Ambiguity & Types : Chronicle 59

A few years ago I read an interview of a teacher, he was smart and interesting. The last question from the journalist triggered a shift, though. What was bothering him? His answer was a surprise. It was something like:

“What bothers me is that in every class I taught in my career I found the same typology, with very little variations : in every classroom of 15 years old students, you find a sporty, a fat kid, a funny idiot, an angry rebel, an introvert girl, a shy blond, a dreamer, a goth, a nerd. That’s boring!”.

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“I empty my head in front of stupid TV”.

Hmmm?

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How TF do you translate a Style? There’s a witchy case:

Marguerite Duras was a French writer with a very special style. It’s difficult… even to define it! And of course it’s a part of her wizardry.

It’s between spoken language and a modest incantatory style. It’s full of mistakes, like a dyslexic person with strokes of genius. It’s gorgeous, blazing and magic… and completely quirky at the same time.

Therefore when you read Duras you have to let go something, a logical normal way to accept narration. It’s audacious, fascinating, it swallows you in a strange, new rhythm – a words-witch!

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I really wonder how people in the USA consider the people of other states…

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I wanted to write an article about “mean quotes about women”. Here are some :

Women show up and they cling to you and they destroy you
Thomas Bernhard

Beware when you’re caught in a woman’s dreams
Gilles Deleuze

What does that mean? That these guys were afraid? Afraid of what? A power? Are men defenseless?

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I read a book about ambiguity in architecture, therefore I wanted to write “At once This and That, the pleasure of ambiguity”.

Ambiguity is when you can’t decide if this is something or something else. In buildings : a window, a corridor, stairs, everything can be two things at the same time.

Of course it TELLS something, that some architects want, seek this. They hate minimalism, the obvious “clean” thing. They love what I think is the essence of modernity :

To make something to make people wonder and smile, instead of making people say “Ohhh that’s beautiful”.

Zola about Manet

Of course I love this! Things (and us) can be this AND that, we can juxtapose, rotate, double-fonction, adapt. It’s enrichment, intelligence, faces. A door can decorate. A cook can be a musician. The superfluous is necessary…

Haecceity

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Incompleteness gives untranquility.

• Game of desires (I want what I don’t have), I buy it, it kills desire for a moment. A loop and a dodge.
• Incompleteness born from boredom : “what can I do I don’t know what to do something is lacking but what”.
• Media pressure to be rich or famous or happy.
• Desire to be valued by people around, or… the world, and nobody really cares.
• Linked to “lost childhood”, nostalgia from great old days that didn’t even exist.
• Fado, Saudade…

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How to adapt? What is adaptation? When is it positive, or negative?

Thanks for reading!

Photography : Chimneys & Skies 1/2

Photography : Chimneys & Skies 1/2 – November December 2019

My photoblog : https://qeht.photo.blog/

 

 

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”

B. Pascal

“Cat & Chimneys” Photography : October Lights in a French City

I went to the the post office I walked with my little cam and the light was cool – I took the courtyard and the walls and the houses and redhead cat who’s a little the king of the street, it’s October!

I have a photographic place here : https://qeht.photo.blog/

 

Photography : Euralille

Euralille, Lille, Architecture.

I asked myself here, what should be straight? I chose the white block at the bottom. Architecture gives lines & reflections. And there’s a guy in a corner, to give the scale. And the contrast between sunny sides and shadows…

Photography : Storm in Lille, France, 3/3

Lines in Lille

Photography : Roofs of Mont Cassel, in the North of France

Photography : Roofs of Mont Cassel, in the North of France “Built on a prominent hill overlooking French Flanders”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassel,_Nord

Photography : Yesterday I caught the sun playing on buildings

Walking home with my cam, I caught some low angle sun reflecting here and there on the architecture :

 

Photography : Paris roofs, windows & balconies

“Remarkable Pivots” : What can a place do in a movie?

I found a book about this subject and you know me and my habit to read the table of contents…

What can a place do in a movie?

Yes, it’s a decor, a setting, a scenery. And also :

1. A space to travel in.
2. A welcome cell.
3. A remarkable pivot.
4. A refuge.
5. A worksite.
6. An unshakeable fortification.
7. A temple. A forest. A waste ground.
8. An aseptic abode.
9. Underground…

A combination of many of them?

