# Cremaster 3 by Matthew Barney

In 2002, Matthew Barney releases his third opus (out of five) for the Cremaster cycle (the cremaster muscle controls testicular contractions in response to external stimuli) in which he explores processes of creation. Barney is fascinated by the notion of constraint and always establishes a set of rules in order to create his work, similarly to the French Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentielle).
Cremaster 3 explores the construction of the Chrysler Building and the very special ceremonial related to an apprentice's initiation. The second part of the movie dramatizes the same story but withing the Guggenheim which hosts a kind of initiative video game populated by strange characters and...Richard Serra.
It is difficult to talk about Cremaster since this movie is firstly a very hypnotic one thanks to its rhythm, its aesthetic and its characters' behavior.

# Francis Bacon The logic of sensation by Gilles Deleuze

After a post on Victoria Reynolds' photographs directly related in my opinion to Gilles Deleuze's Logic of sensation (1981) about Francis Bacon's work (see previous post), here is another quote. (original French version follows the English text).

It is a mistake to think that the painter works on a white surface. The figurative belief follows from this mistake. If the painter were before a white surface, he – or she – could reproduce on it an external object functioning as a model. But such is not the case. The painter has many things in his head, or around him, or in his studio. Now everything he has in his head or around him is already in the canvas, more or less virtually, more or less actually, before he begins his work. They are all present in the canvas as so many images, actual or virtual, so that the painter does not have to cover a blank surface, but rather would have to empty it out, clear it, clean it. He does not paint in order to reproduce on the canvas an object functioning as model; he paints on images that are already there, in order to produce a canvas whose functioning will reverse the relations between model and copy. In short, what we have to define are all these “givens” [données] that are on the canvas before the painter’s work begins, and determine, among these givens, which are an obstacle, which are a help, or even the effects of a preparatory work.

Gilles Deleuze. Francis Bacon The logic of sensation. Continuum 2003 (translated by Daniel W. Smith)

C’est une erreur de croire que le peintre est devant une surface blanche. La croyance figurative découle de cette erreur : en effet si le peintre est devant une surface blanche, il pourrait y reproduire un objet extérieur fonctionnant comme modèle. Mais il n'en est pas ainsi. Le peintre a beaucoup de choses dans la tête, ou autour de lui, ou dans l'atelier. Or, tout ce qu’il a dans la tête, ou autour de lui est déjà dans la toile, plus ou moins virtuellement, plus ou moins actuellement avant qu’il ne commence son travail. Tout cela est présent sur la toile, a titre d’images, actuelles ou virtuelles. Si bien que le peintre n'a pas à remplir une surface blanche, il aurait plutôt à vider, désencombrer, nettoyer. Il ne peint donc pas pour reproduire sur la toile, un objet fonctionnant comme un modèle, il peint sur des images déjà là, pour produire une toile dont le fonctionnement va renverser les rapports du modèle et de la copie. Bref ce qu’il faut définir, ce sont toutes ces « données » qui sont sur la toile avant que le travail du peintre commence. Et parmi ces données, lesquelles sont un obstacle, lesquelles une aide, ou même les effets d’un travail préparatoire.

Gilles Deleuze. Francis Bacon Logique de la sensation. Seuil 2002

# Berlin Wall 1989-2009

Twenty years exactly today after the Berlin Wall felt, numerous newspapers are proposing special editions about that topic. The New York Times proposes a panel of the wall pictures related to the personal story and perception of the photographer.

# Linn Olofsdotter

Linn Olofsdotter is a Swedish graphic designer who develop an interesting colorful aesthetic, some kind of updated Japanese "estampe" (print ?) using collage not as a real medium but rather as a virtual juxtaposition of signs and ideas.

# Claude Parent for the Venice Biennale 1970

Here is Claude Parent's participation project to the Venice Biennale 1970. It works as a prototype of what may be a little part of the oblique city (see former post and Villa Drusch post) in which the walls can host the body in positions depending on their inclination.

