So to contextualize my question I'd name queer theory, of which I have been thinking about non-stop lately, since I find really problematic the idea of an assimilationist gay identity, which adheres to heterosexual values, that so much have damaged the alterity of gayness, and have helped in advancing its institutionalization.

This has also made me realise that the idea of identity with all is accompanying signifiers, is essential to current channels of desire, and they can potentially be mapped out.

Does-sexual-pleasure have a gender?

Today I am reading on Foucault, power, discipline, security and controlled environments, so can't delve into this further. But I'd like anyone reading this to consider this question thoroughly, since you can think of pleasure as just pure stimulation of tissue and organs, you would be missing the cultural significance of signs involved in say, flirting or intercourse. Which I also think many times are more a mirror of power structures rather than constructs for the exploration of forms of relating.

I am not saying people don't find pleasure in performing these by adopting roles and adopting the signs in relation to these, my point is that these are constructed, assimilated and performed, and hence they have an underlying logic or structure (different to logic since their shape might be beyond any Reason).


xoxo

An Incomplete Dictionary of Modern Words

Learning>Unlearning

Singing>Unsinging

Dancing>Undancing

Thinking>Unthinking

Linking>Delinking

Building>Debuilding

Talking>Untalking

Flying>Unflying

Hearing>Unhearing

Following>Unfollowing

Loving>Unloving

Fenced>Unfence

Doing>Undoing

Abiding>Unabiding

Owning>Unowning

Solidifying>Unsolidifying

Reasoning>Unreasoning

Constructing>Deconstructing

Relying>Unrelying

Art>Unart

Network>Unetwork

Code>Uncode

Encrypt>Uncrypt

Remember>Unremember

Sleep>Unsleep

Aware>Unaware

Call>Uncall

Respect>Disrespect

Serious>Unserious

Monetize>Unmonetize

Argue>Unargue

Abide>Unabide

Mention>Unmention

Help>Unhelp

Police>Unpolice

Survey>Unsurvey

Comic>Uncomic

Film>Unfilm

Return>Unreturn

Family>Unfamily

Build>Destroy

Acknowledge>Ignore

British withdrawal

Although it was passed uncut for UK cinemas in December 1971, British authorities considered the sexual violence in the film to be extreme. In March 1972, during the trial of a fourteen-year-old male accused of the manslaughter of a classmate, the prosecutor referred to A Clockwork Orange, suggesting that the film had a macabre relevance to the case. The film was also linked to the murder of an elderly vagrant by a 16-year-old boy in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, who pleaded guilty after telling police that friends had told him of the film "and the beating up of an old boy like this one." 

Roger Gray QC, for the defence, told the court that "the link between this crime and sensational literature, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is established beyond reasonable doubt". The press also blamed the film for a rape in which the attackers sang "Singin' in the Rain" as "Singin' in the Rape".  Christiane Kubrick, the director's wife, has said that the family received threats and had protesters outside their home. Subsequently, Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from British distribution. In response to allegations that the film was responsible for copycat violence Kubrick stated: "To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures." 

from

Today I was thinking about the idea of the self and that of accountability. Both I find complicated, but for the sake of simplicity I'd say that I frame these front he viewpoint of the practice of architecture and the architect-artist never-ending dualism.

If not wrong I posit dualisms or binary oppositions at the birth of the institution of marriage (Foucault) and the obsession in the West to parcel off genders and biological forms; practices of desire as well as their formal relationships. To counter this I suggest a process of unlearning, disremembering, disassociating, etc. Along with a reformulation of language, haha! Forgetting a dual framework requires also a sexual revolution, or a way to challenge how we relate to each other across all scales of desire (from the intimate to the institutional).

This said, I don't challenge here this dualism of the architect-artist, since we currently do hold a professional or occupational division, which many like to reinforce even thought in practice surely can't be so readily asserted. To this I wanted to add another dimension, that of the social (so much needingly decanted) and it's relationship with personal agency, which is so much glorified in contemporary culture, aka American c(v)ulture.


The Artist is always associated with unfettered expression of ideas, reified in object form(s). The Architect is associated classically with its ability to control form, and how it sits together, i.e. Tecton. Contemporarily, in his ability to intercept current flows of global capital, to somehow find for them a form of expression (which usually follow a minimalist mantra), or that of architectural engineering as we currently despise any non-allegoric forms of utility, the utmost expression of a modern morality. The social, thus, becomes another organ in the asocial, apolitical body. As given by nature, he has, ouch! stumbled upon the Social. So mush despise I hold for this word that I capitalise to reinforce its artificial, and surely unnatural, unauthentic authenticity. Here my conception of the social is quite limited, but its shaped around our own experience and forms of relating to others, the forms of our interactions and of our concerns for others. For many this is delimited to the institution of the Family. For others is their friends they see that as their-albeit unconsciously-political formation. Others in addition to these, they have a respect for their country, a unifying geography of desire and ambitions. Their concerns spread upon a hole expanse of territory. To me, the most interesting, defying and involving form of membership to the social is the definition of the human being, and the human rights as defined in Forensis. Although here the courts, hence the state, warrant a form of membership based on the most basic condition, that of the human being. It seems then hopeless to make a separation between the social and the political. Politics then per my definition, is the arrangement of things in space and their forms of relationships, their distances and proximities, their isolations as well as their connections. Since all we experience has an arrangement of many scales, it is intricately politic.

