On Self-Radicalization in Architecture
Notice how each of these haunted houses are characterized by effects outside themselves i.e. through the medium of the photograph. The subjectivity of the projected image obscures the ability to objectively consider whether these houses are haunted or not. We cannot inhabit these houses therefore we are provoked to believe the abstracted vision. Only through our absence do these houses obtain their haunted-ness, evilness, and radical nature (if you can dispel the silliness of the haunted house as a metaphorical tool).
“It is a condition of the uncertain, the unspeakable, the unnatural, the unpresent, the unphysical; taken together these constitute the condition which approaches the terrifying, a condition which lies within the sublime.” Peter Eisenman, from “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes.”
“If there is a single premise to be derived from the study of the uncanny in modern culture, it is that there is no such thing as an uncanny architecture but simply architecture that, from time to time and for different purposes, is invested with uncanny qualities.” Anthony Vidler, from “Theorizing the Unhomely.”
Ghost architects haunting their buildings. Ghost clients haunting their architects.
On Self-Radicalization
The letter also said there appears to be significant ‘intelligence sharing failures that must be reviewed and addressed immediately’ in order to safeguard against potential attacks. Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top republican on the panel said there was a ’systemic failure’ by government agencies to detect the threat posed by Maj. Hasan, who Mr. Hoekstra said appears to have been ’self-radicalized.’ Wall Street Journal Wednesday, November 18, 2009. A6. Cam Simpson and Siobhan Gorman.
What is self-radicalization?
The myth of the self-radical situates itself firmly within the concept of American individualism—that truth exists only within the self. The individual then, is a lifetime member of a community formed out of the family unit and the state apparatus. Devoid of any substantial socio-spatial context somewhere between the biological and the ideological, self-radicalization is a side-effect of unchecked freedom—hence the state’s penchant for criminalization, incarceration, and institutionalization.
The myth of the self-radical is a by-product of American ignorance, the potent tragedy underneath the veil of happiness and prosperity, a figment of the American imagination, a breach in the projection that the American dream is absolute, manifest in each individual. Self-radicalization—a supernatural conundrum propagated ceaselessly to provoke its own realization.
So Major Hasan was not “self-radicalized.” Rather, what Representative Hoekstra seems to indicate is that intelligence efforts could not have foreseen that Major Hasan would act alone to commit a radical and atrocious act of domestic terrorism. Maj. Hasan was indeed radicalized by forces exterior to his self—as a Muslim on a US military base, as a highly educated psychiatrist conditioned to question society, as an internet subscriber with access to extremist literature and media, and as an American citizen with a semi-automatic weapon store within a short drive. Self-radicalization—radicalization within the privacy of your own home.
Julia Robinson for the New York Times
Suburban Folly
An aging billboard skeleton bisected by landscaping for the planned Binning Ranch housing tract just outside Davis, CA.
Something, Something, Something, “Something, Something, Something, Detroit”
In this month’s Vice Magazine, Thomas Morton dares to say it: Detroit is done, finito, a lost cause, so dead even the dead are leaving. Because of crime you might ask? No. The automobile industry? Nope. The city’s crippling debt? No.
Detroit is infested…
with washed up journalists…
Over-produced, over-played, old-fashioned, or, as Morton coolly quips, “like it’s the journalistic version of cutting a grunge record,” Detroit pieces have been dealt their final blow. White flight, global economic restructuring, factory closures, crack-cocaine, global warming–Detroit was too good to be true–an American Dream–ruined … and then came the journalists.
Hi, here I am in front of the landscape that photographers always use to illustrate the jarring contrast between poverty (as represented by a desolate alley) and wealth (as symbolized by the fancy GM skyscraper in the back). That white building on the left is one of Detroit’s most successful grinding plants. Photo by Joseph Patel
Hey nice to meet you too. Yeah, there’s not a whole lot to report on besides ya know, the usual. So you want abandoned factories? And abandoned houses? Abandoned anything. Got it. What about this place? What? That weirdo from the Times was here yesterday? Take you where? Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. What? Yeah, I know. Metaphor. Poetics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you the first, second, and third time. Woah you don’t look so good. Are you okay? What? “Garrrggghhhaarghh!”Ahhhhh! Zombie photo-journalist on the loose. Keep one eye on the lens one eye on your surroundings or you’ll turn into one too… (from 28 Words Later and the hit sequel A 24 Roll Later).
Ok. So Detroit is actually a real city with real people who do normal things–not just photograph abandoned buildings. Let us not objectify, exoticize, speculate as if the future was of our own creation (oh wait…). I get that–I really do, but Morton also suggests that blogging about Detroit gets you blog hits-galore so I’ve got to try it out.
