FREE ASS. MAG.
Free Association Magazine Fall, Issue #3 // NOMAD
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[inside cover] Dan Harvey 1
FALL // ISSUE #3
FREE ASS. MAG. Free Association (Maga)Zine FALL, ISSUE #3: NOMAD This anti-architecture/architecture (maga)zine is an agitated response to the closed nature of the architecture field. It was born out of the idea that our environment, built or unbuilt, influences much of who we are and the things we make as manifestations of our existence. Collected and hand-bound in Chicago, but extending across the globe. freeassmag.com | @freeassmag | freeassmagazine@gmail.com
SPECIAL FEATURE, pg. 30-31 Interview with Marco Bruno about MOTOElastico’s publication Borrowed City CONTRIBUTORS Allie Wass Amanda Wills Brandon Forrest Frederick Chris Kuberski Christian Haarhaus Dan Harvey Douglas Wills Erin Todd Jordan Davis Widjaja June Lee Keefer Dunn Kelsey Sucena Kitty Hall Lyra Jakabhazy Matt Fields Matz Melanjia Grozdanoska Mor Afgin MOTOElastico Nathan Mansakahn Nicholas Burrus Oscar Alejandro Rios Paul Pettigrew Rachel Derum Skylar Morgan Surambika Pradhan Susan Wietlispach Ted Black Ward Miller
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NOMAD : Our previous two publications presented issues within the built environment, emphasizing firstly utopian ideals, and secondly spaces (in) between these utopian agendas. With this third release, NOMAD will draw out the idea of permanence + impermanence within our constructed lives. We’ve grown accustomed to structures which are meant to withstand the ages, but we have entered a time in which we move and adapt at much faster rates. As we become more mobile, our spaces struggle to shift as quickly. In the following pages, you’ll find work illustrating various forms of travelers and spatial occupants, grappling with notions of time and space. During the making of this issue, we were lucky enough to talk with people who have been wanderers themselves, arrived at a point of change, and researchers learning the habits of city space borrowers. The hope is to encourage a discourse about the static nature of our built environment, in contrast to the dynamic moments we find ourselves in space and time. Free Ass. Mag. has itself become quite nomadic, reaching to connect with others in an attempt to create a borderless community of thinkers. Amanda Wills Editor/Founder
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ARTIFACTS FROM TIME AS A STEWARDESS
Susan Wietlispach : Joliet, USA
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June Lee : Seoul, South Korea
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SADY SAYS When I send you Christmas gifts and birthday cards they always go to the same place. It’s what I write in the top left corner that is the discovery. I had eleven bedrooms by the time I was eleven. It’s hard to sleep when new lights carve angular shadows into new and subtle sculptures. I was the most expert packer in the fifth grade. Mom told me to joke that I traveled so light my suitcase could float. You must treat your Star Wars poster delicately. Tack it up so you don’t make more holes, two blue on top and two green on the bottom. Don’t stick it to the door! Use the pins you can pull out easily. Otherwise you will crack your fingernail or rip the corner. Roll it up (there’s no need for Scotch tape). Slide it into the cardboard tube that you put all the dog stickers on. Remove from the tube and repeat. Why did I have to keep packing up my inventions box just because Dad kept getting new jobs? Why was I the one batted back and forth just because he and Mom couldn’t keep it together? I should’ve been allowed to stay in the house and THEY would have to come see ME. There should be a social club for every person who’s received a rent check from me. Do I do this because it’s how my parents programmed me, or have generations of adrenaline and cortisol bathing our brains made this mania the default setting? Connecticut. Colorado. California. Pennsylvania. Alabama. Alaska. Illinois. They do not look like much when you merely list them like that.
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“I had eleven bedrooms by the time I was eleven.” Where can we reach you? Uh…The house at college with the hole in the floor where we exorcised the basement. The townhouse in Alabama that I almost literally never left. Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house. No, their NEW house. Tent 6 at Mile Marker 41 in Alaska. Hold on, I just caught bronchitis for the second time this summer, so my dad’s taking me back to Colorado. If you created a new, annual blueprint for his house, no two of them would ever match. We moved in together in Chicago for nine years. It was one-third of my life and I’m already forgetting it, o sweet relief! I’ve earned three degrees and held two careers in eleven years. It’s hard to start a family when you’re working all night to ensure the planes stay in the air at the proper times. I haven’t seen Australia or West Virginia yet. I also haven’t hung up all my clothes.
