We Had the Experience but Missed the Meaning
Laida Lertxundi
2014
Laida Lertxundi
2014
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“Exactly what makes a building memorable is hard to pin down. It’s certainly not merely fulfilling a practical function-all buildings do that. Beauty? Architecture is an art, yet we rarely concentrate our attention on buildings as we do on plays, books, and paintings. Most architecture, a backdrop for our everyday lives, is experienced in bits and pieces-the glimpsed view of a distant spire, the intricacy of a wrought-iron railing, the soaring space of a railroad station waiting room. Sometimes it’s just a detail, a well-shaped door handle, a window framing a perfect little view, a rosette carved into a chapel pew. And we say to ourselves, ‘How nice. Someone actually thought of that.‘”
— Witold Rybczynski, How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
— Witold Rybczynski, How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
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Dennis Oppenheim, Two Stage Transfer Drawing
Boise, Idaho
1971
"As Erik runs a marker along my back, I attempt to duplicate the movement on the wall. His activity stimulates a kinetic response from my sensory system. He is, therefore, drawing through me. Sensory retardation or disorientation makes up the discrepancy between the two drawings, and could be seen as elements that are activated during this procedure. Because Erik is my offspring, and we share similar biological ingredients, my back (as surface) can be seen as a mature version of his own...in a sense, he contacts his own future state."
Boise, Idaho
1971
"As Erik runs a marker along my back, I attempt to duplicate the movement on the wall. His activity stimulates a kinetic response from my sensory system. He is, therefore, drawing through me. Sensory retardation or disorientation makes up the discrepancy between the two drawings, and could be seen as elements that are activated during this procedure. Because Erik is my offspring, and we share similar biological ingredients, my back (as surface) can be seen as a mature version of his own...in a sense, he contacts his own future state."
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“I understand the unease of all such people. […] they prefer to deny that discourse is a complex, differentiated practice, governed by analyzable rules and transformations, rather than be deprived of that tender consoling certainty of being able to change, if not the world, if not life, at least their ‘meaning’, simply with a fresh word that can come only from themselves, and remain for ever close to the source. So many things have already eluded them in their language: they have no wish to see what they say go the same way; at all costs, they must preserve that tiny fragment of discourse - whether written or spoken - whose fragile, uncertain existence must perpetuate their lives. They cannot bear (and one cannot but sympathize) to hear someone saying: ‘Discourse is not life; its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don’t imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.”
— Michel Foucault, Archaeology of knowledge
— Michel Foucault, Archaeology of knowledge