Voilà. My Structure/Tool here is this :

Take any subject : photography, poetry, blogging, teaching, marketing.

List elements. In a movie : story, actors, scenery, light, sound, music.

Select one element and focus on it, then extend. Give it a much bigger importance. The best importance. What do you find? What does it give and bring?

Teaching? Focus on the tables in your classroom. Poet? What paper will you use?

Have fun! I’m now digging in the history of cinema to find movies where the scenery is the star or a house a character….

Lille, France, today

Nadav Kander, misty distant structures Photographer

Nadav Kander is “known for his portraiture and landscapes”. Interesting portraits (it’s what you find first on Google Images), but what he does with landscapes (here, in China) is fantastic.

People and architecture, maybe staged melancholy (loneliness?), misty distant structures or cities. It’s very “prepared”, artificial, too easy or maybe just meticulous. This is what I choose to show you today.

Have a nice day!

 

#Lille

from Instagram: https://ift.tt/2v9LdvJ

A stolen picture!!

Well I was a few weeks ago in a city I had never visited before. I happily wandered alone for hours, “nose in the wind”, and I entered an concrete official building.

The sun was shining and the light was joyfully playing inside of it. Like all happy Instagram kids who discovered a spot, I unpocketed my phone off to take a couple of pictures.

But the guardian jumped off his shack and groped my shoulder like : “Mister you can’t take pictures here”. Then, sweetly solemn : “The Architect does not allow it”. He probably closed his eyes for two seconds, in sign of Respect…

Don’t take pics in museums or in concerts, that’s normal, right? But in the hall of a building… Why? A desire to control the uncontrollable? A fear of being ideas-stolen? Pure meanness? Shame?

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun, says K. Hepburn, who is here a little red devil in my head. But in the same way my little white angel on the other side of my head provides me a teaching like “Maturity is to do things even if your parents told you to do it”. Errr… That’s a dance! Go tango, white and red!

Between this and that in a choice, I choose both, most of the time. Obedience is OK under your country’s Laws, but for the rest… Damn rules! When you feel like they are a moronic way to invent problems, you ask yourself :

“What if I kill the rule, now, in this second? What will happen REALLY?”.

Mmhh. Maybe something I ignore.

OK, here’s the picture. Red guy won. Argh.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

The Dam & The Bridge : “At the same time” as an Ambiguity Force

I own a book named “About Ambiguity in Architecture“, by Robert Venturi. The title itself is promising, right?

There’s a Wikipedia page about Ambiguity.

It’s not the “vague” meaning here, but a way to be this and that “at the same time”.

At a very simple level, we all understand that. A gallery is a room and a corridor, and a dam can also be a bridge. In the same way, a road can also be a frontier, right?

Then, when you have this “tool”, you can begin to play.

Ambiguity as a force, not a weakness.

• Is “double function” the same as “at the same time” (obviously not)? Explain.
• At the same time : function of signification?
• Double function now, or at different times?
• Something can be esthetically pleasing and useful at the same time, right? But what other and more surprising uses/couples can you invent?
• What if you show there’s an ambiguity? Why? How?
• How a contradiction could be a strength?
• What happens when something is tragic and funny?
• Can a friend also be a lover?

Hmmm?

What’s your field? Teaching? Photography? Poetry? Blogging? How would you apply all this? When is it a game? A path to progress? When is it a danger? Do you have to explain ambiguity? What if you don’t?

Have fun. And a nice day! Thanks for reading !

 

“The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play”.
Nietzsche

A to B : Frontiers & Movements

Call it “cheap structuralism”, because it is what it is. Or topography.

Here I choose to casually watch two territories, A and B.

It can be two apartments, two countries, but also two states (healthy/sick, or single/in couple), two styles, two blogs, anything by two.

