Words
A Trip Down the Memory Lane
work done at Weitzman Design's History and Theory Course
inspired on Timothy Snyder's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
2019
There was a man visiting a gallery in a neighborhood commonly known as Grey. The man stood in front of a wall with two art pieces. On the left a white framed paper, as it appeared, and on the right, a black framed paper. As he was analyzing the piece there was just one tag in the middle for describing both and it said: “either one or the other.” The man got a sticky note from his bag and wrote a response to it with one word: neither. When looking at time and history, humans frame themselves in the notions of past, present, and future separately. Now, there are forces that lead to the understanding that history is somehow a matter of either an inevitable system or an unbreakable cycle.
In order to understand this black and white situation, one must believe that there are multiple histories to be taught and to learn from; that history and life are non binary. According to Snyder, humans have been dwelling on two understandings of the past: the human as victim of a self-regulated system and the present realm detached from a distant past that no longer exists.[1] Although he argues that recent political events shake these understandings encouraging humans to look at alternative pasts.
After a hundred years of “breaking” with the past through the alleys of modernism and post modernism in architecture, one can determine that courageous actions in design could be found in looking at the past through the lens of what has been overlooked: the layers of history behind the facades of buildings, facades, storefronts, streets. As Hannah Arendt puts it, “illumination may come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances...”[2] This may seem contradictory at first, yet it becomes a matter of how the stories from the past are used, how new architectural concepts evolve from a past that unveils hidden messages out of the two understandings previously mentioned. One that looks at the past in the light of hope and on the way to posterity. As Rebecca Solnit says, “one that does not come out of what went before but in spite of what went before.”[3]
This architectural action attempts to superimpose multiple architectural pasts in an interactive monument for the World Expo 2020 in Dubai. It does not look at the past as a repertoire of options like the post-modernists, nor it rejects it like Malevich’s Suprematism. Perhaps it attempts to expose not very famous, yet important, architecture projects that are rarely referenced in the North American academia. Examples like the London Bank in Buenos Aires, Bruno Taut’s Istanbul residential project, The Tribunal de Cuentas in Sao Paulo, and the Exposition Centre from Salvador de Bahía demonstrate a high level of complexity that has a history not commonly known. At last, this interactive action is supposed to inspire escape from the black inevitability or white eternity understanding of life that Snyder describes.4 A courageous attitude that the future architects must have in order to be free from teleological perceptions of the world. Ultimately, the installation invites to see the future having Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in The Dark words in mind: “Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone; an earthquake, breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later…all that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.”
In order to understand this black and white situation, one must believe that there are multiple histories to be taught and to learn from; that history and life are non binary. According to Snyder, humans have been dwelling on two understandings of the past: the human as victim of a self-regulated system and the present realm detached from a distant past that no longer exists.[1] Although he argues that recent political events shake these understandings encouraging humans to look at alternative pasts.
After a hundred years of “breaking” with the past through the alleys of modernism and post modernism in architecture, one can determine that courageous actions in design could be found in looking at the past through the lens of what has been overlooked: the layers of history behind the facades of buildings, facades, storefronts, streets. As Hannah Arendt puts it, “illumination may come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances...”[2] This may seem contradictory at first, yet it becomes a matter of how the stories from the past are used, how new architectural concepts evolve from a past that unveils hidden messages out of the two understandings previously mentioned. One that looks at the past in the light of hope and on the way to posterity. As Rebecca Solnit says, “one that does not come out of what went before but in spite of what went before.”[3]
This architectural action attempts to superimpose multiple architectural pasts in an interactive monument for the World Expo 2020 in Dubai. It does not look at the past as a repertoire of options like the post-modernists, nor it rejects it like Malevich’s Suprematism. Perhaps it attempts to expose not very famous, yet important, architecture projects that are rarely referenced in the North American academia. Examples like the London Bank in Buenos Aires, Bruno Taut’s Istanbul residential project, The Tribunal de Cuentas in Sao Paulo, and the Exposition Centre from Salvador de Bahía demonstrate a high level of complexity that has a history not commonly known. At last, this interactive action is supposed to inspire escape from the black inevitability or white eternity understanding of life that Snyder describes.4 A courageous attitude that the future architects must have in order to be free from teleological perceptions of the world. Ultimately, the installation invites to see the future having Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in The Dark words in mind: “Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone; an earthquake, breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later…all that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.”