Chris Kuberski : Chicago, USA
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Matt Fields : Ann Arbor, USA
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COMPLEX When dealing with history you must also grapple with its fluidity. A narrative denotes a storyteller, who has a perspective filled with their own sympathies, connections, and perversions. We all live in a new history, one that is self-aware, and that fluctuates acutely in response to the diverse platforms in which we consume information. In reference to this thought, Complex minimizes and abstracts itself, giving reference to material but not place or time. It represents a growing aspect of contemporary urban life, one which is viewed in irreconcilable ways.
Brandon Forrest Frederick : Kansas City, USA
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MY LIFE AS A NOMAD I have always considered myself a nomad amongst the settled. Every five years or so I find myself migrating to a dramatically different environment. My life started in the north woods of Michigan then winds through to the working class streets of Kalamazoo to the urban life of Rogers Park in Chicago to middle class neighborhoods of Milwood to farm life in Ionia to the sprawling campus of Michigan State University to the high rise life in Chicago to a suburban McMansion in Bartlett to a peaceful lake in Michigan to the township of Texas Corners to the high rise life of Lincoln Park to an expat hotel in Seoul to a royal home in Korea then to a Mies van der Rohe apartment in the skies of Chicago. And I can never go back no matter how much I might want to. However, each new place becomes a part my identity and who I am. While my mode of living is impermanent, I believe attachment can be a source of pain. Each transition is an opportunity for rebirth and growth. To me, your surroundings are a metaphor of your state of mind. Sometimes I need to change those surroundings even though moving on is very intimidating. But the rewards of change are tremendous. Staying in the same mental state, while often comforting, makes me a prisoner of orthodoxies, which suffocates my growth and creative potential. I never know what is around the corner, but that is exciting! I am not proselytizing this lifestyle to anyone. Especially, since I don’t have a lot to show for it. I don’t own a house, a car or have a sizable bank account. Though I have had it all. Those things were not real anyway. What is real endures. And what endures is love. I am lucky to have found a lot of that as a nomad.
Douglas Wills : Chicago, USA
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THE PRECARIOUS ARCHITECTURAL WORKER This decade is one defined by some exceptionally empty buzzwords - from big data, gig and sharing economies, internets-of-things, disruptions, and (not actually) brave calls for innovation. But this ideology of technological progress isn’t anything new at all. The words may vary slightly, but the core sales pitch that we should trust in the market to bring us a better way of life stays the same. Looking backward one can see similar tropes and idioms associated with progress ironically playing out over and over again.* This belief in the techno-future, in newness, does result in real developments that do in fact change capitalism, but only ever superficially. If you listen to the rhetoric, labor and capital platforms like Uber, AirBnB, Fiver, and eBay are helping us to become small business owners and little entrepreneurs. It’s a laughable assertion given that most of the people supplying the goods and services to these platforms are doing it to make ends meet or get a little extra cash on the side because they don’t earn enough at their day jobs. As Ricardo Antunes notes in his book “The Meanings of Work” that today “entrepreneurialism… presents itself as a hidden form of wage labor.”** Fortunately, thinkers like Kim Moody have shown that the data doesn’t indicate that this precarious gig-economy is supplanting traditional forms of employment in the general economy.