Restricting Through (Re)defining
I can’t help but think that Jameson’s “cognitive mapping” of the world system of capital relies entirely on the self to process its complex organisation. For example, just thinking about the profundity of calculating labour-value--with its many social and geographic parameters (and each parameter having another organisation)--it seems beyond human grasp (and if that’s not enough: how capitalism can be understood not only as a “history of crises”, but also as a history of adaptive reforms. Thus any evolvable ability makes it even harder for a holistic mapping on the part of the individual).
The moment when the credit-card was introduced is something that added more complexities but poignantly, more world market liquidity. The natural thing then is to think of life post-credit-card--where money nor credit no longer serve as the abstract “symbols” to exchange with, something we never see, ever liquefying the “engine”.
The “Chase Freedom Card”: “Freedom” from seeing physical money and to lubricate the “engine”.
When a method of exchange becomes redundant(/invisible) and propels to a new abstraction, further liquidity occurs. Too, in signifying a reconfiguration of capitalism, one is called to imagine a more complex cognitive map (Just as space too will become more complex, ie. new layers of spatial manifestations, superimposed [related to “loose” zones of capital accumulation], over what is now the post-industrial baggage that is the city--a highly exciting turn of events). And yet, humans (cognition) have individual life spans, capitalism changes lives and reincarnates, after dying (if only a little).
So, in thinking of achieving a human-scale total cognitive map, key, is the need for optimised communication (in the same way articulation of space is imperative to the functionality of capitalism). Hence, what space is to capitalism, communication is to its dysfunction.
For art, an attempt to “map” it visually may see its static nature render it as limitation. Architecture, well that too is problematic (albeit, thoroughly interesting). [Has anyone thought of an architecture as a means to hinder capital generation.]
Barney, Matthew, 2003. Drawing Restraint 8: Natal Cleft. Drawing (Detail). Here Barney restricts the self in the process of creation, to redefine the act of painting.
The mental centre (armed with language, which is too, adaptable) is left standing to keep up with the adroitness of capitalism.
So is Steven Shaviro’s call for a renewed “economism” just another trend of reformism (re)adapting to the perpetual changing of capitalism? Maybe he’s right to want redefine it, and maybe he’s just fulfilling a task we should always have borne in mind.
The Commands of (Architectural) Language
Speaking about the constructed reality is made easier because there is physics embedded within language and language has the flexibility and innateness of becoming reduced to simple forms to just “consist of language and the actions into which it is woven” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 7). Success of the process of construction is based on communication and the dialogue learned by the partakers of its success. We naturally deteriorate macro-languages by relating our own syntax and the “vernacular of the milieu of the space” (Goh, 2001, pg. 13).
Because “semantics is (not only) about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also about the relation of words into other human concerns” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6), there are conflicting ways to see points of view or reasons for taking actions in certain circumstances. The language of thought - conceptual semantics - “provides … the dramas of social life. And sets the stage in countless arenas of human disputation” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 5). The way we construe events might reflect our alignment with select political party or to an ideal be it individually developed or a hand-me-down. “Is the American military incursion into Iraq a case of invading a country or liberating a country? …Are high tax rates a way to redistribute wealth or to confiscate earnings?” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6). Is a belief in the Book of Genesis a disillusioned view of the world’s beginning, a trap for thinkers not to find pragmatic evidences or a divine event that justifies the world’s beginning? Is sustainability a “a foreign currency, the joker in the Oriental pack… an incorrectly catalogued fetish” (Chinchilla, 2006) or a responsibility?
Thankfully there is rarely confusion in such basic/reduced vernacular used in the construction industry, as this is indicated in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein describes a simple language game (Sprachspiel) a concept intended “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 23)..jpg)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951). Sourced from the homepage of Tony Bellotti.
This is a universal deconstruction of Wittgenstein’s Builders, not merely an attuning to the industry I so align.
“Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab,’ ‘beam’. A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call…” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 3)
The important point is to realise that the builder’s language is an activity - the orders given by the builder and the executions of those orders by the assistant - into which is woven something we would recognise as language, albeit in simpler form. When the builder says ‘pillar’ a certain type of act is performed. Success is judged if the assistant passes the a ‘pillar’ to him.
Wei-wei, Ai. “Table and Pillar” 2002 (background) “Table and Beam” 2002 (foreground). Sourced from Galerie Urs Meile.
There is a direct connection here between words and extra-linguistic reality. The builder sends the command, as in a command-line software and the worker reacts through a number of stored, predetermined and accessed movements, as in a macro, combining two or more events.
