Endarkenment
My name is Pablo Encinas Alonso (ES, 1990) and I am an interdisciplinary spatial practitioner and researcher based in Gothenburg, Sweden. My enquiry lies at the intersection of spatial theory and practice, bridging art and architecture. Trained both fields I completed an MFA in Fine Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden (2023). I have been an active member of the independent study group AIRC at SKOGEN also in Gothenburg since 2021, where I lead a project focusing on spatial reading with practitioners from diverse fields. Currently, I am an active member of Trojan Horse, an autonomous educational platform based in Helsinki. Trojan Horse organises summer schools, live-action role-plays, workshops, and reading circles in the landscapes of architecture, design, and art.
Endarkenment explores darkness as a spatial, ecological, and political condition, not as absence, but as a presence.
Emerging from my lived transition between Spain and Sweden and my encounter with prolonged seasonal darkness, this enquiry-based proposal seeks to interrogate dominant spatial logics that equate light with progress, visibility with safety, and darkness with danger or deficiency.
The project operates at the intersection of art and architecture through Critical Spatial Practice and Compositional Methodology, forming a working approach I call Collective Endarkenment. Rather than treating darkness as a passive void, this practice explores it as a generative infrastructure that sustains biodiversity, supports social inclusion, and opens space for imagination. It resists overlit environments and extractivist lighting paradigms by proposing slower, reciprocal engagements with under-illuminated spaces.
The work consists of speculative and situated artefacts, including sensing devices, spatial tools, and field-based encounters, that engage with darkness as an active force. These methods have been tested during the Self-Darkness workshop at VARES Architecture Residency (Valga, Estonia, December 2024), where participants explored darkness through nightwalking, sensory hacking, journaling, mapping and prototyping.
Endarkenment is both critique and method. It circulates through collaborative workshops, public space interventions, exhibitions and writing. Within the LINA community, it can take the form of shared toolkits, co-developed prototypes, or context-specific engagements with regional darkness. The work aims to enter into dialogue with collectives and institutions investigating spatial design, nocturnal ecologies, and the cultural politics of visibility.