*** His implication being that the seeming rise of precarious working arrangements is overstated and thus does not preclude mass action against the labor conditions of capitalism. Nevertheless, the “gigarati”-techno-enabled-entrepreneur figures highly in our social consciousness as an enviable and inevitable mainstay of near-future society. At its core, this character is a recycled trope of the “captain of industry,” giving credence to the notion that for all the talk of transformation, capitalist exploitation remains an unchanged fact. There is a constellation of ideology that renders these figures as heroes rather than villains. From the false promise that America affords the opportunity to become such a figure to our valorization of individual freedom over collective freedom. The later valorization often presents itself in the nomadic idyll, particularly in America. Here, we have gone to great lengths to romanticize modern nomads over the years: Cowboys, James Dean, the open road, touring musicians, train hoppers, outlaws, etc. There is a strange elision between these nomadic folk heroes and the myth of the self-made man. Architecture has certainly played it’s part in creating the romantic nomad myth too. Reyner Banham hoped that the machine age would allow us to take our lives anywhere by creating bubbles of comfort and modern convenience wherever we went. Archizoom dreamed of walking cities that wandered the globe. Superstudio imagined a ubiquitous grid that provided for all our wants and needs enabling us to become wanderers, although their project came with a generous helping of good political satire. Interestingly, all of the above scenarios pair nomadicity with a bold future of innovation. 16
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Even though Moody makes convincing arguments that the flip side of this bold future won’t be generalized precarity, it does seem to be a fact of life in 2016 for most architects, particularly young ones. Even though unpaid internships are on the wane, misclassification of employees as independent contractors is rampant, part-time and piecemeal work are too common, and wages haven’t rebounded with the post-great-recession building boom. The techno-futurists within the discipline place the blame for this unmooring of architecture as a profession on a failure to keep pace with the technological, legal, and financial developments in the general economy. They are certainly not entirely mistaken, but the problem here is less that we have fallen behind and more that the economic pressures of capitalism are transforming professionals into workers. It’s less the incompetency of architects acting as business people and more the fact that the big money players in the construction industry benefit when the architect becomes worker. Techno-future rhetoric misplaces the blame or worse tells us that this new precarity is a sign of progress that could somehow be of benefit. It’s no accident that at the most recent AIA convention I heard many speakers and facilitators asking “what the Uber of architecture is.” Even though the proletarianization of the industry has resulted in a new found precarity, we should not for a second lament the fact that the architect-as-gentlemanly-professional is being sent to the grave. It’s a damaging stereotype turned self-fulfilling prophecy replete with sexism, racism, and elitism. The appeal of the gentlemanly architect is the same allure of the techno-future, only heading in the direction of the past. Both are shaded by the romantic nomadic idyll: this draw of independence, autonomy, and freedom. Our precarity as architectural workers has made us nomads but without any of that romance. In fact, we are almost literally rendered nomads by crushing student loan debt that has placed ownership of a home or a business out of reach. We are unromantic nomads because stable and fairly compensated employment is rapidly becoming an exception and not the rule. Given this situation, our task should be to set a course against the techno-futurist rhetoric that would tell us our nomadicity is of the romantic variety. What they call gigs, flexibility, and independence we should call a lack of stable and fulfilling employment. When they call for new technological platforms that supposedly make it easier for us to be entrepreneurs we should call for a union that brings together architectural workers so that we can actualize our economic leverage as a collective. The romantic nomad is dead in the case of the gentlemanly architect and a pipe-dream in the case of technological advancement. The precarious Nomad is our reality, and we would do well to become a tribe. Footnotes: * In the first issue of this publication I wrote a typo-challenged piece about Manfredo Tafuri’s book “Architecture and Utopia” that sheds some light on this phenomenon. ** Antunes, Ricardo. The Meanings of Work: Essay on the Affirmation and Negation of Work. Leiden: Brill, 2013. ***
Moody, Kim. “The State of American Labor.” Jacobin, June 20, 2016.
