thoughtbelt

webphoto 48

2007-03-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

cloudedrust

webphoto 47

2007-03-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

rollaround

webphoto 46

2007-03-20T02:06:00.000-07:00

calmblue

poem 16

2007-03-20T01:51:00.000-07:00

Kiore

like little kings, my arbitrary breaths order me imperative

each me beats alone, drawn by breath on and along,

by a single hale drawn, in and in, within this core;

emptying its hunger, life’s single sin;

burnt quiet within, letting warmth return past this skin,

just here: in, and in, and in;

where venting air kills by use,

void sucks void, consumed in arbitrary bidding . . . it is this wasted air,

rubbing me dry, blown down and deserted,

each beat denying that peace taken of death; any world’s rightful dream;

that quiet rest it sits within, in which, it itself inheres, alone and sole, but stillborn made,

by breath’s endless take and take,

like a kingdom composed of carted stone, warmly held through dismantled time,

it slips past each me that beats inside,

just here, alone in time;

in, and in again,

and in.

so breath rattled, whistles past my toothy cage,

but will un-joined, is thrown out again, but still pressing firm,

returns to be owned; a void still less than home, mere simple aid to bone,

enduring briefly with intermingled soul transformed,

life’s pulsate tissue wetly conjoined, strips breath, brought chaff and dry,

like clumps of death, broken upon dry skin,

bent to limbered breathing; unjustly receiving . . . and so exhailed again.

and so a war is raged, ukase driven,

rival marching orders given,

across steppes of endless thirsting, necessity licking the upturned hands

burnt from asking, for the slightest rain.

in and in and out again.

my drying breath alone can bring

now raised to voice, ignorant of all reason lacking;

ordered lives now begging, a chorus asking,

and indulgence producing

ukiyoe . . .

an utterly simple whisper;

moving without pleading, without listening

inexorably to celebration, culminating before considering,

releasing by wailing: joy . . .

by necessity we ululate . . .

the arbitrary breath need letting loose,

of breath punctuating living,

through living breath, we beat.

photo 011

2006-10-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

snow underfoot - midway to more

webphoto 045

2006-10-05T03:11:00.000-07:00

perched city pigeon

webphoto 044

2006-10-05T03:08:00.000-07:00

perched city gull

photo 010

2006-10-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

driving into where it thickens

Figural Underspecification: Change and Stability

2006-10-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

The important thing is that one must be free to have many myths – many stories. Someone who, together with all other human beings, has and can have only one myth – one story – is in a bad way.
...............................................................................................................Odo Marquard

Damn a people who cant [sic] handle or be handled
by more than a single God. Those slaves, those wisps.
.....................................................................George Bowering

Because metaphysical claims are fundamental, they must apply to all objects across all times. While this might mean that all buildings "exist" in the same way, it does not mean they all operate meaningfully in identical fashions. Their meanings, while based on the never changing essential nature of reality, exist as the related structure between that condition and the ever-changing human perspective and organization of it. Buildings are born within their originating context; the endlessly complex background of their original conceptual and physical setting. However, that context is constantly evolving and buildings quickly find themselves in changed situations. The fundamental character of a structure allows it to transcend such change within the range of its potential. However, sometimes the landscape changes to the point that existing forms can no longer maintain their meaningful participation. There is, therefore, a need to build a character capable of providing a multiple range of possible meanings.

Figural underspecification utilizes the potentially broad range of meaningful complexity which can be ‘built’ into a form. “Underspecification,” a term borrowed from linguistics, denotes a design which does not stamp a singular “correct” pattern upon its form. Instead, the components which comprise its formal potential are under-designated such that they do not coerce an unequivocal formal reading. Traditionally fixed codes are stretched so that they entertain a potential of ambiguity, allowing them to apply to new situations without the need for a completely new formal creation. It remains important that the overall code not be overly compromised in the process. Here it is a question of what is the appropriate balance and rate of progression at which a form needs to retain some degree of recognizable government. If meaning is to be at all comfortably achieved, the past (1) (established institutions and conventions) in some form is indispensable. A fully new discourse drawn from the saturated openness of the present is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil. Perhaps Arnold Schoenberg’s work sits at the furthest possible edge from the past. His invention of twelve-tone or serial composition for atonal music remains a rare example of a creation based on an originary rejection. (2) By establishing a structure of unity and coherence for atonality, he radically challenged the inherited foundations of musical sense. However, even in such a violent revolution, Schoenberg, and this may almost sound nonsensical, did not challenge “musicality” itself. It is a musical language nonetheless. It opposes the exclusivity of the chromatic scale, the exclusivity of thirds in building harmonic combinations, and even the requirement to resolve dissonance into consonance; but in doing all of this it reinforces these issues as the ultimate components of musical argument. In other words, he systematically enforced the negation of tonality (a refusal of a single tonal centre), but in so doing, by guaranteeing their equality, he supported the centrality of the singular tone itself.

What Schoenberg did do was to largely compromise the inherited code. The resulting challenge of this act remains. His negation of the past was to such an degree that its doctrine has never achieved its full resolution. Schoenberg himself questioned whether it was fully possible to put into practice. Theodor Adorno, an enthusiast of Schoenberg, acknowledges the degradation of meaning which was atonality’s ultimate sacrifice. “It dies away unheard, without even an echo. If time crystallizes around that music which has been heard, revealing its radiant quintessence, music which has not been heard falls into empty time like an impotent bullet. [. . .] Modern [atonal] music sees absolute oblivion as its goal.”(3) Such is the fate of extremity. But I think that the real lesson, one even Schoenberg accepted, is that we cannot create without the past any more than we can by slavishly adopting it in toto. Except for the chimera of creation ex nihilo, invention and adaptation “. . . [depend] upon an act of double-recognition, of both a model (even if we cannot name it) and the [ ] transformation of it.” (4) This is definitive of the Classical use of figures, and illustrates how figuration is a metaphor for creative presentation and representation. The idea of underspecification can now be seen as merely an analytical drawing out of the essence of figuration itself.

In the case of underspecification, when trying to establish a meaningful formal compliance to unstable conditions, the question becomes one of where the model is to be accepted and where it begs to be transformed. Sometimes the inertial force of tradition, like the character of the city, alone propels its continued adoption, and major misfits between form and functionality are required to fuel change. While radical transformations must often be restricted to limited (small) aspects of the whole, it is equally the case that “. . . the most rigidly deterministic conceptions of the world are the ones which generate in the individual will an urge to move forward, as though will and free choice can only be effective if they carve out their openings against the hard rock of necessity.” (5) This after all is at the very definition of individuality. It is the locus of each and every subject, and therefore a general characteristic of humanity and all its cultures. The need for movement, against either the conventional or the normal, is rooted in the conceptual misalignment between subjectivity (ultimate finitude) and objectivity (ultimate inclusive infinitude). We can go so far as to say that such operations are what sustain subjectivity . . . its need to forever identify itself against its world; even if that world is the matter by which this is accomplished.

This is why it is critical to open the range of meaningful readings and the valency between them. (6) Works which behave polyphasically in their form, create a space of autonomy for subjective awareness. (7) By virtue of one meaning, from another, and vice versa (and multiply so, in criss-cross fashion, by further interferences), persons gain a form of freedom. Monophasic works oblige the subject to recognize a single meaning. Whereas the subject-object relationship is static it tend towards atrophy. Such work is dangerously restricted in its identity because of a lack of internalized non-identity. In other words, the freedom which accompanies non-exclusivity equals multiplicity. It involves the separation of the powers, already potential in a patterned object, into a manifold of formal aspects; aspects which are therewith left up to individual determination. The building is polysemous but only so far as human desire demands. Here again we see the forces of the individuality of subjects at work. By allowing a figure to recognize its inherent ‘landscape’ qualities, its internal compound elaboration; figural underspecification enhances the individual’s freedom of experience. By being formed so that certain strong readings cannot fully specify how it is encountered, a building is free to be understood, or even used, in a number of different ways. A re-investment by architecture in the potential of figural processes offers the hope of letting go of the conservative constraints unnecessarily imposed upon the figure . . . allowing it to accommodate both order and disorder. By shaping the limits of underspecification, formal adaptability over a range of potential contextually driven changes becomes possible.