Why I have my doubts about the idea of a political architect? Or a political practice of architecture?

I will answer the first one, first. The architect is mostly a, lest blame them again, a construct of the media, and a whole load of propagandist publications and articles regarding the virtues of the figure of the architect in completing building projects. His agency, quite purposefully, is quite amazingly overstated, when he in reality has no real political power, or wealth (aka.political power). Her is more of a Puppet, for urban regeneration, branding, credibility buying, etc. On this strongly cynical view, there are clients I am sure (I am sure too very few) who commission work to specific people for they have a close sensibility and hope to pursue the Art further (I apologise for writing this). He, the architect, can be political for having made an opinion for himself, for implementing that onto his everyday life and commenting and even shouting about it on the streets. He should not, in my view, speak for others, or assume an unauthorised collective view. The architect is then not responsible for social change, but for generating pointers to a new social landscape. He is a Doctor reconstructing or suturing the body to open up routes for and of the imaginary to suggest new horizons or opportunities to activate future agencies. If this requires punching a hole in the body, he might as well? This nevertheless to me accounts as creative expression, the individual as creator, and hence as artist. His practice under current legislatory practices, amounts to the targeting of structures of power, rather than individuals. If the architect wants to be political he must reengineering the world, his own world, and project it for the public imagination. They have the option to join, they might not want to. Feed-forcing any political project is totalitarianism, not visionary. Here is where I see myself thinking of Democracy as a form of continual struggle (Chantal Mouffe), where there is always an option.

A political practice of architecture is a practice that stems from one's own idea of the world, which might or might not coincide with our current world (2.2). Many would say this is untenable. I am sure it is.
My point here is to say that all this anxiety regarding the social should vanish, and a deconstruction reading of practice should be encouraged, only then we can bring our forms into our own judgement. Having a project can bring other people on board. And the only way to commit, is to have a horizon of hope, as the eyes of others align it might then, and only then, become a political reality.

Reader comment

Good European 21 hours ago

The last time anything of this nature happened it was in reverse and it was in the summer of 1988, after Nigel Lawson announced the end of 'double MIRAS' (mortgage tax relief). What happened back then was hundreds of thousands of sharers piled into the market, which was highly over inflated at the time, to buy before the tax break was no longer available. Cut off point was 31st July 1988. The next thing that happened was the market collapsed (on 1st August 1988) and these people, who subsequently discovered they didn't much care to live with one another anyway, found the reality of their desperation to get onto the property ladder was a total loss of all their savings and negative equity in a property they could not sell. Keys were routinely being posted back through building society and bank letter boxes in the dead of night as the unfortunates slithered off into finical ruin. Utter misery all around. But what could possibly go wrong this time? Unless the market is over valued again…

Last time it was a ploy to prop up what everybody knew was an overcooked market. This looks no different.



from

The political unconscious of architecture : re-opening Jameson's Narrative, edited by Nadir Lahiji. Contents:

Ban-lieues / Bechir Kenzari -- The architecture of money: Jameson, abstraction and form / David Cunningham -- The master's house / Donald Kunze -- The stolen hope: Reading Jameson's critique of Tafuri / Gevork Hartoonian -- Designing a second modernity? / Hal Foster -- May Mo(u)rn: A site-writing / Jane Rendell -- Allegories of late capitalism: Main street and wall street on the map of the global village / Joan Ockman -- Rethinking city planning and Utopianism / Kojin Karatani -- Fredric Jameson and critical architecture / Louis Martin -- Reloading ideology critique of architecture / Nadir Lahiji -- A photography not 'Quite Right': Fredric Jameson's discussion of architectural photography in 'spatial equivalents in the world system' / Robin Wilson -- The architectural parallax / Slavoj Žižek -- Botanizing the Bonaventura: Base and superstructure in Jamesonian architectural theory / Terry Smith -- Jameson, Tafuri, Lefebvre.

Today I wanted to talk about all the things spinning in my head. And believe me; they are quite a lot.

I have been thinking about the ideas of anxiety, work overload, delusion, infusion, success, lament, loneliness, dirt and silence.

