Monday, September 28, 2009
Architect Lebbeus Woods
Manifesto: RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION (1997)
Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
For deep fixed and wholly personal—
Then we cannot walk the same street.
You’ve stolen them all, and lines, and reality.
Give them back whole and firm, unchange them.
Or pick just one (others will result). Return it.
Come down from there, I promise
Your face will dry, (or the streets
Will sweat in you. You need balance, double yellow)
And will harden into a smile, your seismic mouth
filled through with cement.
Do not call a street irrational
Nor unreliable. Call it bare if you wish
Stockholm upon it, but if you leave with it, forget
Its black seal behind in your getaway.
You’ve stolen them all, and lines, and reality.
Give them back whole and firm, unchange them.
Or pick just one (others will result). Return it.
Come down from there, I promise
Your face will dry, (or the streets
Will sweat in you. You need balance, double yellow)
And will harden into a smile, your seismic mouth
filled through with cement.
Do not call a street irrational
Nor unreliable. Call it bare if you wish
Stockholm upon it, but if you leave with it, forget
Its black seal behind in your getaway.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
It's Ramadan!
A little bit of Oldenburg in honor of the retrospective at the Whitney/ for Eissa, my Ramadaning friend.
Trauma and Memory - Gerhard Richter
The problem of representing traumatic experiences and painful memories has come up a lot in my classroom discussions about Argentine art and film. This made me draw an obvious connection to Gerhard Richter. What an amazing painter!
"Borges and Myself" by Jorge Luis Borges
It's to the other man, to Borges, that things happen. I walk along the streets of Buenos Aires, stopping now and then -- perhaps out of habit -- to look at the arch of an old entranceway or a grillwork gate; of Borges I get news through the mail and glimpse his name among a committee of professors or in a dictionary of biography. I have a taste for hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the roots of words, the smell of coffee, and Stevenson's prose; the other man shares these likes, but in a showy way that turns them into stagy mannerisms. It would be an exaggeration to say that we are on bad terms; I live, I let myself live, so that Borges can weave his tales and poems, and those tales and poems are my justification. It is not hard for me to admit that he was managed to write a few worthwhile pages, but these pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good no longer belongs to anyone -- not even the other man -- bur rather to speech or tradition. In any case, I am fated to become lost once and for all, and only some moment of myself will survive in the other. Little by little, I have been surrendering everything to him, even though I have evidence of his stubborn habit of falsification and exaggerating. Spinoza held that all things try to keep on being themselves; a stone wants to be a stone and the tiger, a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is so that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in those of others or than in the laborious tuning of a guitar. Years ago, I tried ridding myself of him and I went from myths of the outlying slums of the city to games with time and infinity, but those games are now part of Borges and I will have to turn to other things. And so, my life is a running away, and I lose everything and everything is left to oblivion or to the other man.
Which of us is writing this page I don't know.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
water dreams
Clue from across the way, a loosened clue, looking at me, a runaway clue, a speck—
one that I might discover dazzling river water
(when goggled or open-eyed), discovering!
—rushing, turning in wide spreading dusty molecules, leading me by the eyestrings along the pilgrimage the river is southward roaming…
and this rock hints at a pirouette, and that one still isn’t finished spinning, here I go…
Fish in jaws, I’m human again. Bones popping like under-water ears. Sorry, I was getting a clue from the water.
The only memory I have of my childhood is of gutting fish. There was a shaky-kneed breathing machine standing always behind me, me with the knife and the squirting horny-heads pinned to the table. He wouldn’t push unless I edged a body of water.
The breathing treatments, as he called them, reminded me of tides, or white noise machines for insomniacs. “Watch out for it! Watch it! It’s a land mine—Go to the water…” That’s what I sometimes woke to, his shouting, his self-waking. We would catch our breath and he would snore again to the rhythm of the breathing machine. I still dream…
I can. Hold it.