(1)The past here stands for the ‘already determined,’ if we can even speak in such strong words.
(2) I am indebted to the formulation of atonality in Bruce Murphy, ed., Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1996): 61.
(3) Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and W. V. Blomster (New York: Seabury Press, 1973): 133.
(4) Donald Mitchell, The Language of Modern Music (London & Boston: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1993): 97.
(5) Italo Calvino, “Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste,” in Why Read the Classics, trans. Martin McLaughlin (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1999): 110.
(6) I am indepted to the analysis of Odo Marquard for these thoughts. See the section entitled “Monomythical and Polymythical Thinking,” of his essay “In Praise of Polytheism,” in Farewell to Matters of Principle: Philosophical Studies (esp. page 93).
(7) polyphasic a. (OED, paraphrased): commonly used to describe an electronic design which simultaneously supplies or uses several different alternating currents which share the same voltage but are out of phase (the particular stage of their periodically recurring sequence of charges). [f. POLY + PHASE]
More generically, polyphasic describes a form which simultaneously carries several different sets of ‘information’ which share the same ‘language’ but exist in separate phases of the structure. As such they can be ‘picked-out’ by a reading which is in phase with their diffence. (note: one of the denotations of the word phase in the OED is: “3. (Chem.) Physically distinct form of matter that can be present in a system.”)

webphoto 043

2006-09-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

bluenote riding in wait

webphoto 042

2006-09-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

bluecornered

2006-06-23T00:59:00.000-07:00

. . . this earth a spot, a grain,
An atom, with the firmament compared
And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll
Spaces incomprehensible (for such
Their distance argues and their swift return
Diurnal) merely to officiate light
Round this opacious earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night; in all their vast survey
Useless besides, reasoning I oft admire,
How nature, wise and frugal could commit
Such disproportions, with superflous hand
. . .
................................................Milton

photo 009

2006-06-14T00:13:00.001-07:00

tools for putting the body through physics and geography - two

photo 008

2006-06-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

optionart-ks

webphoto 041

2006-06-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

slabarsunderladder

thoughtnote 5

2006-06-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

It is as if our form did not know how to resolve itself from one into two, from trunk into legs, from core into the extensions required to interact with the ground (the vast other beneath us with which gravity causes us to most closely associate) . . . and so it made a complication, our sex, in which we truly make the break from our singular selves into the multiplicity of the world: as body into body into new bodies . . . and so, also into time from space.
-
Above our sex, we split again . . . so that we can interact with the world at some separation from gravity’s reign: and so find the possibility to interact also with ourselves. With our back curved against the world, we focus our being to the front and physically form the loop in which the universe miraculously becomes self involved.

poem 015

2006-06-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

poetry passing time

(again)
poetry ends
(forever)
like time
(bored)
drawn from magazines
(quiet)
sitting still
(always)
in the face
(fronting)
all pain.

webphoto 040

2006-04-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

rubber above Zagreb

webphoto 039

2006-04-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

MAXXIS OUT

poem 014

2006-03-31T10:57:00.000-08:00

in building a home we set about it, mastering ourselves through our active creating, that wide universe built inside by that same self . . . mostly unformed, rarely brought to speech, even less written or passed along . . . little fundamental connections to the grounding incidentals, bits built into the core itself immersed . . . becoming who we are: that endless universe left mostly below the level of sense we share, instead felt like a chord holding true beneath it all . . . by artful profiles, we turn it out for others to see, still mysterious because still connected below the point above which is open to simple reason

photo 007

2006-03-26T02:16:00.000-08:00

tools for putting the body through physics and geography - one

photo 006

2006-03-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

huckstart - 24.03.06 - another fluidity

photo 005

2006-03-15T00:22:00.000-08:00

springsprungyellowgrass

poem 013

2006-03-14T17:26:00.000-08:00

In Linings from Jeremy Reed

In dark matters I abound,
surrounded by walls I cannot sound,
as poet I write whatever on,
wanting paper, serves as ground.

Scarred and scratching,
the mess into heaps; eccentric laughing,
with ideas messed with grime,
I turn to forms precise,
and figure my interest pointedly.

Thus, in manner, I speak to me,
pounding a course from letters wrung,
or using my sharpened lead I pull,
a line whose product begins the start,
of a world from part I come.

From out that centre I present,
by negatatives within mind’s reform,
tending myself past the peace,
of quiet calm reigning sovereign,
where my intent always furthers
places I need yet create.

photo 004

2006-03-10T01:33:00.000-08:00

snowgrate

webphoto 038

2006-03-03T00:58:00.000-08:00

rockcrop

1 for Clo

2006-02-27T02:07:00.000-08:00

'multilingual' must meet the multiple side of ambiguity somewhere . . .

Ambiguity

ambiguity n. (OED): Double meaning; instance of this; expression capable of more than one meaning. [ME, f. OF ambiguite or f. L ambigiguitas]
ambiguous a. (OED): Obscure; having double meaning; of doubtful classification; of uncertain issue. [f. L ambiguus doubtful f. ambigere (ambi- both ways, agere drive) + OUS]
Grammatical Ambiguity (Lexical or Syntactic Ambiguity): refers strictly to instances where the grammar specifies more than one meaning. It is distinct from cases in which the grammar specifies a single representation that then corresponds to potentially multiple refents. Grammatical ambiguity is internally generated. While it may not be fully systemic, it is a systematic product of either syntax or lexicon.

The interesting thing about systematic polysemy is its ability to become conventionalized, and so enter the structure of overt cultural norms. Our ability to process this kind of ambiguity depends upon a number of abstract and pragmatic issues. Interpretation is governed by things like useablity, as well as standards of meaningfulness like connection and coherence. Limited interpretations can then become conventionalized for different isolated requirements (useful or symbolic). This is the normal process by which comfort is achieved against multiplicity. In the same vein, uncertainties of interpretation are usually not recognized at all, provided a suitable conventionally driven understanding can be achieved without undo difficulty. Standard assumptions concerning the nature of things prevent us from straying into the “unknown” realm of other possibilities. This is most strongly the case when the ‘language’ used is a commonly shared code based upon pragmatic requirements. Both the independent life (order) of the code and the pressing need for which it used determine the depth to which our assumptions govern our perceptions.

webphoto 037

2006-02-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

between knees

thoughtnote 4

2006-02-27T01:57:00.000-08:00

Consciousness is a loop. A loop requires space. The consumption of space entails movement and distance and removal; all forms of trans-position. The presentation of things to consciousness occurs in consciousness; occurs within the space of the loop . . . occurs by the mechanism of intended reference. All of this is to say that presentation involves re-presentation. A thing’s presentation in consciousness equals that thing’s representing only itself. Art contains the whole world because the whole world is a represention within consciousness by way of subjective limitation. That limitation equals meaning, which equals interrelated form . . . formal body is that tertiary component of our existence, the idea, which couples the immediate and direct into relationships with both themselves and ourselves. This is the connection between a subject and its object. And this connection constitutes the sense of experience.

thoughtnote 3

2006-02-27T01:48:00.000-08:00

from Borges to Montale . . . the space behind conscious existence, opens . . .

...........You alone knew
...........that movement and stasis are one,
...........that the void is fullness and the clear sky
...........cloud at its airiest. . . .”

