over and out

2 months ago

Where I’m at

“The years of illusions aren’t those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they’re the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head.”

– Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“You decide not to go to law school after all … Perhaps you work odd jobs and take writing courses at night… Perhaps you are losing your pals, your acquaintances, your balance.”

– Lorrie Moore, “How To Become A Writer

(Source: blalalablog.wordpress.com)

3 months ago (1 note)

#politics
#theory
#structuralism

"Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would gave trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon…The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped."

Marilyn Frye. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. 1983

4 months ago (3 notes)

#oakland
#thetown
#bayarea

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oakland <3

4 months ago

Best ‘call for submissions’ I’ve seen!

PLAT 3.0
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

From unforeseen endings come dramatic beginnings. Plat 3.0 invites projects,
images, essays, and manifestos, which explore the discursive opportunities that
emerge in the wake of collective disruption. In a time characterized by rapidly shifting conditions and perpetual crises, contingencies and opportunities to innovate emerge. Such moments lay the ground for radical change. Free from the constraints of the established doctrine, architectural and urban practice find new frontiers where experimentation is not only allowed, but demanded—where temporary breakdown establishes new, lasting thresholds for design and research. With this in mind:

What are the limits of urgency and agency?
Where is the relationship between speed and production?
How do rapid changes in topography, geography, and movement produce new territories for architecture?
When can architecture extend the potentials of the boiling point to make lasting change?

What was yesterday unimaginable is now perfectly plausible in the call to action embedded in disruption. Please submit abstracts, scholarly papers, photographs, drawings, prints, media projects and other such philosophical explorations to curator@platjournal.com by February 14, 2012 for consideration. (See www.platjournal.com for guidelines).

PLAT Journal
Rice School of Architecture
MS-50 PO Box 1892
Houston TX 77251-1892 USA
PLATJournal.com

4 months ago (462 notes)