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The Gothic Flatline and Infrastructure Studies

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola Fall, 2021

Michael Fisch in his book An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo's Commuter Train Network outlines an almost surreal picture of the Tokyo metro, which at first glance, seems like a monotonous beast which only serves a utilitarian purpose. This surreal picture constantly includes historical examples of bodily violence and death in relation to riding the train, as well as examples of “living” which calls to reference the common saying that “you die a little bit each day.” In reference to the Tokyo commuter train infrastructure, this death paradigm is not hard to see. The train itself has somewhat of a suicide culture; there are corporate a in line to answer for train suicide; some shuttles are divided by gender in order to help women feel safer from sexual assault by male riders; some news outlets have changed their rhetorical techniques whenever reporting on train suicide; riders have the system “etched” into their physiology, pulsing awake from a deep slumber whenever their exit arrives; there is an ongoing narrative that overworked salarymen are the typical train suicide demographic—the list goes on. For other infrastructural systems, this almost phantasmic interaction between the infrastructure and the life/death paradigm is more hidden, though nevertheless present. The leading question of this paper then becomes: why do humans and non-humans in their interaction with infrastructural systems speak about their experience in terms of death? Or, why can their interactions be framed so vividly in their implications of a more nuanced life/death distinction? The late Mark Fisher in his 1999 dissertation Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction theoretically lays out an effective system for this question to be analyzed—Gothic Materialism. Though Fisher definitely expands beyond the first principle of Gothic Materialism, the Gothic flatline, (which we will be focusing on exclusively in this paper) is the most salient to this study, as well as the most important to Gothic Materialism.

My analysis is informed by previous research that tries to extend agency in infrastructure studies beyond humans, or that shows agents coming interacting deeper with the life/death distinction, (the Gothic flatline) but I argue in this piece that our very conceptions of those same agencies will need to be extended to encompass a more nuanced divide between life and death.3 This is because death, as Fisher illuminates in his conversation on the Gothic flatline, is not a binary condition. Rather, agents occupy a space where they constantly flow through the realm of life and death; death is always coexisting with life and one state does not take prowess over the other. Fisher draws a lot of inspiration surrounding the life and death divide from Xavier Bichat. Fisher is unique however in that he provides the necessary and salient theory to bridge Bichat’s theories into a modern/postmodern landscape, and in our case, modern infrastructural systems. I aim to provide a salient historical case study that qualifies the use of a Gothic Materialist methodology within STS. The particular case I will be analyzing through Gothic Materialism is the Tokyo metro system, with a particular look at the acts of bodily violence which happen within the context of the train experience, both inside and outside of the shuttles. I will also be drawing in the various works (those that made me initially interested in this question) which have tried to extend agency in infrastructure studies beyond humans but also those studies which illuminate interesting examples of agents flowing through the life and death divide in their interaction with infrastructure.

In a way, this paper and Fisher’s dissertation can be seen as an applied and theoretical elaboration of chapter one of Xavier Bichat’s Physiological Researches on Life and Death, originally published 1800. Bichat was not generally interested in providing metaphysical details of the body and physiological nuances, rather he wanted to provide research that resonated with the standardized scientific method at his time. Nevertheless, many of his statements were often prolific. There are the two general statements which are most salient to this study and his overall influence, one being his definition of life as a total history of the specific bodies’ resistance against death, translated from French into English: “Such is the mode of existence of living bodies that everything surrounding them tends to destroy them.”5 The second point is Bichat’s division between organic life and animal life. Organic life can be seen as the bodily systems which act without direct control: heart, lungs, kidney, liver, etc. The animal life can be seen as bodily systems which act in accordance with the body's nervous systems and ambitions: limbs, eyes, ears, nose, fingers, etc. The animal life can operate without the heart, which to Bichat was the central organism behind organic life.6 In Fisher’s dissertation he expands on Bichat’s two main statements through Foucault and Deleuze—Deleuze’s interpretation of Bichat will be of more use to this study, but it will still be useful to expand on Foucault’s take. Bichat’s first statement can be seen fruitfully in Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic, particularly in Foucault’s notion of life as the origin of disease itself, and of death as not a singular point or destiny but rather as a continuing battle against illness and disease in the patient's life, Fisher elaborates: “The Foucault of The Birth of the Clinic encountered the flatline when reconstructing Bichat’s version of death. Rather than being a destiny waiting for the organism at its termination, “death” is the real process the organic-vital is parasitic upon from the start; it is an event, aeonically multiple rather than chronically punctual.”