................Euginio Montale, “Xenia I,” in Satura {Poems}, trans. W. Arrowsmith (New
................York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998): 19.

thoughtnote 2

2006-02-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

The artifice of modern culture; its structures of value, knowledge, technique, and memory; make it necessary that the self be consciously constructed. We might argue that subjects simply exist and have no need of being constructed. However, culture, in its need to understand and empower itself, actively engages the subject as a topic of theory and investigation. Modernity has constructed its idea of subjectivity for numerous ends; some more neutral than others. As a culture constructs a metaphysics and epistemology in order to understand itself, a poetry to experience and express itself, and a mythology to comfort itself; it also develops various mechanism which use these constructs for their effectiveness in its exercise of power, both internally and externally. Thus the forces of political, economic, national and other such institutions have taken advantage of the modern subject-concept. They have used it to further their efficient operation, to defend or expand their territory (material or ideological), and they have worked to develop or change it accordingly. The notion of the subject both benefits and suffers from this involvement.

This double aspect contributes to the dialectics which propel cultures through change. Recently, this debate has questioned the foundations of western culture to their core. Modern thought, a tradition now in its own right, increasingly falls under attack by forces seeking a more inclusive, open and flexible culture . . . one more suitable to the increasing complexity of our means of interrelation and dividing up work, wealth and power. However, this attack does not preclude the complexity inherent in the deep structures of modernity. It is possible to strip away the biases external to the foundations of modernism and allow its foundations to inform us through the complexity which has so often been misunderstood, ignored, misrepresented or covered up by the powers that be. Such a resurrection must start with revisiting the metaphysical sites of the modern impulse. One such group of sites is that of the constructed subject and its implications. We exist as subjects and all enquiry ultimately begins there. However, subjects exist as part of reality as a whole, and as such, any inquiry into subjectivity immediately becomes an inquiry into the nature of reality itself.

thoughtnote 1

2006-02-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

Once reality is divided into subjective and objective parts their interrelation becomes problematic . . . in what way are they connected, and do they define each other's existence necessarily? For its part, the West has developed a long tradition of understanding the conscious ego as something essentially disconnected from its outer/exterior objects. Even before Descartes, the unified cosmos, which had held subjects and objects together in balance since antiquity, had begun to be replaced with an egalitarian construction in which the subject dominates. This construction can best be described as a neutral field within which the intending subject can exercise its fullest effects. For its part, philosophy has been busy generating a subject, newly self-conscious, which would be up to the task. The result has been a subject which primarily sees itself as an agent of control. Through its scepticism of orthodoxy, its refusal of authority, its commitment to progress, and most importantly, its confidence in its own powers of judgement; the relationship between the subjective and objective has increasingly become understood through this single particular category, its action and its exercise. At its most profound level, understanding reality based upon the requirements of keeping it under control, reduces the essence of things to mere depositories of potential content. They remain impenetrable save for their capacity to enter the subject-driven realm of experience and manipulation. This condition sets up the material foundation of reality as an object of experience, knowledge, desire. As such it stands in opposition, even frustration, to the nature of the subject; but it does so in a passive way, through its muteness and difference. I equivocate concerning whether this is a good or bad development. On one hand, it speaks of an existence out of balance. But perhaps this is temporary, and indicative of a limited understanding of what our dominant position fully entails . . . especially concerning responsibilities. On the other hand, this model incorporates its own latent forces of balance. In it, epistemology is not limited to the description of states of affairs relative to the attainment of knowledge, but includes our active (motivated) engagement of our objective context. The alienation of a world of cold facts is hereby potentially undone. In modernity’s alienation of subjects from objects there lies a seed of unity. The philosophical battle pitting the contemplative spirit (the true home of philosophy's original impulse to speculate and doubt) against the overwhelming pragmatic spirit of calculative control was introduced to cultural practice precisely when positivism tried to throw it out. Our folly was always inherently exposed . . . as if we could ever replace the position conceived of for the gods.

thoughtnote 0

2006-02-27T01:13:00.000-08:00

- a single sentence from Borges and we can begin:

“There is something that wants to live, something that opens a passage [a spatial loop?] across matter, or in spite of matter.”

........Jorge Luis Borges, “Immortality” in Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger, trans. E. Allen, S.J. Levine and E. Weinberger (New York:Viking, 1999.): 489.

webphoto 036

2006-02-02T22:32:00.000-08:00

sixside stride

webphoto 035

2006-02-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

post dive curving ride

poem 012

2006-01-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

The line’s end

Trying to find the end of places,
crisp-eyed, out running from stilled standing,
finding ends within cluttered traces
across papered spaces, mirrored looks
over edges, cuttings, knife-edged stable landing.

Because lines seen, divide and multiply,
I cannot understand that my eyes see an end,
because lines exist to hold the sides they imply
whatever surface or volume over which they tend;
we all look to find some standing reply
some reliant line up which our backs ascend.

Then standing, we walk a path, crossing lines we do not see.
Feeling our movement progress – like dancing through a fill
which emotion calm-in-place, yet creating questions for free . . .
................free, free, freedom looks at infinity,
................and freely balks losing with feeble nerve, it’s will.

Like a wall, at its opening, seeing the same wall; another
..............hole and glassy reflection traced over the outside tract
................understanding its many edges makes clear
the idea of outside . . . is it there or here?

webphoto 034

2006-01-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

sitoesando

2005-12-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

wishingforosix

biejubugbemine

-bjb-

biejubugbemine

workphoto 005

2005-10-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

scafwdpile

2005-10-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

artcrop series #3 - poetry market

webphoto 033

2005-10-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

wave.alalima

workphoto 004

2005-09-11T01:19:00.000-07:00

offline steel sneeking under column

workphoto 003

2005-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

well

The Status of the Theoretical Project

2005-08-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Looking at John Hejduk's work, and reading its gloss by Alberto Perez-Gomez, raises questions concerning the place of theory in relation to architectural practice. Is the "theoretical project" a form of authentic architecture? Perez-Gomez argues that phenomenology has proven fallacious the assumption that "theory and practice (mind and body) relate to one another as in a mechanistic diagram." (1) Theory is an activity of consciousness, and consciousness is always embodied consciousness. Their intrinsic interrelation means that thinking cannot occur except through the content which it intends. This connection rejects any implications of Cartesian dualism. It is experienced content, whether of thought, dream or sensation, which provides the phenomenal ground of our existence. Perez-Gomez agrees with this, but his own exclusionary polemic does not accept the full implications of the interactive nature of this ground.(2) The concretization of the theoretical (be it Perez-Gomez's or Hejduk's) in the mimetic/metonymic work of Hejduk shows the limitations of their approach to architecture. Architecture as art includes a priori the aspects which Perez-Gomez shunts aside...especially the logos of science.

Architecture is a discipline with a very wide cultural base. It reflects the full complexity and ambiguity of 'knowing' in the profound sense because it combines the dipoles of practical and poetic life. It is not merely that it combines the aesthetic with the structural, the technical, the rational (order and program), the sensual and the intellectual (historical memory, the symbolic, etc.), but that it operates as an 'art' and a 'thinking' of all of those components as well. In philosophical jargon, real architecture is always both itself and meta-architecture . . . it operates as both a specific object and as a set of relationships and qualities which engage across the whole of culture. Perez-Gomez claims that theory is always embodied theory (embodied within practice). It is difficult to assess the truth of this claim, especially in its hard form that theory is intrinsic with the full nature of the practical. Heidegger's understanding of how we dwell amongst things, how we orient and find belonging through our interrelation with things at hand and things made by hand, shows that the opposite is surely true. Practice always involves the theoretical; directly or without intention. However, theory can stand significantly apart, within what we call the ideal; a thin, reduced, and thus abstract connection to reality's infinitude. Its participation in the fullness of culture is governed by a coefficient of unrealizability which arises through its interaction with the real (existing, in part, outside of its control). This supports the argument that theoretical projects are meta-architectural, and however important as disclosing, critical or inventive explorations, they cannot constitute architecture proper.

