2 roomies + 2 different incidents

ReadingSPACE: Eastern Harbour District: Architecture & Urbanism by Marlies Buurman, Bernard Hulsman, Hans Ibelings, Allard Jolles, Ed Melet, Ton Schaap, et al.
SongSPACE: Hot Snakes: Suicide Invoice
InteractiveSPACE: Sushi Samurai ! Thanks A LOT Cwangdom ! Like I have time for more addictive types of procrastination!

I ADORE you but….

Morrissey must have forgotten to take his prudence pills a couple of days ago after posting this statement on his True to You site:

"We will not include any Canadian dates on our world tour to promote our new album. This is in protest against the barbaric slaughter of over 325,000 baby seals which is now underway.I fully realise that the absence of any Morrissey concerts in Canada is unlikely to bring the Canadian economy to its knees, but it is our small protest against this horrific slaughter - which is the largest slaughter of marine animal species found anywhere on the planet.

The Canadian Prime Minister says the so-called "cull" is economically and environmentally justified, but this is untrue.The seal population has looked after itself for thousand of years without human intervention, and, as the world knows, this slaughter is about one thing only: making money. The Canadian government will stream all of the pelts into the fashion industry and this is the reason why the baby seals are killed with spiked clubs that crush their skulls - any damage to their pelts is avoided.

The Canadian Prime Minister also states that the slaughter is necessary because it provides jobs for local communities, but this is an ignorant reason for allowing such barbaric and cruel slaughter of beings that are denied life simply because somebody somewhere might want to wear their skin.Construction of German gas chambers also provided work for someone - this is not a moral or sound reason for allowing suffering.If you can, please boycott Canadian goods. It WILL make a difference. As things stand, Canada has placed itself alongside China as the cruelest and most self-serving nation."

Huh?!!! Gas chambers??? China???Boycott Canadian goods???....

I am SO incredibly disappointed- there are better ways of protesting other than absurd gestures + absence…

Jan. 4. 2006: taken from: http://true-to-you.net/morrissey_news_060104_01

Q: HOW DO YOU DEFINE YOURSELF POLITICALLY, OR DO YOU AT ALL?
Moz: “I don't consider myself to be political, even though to sing or to write are political acts, of sorts. The proof of your political thinking is usually in your conduct. I find myself opposing barbarism, that's all… I see no difference between Blair or Bush and Saddam Hussein - all egotistical dictators. Perhaps the only difference is that Blair and Bush do it with a smile. Murder and smile .... as Shakespeare said. Good people do not succeed in politics - it's impossible…”

Sounds like Moz has overlooked a small little factor: that he has already engaged himself in political debate by making statements regarding the war and the killing of animals. Morrissey’s a "superstar" - a *hero* - people love him, *I* love him and he has tremendous influence on his fans. He has the "power" to make change – be it big or small. Sorry Morrissey you are 100% political. To protest is to be part of a political system. It’s not bad, it’s inevitable. It’s self-defeating to think that you can separate yourself from politics or political debate - especially if you’re voicing your opinion onto others and asking them to support your cause...

Read Retorts ::

http://www.myspace.com/morrissey {The debate’s getting heated! Go Team ‘Barbara & Ryan’!}
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/06-03/27.shtml {excerpt: “Uh, Morrissey? You do realize that you recently played three shows in America, where George W. Bush is President, right? And he's responsible for way worse things than killing baby seals, right? OK, just checking.” }

“Space Invaders” :: it’s not what you think…

22a :: (initiated in 1996): Named after their original studio “location” in the industrial area of Poblenou, Barcelona; this curatorial/artist group seek out new ways to promote artistic production and to question traditional exhibiting models.

Space Invaders :: “The central, driving idea is to invade the space of others or just as well of common spaces, so as to share, co-inhabit, live with, communicate, participate in, interact. If the art space is desacralized, if art is wrenched out of its specific space, all that is left for us is the street, the public space, the social space, in the purest and most direct confrontation with reality…”

The project Fuerte Europa (Fortress Europe), by artist Anee-Britt Rage, proved to be a significant piece of work which exemplified 22a’s objectives. The politically provocative event included flying 15 kites with the faces of extreme right European politicians (Haider, Le Pen, Anglada, ...) on the beaches of Barceloneta and Bogatell. This was supplemented with the dispersion of literature regarding xenophobia in Europe and the decline of various right-wing movements around the world.

