A Conversation Considering

Upon signing up for the “Political Economy of Construction” seminar led by Daniel Young, I wasn’t sure what to fully expect. I took the seminar because I felt it would be reading and theoretical material that would be the financial aspect of my research. Currently, I am examining white supremacy’s entrenched condition within design via modernity (philosophical origins manifested in design) across the 20th and 21st centuries. When attempting to illustrate the inherentness of white supremacy in the being of commonly figured modernity (brought forth by capitalism) within the present hegemonic condition, it is essential to thoroughly investigate all considerations of the urban landscape’s development, in general and in context. I formed the hypothesis that the class would be primarily based on the more political conditions that augment the built environment. While this did occur, I was excited that the course had a significant architectural focus that explored typologies and zoning. I was most thrilled with the reading and conversations that surrounded the hegemonic employment of “work,” “labor,” “success,” and “time” and their consequences.

I was not expecting the theoretical writings on money, which brought an edge to my research that was necessary, even if I didn’t know how to engage with it. Due to one reason or another, I feel like I struggle with comprehension (probably too much screentime). The older I get, the longer it takes me to understand things, it seems. Since I am having comprehension issues as is, attempting to conceptualize or articulate anything money-related without discussion feels intense. My pre-existing lack of interest in talking about money matters (the most important matters to talk about) makes consuming already incomprehensible intellectual writing an arduous task. It almost takes me force-feeding myself the material to engage with it. Having a seminar in which I could convene with others, hear their takes, and listen to their presentations proved helpful.

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

Urbanity is a fabric. An arrangement of economic and cultural materials spatially woven into a condition that gradiently shifts through time and circumstance. Shifting between the human and building scale, one finds a different condition, routine, and world that materializes its own socio-economic spatial niche. But we have to ask ourselves: how are the foundational arrangements (e.g., block size, grid or circle, etc.) for an urban fabric spatialized to begin with, and what factors contribute to its manifestation? In Cognitive Mapping, Fredric Jameson discusses the three historical stages of capitalism, noting the increased separation of the immediate/limited experience of individuals (essence and appearance) and the true economic/social form that governs said experience (structure and lived experience). (Jameson, 1990, p. 2). The separation of essence experience and structured experience is critical because it divides and introduces a way of being that is removed from a “humanistic” form of living. The act of modernity, in all the ways in which it takes shape, is a procedural step for causing this experiential rift as it invalidates and makes false authenticity, pushing pre-modern forms of living, regardless of spatial or architectural form, into antiquity, and therefore not a way one should currently live. Though science or cognitive models (meaning that which can be measured, aka the social) similar to falsified authentic experiences are rendered true, these steps of being still escapes individual experience (Jameson, 1990, p.3). Just like the logic of the grid, as noted by Jameson, capital life mimics its geometrical heterogenousness and Cartesian homogeneity into infinity.

Recognizing the slow colonization of use value by exchange value via the reframing of “transaction” to a strictly monetary condition and the denaturalization/demythification of desire, displacing commodification as “success” (Jameson, 1990, p.2), a cognitive resonance streamlines the spatialization of capital into a complete life performance. This is further highlighted through the extraction of raw materials by colonial countries, thus shifting the focus of the social world to a small, circumstantial condition, exacerbating “success,” and further invalidating ways of being that exist within extracted lands. A complete disregard for anything but capital. The thought fits the action due to the reprioritization of Western/modern mythic narratives and their control on one’s way of being, further made fact via taylorization and the labor process spatialized (aka the grid).

To maintain the grid, this spatialized condition must be implemented as a standard way of being. From grid to individual experience, all ways of existing are made measurable, and therefore devaluable, if they do not function within the calculable dynamic of capital. Going against the grain, specifically regarding punk and anarchic ways of being, highlights that the entire spatial condition one lives in is that of capital conformity… and that’s the point. The chicken or the egg question always crops up: do you shift the space first and then the expected life narrative augments, or do you augment the expected life narrative first and then the space augments? Hannah Ardent’s dissection of the vita activa, the spheres of labor, work, and action (Labor and Architecture: Revisiting Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt), provides essential perspective to this matter but requires its own thorough breakdown in another writing.