Keefer Dunn : Chicago, USA
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Nicholas Burrus : Chicago, USA
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“Some call this “being oldfashioned”. I call this being...a hopeful romantic.” 20
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CALLING ALL HOPELESS ROMANTICS In a world where someone can show up at your door faster than pizza delivery, how do the hopeless romantics survive? We live in the era of fast and convenient. A time where if you want to listen to a song, you don’t have to wait till it comes out on CD, save up all your babysitting money, convince your mom to drive you to the store, wait for your mom to drive you to the store, proceed to drive to the store and then buy the whole album just to listen to that one song. Nowadays, you can simply buy it on iTunes, download it illegally, watch a youtube video or log into your friend’s Spotify so it’s absolutely no surprise that romance has to get with the times, too, but for a hopeless romantic like me? It kind of sucks. This is a society that’s constantly trying to outsmart itself. A society that wants to be bigger, better and more innovative than the one prior. A society that shits itself at the thought of being unrecognized and unimaginative. It’s a beautiful thing, don’t get me wrong, but I just can’t help but wonder, when it comes to love, are people missing out on the bigger picture? Are we forgetting what romance is all about? In a world that’s constantly trying to find new and improved ways to reduce wait time, even love begins to feel impatient. It’s called evolution, Kitty, learn to adapt. Sure but if “adapting” means hooking up over apps before you even know if a person is voting for Donald Trump then I don’t know if I like that. If “adapting” means texting someone nonstop before you even hear the sound of their voice then I’m not sure I’m down. If “adapting” is rushing into relationships faster than you can say “table for two” then I gotta say pass. And before all the “don’tknock-it-till-you-try-it” folks start wagging their fingers at their screens, know this. I’m not knocking it and I’ve already tried it (more times than you probably). You see, I’m the kind of lady that firmly believes in trying everything twice (once to try it, another to see if you like it) but seeing as this is becoming more of a societal norm, I can’t be bothered just to “try it twice” anymore. While this lifestyle may work for some, I’ve thrown in my towel. While a large chunk of people thrive off this particular part of 2016, I have come to realize (after trial and error) that I’m just not cut out for the task. Some people call this “being old-fashioned”. I call this being… A hopeFUL romantic. (If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with hopeful romanticism, please, stay calm. While hopeful romanticism is incurable and sometimes downright frustrating, it is freaking awesome and totally worth it. Hang in there, buddy, love is on the way.) Kitty Hall : Chicago, USA
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Ward Miller : Chicago, USA
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AFTERMATH Finishing college is often pitched to us as a happily ever after sort of deal. With the degree, life becomes a whole lot smoother. This images depicts a harsher truth, that there are still decisions to make and endless routes life can take, sometimes departing from that original academic specialization. College is over. What are you going to do now? It’s a question that puzzles and paralyzes many college graduates, often feeling isolated with this realization. Cut off when you’re parents decide to stop spending on you, ‘cause you have become the literal definition of grown in today’s society, even if you don’t really feel like it.
Nathan Mansakahn : Chicago, USA
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I CAN STILL SING For six months, I volunteered as an art teacher for the dementia ward in a local nursing home. I had about fifteen ladies in my class each week, and they were all memorable, wonderful people. Even though they would forget my name sometimes, it didn’t matter. Having them engaged and supported in something creative made an impact. There were a few key things I noticed from my experience, one being the act of coloring or doing a craft stimulated memories and they were able to recall on their childhoods and laugh and have conversations about it. If they wanted to tell me the same story over again, I would sit and listen again, because the simple joy that they had at sharing a recalled memory was immeasurable. Another thing I noticed, was the treatment from the staff to the dementia patients. Every week I watched staff members lose patience within a few seconds on these patients, which, of course, never helped the situation. The title “I Can Still Sing” acts as a statement, that even though their minds are no longer fully there and their bodies might not be able to the same things, they’re still people and they can definitely still sing. Even though their minds are spottier, they’re still vibrant with life and personality.
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Allie Wass : Grand Rapids, USA
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Lyra Jakabhazy : Chicago, USA
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MOTOELASTICO “The best Italian Architecture firm in Seoul, South Korea!” Marco Bruno (founder) Simone Carena (founder) Minji Kim (partner)
DISCUSSION WITH MARCO BRUNO ABOUT: “BORROWED CITY” A research publication about borrowed spaces found in Seoul, South Korea. Conceived by MOTOElastico and book design by Fritz Park. AMANDA: What inspired the MOTOElastico team to create the collection of research in Borrowed City?