# Quarantine / Remoteness, paranoia and mechanisms of precautionary incarceration

Yesterday, I attended to Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG) brilliant lecture at Pratt in which he introduced the Quarantine workshop he is currently leading in the Storefront. I am very interested by this notion of quarantine in the materialization of fear and paranoia its implies. The potentiality for each building to become a quarantine station therefore a prison seems to me as embodying perfectly an ultimate state of totalitarianism. It reminds me of Foucault's descriptions in Discipline and Punish (see former post) in which he depicts a middle age city infected by the Plague (see also Geoff's article on Albert Camus' Plague) and the imprisonment of every inhabitants in their own house waiting for the health inspection which would deliver a license of free circulation in case of non-infection. What is really striking with this notion of quarantine is the precaution it implies. No matter if one is infected or not, if he is suspected to be, his circulation will be controlled.
Another example quarantine evokes to me is Peter Watkins' movies, Punishment Park on the one hand and The War Game on the other hand. The first one depicts. in an amazing documentary imitation, the invention of a park lost in the desert used by the police to train itself, chasing in the most violent way young "voluntary" dissidents. The War Game is also a diversion of a documentary (a kind of official one) dramatizing a country (England) living in the paranoia of a nuclear attack. Through these two movies, we can observe both violent remoteness of infected citizens (the infection is not necessarily viral) and the fear being the leitmotiv of a nation and therefore its omnipresent material of this nation's both physicality and social relationships.

# Walls of shame

En una linea el mundo se une
Con una linea el mundo se divide
Dibujar es hermoso y tremendo

Eduardo Chillida

I love this poem because of it express the responsibility we architects have regarding every single line that we are tracing on the paper. Each of those lines will have a territorial and social implication in the reality. The wall, is the most tremendous example of this power. A single line on the map (see a former post on the US/Mexico wall) constitutes a hyper violent physicality in the real world.
To celebrate the twentieth birthday of the Berlin wall's fall, the French newspaper Liberation is doing an inventory of the remaining walls of shame in the world.
Palestine, Korea, Chypre, Mexico, Morocco, Northern Ireland, and Padova are still confronted to this static immutable violence of a single line...

# Jardin Addiction by Berdaguer Pejus

Jardin (garden) Addiction is an installation created by Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Pejus (see former post) helped by Christophe Laudamiel, perfumer. This piece of art affect the visitor thanks to brain stimuli by emanating smells of addictive substances such as cocaine, alcohol, opium etc. The aesthetic of the plant itself uses an ambiguous language mixing beauty and dangerosity.

# The pillow book by Peter Greenaway

The Pillow Book is a Peter Greenaway's movie (1996) which dramatize the ceremonial of calligraphy on human skin. The brush's slight caress on the body and the mystery of those signs for the westerner that I am, develop an irresistible eroticism which is perfectly arranged in the movie by a constant mix of genres between Western and Japanese cinema.

# MANIFESTO /// Romaric Vinet-Kammerer

(sorry no English translation this time...)

Romaric Vinet-Kammerer

WUNDERKAMMER

« Imaginez les relevés spatiaux futurs, ceux qu’établiront les générations à venir pour tenter de comprendre où se concentrait l’habitat de leurs ancêtres, comment ils dessinaient les plans de leurs cités, pourquoi ils choisissaient ce delta, ce plateau ou cette baie pour se regrouper, bâtir des villes et les nommer… »

Les visiteurs défilent. Certains ne font qu’approcher des hauts rideaux qui séparent le pavillon du parc, d’autres pénétrent dans l’obscurité, y trouvent une place et s’y installent.

« … et lorsque les climats auront changé, à partir de quoi redessineront-elles les paysages dans lesquels nous vivions, la végétation qui peuplait nos villes et les environnait ?

Quand nos intérieurs auront disparu, qu’il restera très peu d’informations sur notre quotidien et moins encore sur nos vies intimes, certains tenteront d’écrire l’histoire des mutations de nos grandes métropoles et celle des existences qui s’y logeaient. Alors, à partir de restes d’édifices et de fragments d’étoffes, les mêmes réactiveront peut-être aussi imaginaires et visions de mondes disparus… »

Le promoteur achève sa présentation et se tourne vers l’écran. Un commentaire off enchaîne, sur la projection de plans et de vues en trois dimensions.