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Typologies are an interesting factor to consider, as they lie in the middle between the capital manifestation of a modern solution (building forms picked up from Europe and placed down anywhere else in the world) but also augment authentic individual experience due to the shift in their spatial context. Kenneth Frampton’s Towards A Critical Regionalism: Six Points of an Architecture of Resistance tangentially encounters this liminality of modern typologies and works to examine how modernity should be architecturally adapted to functionally, economically, and aesthetically fit within its geographical vernacular. Opinion: I think even though the current hegemonic structure is based on Western modernity, as distance increases between influencer (global north) and influenced (global south), modernity itself actualizes differently. All translation is interpretation. Japanese culture comes to mind, specifically the values and historic tradition of shame, respect, and conformity. These social factors, and so many more, contrast with the chaotic, capital modernity that exists within the United States. This condition is able to materialize because the US both values and is historically lawless, individualistic, and shameful. Same make-up / different bone structure.

Considering the different manifestations of modernity, I wonder: What is authenticity? I feel like I’ve read at least four articles on it, and I still don’t know what it is. When Jameson discusses the separation of essence and appearance from structured experience, I wonder what he means by the falsification of authenticity. Instead of asking, “What is authenticity?” it might be more helpful to ask, “Where does authenticity begin and end?” If everything is informed by itself and thus replicating itself ad infinitum (simulacra and simulation, Baudrillard), and this self-informing material is perpetually spiraling into a oneness via the all-encompassing linearity of capitalism and modernity, then nothing can ever be authentic. That is bleak. To maintain my sanity, I have to recognize authenticity as a form of momentary intentionality that lacks a third perspective (another audience). It's not what you are engaging with; it's how you engage with it. The way we as individuals collectively interact within modernity is different. This goes for speaking from the global north to the global south, where there are a multitude of conditions in other countries’ modernities, as well as, within the same country. Authenticity has to be in the crevices of interaction. For example, an object not being used the way it was designed is a modernity break. A form not following its function. There’s a human, unscientific-ness to that that is unreplicatable by modernity. So I ask another question: How entrenched is modernity?

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With all this talk of capital made spatio-psychological and the contextual configuration of European typologies, it is necessary to bring into focus the theory of the dérive. Observation lies in the [architect]’s toolset. The dérive is the inverse of “success,” since to be successful it requires the observation of authentic experience that is conditionally measurable and requires playful-constructive behavior. Imaging urbanity as a fabric helps animate the reflexive nature of the urban landscape to the I’s human body. Living in the city wraps around one like a fabric: form-fitting, contoured, misshapen, and frumpy. The city is a tennis match of “I belong here” and “I don’t belong here.” The activity of the dérive is grounding, as it removes personhood for embracing the un-extraordinary-ness of self to achieve cognition of the everything-ness ambiance. A labor of psychogeographical and emotional instability. An anarchic lifestyle activity.

(In conjunction with the functionality of the dérive, abandoned spaces as commons is a phenomenon that's worth exploring because of its anarchic and anti-modern functionality.)

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

Complete topic change:

On the last day of the seminar, a discussion arose about the roles of the academic and the artist. It was formulated that the academic labors for the collective and the artist labors for the self. The academic navigates structured frameworks and proper academic decorum for validity, and the artist navigates in and out of academia, taking what they need to produce a work. I don't disagree with the established role of either the academic or artist, but I believe there is a synergy rather than two divergent ways of understanding reality. The artist serves as a synthesizer that’s able to remove, reiterate, and recontextualize materials presented by the academic to explore other forms of knowledge (i.e., intuition). The academic extrapolates the artist’s perspective as an inspirational investigation and thoroughly examines and questions the artist’s work for unfounded insight. Both institutions seek one another and can’t fully extend thought without their counterpart’s expertise.

A Conversation Considering Urbanity, Experience and The Dérive