In Hejduk's work, especially his inclusion of the written word as an architectural device, the question becomes whether the boundaries of architecture are elastic enough to include written language. Heidegger's explication of language as the "house of being" is misapplied by Perez-Gomez in his effort to directly relate it to architecture while negating the peculiar qualities which give architecture its noumetic identity. Language involves a displacement, allowing for indirect reference to the eidetic in experience, but architecture's reference is of a different kind. Architecture does not exist as displaced from fundamental reality, but exists as a part of it . . . it exists within and without of experience. It straddles between the ideal and the real. It relates to life's complex of physical, emotional and intellectual intentions by making 'place' which reflects, suggests, encourages, permits, discourages or excludes them from possibility. Furthermore, architecture's explication of life's richness requires of its occupants a participation of equal attention. Architecture is completed through its occupation.

Hejduk's use of words to search for a figural ground provides a powerful criticism of the generalized loss of poiesis within the mainstream of modern culture, but it ignores the real need for the reintroduction of poetics into the very fabric of architecture; into its own devices and referential systems. Heidegger's notion of 'naming' is epistemologically prior to metynomy, and is not approached through such literal devices. Even complex narrative cannot stand in substitution for the inherent meanings of architectural organization, structural expression, colour, texture, material and form. At the deepest level, it is wrong to claim that the theory which reflects the mind is no longer a logos, but a poiesis. The revelation of Heidegger is that the ultimate ground reveals itself as a point of collapse between these two. Hejduk's work, as concrete poetry, as storia remains as fiction, a luxury which real architecture cannot afford. Real architecture satisfies by maintaining an uneasy equilibrium between logos and poiesis.

Notes -
1. Alberto Perez-Gomez, “John Hejduk and the Cultural Relevance of Theoretical Projects,” in AA Files, no. 13, Autumn 1986: 26.

2. By this I refer to his discourse which pits common sense opposites against each other at the profound level of ontological and metaphysical foundations. For example: poiesis against logos, prose against poetry, the specific and mutable against the ideal and universal, and further; disclosure of meaning against invention, and modern body image against that of the Classical.

2005-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

artcrop series # 2 - drawing project

photo 003

2005-07-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

contorted hazel

workphoto 002

2005-07-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

constructed cuff

". . . the idea of nonfiction is paucity in plain view . . ."

2005-07-04T01:40:00.000-07:00

Reality is too difficult to sustain full on. It is too big, too present, too lonely, too beautiful . . . in sum, too much, too meaningless. Even though we seek to know and feel it from time to time, it is unbearable to live with. Therefore, there is a need within common life to allow one’s self to be persuaded by (even a need to deliberately create) some form of living-fiction. However, reality’s dictates, especially psychological and inter-personal, are always present. They can no more be postponed than eating and breathing. Nothing is resolved on its own. Nothing comes without being paid for. The question becomes one of how much we can borrow . . . and for how long. This does not imply a difference between our desires and the limitations imposed upon us by reality. Rather, the difference exists most poignantly within. Reality is the other pole of freedom, it is what constructs our loop of consciousness within the world. When our personal myth diverges too much, we are forced back in line. If we resist we are eventually made to suffer the required penalty. One of the great stories of our shared experience is rooted in the opposition of realty and fiction. All stories are underpinned by the clash between the differences between characters (a clash of the unreal), and negotiations required by the living out of daily life within our limited opening upon reality (what has ultimately been described as Dasein). How much room is there for us to inhabit? What happens when we hit and push against its/our shared limit? How does the failure of our invention impact our life over time? How are we defined . . . what do we experience when reality fights back and tells us who we are in the face of who we want to be.

webphoto 032

2005-07-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

framing a couple of birch trees in Grand Metis, Quebec
a project by architect Hal Ingberg
photo by Robert Baronet

webphoto 031

2005-05-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

rising bird

webphoto 030

2005-03-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

sink

2005-02-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

Gio Ponti: Architecture and Incoherence

Germano Celant states in "The Substantiality of the Impalpable: Gio Ponti," that Ponti's position "...did not consist in the illusion of an abstract linearity, but in the fluidity, directed as much at the modern as at the ancient, of a not knowing and a not recognizing, which he tied to daily experience..." This attaches a primary epistemological characterization to the core of Ponti's architectural thought and work which raises a number of interesting issues regarding the foundations of architectural culture. To argue that experience can only involve us in a reality of incoherence, and that thought's progression and expansion is based upon a synthesis of the otherwise uncertain, places the problems of human dwelling in a peculiar (non-obvious) situation. To take on those problems most fully (beyond the practical into the profound) is to accept the chaotic as the fundamental background of work. Ponti's own work, especially when considering the plan, stands outside or beyond the concept of coherence. While it is normal for much architectural work to "consist in the illusion of an abstract linearity," it cannot deliver on its promises of well maintained selfcoherence.

Ponti would argue against the monolithic in architecture as a mimesis, or at least a symbolism, of the absolute. In the arts, as in any other discipline, the realizability of absolute knowledge promises the safety of being able to justify artistic moves. No wonder it is the weapon of choice for embattled ideologies of all kinds. In architecture it reduces the profound operation of buildings to a simple representational function. It is not important what the nature of the underlying 'certainty' is, beyond that there is one and that it is being referenced by the work's being as it is. Ponti's position steps beyond the whole arena of ideology. He understands that idealism does not hold power over reality. Theory can be constructed and goals maintained, but in the realm of action (and design exists as action) it is imperative that contingency be accepted. The distance between the ideal and the real is not a problem to be overcome, but rather, a clearing in which fantasy and possibility reside. The open-ended nature of life (fantasy) prevails over stasis, where stasis is the realm of absolutes and extreme opposition...the realm of simplification wielded for its utility through the exercise of power and control.

To avoid the absolutes of architectural ideology requires the rejection of the very idea of an attainable certainty. According to Celant, Ponti accepts changes of style and insists upon an "emancipation from any rigid definition of tendency." Such a rigidity exists in the typical, the usual, the ordinary...its rejection is of the slavish demarcation of things. Intuitively, we might rightly ask what is to be gained from such a position. The answer lies in the retention of the 'pursuit of identity' as an always open question; the answer to which is governed by a kind of common sense version of the Heisenburg principle where extreme absolutes represent the containing limit. In concrete terms, design benefits from a never finalized questioning of its basic concepts. The architectural use of geometry, the notion of built order, and especially the concept of program must remain open to explorations of the richness they receive from the innumerable 'acts of human living.' After all, architecture is a 'place where things relate' at numerous levels within culture. It must present the fullness of human complexity through an unencumbered consideration of all its relationships and meanings. It is here that architecture becomes grounded. The ultimate end of Ponti's freedom and fantasy is the 'invigoration' of space and structure. This grounding-in-life includes the clear perception of limits and boundaries which allows us to separate fantasy from the merely arbitrary. This is as close to justification as art can come. The lived world is, after all, governed by fluidity, not absolute certainty. It consists in the multiple and fugitive nature of our experience...not only of sensation but of thought as well. The possible perception of this deeper truth is characterized by numerous words used in Celant's text: insubstantiality, contingency, ambiguity, mystery, incoherence, transition, vibration, palpitation, transformation, mutation, dynamism, and enigma.

webphoto 029

2005-01-18T03:43:00.000-08:00

Niagara ice crystals
(cropped from an image by Sam Javanrough, from his website " daily dose of imagery - toronto," at http://wvs.topleftpixel.com)

webphoto 028

2005-01-14T19:42:00.000-08:00

my pachinko dream

webphoto 027

2005-01-08T02:20:00.000-08:00

kievorange

webphoto 026

2005-01-07T03:21:00.000-08:00

some Baltic shore

2005-01-05T07:38:00.000-08:00

artcrop series #1 - "The Knot" cropped

poem 011

2005-01-05T06:42:00.000-08:00

a personal humoured message by polemgrom
.......................................................................for mw

brilliant challenging crazy friend,
you want me to think, and think hard,
...........about mustachioed Nikky Tesla,
and crazy Reich . . . Willy Nilley to schoolboys frot with the usual frustrations,
making moulds of themselves for science, lost in lust and plywood,
And it is not only hard for them,

it gets harder for me, harder than even John Giorno thought,
I scare easily beside anything esoteric, when it gets close, I mean,

you have set upon me with contemporaries of my own age,
so I can't even use the comfort of time sitting between us,
like a soft barrier protecting my smallest being,
You bastard queen . . . why put your armies so close to mine,
is it to conquer
................or to have me under you?
Yes, I protest too much . . . you are right; the battle will bring love and union
(of a strange sort)

vacume energy, massfree and given to technological promiss?
You jest young royal,
and I wish I could abdicate the crown you see upon mine own,
I wish you would accept what I like to offer: a simple drawing,
out of my ease with leaden eyes upon paper.