Deleuze & Guattari report of the order-word, a procedural, seemingly void of expression, interpretation of language, that utilizes a sequence of instructions to achieve the retrieval of information. “The elemental unit of language - the statement - is the order-word. Rather than common-sense, a faculty for the centralisation of information, we must define an abominable faculty consisting in emitting, receiving, and transmitting order-words. Language is made not to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience.” (Delueze-Guattari, 1987, pg. 76)
This account, raises the question, could a language exist which consists entirely of commands? All art forms have been churned through the reduction machine, stripping back Baroque to Breuer to Pawson, Shakespeare to Hardy to Hitchens, Banquets to Burger King to vending machines. Is it possible that the information age will consume creative writing however passively informative creative writing can be. Consumed by command-line requests that spill to conversation and human interaction - to live is to request both virtually and physically.
Garnier, Charles. Opéra Garnier. 1875. Sourced from Gay Paris.
Pawson, John. Set design for Chroma at the Royal Opera House. 2008. Photo copyright of Richard Davies. Sourced from Dezeen.
Command-line. Sourced from Wikimedia.
If we dive further in the understanding of linguistics moving from Wittgenstein we find that in reality objects are 3-dimensional arrangements of matter, but language idealises objects as essentially 1, 2 or 3-dimensional. For example the word ‘line’ indicates something as 1-dimensional, the word ‘road’ indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ width), the word beam indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ having a finite thickness), the word ‘surface’ indicates something as 2-dimensional and the word ‘slab’ indicates something as 2-dimensional (+ a finite thickness). (Pinker, 2007, 5:07 mins)
The boundaries of objects are treated as objects themselves; ‘edges’ which define the 1-dimensional boundary of a 2-dimensional surface. ‘The patron walked along the edge of the parapet’, and ‘end’ which is the boundary of a 1-dimensional ‘road’ or a 2-dimensional ‘beam’). It can be summarised that space exists in our prepositions, matter exists in our nouns, naturally time exists in our tenses and is causality exists in our verbs. (Pinker, 2007, 7:00 mins)
However uncanny is the relationship between the interpretation of the structure of language to the built environment, it is a functioning language and armed with intrinsic language-games/order-words that allow for the materialisation of our realities.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Viking Adult; 1 edition, 2007
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell Publishing, 1953/2001
Goh, Irving. Promising “Post-Colonialism”: Delouse-Guattari’s “Minor Literature” and the Poetry of Arthur Yap, Genre; vol. 22, California State University, 2001
Authors@Google: Steven Pinker, 2007, Producer, Google; director, Google. s.l: Authors@Google. 1 online video (Flash Format) (75 mins). [Video recording]
Chinchilla, Izaskun, Sociopolis, Public Issue, 2006
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 1987/2004
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Interview by Valle Medina and Ben Reynolds with Junya Ishigami
Recorded at the Japan Institute of Architects, Tokyo on 23rd of October 2008 (07:46 mins)
Junya Ishigami. Sourced from In Interest.
Ishigami, Junya. Japanese Pavillion, Venice, 2008. Sourced from flickr.
Occupying Voids
Urbanity asks us to add function to void space. A space which superficially might need little design concentration - by natural selection it is the body and chance that are the vessels to perform this request. Why is it that voids occur? In some cases they seem to be architectural devices paying homage to the built, or dead-space for alternate foci, or purely for transience - similar to the relationship of a catalogued search-engine and the exclusive web. Being the chance-relationship spaces they are, they might be better left alone.
Sourced from Tepper Takayama Fine Arts.
The Smithson’s (Peter (Brutus) and Alison) use their architecture as a means to charge the void. Their works appear as kind of egalitarian additions to what is already the homogeneous conobation of the city. These additions allow for new “movement patterns” different to those made on the same domain - giving the city new circumstances and possibilities. Within their ‘charge’ an occupant invents and experiences new ways about his or her own city. The works are forever successful because their prescribed and conscious aim is not to make the best arrangement of the site, however they recognise that they are but one of many built re-incarnations - a part of a long line of uses where the only difference is in the contemporary state that they built.
Smithson, Alison and Peter, The Economist Building, 1959-64. Sourced from Flickr.
Smithson, Alison and Peter, The Economist Building, 1959-64. Sourced from Hugh Pearman.
The work of the prematurely felled Yves Klein saw the void as a commodity, likened to that of a canvas. If Klein was the creator of the void (Le Vide), it was a space he owned. His capitalistic approach to his art contemplates this idea of ownership - from his signature in the sky, frivolously defying real-world constraints (Leap Into the Void, 1960), legally patenting IKB and leasing his voids - ‘his’ inhabitants were “literally impregnated by the sensible pictorial state that was specialized and stabilized by (Klein) before hand in the given space” (Sidra Stitch, Yves Klein. Stuttgart: Cantz Verlag, 1994, 133). Klein’s zen-like understanding of the void forced users to be “feel” and “understand” such a state.,%201960.jpg)
Klein, Yves, Saut Dans le Vide (Leap Into the Void), 1960. Sourced from Shane Lavalette.