« Entre le conservatoire, la bibliothèque et le cabinet de curiosité, le projet vise à réunir non pas l’histoire de notre époque, mais les rêveries qu’elle provoque : journaux d’exil, utopies réalisées, rosebuds et possibilités paysagères… »

# Armilla in The Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Thin Cities 3

Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not know. The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing that makes it seem a city except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a forest of pipes that end in taps, shouwers, spouts, overflows. Against the sky a lavabo's white stands out, or a bathtub, or some other porcelain, like late fruit still hanging from the boughs. You would think that the plumbers had finished their job and gone away before the bricklayers arrived; or else their hydraulic systems, indestructable, had survived a catastrophe, an earthquake, or the corrosion of termites.

Abandoned before or after it was inhabited, Armilla cannot be called deserted. At any hour, raising your eyes among the pipes, you are likely to glimpse a young woman, or many young women, slender, not tall of stature, luxuriating in the bathtubs or arching their backs under the showers suspended in the void, washing or drying or perfuming themselves, or combing their long hair at a mirror. In the sun, the threads of water fanning from the showers glisten, the jets of the taps, the spurts, the splases, the sponges' suds.

I have come to this explaination: the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in th posession of nymphs and naiads. Accustomed to traveling along underground veins, they found it easy to enter the new aquatic realm, to burst from multiple fountains, to find new mirrors, new games, new ways of enjoying the water. Their invasion may have driven out the human beings, or Armilla may have been built by humans as a votive offering to win the favor of the nymphs, offended at the misuse of the waters. In any case, now they seem content, these maidens: in the morning you hear them singing.

extract from The Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino. Harvest Books (1978)

# Resisting the Capitalist Production of Space

Resisting the Capitalist Production of Space is a ten days conference organized in Brooklyn by Oppositionnal Architecture proposing discussions between sociologists, architects, geographers, historians, economists about resisting the systematic embodiment of capitalism in urban spaces.
Here is the program:

Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture
Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces

Location: Gair Building No 6, 81 Front Street , Brook l yn NY 11201 / York stop on the F Train

Wednesday, November 11 // 6 pm
Opening Reception

Thursday, November 12 // 7 pm
The Decommodification of Housing
Discussion with James deFilippis, geographer, Rutgers University, New Brunswick · Esther Wang and Helena Wong of CAAAV, Organizing Asian Communities, New York

Friday, November 13 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by Lize Mogel and Alexis Baghat, An Atlas of Radical Cartography*

Saturday, November 14 // 7 pm
The Real Estate Crisis, Private Property and the Prospects of Planning
Discussion with David Kotz, economist, University of Massachusetts Amherst · Teddy Cruz, architect, San Diego

Sunday, November 15 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by tba*

Monday, November 16 // 7 pm
On the Commons: Taking versus Granting Rights
Discussion with Peter Linebaugh, historian, University of Toledo · Brett Bloom of Midwest Radical Culture Corridor, Urbana · Rob Robinson of Picture the Homeless, New York

Tuesday, November 17 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by common room*

Wednesday, November 18 // 7 pm
Territory as a Means of Struggle
Discussion with Veronica Dorsey of United Workers, Baltimore · Neil Smith, geographer, City University New York

Thursday, November 19 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi of SLO architecture

BELOW HIGH-WATER MARK
An evening of film footage and munical improvisation exploring hidden connections along the water ways of New York City

Musical Improvisation by Joe Warner

Friday, November 20 // 7 pm
Reclaiming Capitalist Spaces
Discussion with Janelle Cornwell and Julie Graham, geographers, University of Massachusetts Amherst · Max Rameau of Take Back the Land, Miami

Saturday, November 21 // 12 pm
Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces
Lecture by David Harvey, geographer, City University New York, 12 pm
Workshops with special guests*, 2 - 6 pm
Final presentation and discussion, 7 pm
Party, 10 pm