler Ediciones ARQ Santiago, Chile Director UC School of Architecture Luis Eduardo Bresciani L. Editor in Chief Ediciones ARQ Francisco Díaz P. LITHIUM: States of Exhaustion Eds.: Francisco Díaz, Anastasia Kubrak, Marina Otero Verzier © Het Nieuwe Instituut © Ediciones ARQ, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile © Texts: The Authors © Images: Indicated in image captions All Rights Reserved: No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Ediciones ARQ . Editors: Francisco Díaz, Anastasia Kubrak, Marina Otero Verzier Graphic Editor: Carolina Valenzuela Managing Editor: Francisco Cardemil Copy-Editor: Gabriela Cancino Design: Eduardo León Translations: Francisco Cardemil Proofreading: Rayna Razmilic, Blanca Valdés ISBN: 978-956-9571-88-6 Printing: Andros impresores, Santiago, Chile First edition, September 2021 Lithium: States of Exhaustion Eds. Francisco Díaz, Anastasia Kubrak, Marina Otero Verzier Index Introduction Marina Otero Verzier 008 This Extraordinary Rock LiCo (David David Habets, Cameron Hu, Stefan Schäfer) 012 From Burnout to 7Up: On Bathing and Mining Grounds Anastasia Kubrak 016 Lithium Het Nieuwe Instituut X The Architecture of the European Mineral Spa Christie Pearson The Breast Milk of the Volcano Unknown Fields 020 XXVIII From the Origins to the Ends of Life on Earth Godofredo Pereira, Alonso Barros Salar de Llamara, Chile Lithium Triangle Research Studio Microorganisms in the Desert Lithium Triangle Research Studio – Mingxin Li On the Ground Rolando Humire, Cristina Dorador, and Alonso Barros, in conversation with Godofredo Pereira 024 II XL 029 Salar de Atacama, Chile Cristóbal Olivares L The King of Lithium Daniel Matamala 039 On Bipolar Expeditions Emily Martin in conversation with Anastasia Kubrak 044 Healing as Killing Byung-Chul Han 047 Architectures of Bipolarity Francisco Díaz 049 Lithium: Towards a Theory of Bipolar Transitions Marina Weinberg, Cristóbal Bonelli 052 Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia Cedric Gerbehaye LXXII Evaporations Pedro Alonso Watercolors Pedro Alonso, Ignacio Infante The Cosmological Lithium Problem Francisco Förster 057 LXXXVIII 061 Architectures of Bipolarity Francisco Díaz 049 Architect, Master’s in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2006. M.S. in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, Columbia University, 2013. Since 2015, he is the Editor in Chief of Ediciones ARQ and ARQ magazine in Chile. After his first book in 2008, he has edited more than 80 books and 20 magazine issues. His latest book, Contemporary Pathologies: Architecture Essays after the 2008 Crisis, was published in 2019 in Chile and Spain, and was awarded at the 2021 Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urbanism. In 2020 he co-curated the exhibition Chilean House: Domestic Images, exhibited at La Moneda Cultural Center in Santiago. Díaz is Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Human bodies are in a permanent state of exchange. Through the nose and mouth, our lungs perform a continuous process of inhaling oxygen and exhaling CO2. Our skin permanently exchanges water with the environment, releasing or receiving humidity. Blood is continuously flowing in our veins, feeding the different organs that make up the body. Electric impulses are always traveling through our nerves. Even in a state of total rest – as in profound sleep or total relaxation – the atoms in our body are continuously moving. But not only human bodies. Air, fluids, or electricity work on the same physical principle: the difference of potential. Contained in a channel of communication between A and B, the potential becomes energy – stored power. And when it is released, a flux appears. A light-bulb lights up when we release the path through which electrons move from negative to positive. Water runs into our sink when we open the faucet that contains the stream. Due to the temperature difference, hot air leaves the room as soon as we open window, forcing an equivalent volume of cold air to sneak in. However, the power of such streams has to be controlled; otherwise, it may damage the channel of communication. That’s why the electric grid provides a specific voltage, and water has to meet certain pressure levels. The same happens in our bodies. Our blood has to be within specific ranges of pressure, the rhythms of inhaling and exhaling have to be continuous, and our skin can only be exposed to low voltages. We have power inside our bodies. Yet, its potential has to meet certain ranges – beyond which our lives may be threatened. Polarities Since everything in our universe is composed of