Architecture history will always be told from a perspective thus there will always be information missing, but if humans have the courage to look sideways, then the world will never die under blinded tyrannies.
[1] Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. (p. 120)
[2] Arendt, Hannah, Men In Dark Times. [1st ed.]. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
[3] Solnit, Rebecca. Hope In the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. New York: Nation Books, 2004.
[4] Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. Snyder defines two anti-historical ways of looking at the past: the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity. This is interpreted as a black or white situation to which people is encouraged to react in refusal of both and in openness to untold histories.
[2] Arendt, Hannah, Men In Dark Times. [1st ed.]. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
[3] Solnit, Rebecca. Hope In the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. New York: Nation Books, 2004.
[4] Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. Snyder defines two anti-historical ways of looking at the past: the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity. This is interpreted as a black or white situation to which people is encouraged to react in refusal of both and in openness to untold histories.
Living Room Monologues
work done at Weitzman Design's History and Theory Course
inspired on Toni Morrison own words [cites below]
2019
Language does not only represent; it is. Language has volume; it has attitude, tone, character, physicality. Language manifests in many ways around us and through us. It suggests wisdom, fear, joy, sadness, bliss. It conveys power. Language is the most powerful tool a human being can have but is also a weapon for human auto destruction and punishment. Therefore, oppressive language is a criminal act. Oppression of the language is erasure of the language,[1] of knowledge, of freedom, of difference, of acceptance of others, of collective meaning of living. When language becomes oppressive, it behaves as a bomb, a weapon for the privileged to provoke self-destruction and limit the frontiers of the oppressed. Oppressive language is violence; oppressive language limits knowledge.[2]
As individuals we can say that communication is an exchange of knowledge, a negotiation of ideas, an expression of agony, an opportunity for forgiveness. Language is the most prevailing resource a human being can have to communicate ideals and acquire transcendence. One that cannot be taken from you, though there will always be attempts to make you believe otherwise; there will always be attempts to disrupt its uniqueness amid difference. Language is so powerful that it transforms, it flows, and it manifests through yourself in diverse ways, good and evil ways. Language is something you can never lose! It is always salvageable by an effort of the will as long as we do not let it yield to its own paralyses.[1]
Let’s look further into the narratives and stories we make up of our lives, of the everyday, of the world... The way we tell these stories say a lot about us and how we are destroying or maintaining its own exclusivity and dominance.[2] Tongue-suicide is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.[3] Look at the newspapers, look at your Facebook feed or perhaps look at your own diary like I have, you can be astonished by your own and unknown power over words; a power that entitles and also destructs. Language is something individuals should feel empowered with, a tool to not being afraid of the oppressors as they have not felt any shame in excluding our voices from their patriarchal dictionaries. For us language should be a tool for creating connecting bridges instead of dividing walls; a tool to spread untold stories and to also accept those we do not understand completely. Let us not be afraid of the lost in translation.
Now, there is a problem, a dangerous bliss that provokes an inaction of those believing they are naturally better than, [4] of those not feeling the need of demanding civil treatment thus making the ones that need it look like they are wrong in taking action. When you are born believing that you are naturally better than, do you even know what demanding civil treatment is? What is it with this world that everything, including language, is understood in binary terms, cause and effect, white or black? Perhaps the numbness of being on the “better side” provides unbalance to those on the disadvantaged side? Again, language is not oppressive, it is MADE oppressive by those who see difference as a threat. By those who cater in power guaranteed by unsustainable World orders and virulent comfort zones. Awareness of this definition of language is important because it frees us from oppression of minds, of bodies, of places.
To conclude, let us collectively reflect upon Paulo Freire’s idea of what it means to become radical. The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. [5]
[1] Morrison, Toni. “Toni Morrison Nobel Lecture”. NobelPrize.org.
[2] Yam, Kimberly. “Toni Morrison’s Most Powerful Quotes on Racism”. Huffington Post (2019)
[3] Morrison, Toni. “Toni Morrison Nobel Lecture”. NobelPrize.org
[4] Yam, Kimberly. “Toni Morrison’s Most Powerful Quotes on Racism: Mourning from Whiteness essay for The New York Times (2016)”. Huffington Post (2019).
[5] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)