Initiatives like 22a demonstrate how a new sociology of public space can emerge through the integration of an unsuspecting public + an unequivocally socially-engaging piece of art. The strength of 22a stems from it’s ability to separate itself from the other more common forms of public art - such as graffiti art – in two main ways: 1) It's transient status: the event and 2) It's ability to spatially transform it's surroundings through its materiality.

InvadedSPACE ::
Similarly, there has recently been a couple of “Space Invaders” outside of my studio in the main foyer of the Architecture Graduate building! Student prank or serious stuff? ...

ReadingSPACE ::
Space Invaders: Artistic Interventions in Barcelona by 22a
Navigate it!: http://www.22a.org/ (in Spanish only)

Architecturaluncanny would like to note that she likes the installations and that prior to having them in the school she was thinking that she was getting “BDBD” or what is more commonly known as: Badly Designed Building Depression (BDBD: n. depression and/or decrease of inspirational or motivational faculties due to a lack of stimulation, heat, daylight, practicality, personality/character, in your space of work!).

Thank goodness for my classmates or I would’ve stabbed myself in the eyeballs with my drafting pencils a long, long time ago!

Note: (for non-Carleton people) there are two separate buildings at our School of Architecture. I assume that they wanted to grant the Masters of Architecture kids the new sterile building for all their hard work and $’s invested over the past 4 – 5 years…thanks, Carleton...boooo!

+ ReadingSPACE: Urban Futures

Someone somewhere is on the floor howling (other than me)! Possibly a satirical stab at the practice of contemporary architecture?

An intimate photo of Richard Meier’s Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona is the subject of contention. It’s not the façade in the photo that makes it so intriguing; rather, it’s the lonesome man with his dog in the bottom right corner of the cover. Now I haven’t read through this whole book yet and I’m not entirely familiar with author Malcolm Miles’ attitude towards specific architects or architectural movements but I’m pretty sure that the dog in the photo is preparing to take the biggest *crap* ever on the plaza in front of Meier’s museum!

Don't get me wrong, I’ve been to this museum before and although it wasn’t as spatially interesting as I had anticipated, it captured some nice moments within different areas of the building. Contextually, the museum stands in stark contrast to its surrounding fabric. As you make your way through the narrow winding streets of Barcelona you arrive at this unexpected intervention.

It is located in the Raval area of Barcelona which is just beyond the remains of the medieval Roman city: Ciutat Vella. The Raval is notorious for its somewhat 'sketchy' reputation but as a way of enriching its organizational space, the city of Barcelona has taken great measures towards building various cultural institutions in unique - and sometimes controversial - locations throughout the city. Meier’s museum is just one of many examples of this and it seems to work. Its purpose is to attract visitors internationally and locally to an otherwise "undesirable" part of the city in order to dispel notions of negativity associated with the Raval.

Since the 1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona has been rigorously involved in an effort to generate planning initiatives which attempt to address issues concerning economic and social disparity. While it is debatable whether some projects were succesful (Diagonal Mar), Barcelona’s perseverance to invest architecturally in innovative planning + design are admirable.

As for the cover art: There are few places for dogs to *crap* in around Barcelona seeing that much of the surface is paved with stone or brick. Possible interpretations of the photo could include: a need for more green space? Or possibly it's a criticism of the institutionalization/privatization of art? Or maybe it's just an audacious protest for more public washrooms which, I might add, are totally impossible to find! What I do know though, is that it is in no way a reflection of what is contained within the pages of this book.


So how is this at all related to the content of the book? ....Well, it isn't *really*...

+ Read it! :: Urban Futures: Critical Commentaries on Shaping the City by Malcolm Miles 2003.

+ Say it! :: taken from the article: “Public art: a Renewable Resource” by Patricia Phillips from the book: Urban Futures: Critical commentaries on shaping the city by Malcolm Miles

“Public art balances at the boundaries, spaces between public and private, architecture and art, object and environment. In reality and rhetoric, it operates in the seams and margins.”

“Art is not a thing; it is a dynamic exchange of invention, production, delivery, reception and action rather than a stable collection of formal characteristics. It questions what occurs when people encounter and experience it. “

“Art is thrillingly imprecise. it can shape a public space of imagination and suggests a sense of consequence of individual desires and actions within a community. But it is not risk-free or precisely programmed.”

"Bite Me."

Amongst all the name calling, I’ve recently been labeled a: “Nikki Wong”.

According to Wikipedia, the Canadian-produced cartoon 6Teen is a “…series (that) chronicles the adventures of six sixteen year old friends at their local mall.” It goes on to explain that “Each character is tailored to resemble a range of subcultures or subtypes of teenagers… and targets issues that teens deal with on a daily basis, while still remaining entertaining. The result is that the teenaged target audience can relate to the characters and their lives at the mall.”