But, instead I will honour you with thought.

webphoto 025

2005-01-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

Chongqing street lights

webphoto 024

2005-01-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

how the body supports its rest

2005-01-01T04:55:00.000-08:00

Threshold & Discontinuity

“Continuity becomes a problem when you try to figure out what it means to be “between.” [1]

Where and how does distinctiveness arise out of simplicity (homogeneity)? The idea of “threshold” allows a form of answer to this question to begin . Our perception depends upon distinction. The distinctions created by acts of perception necessarily recognize (because they depend upon) both sides of a threshold. Afterall, a threshold is constituted by the marking off of surrounding contents from each other by watersheds of difference. This marking off is a kind of metaphysical cut in which reality is both held together and separated in a single act of recognition. It is based upon the existence of discontinuity within what is, and in turn, defines what the existence of discontinuity demands; given that the being of what is possesses the character of being whole.

Modernism has been struggling with this problem through its history. Seurat attempted to paint the discontinuity of impression. Each daub of paint standing with isolated independence, while at the same time acting as a threshold joining neighbouring daubs together into a stable-tending complex. In a similar manner, Father Gregor (Johann Mendel) found genetic discontinuity from within the statistical regularity of the Law of Segregation. He showed that the traits or “factors” paired in successive generations of peas do not shade into one another as Darwin had claimed they would. Instead they continue to appear or not appear independently; “segregated” from each other. There is no homogeneous mixing of hereditary material; no smooth continuity. What there is however, is genetic implication in spite of the disjunction of its transferrence.

This kind of action was most potently described in the 19th century by the mathematician Richard Dedekind. The Dedekind Cut is a mathematical definition of irrational numbers which separates the digital from the continuous in arithmetic.[2] Neither whole numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 …) nor rational ratios are continuous. There always exist more of the same between them. Irrational numbers also exist between. However, these have the further difficulty that they are impossible to distinguish positively. How can the sequence of real numbers extend continuosly? Without “space” between succeeding numbers, (if you can always find more numbers between any two in the sequence) it would seem that no two numbers can define locations which are truly side by side.[3] The genius of Dedekind was the realization that this difficulty defined the very nature of reality. Each arithmetic separation was a threshold which both cut and maintained continuity. By itself it promised an account of smooth change within a discontinuously experienced multiplicity of difference.

Likewise, change is also a conundrum of the discontinuous. Without continuity, how can change come about between entities? What about entropy? It describes a process of change: between singularity and multiplicity, between the central and the peripheral. Max Plank’s so called “elementary quantum of action” describes a distinct limit to the size (smallness) of step in the increase or decrease of energy. The quantum (energy “atom”) proves that energy does not change in a smooth or continuous manner. It itself is proved by its necessity as a constant in the equation satisfying Boltzmann’s conception of entropy as the sum of logarithms of probabilities; the probabilities under consideration being different combinations of distinct bits and pieces. In other words, entropy cannot be described as a continuity either. Instead it is a process described by quantum changes which themselves result in a continuity of directedness . . . a directedness seemingly aimed at producing an ever devolving distinctiveness from the once homogeneous singularity of physical existence.

[1] William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997): 33.
[2]His theoretical cut states that if a function (number field) can be cut at any point or number so that all remaining values are either greater or smaller than that point/number, and that same point can belong equally to either set, then the interval is continuous by definition. It is not necessary to examine numbers themselves to determine if they are between or next to other numbers.
[3]This language seems to make numbers out to be more than they are - as if they had breadth and were not mere abstract locators of infinitely small points. Numbers, as points, are by definition cuts in reality.

webphoto 023

2005-01-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

heading home from new years - its 2005

webphoto 022

2004-12-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

the last day of 2004

workphoto 001

2004-12-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

allora . . . Oltremare
Italian construction as sculpted by Leandro Stanzini and I in Vancouver.

Including Complexity

2004-12-10T01:53:00.000-08:00

What is a jewel if not a concentric and focusing point or object . . . that which focuses the real?

Complexity exists; simply and obviously.

Recently, it would seem that it has become some sort of virture to express the complexity of modern life. Many streams of our cultural production are bent upon increasing the complexity of their products. Indeed, much work seems to add complexity to our experience as a means to express its pre-existing and central characterization of our current lives. However, we can be overwhelmed as natural complexity is mismanaged and the world becomes increasingly dominated by variants of noise: speed, contradiction, competition and insistence vis a vis our attention.

We can be overwhelmed and often are.

We cannot ignore complexity. There is always a need to deal with it. But how? Much 20th century art has worked to express or re-present our overwhelming sense of complexity. Restricted within the scope of aesthetic presentation, the whirl of modern urban life is placed before the viewer for comment. Some architects have likewise tried to express a wordly level of complexity in their designs; making into material expressively fractured and confusing compositions. To do so is a grave limitation of their art. after all, the success of such work depends upon a severe limitation or compromise of the fullness of the architectural aggenda.

The working of such buildings (working far beyond mere utility, if such terms can even be said) is sublimated to their expressive quality . . . an expressiveness which relies on a sculpturally reduced use of elements. It is impossible for buildings which are vehicles for the abstract expression of general themes of complexity to be focused on the expressive organization of the complexities already inhertent in their own context. That context is constituted by the miriad of conditions (site, material, use, etc.) from which need and desire have caused them to be financed and built in the first place. The mimicry of complexity and contradiction comes from an extra-architectural aggenda. While there is no need to create complexity for the sake of illustrating its existence in our lives, there is a need to give form to the complexity which already exists – program, urban issues, structure, circulation, the interrelationships of the inside-outside interface. Architecture needs to marshall the complexity that exists to express some form of “world.”

Architecture could be a means by which we focus complexity within the real.

The pre-existing complexities of a place can be exposed or concentrated in points of revealing which, like jewels, focus and structure the inclusion of that complexity in a project. This inclusion need not be of the complexity itself but rather of the idea of its expereience or presence within the work. The inclusion is an act of artifice. Complexity then takes on a figural presence. Instead of masking the complexity which naturally exists within an object, it is given places in which it can effect the experience of that object without undue domination . . . without overwhelming the subject of that experience. In other words, it needs to be to be set into an accord with the singular and simple (indeed, with the empty), such that together they compose a sensible set of figure-to-context relationships. The nature of these relationships find governance through need and desire. This does not mean that the root of all is purely subjective. The subject is only the vehicle in which the object (in line with infinity) is filtered in meaningful (finite) ways.

webphoto 021

2004-12-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

no litter here - montréal

2004-12-10T01:08:00.000-08:00

artcrop series #1 - cage, 2000

poem 010

2004-12-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

a forstalled death foretold

We be,
bleached bone,
all centre caged,
wind blown,
and burned it be,
our first,
as we see,
all awkwardness,
shared by an account,
forclosed, so small,
it was drawn,
long past reason,
....reasoning on,
through salt,
dried skin,
covered bone,
left slowly in retreat,
as a savings,
withdrawn,
we give,
....we be,
like lead on paper
scribed,
drawn idle and still,
before giving lastly away.