“Two Nails Barber Shop” Borrowed City excerpt
MARCO: The first time we thought about Borrowed City was not in Seoul, but in Hanoi, Vietnam. There was a barber doing business in the street next to our hotel; he was just hanging a mirror with few tools to a nail in a wall while he was waiting for his customers on a very comfortable chair. He was borrowing the space only during the day, at night there was no sign of his presence. His shop look so permanent but at the same time so temporary, just like the things we were observing everyday in Seoul. A: What was the most unexpected discovery while collecting instances of “borrowed spaces” in Seoul?
“Exchange Currency” Borrowed City excerpt
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M: The fact that our [Korean] students, when we started the research, had no idea of what we were talking about. For them, all those things happening around them were just normal.
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A: As an Italian designer + architect, living in Seoul for the past 15 years, observing the way Koreans transform their public spaces, do you see similarities or differences in your own Italian origins? M: I see more differences than similarities. Space appropriations might be similar but in Korea there is such a high respect for public properties, that even when people abuse public space, you have the feeling things can be reverted anytime to the original condition. Civic education is totally missing in Italy. A: What is the connection - or is there? between Borrowed City and your Mototjari Mats? M: The [Mototjari] mats are a way to promote a responsible way of borrowing public space. It is like a Whiskey Campaign: Drink (Borrow), but do it responsibly! A: What have you discovered by asking people to use your Mototjari in their own ways? M: That no matter how you talk about it, people will understand the idea in their own way. And we think this is a great quality.
The MOTOTJARI Mat by MOTOElastico
A: From you research, and other projects done in the past three years since the publication release, how do you see “borrowed� spaces transforming in the future? M: Would be great to embed the ideas into real projects, like we did for the Seoul Citizen Hall. We just need more opportunities and people interested in listening to our ideas. To view more fantastic work, visit: motoelastico.com Discussion with MOTOElastico : Seoul, South Korea
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MICRO CITY LAB | MOTOELASTICO Borrowed City Messenger Performance at Gong Indie Art Hall Oct. 7-31, 2016 A total of 12 messengers living all across the globe received a MOTOElastico Mototjari Mat, to reclaim space in their public urban environments. Each took photos of their borrowing actions to be shared live. Messenger: Amanda Wills Location: Chicago, IL
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Amanda Wills : Chicago, USA
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Oscar Alejandro Rios : New York City, USA
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“Cyberspace : A consensual hallucination experienced daily by legitimate operators, in every nation.... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...� - Neuromancer
Jordan Davis Widjaja : Chicago, USA
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“The same people who give Old Faithful a wide berth easily drop coins into a smaller, unnamed, geyser.” 38
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AMERICA’S DRIVE TO THE NATIONAL PARKS Formed in 1926 the US Highway System revolutionized the American relationship with the automobile. With the new highways, the United States opened up to the middle class American, and the American vacation was forever changed. One of the main facets of the ‘American Road Trip’ were the National Parks, federal land that were declared as protected wildernesses. These parks became major destinations in the 1930’s as national travel became easier for the middle class American. Today, the National Parks have retained their status as ideal destinations, many contemporary road trippers frame their road trips around the various parks they want to, or have to, visit. This constant traffic challenges the National Parks Service, inspiring park rangers to both conserve the wildlife and make it accessible to everyone who visits the park. The Parks Service confronts this challenge by restricting the amount of access a visitor has, while also creating small managed areas designed for large amounts of traffic. These managed areas are prepackaged environments, designed to allow visitors to experience the transcendental qualities of nature, while remaining relatively comfortable and within a safe environment. The issue comes when the visitors leave these managed spaces and encounter the wildlife that isn’t given appropriate fencing. The unruly wildlife maintains its majestic status for a time, but it soon becomes a nuisance as it is harder to interact with than managed wildlife. The same people who give Old Faithful a wide berth easily drop coins into a smaller, unnamed, geyser. The parks also change the way the Road Trip is experienced. With the highways facilitating easy travel, and the parks serving as roadside amusement, it became easy to take an entire vacation on the road. These road trips were associated closely with the National Parks, many of which became situated on or near a major highway. Today the National Parks are a major part of the American