Fisher then elaborates on Delezue’s take on Bichat’s second statement: “Bichat put forward what’s probably the first general modern conception of death, presenting it as violent, plural, and coextensive with life. Instead of taking it, like classical thinkers, as a point, he takes it as a line that we’re constantly confronting, and cross only at the point where it ends. That’s what it means to confront the line Outside.” Deleuze took up Bichat’s divide between organic and animal life seriously in his lectures. Sometimes Bichat’s statements were so profound that they dumbfounded Deleuze, to the point where he couldn’t make a clear interpretation. Deleuze discussed and struggled through Bichat during some of his lectures/seminars, particularly the lectures on the dates of: March 25, 1986, March 18, 1986, and November 26, 1985. Deleuze believed Bichat to be a modern (as opposed to classical) thinker despite his time of operation because of his incredibly progressive theories surrounding life and death; it is intriguing to Deleuze what Bichat meant and what the implications for his new concepts are on four points. On one point, that death is coexistent to life and that death is not a single point or break with life, this notion is the break away from classical notions of death for Deleuze; second, that death encroaches upon life in a swarm-like manner, affecting different parts of the body at different points of your life time;10 third, the division of life between organic and animal; and fourth, the division of death between natural and violent death. Deleuze’s interpretation of these divisions involve the definition of organic life as the continuous half that you inhibit yourself within a particular place, this is more alongside the conceptions of a classic death, and organic life is not particular to humans but also includes animals and plants. On the other half, at the center of the animal life is the nervous system—this animal life is intermittent because of sleep, sleep is multiple, traversal, and particular, we return to organic life when we wake from these particular sleeps. The distinction between natural and violent life is what confuses Deleuze the most, but nevertheless something he definitely agrees with. Death from old age would be considered a natural death, and to Bichat this is the death most common among animals. This confused Deleuze (for which he makes sure not to blame Bichat) because it seems evident that animals are constantly killed by humans and other animals. Violent death, on the other hand, is much more understandable to Deleuze—violent death is society as a whole. Society wears down egregiously on our animal lives, causing violent deaths.

Here it is nice to finally put Bichat’s idea into practice, this violent death is not a single point, rather it’s different deaths that happen at different times of your life because of interaction with Society: “At any rate, he’s not wrong, either… he didn’t know it, himself, but uh… assault, social assault, is terrible, people who talk too much… people who talk too much, that’s an assault. Uh… [?] Neon lights, neon lights… Bichat didn’t know about them, but neon lights are an ocular assault all the same. TV is an assault, a pure assault. You’ll say… well… yes, anyway. It’s true that society wears on my animal life. He won’t portray it as a supplementary sphere of life; Bichat is too clever for that—he says that society is the acceleration of all the functions of animal life. But animal life is, on the contrary, a life which really needs intermittence, really needs rest, really needs its particular sleeps. But we, as we know, have one big sleep, and yet, unhealthy, we no longer have these particular sleeps. [...] Then, as our animal life is so worn out by such high-tempo rhythm, the our [sic] form of death tends more and more to become violent.

Given all of this context on Bichat, Foucault, and Deleuze, we can now move firmly onto Fisher’s own methodology and elaborations of Bichat’s theories which illuminate the Gothic flatline, which to Fisher is: “a plane where it is no longer possible to differentiate the animate from the inanimate and where to have agency is not necessarily to be alive.” To fully understand what the Gothic flatline is Fisher believes that we will need Gothic Materialism as a methodological approach. Fisher is aware that joining the Gothic—what is originally thought of as ethereal, otherworldly, spiritual, supernatural—with Materialism might seem to be contradictory, but this is exactly Fisher’s aim, to instead be concerned with a: “plane that cuts across the distinction between living and nonliving, animate and inanimate. It is this anorganic continuum, it will be maintained, that is the province of the Gothic.”14 Fisher gives a great overview into why cybernetics is so particularly telling of our modern times and also why cybernetics aims to provoke the life/death paradigm, he terms this cybernetic realism. We will not go into this particular section but it is salient to this discussion as a whole. Fisher designates the first principle (arguably the most important principle) of Gothic Materialism to be that: “The Gothic designates a flatline”15 as a reference to the sociotechnical usage of flatline (what is said when the electroencephalogram reads no activity, indicating brain death). Additionally, to Fisher the flatline is actually where everything occurs: “the Other Side, behind or beyond the screens (of subjectivity), the site of primary process where identity is produced (and dismantled)... It delineates not a line of death, but a continuum enfolding, but ultimately going beyond, both death and life.”16 Fisher goes at length to explain this first clause, but I believe that there should be careful attention to how Fisher illustrates this flatline on its path, borrowing from a passage in A Thousand Plateaus: “the flatline designates an immanentizing line,” a “streamlining, spiralling, zigzagging, snaking, feverish line of variation… a line of variable direction that describes no contour and delimits no form…”