atoms containing protons and electrons, all that we see and all that surrounds us has positive and negative charges. Thanks to these poles that generate electric flows, everything is in a permanent state of movement. Polarities are the chemical architecture of the universe. The imbalance between poles is what creates potentiality. Such imbalance is what makes the electrons flow through a copper cable, light the resistance, and then return to the power grid. For like a river basin or a highway, the power grid does not store energy; it is not a pond or a parking lot – it is a device that allows electricity to flow. A battery ‘stores’ power only because it can contain the potentiality of an energy imbalance – which is released when a device acts as a channel through which electrons can flow (a resistance). Thus, if we manage to induce a permanent imbalance between the two poles, we could create an endless power source. Our body’s perceptual apparatus can’t directly notice the endless movement of electrons. Just like we don’t feel the Earth’s rotation but we can perceive the days and nights, we can’t see the movement of subatomic particles, but we can see their effects, like the incandescence in a lightbulb. 050 In fact stones, which seem to be inert objects which have been in a frozen state for millions of years, are actually a chemical composites or elements full of subatomic movement we can’t perceive. They seems to be cold and hard to our senses, but some of them – like coal or lithium – have the potential to prompt energy flows. Li Due to its usage in batteries and as a treatment for bipolar disorder, lithium has become a sort of miraculous chemical element in the last years. But, what are the actual properties that make it so miraculous? The lithium atom has three electrons. Two share an inner orbit while the third spins in an outer one. This structure allows it to easily lose and regain the third outer electron. Besides, as the lightest metal, it’s the smallest electron-giver element so it needs less space to generate the potential necessary to release a flow of energy. Since there is no element with more electrons to share in a given volume, lithium is the most efficient among those that ‘store’ energy. In batteries, potentiality is generated by a contained flux of electrons, ready to jump from negative to positive when connected to a resistance. In the average lithium-ion battery that mobile phones have, the negative side (anode) is composed of graphite and lithium, while the positive (cathode) is mainly composed of cobalt, an element that attracts electrons. When the phone is in use, lithium’s third electron flows through the circuitry drawn by cobalt. Once all the electrons have crossed to the cathode, the battery loses its charge. And when we recharge it, electricity reverses the flow as if we flip an hourglass: lithium electrons meet again with their atoms in the anode, and, in so doing, they re-create potentiality.1 From the psychiatric point of view, lithium is, so far, the most successful treatment for alternate cycles of mania and depression – which we know today as “bipolar disorder.”2 Although there are no positive and negative poles, the opposite condition of these moods caused by alterations in neuronal action is what accounts for bipolarity. Interestingly, lithium works well in both conditions. Remember that neurons are like a tree: the more the branches and leaves, the more the sunlight and CO2 they can collect to photosynthesize. In the case of depression – caused by a lower exchange between neurons – lithium seems to boost the number of dendrites (branches) and links (leaves), thus increasing the exchange levels. In mania, on the contrary, the exchange between neurons starts to speed up until they get exhausted (as if you drown a plant when watering it). Here, lithium seems to drag and absorb the excess of exchange so that the process recovers a regular rhythm. Thus, in the two moods that account for bipolarity, lithium helps recover homeostasis.3 Now, seen abstractly, mania and depression are opposites in terms of energy: the former implies an excess and the latter a lack. By dragging the excess in mania or allowing more exchange in depression, lithium seems to regulate the energy flows. Hence, although its effect is visible in a change of mood, its operation actually happens at a chemical level. Lithium is not a mood stabilizer but rather a flux regulator.4 Architectures of Bipolarity The architectural layout of bipolarity is straightforward: two poles that feed each other through imbalance and, in so doing, create movement and energy. Today, such