Road trip despite the increased risk to protected land. The parks, like Route 66 before them, support a wide variety of towns and businesses geared to supplying luxuries and a sense of permanence to travelers. The prospect of traveling through wildernesses becomes less daunting when you know there’s a 24 hour pizza place only a mile from the park entrance. The road trip sits between two massive infrastructures, the National Park Service and the US Highway System, which both influence each other to create a unique mobile experience. The National Parks facilitate the creation of roadside attractions that can rely on the support of park visitors to thrive. At the same time, the highways change the way the parks are interacted with on a daily basis by drastically increasing the traffic that passes through the federal wilderness. The results of this influence are a road trip that is filled with both transcendental interactions with nature and an abundance of luxuries, a park service that bases its conservation practices around pleasing the public instead of focusing on an ecological ideal, and a truly unique way to see the country. Christian Haarhaus : Long Island, USA
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Architecture is often foremost the result of carefully calculated decisions intended to make life within a particular structure not only bearable but pleasant. On the road few can afford the luxuries that money brings to the construction of a space, but abundance of time and of necessity can begin to make up for relative poverty. For a month now my friend and I have been traveling the country, ourselves quite transient, experiencing the country through the lives of those we encounter on the road. For “Nomad”, I thought it best to focus on the people tramping about the outskirts of society, National Park Wilderness’, mobile parks, and anarchic communities like Slab City, to investigate how folks make personal the spaces owned by no one. This submission includes images of such folks living in relative no-mans land as well as the structures they create to feel comfortable in these unowned spaces.
Kelsey Sucena : Long Island, USA
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“I know not where my thoughts wanter | Near and afar they go, they soar | They have never known a place called home...” 42
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LOVE It was a dream and I was walking on the clouds I saw you there, pale and draped in sheer white You reminded me of the pictures of angels Yet I am no angel. My skin is pale but my thoughts dark I wish I was white inside but I wish not be untrue The game you play with me. I see you and I see you not In a flash of moment, I sense your presence And then you are gone I know not where my thoughts wander Near and afar they go, they soar They have never known a place called home I long for that smooth ride of my hand From your neck, going down your back I can almost feel you are next to me I can feel the warmth on my shoulders Maybe it’s one breath too many Maybe it’s one body too many We are we. I have known you forever In my sleep, in my work, in my play You were there, like blood in my veins I am not who you want me to be I am not who you thought me to be I am my own mind, life and body Yet, I am yours, body, mind and soul I own nothing and you own me My demons and darkness Demons I have known, I have known angels I have known you, him, her and him I have known everything, but one, me.
Surambika Pradhan : Chicago, USA
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Paul Pettigrew : Chicago, USA
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Matz : Berlin, Germany
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NOMAD As technology and media started to inhabit and change our everyday lives, the shift from permanence to mobility took hold “and its implied air-conditioned nomadic subject in an infinite interior, promised to completely redefine not only the social relationships of the city, but also the technological relationship between the people, the city and the natural environment.1 This was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an age of optimism of the imminent freedom coming to society, breaking from the chains of the physical world and all of the political and social historical injustices that it entailed, as reflected by the emerging utopian visions of inhabitation of the world from artists and architects all over the world. It was clear the world was changing, and as with all change, humanity hoped for the best. However, “as the spectacle of screens and media began to overshadow the brute weight of the buildings that held them,” it reflected the incoming clash between the new digital technology and the old physical reality.2 “The gradual reduction in size of new technology, the shrinking from displays of moon rockets to mobile telephones, also helped to render” an increasingly hardening boundary between the physical world and its recently discovered virtual companion.3 “We are surrounded by a network of satellites creating an information shell around the world, all around us and mostly out of sight, meanwhile we still live in spaces whose forms and arrangements, both spatial and political, were established long before the world of electronics began to change daily life.”4 “This invisible network is clearly not the consummation of that architectural promise of indeterminacy and freedom. Indeed, the way that the