This recalls another methodological technique already being implemented in infrastructure studies (although not in the same scope)—and as is most showing in The Undersea Network by Nicole Starosielski—called transmission narratives. A direct definition of transmission narratives is gave, as well as how it contrasts with nodal narratives: “Nodal narratives use specific locations in the network to track the intersection of different flows; transmission narratives follow a signal or person across an infrastructure system, tracking movement between interlinked nodes.” Starosielski, in their analysis of underground transoceanic communication pipelines, aims to disturb the invisible nature of our concepts surrounding telecommunication technologies by “surfacing” the pipelines (a good example of an unsurfaced infrastructure being the internet “cloud”), as well as using transmission narratives to not merely analyze the start and end nodes of these communication infrastructures, but rather their progressions along these plots, the travel between these nodes, and the muddled context behind their implementation: “Although narratives of transmission follow cable technologies, they almost always do so to reflect on the human dimensions and embodied experiences of these systems” In tracing transmissions and paths along these lines of communication instead of only focusing on the end-nodes where “connection” really happens, Starosielski puts to center the agents, environment, and general history that goes into these undersea communication lines. This reflects the plot of the flatline as envisioned by Fisher—a line definitely not straightforward. The transmissional line bounces around points in time, zigzags around the environment, and is generally chaotic in scope. We will need to envision actors and their interaction with infrastructure in this same manner, as moving along the line of life and death in a fashion that is not “straightforward.” According to Fisher, this spiraling plot emerges from a Spinozistic mindset, the: “refusal to distinguish nature from culture.” The blurring between living and dead, the animate and inanimate, the natural and unnatural, things and beings, and so on. It is my argument that when we study humans and non-humans and their interactions with infrastructural systems we must also pay attention to how their relationship between life and death is nuanced by these same interactions. This illumination is more obviously seen in some specific infrastructural systems than others, but nevertheless it is an ever present factor. Gothic Materialism is helpful when dealing with an infrastructural system that acts as a catalyst for the creation of complex psychological or physiological reflections on the user’s experience with the infrastructure in terms of their experiences with life and death. This is because Gothic Materialism allows the analyzer to devote their time away from trying to find a nexus of reason behind these muddled interactions, rather now for the analyzer all of the experiences act as an aggregate and form into a sort of rhizome which steers away from generalization.

Another great infrastructure study that utilizes transmission narratives and confronts that Gothic flatline is Max Hirsh’s “What’s missing from this picture? Using visual materials in infrastructure studies.” Hirsh confronts the propaganda-like nature of airport visual advertising with a particular focus on the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). Whereas those more privileged are allowed an enhanced quality-of-life experience of airport traveling in major hubs, the visual imagery which depicts these hubs does not account for the majority of “non-traditional” travelers, Hirsh states:

“What these scholars don’t tell you is that the facilities portrayed in these images typically accommodate less than a fifth of all passengers flying through major airport hubs. The infrastructure systems used by the other 80% – students, retirees, migrant laborers, low-income tourists – are largely absent from official maps, ads, and brochures; and thus remain unaccounted for in existing discussions of airport infrastructure. Yet it is precisely these non-traditional travelers who have driven the exponential increase in global air traffic over the past 30 years [...]”