I am not addressing all of them here but they have to do with our ideas of virtue; of good or bad, of improvement of goodwill, as well as their Christian counterparts.

I am not an academic nor I want to become one. I feel like many contemporary practices are born from the white male heterosexual milieu, which devours any adjacent culture to subsume it as one of its choices, i.e. Gay Life, Gay Community, the Arts, Black Arts, Disabled, Transgender, Interdisciplinary. It all fits quite too well. This narrative of the modern project of cultural destruction put forward by Baudrillard, is quite appealing if not quite megalomaniac and cinematic.

I have also fallen within the white male expectation, which my family has been happy to remove from me. It's the very discourse of Structuralism which I am by no means trying to replicate here.

Since I believe in human agency -and I am purposefully avoiding any development of ideas of a metadata to human life (like governmental policy) or equivalent frameworks- I am going to tap into this liberal idea of choice, where you get the life you choose to have (hahahaha!) or worse, that you have the life you Deserve (Privilege Horror Movie). Along these lines I have been thinking if I should pursue this idea of getting lucky; taking a shot at the repositioning of myself might I manage to intermingle with contemporary flows of capital and capitalism. And the answer is a definite No. You might argue that then, since I am in London, I should move myself out of the equation; maybe I should.

I have always though of thinking further to pursue the human project of intellectual advancement, but which for me is more about delight, in exploring other peoples ideas and then reformulating my standpoints. Its not complicated, but it does require a lot of resources, including a lot of time. These I have limited, very in fact. The latest is my computer struggling to interact with any other external device, or connecting to Wifi. I feel sorry for Him. He is going to undergo a few repairs, and yeah, it's the source of a lot of my-if any-income.

Going back to the idea of a Liberal Project, I wanted to talk not only about the death of Religion; us replacing a moral schema with a technocratic/functionalist morale. Its the History of white male heterosexuality, coupled with the fallacy of Free Markets, which I struggle to pronounce in my head. In these fake landscape of functionalism-a cheap cover up for money making-we need to talk about Virtue, and how the very idea of the Pursue of Excellence, i.e. Beethoven, Reinhardt, sorry those all I can think of now, is a form of resistance to practices of Capitalism. The snobby or elitist idea of Excellence is now that I have been long fascinated by. I have been long fascinated by objects and forms of expression that carefully craft and design their form. I think of them as acts of Love and Care, for the very experience of their presence is pleasurable; unless you are full of envy or despair-me-. Virtuosity then is the ability to pursue an activity beyond what would be average, and propels it to the realm of the excellence, or better, to the arena of captivating. Captivating then, if you are a true Artist, can be engineered, and if you are a Tycoon, it can be simulated. Both deal with the enervating idea of Authenticity (I have nothing to say here).
Then the reason a Virtuoso might be an opposing form to capital is because of the practices in which the subject its engaged-it always annoys me how academic writing more often than not misses the idea of the subject or the body, as if objects had a life of their own-. Then the person who has an idea or a hope of expressive perfection has to inevitably deal with the sensible (Plato) as well as with the Ideal (i,e, the world of ideas, of the abstract). The hypostatization of these into an object of expression, doesn't aim at changing the world, but at articulating an idea in the World about the World. Its function is not functional, i.e. It doesn't aim at changing the world physically, for any unassuming body can modify the World. Thus the thinking subject is there to question this unassuming body, the reconsider the object-body-mind question, and to project questions into this realm. Is not an attempt at behavioural science, but an attempt to create a pustule in the minds of the present bodies who share the space or the representation of the object (a whole set of new implications). This Virtuosity then, develops in mastering this ability to reify, to manufacture a narrative which we believe, and that questions our current body schema, changing our gaze upon the world. But really, this is not my point here. My point is that Virtue, requires of the Virtuoso the self-discipline, to perform and re-perform, to edit, to cut, to focus. This goes against the neoliberal idea of deregulation of everything. The destruction of every form of stability and the production and reproduction of flows. Defamiliariy, Decontextualisation, Deformation, Decommon-sense, Destruction, etc. A long etcetera. It cannot be negated its politics are complex, and it cannot be negated that its operational subjects are there for the chase, for the money. For these reasons the establishing of Virtue can be counter-productive, since it needs stable ground-not instability-discipline-not flexibility-and continuity-not "opportunity". The Virtuoso then has lost the battle; and if anyone has a claim against contemporary art it should go against the hyper-modernity on steroids we are going towards at this very moment.  Virtuosity can then be seen as a form of Privilege,


I'd say then, to conclude, that to design this mode of action is the project of the Virtuoso wannabe, and is in the hope of staying away from the flows of capital that it both aims to and aims not to be part of.