2004-12-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

artcrop series #1 - City with Strip of Feuille Mort, 2000

2004-12-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

¤
a bit from Gunslinger, [1]
. . .
Nor could, my child, that which exists
be more Here and less There
The thing that can be thot
and that for the sake of which
the thot exists
is the same as the only function
and in it the Power of Reality rides
behind the oneway vision of the darkened glass
snowblind with fixity, on the Equator
. . .

[1] Edward Dorn, Gunslinger (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989): 174.

2004-11-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

artcrop series #1 - talfelk, 1999

webphoto 020

2004-11-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

belly . . . not the band, the home

poem 009

2004-11-28T01:22:00.000-08:00

singled scaled
.
every mortal thing acts simple
is iota
a jot I sing
one thing arched and sprung
like a bridge which holds
between.

Spotted by an other
plain cut thing
becomes that self completing ring
the dot
reflecting everything, while
dealing out all being
.......that indoor self
.......delves searchingly
.......and same, so it goes itself,
speaking loops which curl
as this blanket becomes a spelling friend
the single cries
in hope it scales
always missing its other,
.......friend.

photopost 003

2004-11-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

15:56:26:11:2004
junebug is now 5wks
[leonardo da vinci]

webphoto 019

2004-11-23T14:21:00.000-08:00

walkingpastserge'seye: montréal

poem 008

2004-11-23T13:07:00.000-08:00

sustino-madre

perhaps the gentle expansion
..................of your eyes
sent my hand – warm and dry – toward our child,
opening to protect his in mine.
.......You possess this power, hidden
in all the smallest places,
in love that makes important
.......spaces
..................once seen so minor.

webphoto 018

2004-11-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

wired lamps in studio

webphoto 017

2004-11-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

a pigeon takes flight in Plaza de Mayo last spring
in Buenos Aires

third november essay

2004-11-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

Ordering, Meaning, and Distinction
architecture topics

The issue of architectural order is overlaid by the more general issues of created significance. Formal configuration, like any ordering, is a product of conscious action; effecting the intelligible perception of, and affected by the intelligible potential of, the material world. Any attempt to penetrate the nature of order is equally an attempt to reach the foundations by which that structure is a reflection of our understanding of reality. Immediately we find ourselves facing the question of the grounding of our sensual-mental experience, and the problem of its reference - that which our understanding directs us to, directly or by implication.

The discipline of architecture, its geometrical and formal dimensions, rests secure in the belief that its existence is justified by being a fundamental derivative of human nature. But this security is not an a priori condition. It is necessary for architecture to forever earn it through an ongoing effort of self-questioning and self-definition. Architecture cannot take itself for granted but must continuously defend itself against the forces of an everchanging situation. As an independent participant in the general culture it faces the same consuming forces as all of the arts. Its prosaic aspect places it in a more precarious position vis-a-vis any powers actively working to reduce its significance. The topic of order is a subset of the more general human desire for meaning and orientation within the threatening chaos and otherness within which we live.[1]

A primary question which needs to be asked of any discipline is whether it is responsible for the creation of its own significance, or is it dependent on another body of understanding for this. A discipline which relies on outward authority for its meaning does not possess the integration necessary to stand as a fundamental means of exploring and relating to the world. Such a reliance effectively reduces the discipline and its output becomes dominated by a mercantilized character. As articles produced under extrinsic constraints, its products possess a relatively weak value in and of themselves. Instead, they are valued as objects of utility, as currency for trade, as sites of economic investment and speculation, and so on. Just as they obtain their guarantee from an external source, they are chiefly valued for reasons outside of their inherent character. In such a situation, they cannot constitute the material part of a living project. Nor can the discipline of their production be constituted by the processes implicit in its own subject matter and their interaction with the ever changing world which comprises its context.

If architecture is to assert its position as a fundamental human activity, it must understand itself as a body of knowledge in its own right. It must resist its own reduction by other forces; whether these forces are seemingly friend or enemy. The increasing domination of architecture by the mercantile, the utilitarian, the economic, and the technical is no more threatening than its confusion with writing, painting, sociology, psychology and other such bodies. This is not to say that architecture does not share much with all of these. In its operation and theoretical awareness, it deals with similar issues in parallel ways. Even the language it uses parallels that of many other disciplines. But this is not surprising. All human endeavour shares the human condition, and all thought begins in the same place.

Thought, no less than architecture, requires an order, a structure of interrelations which informs itself and is what we term 'meaning.' Fundamental concepts operate across all disciplines and philosophical questions concerning metaphysics, ontology and epistemology impact every mode of understanding and expression. But this does not mean that architecture is equal to any other mode of understanding or expression. Rather, it exists as a process which parallels the efforts of writing, poetry, philosophy, mathematics, physics, sociology, and other such bodies. When it looks to any of these external discourses to explain or justify its theory, its operation, or its designs, then it becomes removed from the inherent set of issues which ground them all. It becomes removed from the condition of life and suffers a profound loss of integrity.

[1] It is important to note that this chaos and otherness is not fully constituted by the natural world, but is equally represented by the creations of human culture; be they objects, concepts, systems, or institutions.

webphoto 016

2004-11-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

a crop from No. 3. Parallel Waves, Point Reyes, California, 1980
from the "Overview" Series of 50 aerial photographs in two 5x5 grids
by Marilyn Bridges
[some of her work is posted on photoarts.com]

webphoto 015

2004-11-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

waterfoot

webphoto 014

2004-11-15T04:44:00.000-08:00

Ed Ruscha
End to the Things Made Out of Human Talk
1977
[Oil on Canvas, 36x84 in.]

second november essay

2004-11-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

buildings are figures, not ideas

No matter how complex they are within their own context and presence, buildings operate through their approximation or approach to wholeness. Architecture is essentially synthetic; it is not abstract [1] in any reductive or analytical sense. It requires embodiment and sits as a body within the world. Any body demands stability and coherence; even if this can, at best, be achieved through an unstable equilibrium of otherwise incoherent parts. Ideas are incorporeal. They are not limited by rationality or compromise. Compromise, like the irrational, lies at the heart of habitation. When architecture becomes dominated by its idea, when its body takes form by way of illustarting ideas, when it is determined by a hegemony of ideas alone; buildings are pushed towards the anti-figural in their design.

I include the phrase “in their design” because it is my contention that they can never be so in their operation or physical -experiential presense. However, when they are pushed towards the anti-figural, they sustain losses of disconnection from otherwise essential involvements in the larger world. They suffer a reduction from the fullness of their program and from the dimensioned relationship they ought to maintain with the human body. The result is a significant reduction of their ability to house the interest and desire of the mind. Buildings-as-ideas cannot help being anti-architectural in this sense. Pure ideas, philosophy, cannot survive incorporation without loss: loss of purity, loss of isolated wholeness. Buildings-as-buildings are defined by forces of interaction. They carry innumerable compromises to their integrity brought on by the complexity and contradiction displayed by being related to “everything” else.

Architecture as Idea operates best on paper and other abstracting presentations. Precisely by not being built, by not becoming architecture at all, it retains enough coherence and isolation to be meaningful. If built, it must compromise or fail. Their ideas, built into them, are compromised. They could only hope to become ‘models,’ not buildings. If they lie at the periphery of use and need, they may sit as embodied abstraction – as objects of contemplative enquiry, as art.

[1] Here the meaning of abstract is to be weighted towards its verb use; meaning to deduct, remove; and most particularly to disengage the attention from, and dissemble. [abstract3 v.t. (OED): Deduct, remove; (euphem.) steal; disengage (attention etc.) from; consider abstractly; summarize; hense ~or n. [f. abstract1]. This sense possesses the metaphysical and experiential implications of reducing complexity and suspending necessary connectivity (of parts or meanings). This meaning is tied to the adjectival use of abstract; meaning that which is left after an operation which separates it from matter and parctice. [abstract1 a. (OED): 1. Separated from matter, practice, or particular examples; not concrete; . . . [ME f. OF, or f. L abstractus p.p. pf abs (trahere draw)]].

webphoto 013, poem 007

2004-11-13T04:04:00.000-08:00

Poem 006, Walking Down to Sherbrooke, is the second of a trilogy "Three Poems of Brief Belonging," set in Montreal in 1987. The series begins with a reflection upon the peace of summer reading in a quiet walled park on the city's upper slopes near Parc Mont Royal. The poem of this memory, refuge, begins the trilogy. I came across this webphoto of Montreal schoolgirls on one of the streets rising up Mont Royal . . . (a smaller group) but reminiscent of the wall of youthful energy which disrupts my own subsequent Walking Down to Sherbrooke.

poem 007:

refuge
. . . . . . 31.04.87 – shady, warm, 3:00 p.m.