digital world seems to have bypassed the limits of architecture makes it appear almost impossible to imagine significant change in the world as it is;” living in and continuing to create the exact same type of spaces that we have always lived in and created.5 Further calcifying the “political boundary that has opened up between the hard world which continues to exist, seemingly unchanged, and the networked computer world that we can only ever peer into and never truly inhabit.”6 “Far from the home becoming something as technical and impermanent as an appliance, the house has become an asset class, whose very permanence has allowed it in parts of the world to become a socially ruinous investment, as solid as ever, yet ever more melted into air. Instead of our being housed in bubbles, the monetary value of our housing continues to bubble ever more erratically. And instead of the modern human becoming a nomad, free to roam within their comfort shells, national walls appear to be growing higher again, with antiimmigrant politics on the rise in the wealthy nations and all the grim historical resonances that suggests.”7 It’s not an exaggeration to say that the nomad is not free but in fear of being drowned by the state of things. Footnotes 1 Murphy, Douglas. Last futures. Verso Books: 2015. (293/333) 2-3 loc (291/333) 4-6 loc (290/333) 7 loc (2293/333) 48
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Our own urban lifestyles are certainly becoming increasingly nomadic. Every day, the lived experience of urban space becomes more fragmented, artificial and ephemeral.1 Can we modify the way we create space to reflect the way we are starting to live in it? The kind of spaces desired in houses everywhere – a cosy living room with a low sofa facing toward audiovisual equipment, a dining room with a large table around which meals may be enjoyed, a kitchen containing splendid modular fittings – are no longer places that play a part in the simplicity and vitality of family life. Like stage-sets for television dramas, they are no more than highly fictional spaces prepared for our aspirations toward family life.2
The change in how we live now encourages not only “the consumption of things but also of spaces, and even of the houses that we had thought of as the final stronghold for our lives”.3 Yet, this consumption of urban space allows the fluidity to create temporary space, which “emancipated from a finished building, undoubtedly ensures a sensation of freedom. Perhaps, within these urban spaces we may also find a truly free sense of dwelling, appropriate to our era.4 “For [the urban nomads], cinemas, theatres and bars are living rooms, restaurants are dining rooms, and the pools and saunas in gyms are luxurious gardens and bathrooms. Boutique stores are their wardrobes, coin laundries their washing machines. For them, all urban spaces may be inhabited. It might even be said that the spaces connecting the trails of their behaviour constitute a house.”5 Following a logic of inhabiting physical space in a similar way of how we inhabit virtual space, the term ‘software eating the world’ presents the condition of how the changing technology of our world is affecting how we live and even think. “It is eating the world, and it is only just booting up”.6 Inhabiting and living in temporary space is terrifying, but also potentially freeing. “It took Hilton a century to construct all of their hotels, brick by brick; Airbnb came along, armed only with software, and in six years created more without laying a brick.”7
Creating space through the means of fractal planning allows zoning to occur at the level of the room, within the home, allowing “possibility to dissolve previously calcified boundaries between“ the hard world of buildings and mobile world of networks.8 It enables an “apparent fluidity of space, at least in terms of fractal subdivisions of domestic fabric, rather than larger more permanent schemes…between residential, commercial, and industrial, between individual and collective spaces in the city, between bottom up- and top-down... allowing a more human-centered, localized designation of space, determined by communities themselves.9 Nomadism is happening and space needs to reflect that change; “whether it does so beneficially will depend on how much we care about the idea of the city as a public good, how adept we are at absorbing and redirecting disruptive forces for civic returns.”10 Can the nomad ever be free or is this just another failed utopia? Footnotes 1-5 Ito, Toyo. “Dismantling and reconstructing the ‘house’ in a disordered city” (1988) From Tarzans in the media forest. AA Publications: 2011. 6-10 Hill, Dan. “The commodification of everything” from SQM. 2014. Melanjia Grozdanoska : Chicago, USA
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Erin Todd : Ann Arbor, USA
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52 Background: none.
Series: the market transitions from full to vacant.
Sequence: a performer listens near the marching band, and gives one of his hats to another listener.
Voice: none. Music: trumpet solo. Background: none.
Background: passing traffic covers the market sounds.
Series: trucks and vans line the “back” of the market, forming an envelope.
Sequence: browsing the variety of olives at an Importateur’s stall.
Voice: a marchand de légumes calls out his goods in the distance.
Music: none.
Background: marketgoers can be overheard conversing with the marchands and one another.
