Thursday, September 6, 2007

anti-aesthetic

Careri has confused me, so perhaps others can focus on this and clarify it for me. Bear with my forensics.

Just before the section "Toward a new expansion of the field," he describes transurbance/walking as pre-architecture.
In "toward...," he does the following:

-describes walking as an "aesthetic form." I assume that these words are being used as "pleasurable" or "inducing pleasure" and line (or possibly space, but he calls the path an "architectural object"). This sounds good so far. I think I might enjoy walking in splines rather than polylines, but I'd like to walkshare with someone who's more vertexically inclined. (For a digression, check out this diagramming of this idea: http://www.pedestrianlevitation.net/process.html )

-Then he writes that the path has "led to the pursuit of the historical foundations of anti-architecture in nomadism." Does that mean that nomadism is anti-architecture? I can understand that. If architecture is the built, and nomads wander, then they have no need for architecture, and might even be anti-architecture....though that doesn't necessarily seem like a logical leap. Just because nomads are pro-wandering doesn't make them anti-architecture. Architecture has tried to learn from nomadism (e.g. Ito's Nomad projects in 1985/1986) and apparently Deleuze discussed the nomad as extra-national or extra-societal around the same time. What's the rest of the background here? And what about "pursuit of historical foundations"?

-Then he mentions Rosalind Krauss and "anti-art."

-Then he mentions "the field" and how landart and architecture both expanded into landscape.

-Then "in this direction we also find the crossing of space, seen not as a manifestation of anti-art but as an aesthetic form that has achieved the status of an autonomous discipline." First of all, what is "this direction"? I haven't read the 1985 compilation "The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture", but Rosalind Krauss' piece is in there, so my next question is: how do anti-aesthetic, aesthetic, and anti-art come together, and what happened between 1985 and 2005 (when Careri's book was published)? Is Careri being post-postmodernist? Post-critical? (Walk, don't talk.)

-Then he writes: "Today architecture could expand into the field of path without encountering the pitfalls of anti-architecture." He seems to use "field" as "discipline" rather than planimetric space. So it was just timing that led to anti-architecture? Did the walkers feel that architecture was poaching before?

-Then "space of encounter" gets used. This is three years after Libeskind's book was published. Mere coincidence?

-"Aesthetic tool" is mentioned once more, and there's a great spelling error in the same line. "Nature" becomes "uatnre." I had to read it a few times, because that misspelling just looked so great and distracted me. I even looked up the misspelling, hoping that it was some new and fantastic word.

-Then he uses "mutations." That implies a lot that I hope is intentional, but there seems to be a looseness to this writing that disturbs me. Are we getting lost in the translation from Spanish to English?

-Finally, he writes that "today, architecture can transform the path from anti-architecture into a resource, expanding the field..." So we're beyond avoiding pitfalls. It's actually time to claim the path.

One last unrelated thing, since I've driven you all mad:
Look at the original castellano for "that global Happy Valley" (p180): "aquella PaperopĆ³lis Global".

Buena transurbancia. Hasta maƱana.

1 comment:

Christian said...

I wrote castellano, but perhaps this was Catalan? (It was published in Barcelona?)