. . . 4 greystone walls . . . turning back the spring sun’s
. . . . . . . . emergent craze, and,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . together with bright leaves,
creating quiet; one bounded cool place (behind,
. . inside, rested) – I sat inscribed by infinite things,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .but governed by just some -
. . . .the sun’s set sets out words by Camilio Cela,
. . . . . . . . privileged within Percy-Walters Park,
. . . . the square of benches; the single
. . . . afternoon,
. . . . . . . ..alone and bounded
. . . . by walls and pages – I within the book’s removal,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .it’s third city of cover
. . . . Montréal, park, reading and page.
. . . . . . ...together under that simple sky,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .the warmth of spring
. . under the shade of civilizing trees,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . detained.

webphoto 012

2004-11-11T03:50:00.000-08:00

the beautiful parts of my front yard trees

poem 006

2004-11-11T01:55:00.000-08:00

walking down to Sherbrooke
. . . . . . . . . . . . 31.04.87- Rue Redpath, sunny, warm, 3:30 p.m.

Forward then down, forward and down.
. . . . .foot after foot falls,
. . . . .making quick stops; sloping over ground,
. . . . .arrested in slow awareness
. . . . .to (then) be found . . .

Suddenly surrounded,
. . . . . . . . . falling to full stop,
. . . . . . . . . within a spread of joyful accents,
. . . . . eyes blocked and jammed,
. . . . . squint flashed by sun,
. . . . . . . . . uniformed schoolgirls making for home,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a breathing plaid moving wall,
. . . . . . . . . with descent reduced, I am (stalled)
. . . . . . held for an instant, before lent again,
back walking, back to the city’s blurring gist:
. . . . . . . . . restored downward; halting,
. . . . . . . . . gait falling, foot after foot tracking,
out, under and below . . . forward again to fussing activity
. . . . . . pointing and surrounding and making,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pointless my ceaseless turning.

quote

2004-11-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

. . . that . . .
effigy in frozen music,
horned and terrible,
of the human form divine,
that eternal symbol of wisdom
and of prophesy
which, if aught that the imagination
or the hand . . .
has wrought . . .
of soultransfigured
and of soultransfiguring
deserves to live,
deserves to live.
James Joyce [1]

[1] James Joyce, Ulysses

webphoto 011

2004-11-09T20:12:00.001-08:00

aquarium wave, vancouver

webphoto 010

2004-11-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

first november essay

2004-11-04T01:54:00.000-08:00

first november essay Duchamp and the Ready-Made

Octavio Paz speaks of "ready-mades" as an-artistic; works of art whose "interest is not plastic but critical or philosophical."[1] If we accept this, and there is plenty of support in Duchamp's own writings for accepting this, we quickly fall into the realm of contradiction. That a work of art might not be plastic, but rather something almost outside, over or past "art," that it be an exploration, not of itself (its processes and material), but of an intellectual struggle to discover the place and value of art, all of this places the "ready-made" within a much larger context than a mere work. Or, it illustrates how there is no such thing as 'mere work.' Duchamp would seem to be struggling to get to the basis which creates our interest (a profound connection) in art in the first case. Works, by being 'interesting' or meaningful, stand between our awareness and its anihilation. They, by definition, call their own existence into question. What then makes "ready-mades" of value any more than any other work: industrial products or art works for example? Are "ready-mades" still of value, or were they wholely exhausted within their own history?

Questions of value are not only philosophical, they involve the nature of our consumption of art. This consumption is a fundamentally social act. Art is an exchange between artist and observer. But what are the conditions for success? Is it true that to come away from a painting with something meaningful (of sense) requires that we first know everything possible about who created it? Surely, the social connection which has an artwork at its intersection relies on something deeper, something fundamentally shared by all, something which does not require a literary accompaniment. It only adds to the rigour of the "ready-made" that it is offered as intellectual work, while the material object which houses the effort only serves to keep it opaque.

The desire is to ask Duchamp for an explanation...the whole point of the work is strengthened by his denial to give an answer...or to give an non-answer: 'I don't know, I just felt like it.' Just because he plays his game in the gallery of the mind does not mean that Duchamp is playing a discursive game. He is producing art about art, using our understanding of the objective as the material he manipulates. It is not the object which is of interest, but our relation to it and the context in which it is placed. The "ready-made" attains its value from the force it exerts on us to reassess our perception of our world. This is an act of reconnection to the fundamentals of our existence. After all, perception, as a connection between the experiencing subject and its forever distanced object, is the embodiment of the ambiguities of epistemological desire and the universe's refusal to answer. But, why do we need to be reconnected in this way. Art, like all human activity aimed at awareness, is prone to the dulling effects of habit and repitition. To overcome this we need to continually re-invent our cultural productions, to continually seek newness.

The "ready-made" attempts to resusitate the habitual observer by criticizing the formulaic, the systematic, the rational (as assumed to be), and the prejudicially accepted canons of taste. The new is placed within the context of the habitually old in order to frustrate and contradict it. This is not done with any desire to progress beyond the old. There is no progress here, just expression. The role of the "ready-made" is to keep life going...to keep art and our experience of it alive in our experience of reality. The "ready-made" is a metaphysical attitude turned into art through a play within the space which ties art to its very material incarnation. The physical is not the endpoint of the work of art. Against it resides something other (an-aesthetically) which removes us from the sensual influence of what is at first hand, spatially and temporally. The expression contradicts itself in order to avoid conforming to any preconception, to get away from the taste developed to quiet our dissatisfaction with our limited awareness. Freedom from ourselves is the value found here. The "ready-made" interests us because it holds a mirror to the reality we too often ignore in our repetitive habitual lives.

[1] Octavio Paz, “The Ready-made,” in Marcel Duchamp in Perspective ed., Joseph Mashek (New York: Prentice Hall, 1975): 84.

webphoto 009

2004-11-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

Alberto Sughi - To Go Where - crop

webphoto 008

2004-10-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

trunkbark

poem 005

2004-10-31T13:05:00.000-08:00

Arbor

Upon my back, I raise my eyes,
Above my garden, the sky draws out its circuit
as if pinned by the spindle of my nose,
The grass damp beneath my clothes,
My garden stands above me like an arbor
holding the universe close.

webphoto 007

2004-10-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

green water

Existence equals copula plus substance.

2004-10-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

Existence requires an architecture, a structure of interrelations which informs itself and is what we term 'meaning.' Language is made up of vocabulary, a lexical base composed of different words each of which has a "proper" meaning attached to it. However, it does not function, that is it does not speak and produce phrases, unless the words are assembled in a series put together around some verb form. Verbs allow the discursive string (the unidimensionally linear) to turn over, or around, or back on itself and so occupy some kind of multidimensional space. It is the creation of this opening that allows for the possibility of meaningful utterance. In this way, language is a reality parallel to the physical and the conscious (Dasein). The significance of its structure comes into being through the verb; the connecting-relating element which brings it from one dimension into the realm of another. The copula allows existence to appear...to be self-evident. Copula and existence are one and the same. The verb that is always at the base of meaning is that of existence: “to be.” All verbs around which words are assembled to say something about each other are derived from the base verb “to be.” The verb is the indispensable condition of all discourse and the entire verbal species can be reduced to the single one that signifies: “to be.” In reality, there is only one verb, the verb “to be,” compounded, for all other verb forms, with attributes:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I sing = I am + singing.[1]

The verb “to be,” like lone existence, is without determinable meaning . . . its role is the syntactical function which allows other words to relate to each other, it functions as the threshold of meaning and allows language to function. From another perspective, the function of “to be” is manifest as the re-presentational component of language. The operation which turns the discursive string back around on itself is the same as that through which language re-presents reality . . . it functions as the multidimensional linguistic space paralleling the multidimensional space in which reality decomposes itself and allows the appearance of difference. Both “spaces” allow for the most basic requirement of meaning: difference and interrelation within limitation. In conjunction with the lexical aspect (including verbal attributes) of language, the copula “to be” becomes substantive . . . the horizon of meaning.