Hirsh uses his own ethnographic photographic imagery of these “up-stream” check-in terminals which facilitate all of these other 80% of travelers through their airport experience; the photographs are eerie and grim. The most salient of this imagery being his storyboard of a Filipino cleaning women’s travel through Hong Kong to their home in the rural Philippines. Hirsh utilizes a comic-strip to illustrate their journey: waking up at 6:30am in their Sai Ying Pun flat which they share with five other people, traveling to an unconventional airbus stop, their first in an eight hour journey via the HKIA. Certainly a draining trip, one can only imagine the multiplicities of death which are felt by these unconventional travelers; Hirsh alludes towards these muddled experiences through the narrative he creates, which reflects the transmission narrative—he is quite literally following these people through their experiences and detailing the travel itself rather than focusing on the end or beginning nodes. Though out of scope of Hirsh’s article, it would have been interesting to see an attention to the first-hand accounts of these experiences and what feelings they evoke in the traveler in specific. The Gothic flatline arrives no matter the first-hand accounts because there is an obviously draining paradigm going on at the HKIA. A question then arises on whether or not the travelers realize this deadening routine. Maan Barua, in “Infrastructure and non-human life: A wider ontology,” speaks on a vast array of reasons why agency in infrastructure studies should be extended beyond humans, what is particularly interesting and salient in his article is the discussion on “recombinant infrastructures” and “Non-Human Life as Infrastructure,” particularly the Robo-Roach. Though evident in the title, it seems as if there is another grand narrative arising in Barua’s work—the multiplicity of lives and deaths of infrastructure itself. The vibrant infrastructural system reaches the Gothic flatline by itself because of its web-like interaction with other agents. Barua speaks on repurposed infrastructures with an interesting focus on termites. What was once thought to be barren, soulless, finished, or uninhabited, various infrastructural systems are rebirthed for their new use in possibly even more progressive ways than before. The termite repurposes built infrastructures such as railway sleepers, buildings, bridges, and pilings in a manner which lets them extend their movement and foraging capabilities; they progressively repurpose the substrate in an effort to prolong their lives. Barua does pick up on the new vitality which these infrastructures are presented with: “Termites are thus not just enmeshed or entangled in infrastructures, but enfleshed in that it is difficult to separate where one body ends and the other begins or, for that matter, where the divisions between corporeality and substrate lies.”

What is interesting here for discussion is Barua’s inclusion of the entomologist Lisa Margonelli’s notion of vitality surrounding the new life of these infrastructures: “Rhizomatic trails laid out bytermites generate a ‘sort of external memory’, leading some entomologists to argue that their structures themselves ought to be considered as living.”25 While true that this new life of the infrastructure is evident, there are deeper implications here, the first being that the infrastructure was dead to begin with, or that this new life now takes precedence over the death, a binary. There is a nodal-like narrative happening here where instead of tracing the infrastructure's constant battle between life and death in the total history of its operation, the infrastructure instead occupies a single state at a single point of time, the time when the termites started to incorporate the substrate into their livelihood. Barua, in his section on non-human life as infrastructure, speaks of societies’ attempts to turn animals, insects, and other non-human entities into infrastructure for the benefit of human motives. Barua immediately speaks on the epistemological problems that this anthropocentrism constitutes:

[...]

This anthropocentrism is most evident in the discussion of roaches turned cyborgs. RoboRoaches are “speculative infrastructures” which are made real through venture capital efforts and some are already commercially available; RoboRoaches are technologically modulated with sensory technology to enter destructed buildings and to find any potential survivors in the rubble. Barau alludes to the conversation of cockroaches being typically thought of as disgusting creatures but now being turned into synthetic and futuristic beings, almost miniature superheroes if they do end up finding a survivor; colloquial discussion should be more than enough here to elaborate on the implications of these RoboRoaches. First off, there is a constant violent war against cockroaches as instigated by humans—cockroaches are disgusting, unsanitary, vile, hideous, creepy, and the list goes on—one does not think twice about instantly squashing a bug to the greatest and last of its deaths when encountered. There are microeconomies based on the death of these small insects, whether it be the professional exterminator or a can of Raid bought from a local store. There is no soul to the roach, it is not “alive,” this is why it’s okay to immediately terminate them—or so was thought. I am not saying that we should start taking in cockroaches as pets, but that hopefully our conceptions of these animals, particularly their life and their death, is nuanced or rethought from their new vitality as given by their transformation into a useful infrastructure. One can only imagine the eerie or weird emotion that is evoked when something you never thought twice about murdering saves you from a certain, lonely, and claustrophobic death underneath hundreds of pounds of rubble.