So I worked out an equation
Detroit = 
= fordism = advanced industrial economy = American made = American Century = propagandizing the American dream = film industry = hollywood = simulation of reality + reality = LA = fragmentation = abstraction = visual metaphors = movie sets = abandoned buildings = Roger & Me = urban revanchism = disneyfication = imagineering = media conglomerates = Time Magazine = journalism = objectivity = new subjectivity = nostalgia = memory = fun = leisure time = amusement parks = today’s museum = capital = speculation = recession = intervention = federal government = “New New Deal” = jobs = subsidies = investment = action = acting = schizophrenia = capitalism =Warren Buffett = Burlington Northern Santa Fe = blast from the past = redevelopment = development = prophecy = manifest destiny = history = vacant plots = search for meaning = make money = cheap land = Detroit!
What if Detroit could profit from its objectification, sublimation, and romanticization? Imagineer its own history? Its own future?
What if a plague of journalists precedes a new form of tourism? A new platform for speculation where you create your destination before you arrive.
What if Detroit became Detroit!, the world’s largest open-air museum. No need to advertise, there’s plenty of media coverage already. Admission is a congestion tax you pay when your vehicle crosses into Detroit! city limits, subtle enough that people rarely realize they are in Detroit! Visitors arrive anyway they please, but most come by car for authenticity’s sake.
Informed Tourist: I don’t know Detroit! but I know Detroit if you catch my drift. I’d like to visit, but I dont want the “typical” experience.
Hey no problem, stay at one our many dilapidated rentals, or, try a homestay, with one of Detroit!’s lifetime residents.
In a surprise move the Obama Administration drafts the city’s unemployed to “stand proudly and steadfastly as valiant residents of a great American city.” Actors in a great urban drama, Detroit! residents receive generous subsidies to live typical Detroit! lives with plenty of space and few worries. Reborn and reimagined, Detroit! beckons Americans to live life to the fullest, as if each day was the best dream you ever had.
Antoine Predock / Death Star / World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum.
Antoine Predock’s work and I go way back. When I was a kid, my friends and I used to meet after dark and play capture the flag in what most Davis locals refer to as the “Death Star,” formally known as Predock’s Social Sciences & Humanities Building (1994). Social Sciences & Humanities Building by day, Death Star by night. Long before I began to pursue architecture as a discipline, the Death Star was my fortress, a twisting, turning dreamscape, as if it was designed precisely for hiding, spying, sneaking, and climbing.
framed views of Davis from tower
intentional view corridor
aerial view of Social Sciences & Humanities Bldg (1994)
Death Star close up
My playful reprogramming of Predock’s Death Star as it sits empty at night attests to the success of Predock’s practice in cultivating a distinctly American dreamscape. Predock’s aesthetic and spatial logic are rooted in the American sublime, a Baudrillardian mish-mash of sci-fi imagery, fetishized vista points, internalized circulation, and the application of light and shadow. Context is drawn out of a collective dream, a victory for innocent play over the drudgery of the everyday.
concrete wrapping
Clay model of the Social Sciences & Humanities Building
Though Predock would likely cite clay modeling, tectonic striation, motion studies, and the desert Southwest as primary sources, I can’t shake the Star Wars association, especially after seeing his recent competition entry for The World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum in Yakutsk, Russia. (On another note I think the world may have reached its museum limit. Check out Earth, the New Museum of Museums.)
strangely familiar rendering of the "WM&PM"
this is what Predock cut out from the rendering. don't want any Cold War reminders.
interior rendering of the "WM&PM"
illustration of Hoth Rebel Base interior
sculpture of Hoth rebel base w/ Millenium Falcon!
Clay model of the Mammoth and Permafrost Museum
more after hyperspace… Read the rest of this entry »
Chris Woebken – Animal Superpowers
Q: What’s it like to be an ant?
A: Fun!
Woebken’s Animal Superpowers allow humans to get past their human-ness and enjoy the sense-stylings of their inner spirit animal. Or something like that. I would call this a great present for the holiday season. Not yet available at Toys R Us … but in the meantime pick up a pair of stilts and see what its like to be a human-trying-to-be-a-giraffe or maybe a kaleidoscope to be a human-trying-to-be-a-fly.
As aesthetically pleasing and design-y as Woebken’s work might appear, my own subjective-inner-spirit-body-human can’t get past its relation to another project of similar calibur:
Infrastructure Overload
Flaking and inchoate, this overrun Görlitzer Bahnhof facade begs to be excavated.
Insufficient street cleaning services and an overabundance of promotional advertising offers residents a new building material, or perhaps merely a lucid glimpse into the recent past. Next to such a hub of activity, the stern triptych composition (last post) appears stagnant.