[1] This sample comes from Michel Foucault.

2004-10-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

“A method can, but need not, be one of the consequences of a system.”[1]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arnold Schoenberg

[1] Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea (London: 1951); 107.

photo 002

2004-10-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

ditch walk, upper Lenno, Italy

photo 001

2004-10-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

round window, Lenno, Italy

photopost 003

2004-10-26T01:25:00.000-07:00

. . . without Donald Judd, Robert Therrien
. . . enlarges the chair:

Robert Therrien, "Under the Table," 1994, wood and metal, 117 inches high.

October Essay - Proportion is Visible Reason.

2004-10-26T01:24:00.000-07:00

If I wish to make a bed, to design one, can I do it the way I design a building?

Any object produced through work exists within a complex realm of ideas. This realm constitutes the boundaries which define its place within the categories of cultured objects. Donald Judd tried to make a coffee table out of a sculptural work and transgressed the boundaries which differentiate objects of furniture from those of sculpture. In his words, the work was debased and produced a bad table which he threw away. Revisiting this failure twenty years later, Judd concluded that the configuration and scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. Their intentions differ too fundamentally. The practical arts rely upon functional performance as well as artifice, and if they are reduced to either category alone they become (in Judd's words) ridiculous. The requirement that furniture house the body with care in an intimate manner means that, even more than architecture, it must focus its art towards its use. This implies that objects of furniture exist at the fringes of representation. They do not easily allow themselves to be used to represent ideas which are born from outside of their own reality. They do not easily conform to the insertion of artistic interest into their program. When making furniture, unlike art, one must place one's aesthetic desire within the scope of the object's own reasoned intention. That intention is firstly and always primarily the thoughtful and sober accommodation of the body through use. Furniture is inherently wrapped up in proportion, fit and the material interaction with skin under the force of the body. In effect, it must work for its value like few other objects . . . it must measure itself to the restricted movements and positions of the body, it must follow the body's proportions as it moves, and it must accept the body's need for comfort. Furniture must first exist as itself. In this way it may be described as minimal in its distillation of our otherwise wide arena of material interest.

Does this mean that furniture exemplifies the principles of minimalism? Both Donald Judd's art and furniture are admirable in their attention to the idea of the minimal. However, I think that the answer is a complicated yes. The best furniture tends toward the minimalistic satisfaction of its own nature, and the further its conceptual centre is from that focus, the more its usability and beauty are compromised. This does not mean that furniture cannot contain other ideas within its form. Only that it must ultimately rest upon its satisfaction of its own nature first. A bed can never be an idea of a bed. It can never be valuable solely for its likeness or affinity to art. A bed must exist as a bed before all else. That is where its meaning lies.

Does this mean that furniture does not share similarities with other things we make? For example, can it not share something with art and architecture? When I design my bed will it not resemble my architecture and painting? Judd contends that the various interests in form will come together in a consistent manner. I agree. But . . . this does not mean that they will look alike. Judd claims that "If you like simple forms in your art you will not make complicated ones in architecture." [2] I disagree. Because the design of the practical arts is driven by their prosaic nature, a like for simple forms which is appropriate to one discipline does not necessarily translate to another. We relate to our world differently according to what scale is appropriate to the specific manner of relation we are living at any specific time.

Human beings relate to the world in many different ways. In thinking about it, our location of it operates across a wide range: from the fine detail of specific references to the general resolution of our abstractions. The situation is more complicated when we consider the case of perception. The sense of sight can engage the world over a wide range of focus. Through need, interest or concentration we can simplify or complicate what we see. When running with speed along a trail, the forest is radically reduced; and one sees only what is necessary to safely land each footfall and to avoid collision. When we stop and contemplate the same wood, we can hold both its general character and its detail at once. Likewise, but to a lesser extent, we are capable of picking out sounds from background noise by seeking them. If we stop concentrating they become lost in the general discord. On the other hand, the sense of touch displays a highly restricted range of scale. In spite of its uneven sensitivity over the body, we may say that all of our skin is highly sensitive to a very fine scale of difference. Where it is most concentrated, our finger tips for example, our touch can discern differences to a surface which are invisible to the eye. We must remember that, although we relate to objects with all of our senses at once, when we do so we use each of them to different degrees at different times.

This means that our needs and abilities to interact with different parts of our world vary widely. The complexity of volume and sound we may enjoy within a piece of music may prove (and often does) to be uncomfortable within the background noise of daily life. In the same manner, the formal character of our physical environment can comfortably range across a wide variety of complexity and quality depending upon the scale of our interaction with it. At the scale of the city, many people find it impossible to find too much complexity. Here elaboration is experienced as interesting and rich as we move about through it. Regardless of our feelings about the pace and restrictions of city life, a high degree of complexity seems to be both characteristic and appropriate to an 'object' the size of a city. This applies equally to the landscape in general. However, such an appropriateness becomes less so in individual buildings. We demand that they work to simplify the manifold nature of the outside world in order to make places in which people can act in a more focused manner. If movement captures something about our manner of relating to the outdoors, repose does so when we are inside. Our comfort and use of indoor places requires a relative reduced range and amount of movement. In furniture, that repose is intensified . . . better characterized as rest in the sense that the body 'rests up close against' the item which holds its place. Here the body's options for movement are restricted (to sitting, laying, etc.) and through contact, the simplicity required of the object is even higher. It is only once objects themselves operate through being movable by the body (our utensils for eating are a good example), that an even higher simplicity than for furniture is required.

Our conception of, and feelings about, objects are coloured by these experiential aspects. When designing a bed it is necessary to realize that its inherent character requires a relatively simple solution. If it becomes too complicated, if its complexity is not subsumed under an appropriate overriding simplicity, it will appear just as ridiculous as if it were trying to first be an object of sculpture. Even more so, a room full of overly complicated furniture will suffer in its operation and will impact negatively upon our perception of it. We must be careful here. What does overly complicated mean? The arbitration of this must be according to the fundamental nature of the item. The assertion of individual interests; including taste, style and the like; lies outside of this accordance. Hence there is room for both the minimal aesthetic exemplified by Shaker furniture, and the somewhat more plentiful one of the Victorian era. Where there is no room, is where an interest in some aspect outside of the fundamental is asserted in spite of it. Then the object ceases to be furniture and begins to exist as something else. Or, in the case that it retains some usefulness, it might be considered a debased example of the furniture it approximates. The philosopher would claim that a category mistake had occurred. Donald Judd simply claims that other things, art for example, are incapable of becoming furniture.

[1] These words represent my understanding. In as much as it agrees with itself, it represents (illustrates) the postion it expresses. In as much as it exists as a work, it merely presents itself. In as much as it presents the history of its own inception, it presents the results of a private dialogue with the essay Donald Judd wrote titled "It's Hard to Find a Good Lamp." The title is derived from Judd's statement: "The art of a chair . . . is partly its reasonableness, usefulness and scale as a chair. These are proportion, which is visible reasonableness." Donald Judd, "It's Hard to Find a Good Lamp." In Donald Judd Furniture Retrospective, 7-21 (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1992): 7.
[2] Ibid.