What’s freighting is it assumes that the general audience can identify with these types of characters and moreover that it is an ideal lifestyle to aspire to! (media imitating reality or reality imitating media?)

Unfortunately, I cannot fully deny the aforementioned accusations. I did grow up in the suburbs. I did go to a high school across from a mall. And I did eat my lunch there almost everyday…BUT for the record I never worked in the mall!

6Teen illustrates contemporary suburban adolescent culture but does its representation critique or reinforce these ideas?

+Watch it!: (airing only in Canada) on Teletoon. also, Mallrats + Dawn of the Dead + Clueless , related to mall culture.
+Navigate it: 6Teen’s website – Use i-Pods, cell phones and the fictitious mall map (allan thinks it’s suspiciously similar to the West Edmonton Mall!) to work your way through episode highlights and character profiles!

+Say It! :: (shopping related quotes)

"For me, shopping is like masturbating public." - Slavoj Zizek

"They came, they saw, they did a little shopping." -Graffiti on Berlin Wall

"...commodities are in love with money but 'the course of true love never did run smooth." - Karl Marx

Bruce in Barrhaven:

Well it looks like Barrhaven, Ottawa has instantly become ‘hip’ due to the master manipulator of image himself: Bruce Mau. From the only two photos I’ve seen of the newly renovated Indigo bookstore, it looks alright. Nothing totally revolutionary and seemingly more wallpaper than architecture, it’s still about a billion times better than what it was.

I guess the most important thing here is that Indigo actually put forth the effort to re-brand their image in order to generate more physical movement + interest in their stores.I was recently talking to a friend (and old boss) of mine who owns the fabulous City Lights Bookshop in London,ON and she was telling me that it is now becoming more difficult to attract buyers seeing that most people buy books over the internet.

Unfortunately what the internet lacks is the interaction between unique characters and the process of discovery. When looking for a novel, the ability to navigate through intricate spaces and items are tangible and sensorial acts that activate and stimulate your mind – basically, you’re not just a mindless robot making transactions with a generic interface! Yeah, internet is convenient, but what are you making time for instead? Watching more t.v. or surfing the net?

Discovery occurs through serendipity, if you don’t allow yourself the opportunity to discover, you may just be missing out on something interesting!

Live it!: taken from Bruce Mau's "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth":

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
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2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
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3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
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ReadingSPACE:
+ book: Mutations // Rem Koolhaas Harvard Project on the City

SongSPACE:
+compact disc: Sunny Day Real Estate :: LP2

+for some reason I can't link to City Lights' myspace account on the sidebar - probably because I loathe that site for reasons I cannot even begin to explain! - but please check it out: http://www.myspace.com/citylightsbookshop

"Beniyork"

OnSite Review Magazine: 14::2005::architecture and land.

OnSite Review is a bi-annual magazine which describes itself as “a magazine about architects and architecture in Canada.” Funny, because the reason why I bought this issue was for an article on Benidorm, Spain. Oh in a place like Canada where various cultures are so complexly intertwined and where globalization oversees our manifold lifestyles, who really knows what identifies Canada as Canadian anymore!
But I digress, back to the magazine. I was interested in this article not only because I had visited and experienced Benidorm myself, but because my professor Rafael Gomez-Moriana had written it. The four page article demonstrates in both image and text the lack of architectural investment made in this Southeastern coastal city. Punctuated by enormous point towers Benidorm looks more like something from a kitschy American resort town amplified a million times in height, density and tourists. It asserts the highest building in Spain – the 186m high Gran Hotel Bali which pales by comparison to the CN Tower which towers at 553m. Although dwarfed by other internationally renowned structures, could Benidorm be developing a strategy which to expand upon? And by presuming it’s authority on tourism, generate taller buildings in the future thus creating a template that could influence other Spanish coastal cities? (hopefully not!).

“In Benidorm, there is no architecture: there is ‘the tallest building in Spain’ which is also ‘the tallest hotel in Europe’…but there are no buildings that stand out architecturally. Architectural guidebooks to Spain do not list any of its buildings, making Benidorm an exceptional city without exceptional buildings.”

(Gomez-Moriana 18)

By turning your back on the city (literally) your vision surrenders itself to an all encompassing view of the Mediterranean Sea. This calm is what the city lacks. More a spectacle than what should be a complete celebration of its natural surroundings, I’m content in knowing that (so far *fingers crossed*) it permeates Canada only through the medium of paper.