169 : Film : Les Marchés
Music: marching band.
Music: none.
161 : Film : Les Marchés
Voice: none.
168 : Film : Les Marchés
Voice: none.
160 : Film : Les Marchés
FALL // ISSUE #3
NOMAD
LES MARCHES An audiovisual map of the marketgoer’s experiences. I produced a short film which identifies a number of patterns going on within any given marketplace. At the “curtain,” the market is hidden from the outside except for glimpses between its trucks and vans. From the repetition of the marchands’ calls to the sequence of breaking down, packing out, and cleaning up the space, the film’s purpose as a map is to analyze a complex event for recognizable, scalable elements. I also borrowed from Point of Sale, a photo series from my independent study of marketplaces; its significance is reflected in a similar moment of contact at the film’s end. I recorded the content within Les Marchés, both still photography and video footage, during my visits to the open air markets. The audio track overlaps and runs continuous, stringing together moments otherwise separated by darkness. My intention was not to produce a documentary; The segments were edited and composited to tell the story of a fictitious character, in order to weave in more events than a real marketgoer might encounter on a typical visit. I have shown here the elements of the film, distinguishing between photo series (strips) and film segments (reels). Also included is a description of the audio track as it ties the segments together. To watch video, visit: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ohm8brtLZwE&feature=youtu.be
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MASTERS AND SLAVES All of the works are 3D digital images of architectural environments. I create these environments in relation to the physical world we live in. I think about architectural environments as an instrument used by power systems to dictate how individuals interact with the world around them and with one another. They create structures that surround us, we live in them, and in return they have power, the power to divide and conquer.
Mor Afgin : Jerusalem, Israel
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NOMAD
THE SURFING NOMAD Surfers – those who ride ocean waves – have typically gravitated to specific coastal regions that promote an equation of weather patterns and geographical character that produce a surfable wave. Typically, surfers have been known to be territorial or stick to a local geography due to the social and economic climate. With the advent of surfing entering mainstream culture, could be said as the death of it. Point Break (1991) presented the localised nature of surfing as evidence that lead to the capture of the ‘Ex-Presidents’ Bodhi by FBI Agent Johnny Utah. The surfers were territorial and were located to the nearby beach due to the chemical sampled found in their long locks of sun-bleached-Californian hair. Since the rupture of the surfing sub-culture, the nomadic surfer is one that travels for waves, un-restricted by travel with use of mutli-vehicular means, sophisticated weather forecasting and a reprise in what in means to be a surfer in the 21st Century. Where the mainstream has captured the noted surfer aesthetic or at least the surf companies did it to themselves, one can no longer identify a surfer on the street, they are anonymous and nomadic. Human or natural intervention with the coastal geography demands an agile, aware and conscious surfer. Waves can literally come and go depending on the sand, the terrain and the ever-changing swell and wind patterns. The infamous beach breaks of southern France were enhanced by an intervention with the outflow of water as did the ‘super bank’ in Australia. On the flip-side, the surf break Mundaka in Spain was destroyed by manipulation to a marina nearby. In New Zealand surfbreaks of national significance are protected by law, that can be seen as a treasure in which to locate a community of surfer to a natural (or human intervened) phenomena. Yet, the surfing nomad has been a strong undercurrent in the history of surfing. Early film such as The Endless Summer (1966) shows two surfers travelling the world, chasing the summer, on the quest to find the perfect wave. This notion of searching and chasing waves remains consistent yet in a hyper-reality. With the 2015 remake of Point Break, the film follows a similar format of the FBI agent and the surfer. A stark contrast being the 2016 Bodhi moves globally. Unrestricted by the beaches of southern California, Bodhi surfaces in every continent, unidentifiable as a surfer, blending with the mere mortals wearing subdued colours and conservative haircut.
Ted Black : Dunedin, New Zealand
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Rachel Derum : Melbourne, Australia
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[inside cover] Dan Harvey
“ We’ve grown accustomed to structures which are meant to withstand the ages, but we have entered a time in which we move and adapt at much faster rates.”
Free Association Magazine Chicago, USA freeassmag.com