Fisher further illustrates this Gothic flatline through two fictional examples, one is the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, in which Fisher borrows from Deleuze’s interpretation of the film as a work that makes organic, inorganic, natural, and artificial substances or entities as not able to be differentiated from one another. The second is Neuromancer where the flatline: “functions as both a verb – characters flatline (surf what, for the organism, is the border between life and death) – and a noun – some characters are Flatlines (Read Only Memory data-constructs of dead people).”27 Where infrastructure studies plays a part are the immediate connections, whatever your particular infrastructure of study, to how the system navigates this anorganic continuum, or this Gothic flatline. This navigation may be initially hidden or invisible within the system, or in other systems it may be incredibly apparent; all systems are subject to a spot within the Gothic flatline because of the system’s interaction with entities, both living and dead. Some systems may be seen as able to be analyzed by Gothic Materialism in either an intense or minimal manner, while others may be encapsulated by it entirely and act as something like Flatline Infrastructures (just as some characters in Neuromancer are referred to as Flatlines). This implies that certain infrastructures are incredibly testing of the life and death distinction. I believe that the Tokyo metro system, especially as mechanically analyzed by Michael Fisch, is the premier example of a Flatline Infrastructure.

What is most proper in this flatline analysis is not to impose the theories laid out so far in a strict or rigid fashion in their real world application, both because the general idea of the flatline is enough for the analysis (death as a multiplicity) but also because ethnographic research is most important and is what will serve as the empirical evidence which qualifies the use of Gothic Materialism. I believe the most pertinent thing then is to introduce real world accounts of what Tokyo metro culture is like. The riders will show for us themselves what the experience of riding on the train is like, we will let them speak for themselves without enforcing anything upon them, but their accounts will also illuminate their position within the Gothic flatline. One of the first accounts that Fisch gives is from a Tokyo commuter (who is both a paralegal and a law student) on the physically violent experience of riding on a packed train, but Fisch also extends his account into a detailing on the inescapable fashion of these packed train rides, “You are packed into the train so tight that you feel as if your internal organs are going to be crushed. By the time I arrive at work, I’m exhausted and too tired to do anything. I would do anything not to have to ride the packed train but there is no choice [shōga nai].” Here the Tokyo commuter feels literally suffocated, crushed, and feels as if their organs are crushed or in the process of being killed; they become somewhat Zombified by the time they arrive at work from the train ride exhaustion. Here is another account from a website dedicated to suicide advice on how to effectively commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. Fisch eerily states that a particular suicide on the Tokyo commuter lines at 7:42am, August 19th 2004 may have taken this advice, given the saddening details of the actual event:

“If you are jumping from a platform choose a station where the express train does not stop as the chance of fatality is much lower if the train is decelerating. If you misjudge the timing you might bounce off the front of the train or jump too far and end up on the other side of the tracks. So take your time. As long as the train is within a hundred meters of the station, it is not going to be able to stop in time with the emergency brake. Also, be careful since there have been incidents in which briefcases or other items have flown back and hit someone on the platform.”

This is not only shocking to read, it also implies that these directions are needed by someone, or in the particular case of Japan, that there is somewhat of an active negative culture surrounding death by train. The precautions set up by the various companies in Tokyo to discourage train suicide are extensive, ranging from soothing train music and voices, blue filters on the train windows, mirrors and better lighting to reflect before the act, and even the legal pursuit of a debt that the victims family would have to pay if their family member committed suicide and disrupted the train flow. The entire system is operating within the flatline in this manner, riders are alive in a sense while riding the train, but their suicide or death is somewhat assumed and taken account of before the fact. This is particularly true on the commuter lines which have the Autonomous Decentralized Transport Operation Control System (ATOS) enabled. These lines (operated by the JR East Company) have a cybernetic system which regulates traffic and accounts for disruption to the flow in an automatic fashion. Disruption, of which is commonly suicide, to these ATOS-enabled lines becomes the norm, as Fisch states: “ATOS thinks of the gap as a necessary condition of emergence. It does so by inverting the logic of centralized traffic control, shifting emphasis from controlling the principal daiya to managing the emergent order of the operational daiya.” Here the daiya is a traffic diagram of the train network which is broadcasted through the news, radio, television, and so on. What is even more interesting is that in the early 1990s the terminology for train suicide was sometimes differentiated as either committing suicide (tobikomi jisatsu) or an act of bodily accident (jinshin jiko). Fisch explains the differences:

[...]