Then you can begin to play :

• If there’s a A and a B there’s a frontier. What is it made of?
• Is it a line, like between two countries? Is it a wall? Symbolic?
• A place (called C) which is a “space between”?
• Do you have to study or focus on C?
• Is there a door or many doors? Who opens, closes?
• A bridge? Who build it?
• Are A and B bonded? By what?
• A and B can be different things (a house/outside) or the same nature (two people?)
• When you have A and now also B, you own both. Kill the frontier, or keep both distinct territories inside you, like two facets? Like the two Germanies?
• A becomes B is a mutation. Then where’s the border?
• Rubicon process : once you crossed the border, A doesn’t “exist” for you anymore. Burnt bridge!

The tool is funny to use : determine if your problem can be structured as A and B (Do I have to live in the same place as my lover? Should I merge my two blogs? What is convalescence?).

Thanks for reading!

Fruitful Constraints & Creativity

It’s an old tool many artists know : many constraints are fruitful. Mainly because a constraint is a problem calling for a solution, therefore you have to move, to be creative.

All jobs and activities have constraints : budget, environment, other people, time, space, your skills, your tools.

If it’s too loose, though, you feel a freedom, which can be messy. You can not catch anything. Stuck. You maybe need to tight something up, to find “your” freedom within a new frame.

Brian Eno invented the Oblique Strategies (mainly for musicians) as a card game. You pick a card and you have to obey (sometimes it’s terrible!). Some directors are well known to tell the actors to follow precisely something (the dialogs, or the places they have to move on the set, etc) before shooting. Some digital artists sometimes go out in a park with a pencil and a notebook. A photographer can go outside with the limit of 20 pictures taken, not much. And G. Perec wrote an entire book without the letter “e”.

Constraints are fruitful. You probably have many disposable levers for these. A poet can obey : write something in alexandrine; without any letter “p”, in less than 5 minutes. You may have to present a project in ONE minute only, and… with no words. What are your levers?

You can pull a lever to Zero, it’s the Total Constraint. For example, you’re a photographer and you go out without any camera. Just your eye. You’ll feel the need, you’ll feel your brain simmering. As you can only watch and… think, you’ll maybe have bursts of ideas (instead of taking pictures).

Of course it’s an example of “Amor Fati”, being content with what happens to you, even if it seems bad. Embracing fate : every constraint, if you can’t avoid it, should (and will have to) be danced with.

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : f_pilvi

When a poet laughs of a painting (in relief!)

William Carlos Williams, recalling his first viewing of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase : “I burst out laughing from the relief it brought me! I felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my spirit for which I was infinitely grateful”.

Art advance can open paths for other arts. If you’re interested you’ll study the links between WC Williams and Duchamp. BUT you even don’t have to, to activate some ideas.

Duchamp’s abstraction is about decomposing the movement, of course, but there’s also a game with the title. If the title was “XY-56”, your mind wouldn’t have been engaged the same way, right? What would be the same in poetry? What can this bring to a poet? A game with a title? A decomposing symbol/word/frame process? A sense of freedom, and daring?

Tool :

Whenever you feel stuck or not, it could be interesting to explore “other fields”. Maybe if you’re a musician you should study avant-garde architecture, and if you blog, maybe you could read about strangeization? You’re a manager? Why wouldn’t you read anthropology, then?

Thanks for reading!

Simmering & Fermenting Ideas of #LeCorbusier #creativity

Le Corbusier was a French architect. I just found a quote and I try to translate in English. It’s a good tool you can use to be creative (if you need to) :

When a task is given to me, I use to put it inside my memory, which mean I don’t allow myself to draw any sketch, for months. The human head have a certain independence : it is a box in which you can pour loose elements of a problem. One let then “float”, “simmer”, “ferment”. Then, one day, on a spontaneous initiative of the inner being, a click happens : one takes a pen, one gives birth on the paper. The idea comes out, the baby comes out : he comes into the world, he is born.

This is a great tool, and it can be mixed with other “common sense” plans (creative people know, for example, that they “work” in front of their blank page, but also that they get “ideas” elsewhere, walking in the street, washing the dishes or after making love). So, think about your problem and go talk to the birds, or bake a cake!

Also Google : Serendipity

Thanks for reading!

#cat #kingcat #Bidou

 

#Koolhaas #Quote about #Optimism

“Find optimism in the inevitable”

Rem Koolhaas, Architect