Claude Lorrain (1600-82) inventively sewed neo-classic spatial improbabilities to counter horizons of reality into the mythic. Voids were filled with false brilliancy rendering utopic landscapes - a firey Ivan Chtcheglov wrote in 1953: “Many of the latters admirers are not quite sure to what to attribute the charm of (Lorrain’s) canvases. They talk about his portrayal of light. It does indeed have a rather mysterious quality, but that does not suffice to explain these paintings ambience of perpetual invitation to voyage. This ambience is provoked by an unaccustomed architectural space. The palaces are situated right on the edge of the sea, and they have “pointless” hanging gardens whose vegetation appears in the most unexpected places. The incitement to drifting is provoked by the palace doors proximity to the ships.” (Ivan Chtcheglov, Formulary for a New Urbanism, Paris: Allia, 2006)
Lorrain, Claude, The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648. Sourced from Wikimedia.
The planning of occupancy of a void deals only with positive possibilities, its context and sustainability are the determinants of its success.
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Interview by Valle Medina and Ben Reynolds with Atelier Bow-Wow (Yoshiharu Tsukamoto)
Recorded in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo on the 22nd October 2008 (30:54 mins).
Atelier Bow-Wow. Sourced from Atelier Bow-wow.
Landscape of Ambiguous Spaces vs. Built Form
Junya Ishigami
Daily life, artifacts, minimum uses, are related independently in an environment. What is actually happening is transparent to the view. The building skyline, the apartments, all existing windows, every wall, tell stories. The system of objects provides and generates the scenario for the stories. The container for the action is dissolved - the walls are dissolved. 
Garden City. Sourced from Edgar Gonzalez
Paraphrased from Ishigami: The city is a formation of little plots distributed throughout a simulated town, The Generic Town, each with a woodland and hill. The same attention is given to designing the shape and the volume (biomass) of these lots and how they gather together as to designing the buildings. A new way to think about the relation between the buildings and lots and roads and plaza commons.
Satellite Cities. Sourced from Edgar Gonzalez.
Micro-cosmos’ of relations on earth and out-of-space are drawn without a hierarchy of scales. It hybridises nature with daily-life, housing projects, neighbourhoods, cities and furniture. The connections are generated throughout them.
Leah Beeferman
She imagines the internal lives of architecture and buildings, and speaks about architecture with strong personalities and developing and dreamt technologies. The inspiration for her comes from imagining and drawing the universe that a building ‘sees’. The idea that “a building would dream of being something more”.
She focuses in the built-form, the building as a character, and looks to the built pieces one-by-one and thinks of them as isolated beings, not so much as belonging to a system. Satellite buildings about to leave the Earth, as structural spaceships, that travel out of space. Flight Factories, Evaporating Landscapes, Helicopter Archipelagos. Always with the sense that not everything might start and finish on Earth.
Eglin FPS-85 radar. Sourced from Global Security.
“Imagining the Universe as seen by a Building used to track Orbital Debris.”
“Dedicated sensoring/how to hear with clarity” 2008, ink, graphite and medium on paper, 42” x 36” Sourced from Leah Beeferman.
Beeferman is inspired by the Great Idea of the Super-Conducting Super-collider, of building a miracle machine that can replicate the Big Bang, help treat life-threatening illnesses, and maybe even unfold the mysteries of the universe. “Housed in a 54-mile underground tunnel beneath Waxahachie, Texas, the Super-Collider was designed to accelerate beams of subatomic particles to fantastic speeds and then crash the particles into one another, purportedly generating huge amounts of energy. The machine would be able to simulate the conditions present during the Big Bang, thus allowing scientists to gain new insights into the very nature of matter.”
Super-Conducting Super-Collider. Sourced from Neat-o-rama.
“Satellited” 2008, ink on paper, 9” x 12”. Sourced from Leah Beeferman.
Related to the idea of architecture and interiors in films, and how they contribute to the story psychologically, metaphorically, atmospherically, she understands that architecture can begin a character in a story, not just being the container for the story. The buildings are shells that remain always the same, however the character of the buildings change from inhabitant to inhabitant. What the walls have heard throughout time, which stories remain in the Collective Imaginary, what one once cooked inside, the plants that the neighbour forgot at home when he left, each of these give a different personal imprint to the lasting character of the built form.
Beeferman deliberately leaves people out for the focus to be on the structures and the places. Its important that the drawings suggest real space, but never actually become real.