+ see (the madness) for youself! :: Benidorm

+ read :: OnSite Review Magazine (their site needs *help* - don't let it dissuade you though, the mag is good).

ReadingSPACE:

+ book: Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Making of Southern California :: Ed. Jennifer Wolch/Manuel Pastor Jr./Peter Dreier // Everything you ever wanted to know about the original ex-urban city - research analysis geared towards policy makers - hence can sometimes be a bit dry, but is very thorough in dealing with issues regarding: fiscal policies, racial inequalities, implementing strategies ["smart growth" models].

so sneaky!

Like many of my other postcards which I’ve collected over the years, my Theodore Gericault postcard serves it purpose better as a reluctant bookmark than that of a brief note written to an overzealous friend awaiting my return from a "fabulous" trip. Today I found it lodged in Joseph Beuys: Diverging Critiques – Liverpool University Press & Tate Gallery Liverpool.

“EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions in THE TOTAL ARTWORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. Self-determination and participation in the cultural sphere (freedom); in the structuring of laws (democracy); and in the sphere of economics (socialism). Self-administration and decentralization (threefold structure) occurs…”

Beuys wanted to define the actuality of art as an ethical model that allowed for the freedom of co-operative action within society.

In regards to an expanded conception of sculpture he states:

“This intentionality is nothing less than the exploration of dynamic relations between ‘reality as permanent’ and ‘reality as fluent’. When formed as an open-ended presence, a work of art defines a generation of real occasions by fixing reality in an ever-changing movement forward towards infinity.

HeadSPACE:

READ/SEE THIS: Vitamin D : New Perspectives in Drawing by Emma Dexter
Note (for you music nerds): when flipping through this, I saw an entry for Devendra Banhart – “neo psych/folk hippie singer/songwriter” – not really my style (musically or artistically), but interesting nonetheless!

++ Dammit! ++
Just as I heard about this band, Test Icicles, they decide to break up! Anyhow, check them out because they still get royalties!:

+review: Pitchfork: Test Icicles

+buy: Test Icicles Webpage

ReadingSPACE:
+book: Joel Garreau: Edge City
+book: Anthony Vidler: Warped Space: "Terminal Transfer Martha Rosler's Passages"

SongSPACE:
You Say Party! We Say Die!: Hit the Floor! : "The gap (between the rich and the poor)" + "Jazz crabs"

::: Pitchfork Review
::: YSP!WSD! on MySpace

I am deaf. Though for good reason. Last night I had the opportunity to see From Fiction and boy did I ever take it! The guys from FF (guitarists Quinten Ede and Adam Barnes, bassist Owen Marchildon and drummer Rob Gordon) played a fantastically energetic ear-busting, body-contorting show at Zaphod Beeblebrox to a disappointingly small but loyal crowd. Until now I had not seen FF live but I had listened to their four-song self-titled debut EP and had heard raving reviews about their live shows.

As a performance they win for the ‘best use of stage’ award, ‘best group dynamic’ award and ‘highest projection of instruments in the air’ award. On the downside, the sound at the show seemed to overwhelm their music to the point where their delicate musical detailing, which for me separates their music from other instro-punk bands, was sometimes lost amongst the noise of their own instruments.

Interestingly, although FF describes their music as an additive process where individual ideas come together to create a whole song, there seems to be a conscious effort in maintaining a sort of irregularity in their compositions. By deconstructing the typical relationships between vocals and instrumentation and within the music itself FF are able to amalgamate these differences into a beautifully self-destructing sound.

The equally talented headliner Sylvie was more conservative in their “rockstar” performance but played a solid set of songs which seemed to transcend their recorded versions. Formed out of the now defunct Despistado, vocalist/guitarist Joel Passmore, guitarist Chris Notenboom, Bassist Riva Farrell Racette, and drummer Jeff Romanyk have convened with some stunningly dissonant + melodic music. Sylvie’s more accessible sound generated dancing girls at the front of the stage and a lot of head-bobbing on the floor. I would definitely recommend seeing them when they drop by your town!


Highlights:
1. A pause in the show due to broken car windshield glass lodged in Joel’s (Sylvie) shoe.
2. ‘Fourth Quarter Report’ (FF) – Awesome!.
3. Rob Gordon’s moustache.


www.fromfiction.com
www.sylviemusic.com
www.zaphodbeeblebrox.com/

ReadingSpace:
+essay : Terrain Vague: Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubio
+book : The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis: Ghent Urban Studies Team [GUST]