unexpected usefulness of the useless

Oh, unexpected usefulness of the useless! Charity of great things! Bounty of giants! The outsize monument, that had contained one of the emperor’s thoughts, had become an urchin’s shell: the lad had been accepted and taken in by the colossus. The bourgeois dressed in their Sunday best walking by the elephant of the Bastille would say, examining it with their bulging eyes and an expression of contempt: “What is it good for?”

- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, Book Ⅵ, Ⅱ

 

Filed under: Inspiration

The Teacher

The Teacher

…The work of students should not be directed to the solution of problems, but rather to sensing the nature of a thing. But you cannot know a nature without getting out of your guts. You must sense what it is, and then you can look up what other people think it is. What you sense must belong to you, and the words of teaching must not in any be in evidence, so completely has it been transformed into the singularity….

- Louis I. Kahn, Between Silence and Light

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suicidal desires

The continual references to catalogues and inventories and the definitely didactic nature of the publication constitute the affirmation of the wish to testify to one of the most logical acts that an intellectual can commit today: suicide. (Better still if it is suicide committed in public.)…

- Adolfo Natalini, Superstudio, AA School of Architecture lecture, London, 3 March 1971

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Housing as a consumer product

Human situations are as concerned with environmental changes and activity within the city, as with the definition of places. Important in this is the precept of situation as an ideas generator in creating a truly living city. Cities should generate, reflect and activate life, their structure organized to precipitate life and movement. Situation, the happenings within spaces in the city, the transient throwaway world of people, the passing presence of cars, etc., are as important, possibly more important than the built environment, the built demarcation of space. Situation can be caused by a single individual, by groups or a crowd, their particular purpose, occupation, movement and direction.

-Archigram, Housing as a consumer product, Warren Chalk

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The Man Walking

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching

Filed under: Inspiration

Entrance

Marina Abramovic and Ulay : Imponderabilia (1977)

At the opening of an exhibition in June 1977 at the Museum of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Bologna, Abramovic/Ulay stood naked at the entrance opposite each other in such a way that the people streaming in had to squeeze singly through the gap between the two, unable to avoid physical contact. The crucial factor was that everybody had to decide whom to look at as they passed. The video focuses on both the complete view and the half-length portrait in order to capture the different reactions of the audience. Most people were looking straight ahead to avoid a direct gaze, squeezed through with a lot of physical contact or tried bumping into the bare skin of the two as little as possible. Some also held on to the artists’ shoulders. Abramovic/Ulay kept looking at each other motionless like statues flanking an entrance. In this Performance, they are forming a physical frame, confronting the involuntary participants passing through the “birth canal” with the experience of touch, the decision which side to face, and exposing them all to an unfamiliar bodily sensation between shame and an awareness of their own bodies, and to close physical contact with another human being which is generally considered disturbing between strangers. The gap between the two protagonists constitutes the actual Performance space in which the viewer plays an active part. It is fitting that this action is placed in a museum where people go as spectators, learning at the very entrance that they are involved themselves. A text on the exhibition wall stated: “Imponderable. Such imponderable human factors as one’s aesthetic sensitivity/the overriding importance of imponderables in determining human conduct.” The text refers directly to the viewer as a protagonist of the Performance who – as is so often the case with Abramovic/Ulay – is denied the opportunity of direct observation. – Lilian Haberer.

Text source : www.newmedia-art.org/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=ML002604&amp…

For the people who haven’t seen this yet,
Depending on our choices everything could be different.
How should we enter to unknown community?
How could we welcome those strangers?
How can we limit our choices?
I don’t know.
But I found this so beautiful.

Filed under: Inspiration

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik, TV Buddha, 1974

Nam June Paik, Video Buddha, 1976

Buddhism and Nam June Paik have controlled my mind for such a long time.

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Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, Personal Values, 1951~52

Rene Magritte, Golconda, 1953

“My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question ‘What does that mean’? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”  René Magritte

How to transform known to UNKNOWN?
How to explore unknown people?
How to deal with aliens?

Filed under: Inspiration

life without objects

In those years it became very clear that to continue to design furniture, objects and similar house hold decorations was no solution to problems of living and not even to those of life, and even less could it serve to save one’s own soul…
It became clear that no beautification or cosmetic were sufficient to remedy the damage of time, the errors of man and the bestiality of architecture…
The problem therefore was that of increasing detachment from those activities of design adopting perhaps the theory of minimal force in a general “process of reduction”.

- Superstudio, Histograms, 1968

“Objects are status symbols, the expression of models proposed by ruling class”. The only objects one will need in the future they argue are “flags or talismans, signals for an existence that continues, or simple utensils for simple operations”.
- Peter Lang and William Menking (2003), Superstudio, Skira Editore S.p.A., Italy, pp 61-62

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[백범일지] 중 [나의 소원]

나는 우리나라가 세계에서 가장 아름다운 나라가 되길 원한다.
가장 부강한 나라가 되기를 원하는 것은 아니다.
내가 남의 침략에 가슴이 아팠으니,
내 나라가 남을 침략하는 것을 아니한다.
우리의 부력은 우리의 생활을 풍족히 할 만하고,
우리의 강력은 남의 침력을 막을 만하면 족하다.
오직 한없이 가지고 싶은 것은 높은 문화의 힘이다.
문화의 힘은 우리 자신을 행복되게 하고,
나아가서 남에게 행복을 주겠기 때문이다.
지금 인류에서 부족한 것은 무력도 아니오, 경제력도 아니다.
자연과학의 힘은 아무리 많아도 좋으나,
인류 전체를 보면 현재의 자연과학만 가지고도 편히 살아가기에 넉넉하다.
인류가 현재에 불행한 근본 이유는 인의가 부족하고,
자비가 부족하고, 사랑이 부족한 때문이다.
이 마음이 발달이 되면 햔재의 물질력으로 20억이 다 편히 살아갈 수 있을 것이다.
인류의 이 정신을 배양하는 것은 오직 문화이다.
나는 우리나라가 남의 것을 모방하는 나라가 되지 말고,
이러한 높고 새로운 문화의 근원이 되고, 목표가 되고, 모범이 되기를 원한다.
그래서 진정한 세계의 평화가 우리나라에서,
우리나라로 말미암아서 세계에서 실현되기를 원한다.

백범 김구 [백범 일지] 중 [나의 소원]

image source: www.blog.joins.com

What does the world need more?

Filed under: Inspiration