architectures are visible in those polarities that generate a differential in power – a potential – which feeds an endless loop. Wealth and poverty. North and South. Right and left. Mania and depression. No matter if they are positions or dispositions – paraphrasing Keller Easterling5 – the result is a loop or a dynamo that feeds from such polarities. In fact, the ‘dynamism’ of the global economy is also fueled by these bipolarities. Capital flows move due to the potential of revenues, interest, or taxes. As David Harvey argues, “it is flows of money that make the contemporary environment what it is,” so that “any interruption in those money and commodity flows” will have catastrophic ecological consequences, thus, “the circulation of money is a prime ecological variable [...] essential if the material qualities of the environment are to be maintained.”6 Just like blood or electricity, capital is in a state of flux. Even when it is stored – in a savings account or an investment fund – it generates potential through interest rates, and is ready to be invested when the opportunity arises. Lithium helps these different flows to reach another level of efficiency and independence from inconvenient factors that might stagnate them. By allowing electrons to flow inside a battery, lithium enables portable devices such as computers, cellphones, or cars to be detached from the grid. Also, by regulating the flows of energy between cells, it helps balance individuals’ moods, thus liberating their bodies from the need of external care. By unblocking these aspects, which imply the individual’s need to rely on certain material and social infrastructures, lithium helps capital flows achieve new horizons. In fact, the current lithium-fever can be understood under the lens of capitalism’s history: animal power, coal, oil, the electric grid, and now lithium. As Nancy Fraser points out, “capitalism’s history can be viewed as a sequence of socio-ecological regimes of accumulation” that end in eco-development crises, which are partially solved by the next regime until they fail again and are replaced by a new one.7 Just when the neoliberal dynamism was getting exhausted by the rampaging inequalities that choke the flow and bring social and ecological devastation – draining the planet with it – lithium came to lubricate the system again and generate new avenues for capital accumulation. By encouraging the chance of an actual detachment from the burdens of society, the old promise of autonomy finds in lithium a perfect ally, as it has the potentiality of enhancing capital and chemical exchanges while circumventing certain social structures and interactions. Thus, if the pill empowers individuals and the battery powers their devices, lithium powers markets that see in this element the potential to conceal the next phase of capitalism behind the facade of green energies and apparent commitment to ecological concerns. However, as a potential, the enthusiasm about lithium should move within certain ranges. Otherwise, life on this planet may be threatened with the danger of its exhaustion. 1. Christian Julien, Alain Mauger, Ashok Vijh, Karim Zaghib, Lithium Batteries: Science and Technology (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016). 2. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013), 123. 3. Heinz Lüllmann, Lutz Hein, Klaus Mohr, Detlef Bieger, Color Atlas of Pharmacology, 3rd edition revised and expanded (Stuttgart; New York: Thieme, 2005), 230-231. 4. A recent study proposes that lithium acts over a specific protein – CRMP2 – which was inactive in bipolar patients. See: Brian T. D. Tobe et al., “Probing the Lithium-Response Pathway in hiPSCs Implicates the Phosphoregulatory SetPoint for a Cytoskeletal Modulator in Bipolar Pathogenesis,” PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 114, no. 22 (May 30, 2017). Available online: <www.pnas.org/content/114/22/E4462>. 5. We usually understand the stance of an actor, agent, or organization as a ‘position,’ but Keller Easterling has also coined the notion of ‘disposition’ to speak about the potential of one of these, which may not be declared. See: Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2014), 72-73; and Keller Easterling, Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World. (London, UK; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2021), ix. 6. David Harvey, “What’s Green and Makes the Environment Go Round?,” in The Cultures of Globalization, edited by Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 332. 7. Nancy Fraser, “Climates of Capital,” New Left Review 127 (January-February 2021). 051