A few more. Sec-
onds. Coming up is like laying the last brush stroke on a terrible painting. It’s finished but what a failure. I was destined to something biblical, something babbling. Something whereby merely holding my breath means defying gravity. Destined for immersion, silver, dark, dark, heavy, where I can be buoyant. Or sunken.
He was behind me. Not someone else—Something else. I was spawned.
He took me to the Toccoa. The mangroves. The gulf. Cooper’s Creek. Sky Lake. He would sit and regulate his breathing while I’d be lying underwater regulating my exact depth with my skin. I never followed the current. Just down there. Just a catfish.
He would fall asleep and I’d come up. “River rat,” he’d call me. Took him two breaths to say. Then he’d wake up.
River rat. Close enough, I’d bubble.
Look at my fingers, all pruny from just talking to you. Webbed from just talking…
Undulating under water, water passing above in white-washed sheets and rushing above like violence and spawning and breathlessness, and
down here just blueness
waiting, undulating, bubble in my chest. Blue, blue beluga in the baby sea.
Where are you, Barnaby the Barnacle…blue barnacle…
Bubbles jumping to the surface give me impression of sinking
Nothing around me to look at but specks, dusty molecular specks shimmering
I will follow one. It’s a clue. Says go deeper, seep into the sand, where the water seeps into the earth. Go deeper. Rest there. Wait. Don’t forget the waking. Up.
Here I come, breathing machine. Don’t forget me. About to greet you, wake up! Wake up! Breathe! Breathe! Open your eyes!
Grandpa! Get up!
one that I might discover dazzling river water
(when goggled or open-eyed), discovering!
—rushing, turning in wide spreading dusty molecules, leading me by the eyestrings along the pilgrimage the river is southward roaming…
and this rock hints at a pirouette, and that one still isn’t finished spinning, here I go…
Fish in jaws, I’m human again. Bones popping like under-water ears. Sorry, I was getting a clue from the water.
The only memory I have of my childhood is of gutting fish. There was a shaky-kneed breathing machine standing always behind me, me with the knife and the squirting horny-heads pinned to the table. He wouldn’t push unless I edged a body of water.
The breathing treatments, as he called them, reminded me of tides, or white noise machines for insomniacs. “Watch out for it! Watch it! It’s a land mine—Go to the water…” That’s what I sometimes woke to, his shouting, his self-waking. We would catch our breath and he would snore again to the rhythm of the breathing machine. I still dream…
I can. Hold it.
A few more. Sec-
onds. Coming up is like laying the last brush stroke on a terrible painting. It’s finished but what a failure. I was destined to something biblical, something babbling. Something whereby merely holding my breath means defying gravity. Destined for immersion, silver, dark, dark, heavy, where I can be buoyant. Or sunken.
He was behind me. Not someone else—Something else. I was spawned.
He took me to the Toccoa. The mangroves. The gulf. Cooper’s Creek. Sky Lake. He would sit and regulate his breathing while I’d be lying underwater regulating my exact depth with my skin. I never followed the current. Just down there. Just a catfish.
He would fall asleep and I’d come up. “River rat,” he’d call me. Took him two breaths to say. Then he’d wake up.
River rat. Close enough, I’d bubble.
Look at my fingers, all pruny from just talking to you. Webbed from just talking…
Undulating under water, water passing above in white-washed sheets and rushing above like violence and spawning and breathlessness, and
down here just blueness
waiting, undulating, bubble in my chest. Blue, blue beluga in the baby sea.
Where are you, Barnaby the Barnacle…blue barnacle…
Bubbles jumping to the surface give me impression of sinking
Nothing around me to look at but specks, dusty molecular specks shimmering
I will follow one. It’s a clue. Says go deeper, seep into the sand, where the water seeps into the earth. Go deeper. Rest there. Wait. Don’t forget the waking. Up.
Here I come, breathing machine. Don’t forget me. About to greet you, wake up! Wake up! Breathe! Breathe! Open your eyes!
Grandpa! Get up!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)