It is also useful to see an actual newspaper account of a jinshin jiko: At around 8:45 a.m. on the sixth of the month a 61 -year-old man from the Tama ward of Kawasaki City was struck and killed instantly by the Kawasaki - bound train from Tachikawa City on the JR Nambu Line. As a result of the accident, 14 trains were canceled and there were delays of up to 45 minutes. According to the Tama police, the man was kneeling on the tracks. The area of the accident is 20 meters from a railroad crossing. [July 7, 1996]31 Fisch also gives a great account of the “suddenly awakening commuter,” the phenomenon that is attributed to the event of “when a commuter who appears to have fallen into a deep sleep suddenly awakens at a station and bolts from the train a split second before the doors close.” Fisch asks the question of how the commuter knows, even in this deep slumber, when their stop has approached and jolts awake (the presence of sleep in this discussion of course alludes back to Bichat’s and Deleuze’s discussions on sleep) to exit. He answers through an account of an experienced Tokyo train commuter, Mito Yuko, during their conversation over tea. Yuko states,

“The rhythm of the train is etched into the bodies of the city’s inhabitants.” And further: No matter what train line one takes in Tokyo, the pattern of acceleration and deceleration between stations is always similar. The pitch of the electric motor increases as the train rapidly accelerates when it leaves the station: eeeeewwwwwwww. . . . It levels off for a bit as the train reaches its cruising speed— pweeeeeeehhhhh— and then begins to drop as the train decelerates: dreeweeeeeeeeh, tukatoo, tukatoo. . . . [Then there’s the announcement:] “We’ve arrived at such and such station.” This pattern is the driving curve, and every commuter internalizes it from an early age. For commuters it’s a soothing sensation, lulling them to sleep the moment they sit down on the train. Because the bodily rhythm of the city’s inhabitants is in sync with this pattern, when there is a delay, even if it’s only a matter of thirty seconds, they notice it. If the delay is more than a minute, they might actually begin to feel physiological discomfort [shintai no seiriteki na fukaikan].”

This repetition and rudimentary experience becomes etched into the riders to the point where the entire process becomes somewhat of a lull that begins to wear on the animal life. The typical rider is the salaryman/salarywoman who will have almost no time to spare for anything. Fisch interviewed a Japanese bank employee by the name of Akira who details the typical train experience:

“Japanese salarymen have a fixed schedule. I leave my house every day at exactly 7:05, arrive at the station and line up at the second door of the ninth car of the 7:23 commuter express. Every day exactly the same and always with a Nikkei [Economic] newspaper under my arm. From my station until Shibuya it’s too packed to even lift my arms and hold the paper. But at Shibuya a lot of passengers get off and I have fifteen minutes to read all the important articles in the paper. There is a group of regulars I ride with but I’ve never spoken to them or exchanged a nod or greeting. A salaryman’s energy is at the lowest in the morning. It’s like “ach, back to work again and back on the packed train.”

The metro experience then becomes somewhat of a landscape where unordinary events are compounded in effect because of the intense lull that is active. Fisch has an entire section in his book where he tackles the salaryman suicide by train phenomenon, tracing the problem deeper into Japanese society and problems of representation. These are all interesting, but what seems most salient is a small conversation that Fisch had with another salaryman while in the train station. The trains had just been announced to been delayed because of a suicide, this particularly salaryman in their nonchalant reaction to the news caught Fisch’s attention and they had a conversation in which the unnamed salaryman stated:

“They do it during this time in order to elicit an appeal to their own existence, probably because they want to create annoyance. It’s always a salaryman, and it’s when they just snap, when they can’t take it anymore after failing no matter how much they try and try. There was another accident not too long ago at this station, same thing, same situation, but the guy jumped from the far end in front of the special rapid. There might be more instances [of jinshin jiko] in the summer than in the winter, I’m not sure. At first, when I came to the city from Okinawa I thought that the way people just go on as if nothing happened was cold hearted, but then I realized that they are just used to it. Now the whole schedule is disordered for the rest of the day. And after all that careful calculation. No point in trying to check it from your keitai, maybe not even until they can restart tomorrow morning.”

An overview of the Tokyo metro culture would not be complete without covering the persistent sexual assault incidents which female train riders face from male assaulters, referred to as perverts (chikan). Fisch makes clear that there is a definitive, almost culture-like, environment of heterosexual male fantasies (transgressions) which materialize on the train. Fisch states that there is many research into this problem that women face, but that he does not want to expand on the research and that he himself only has a variety of potential theories on why this environment exists in the first place; in the footnotes he also explains why he did not want to inquire about these cases of sexual assault in specific for a variety of reasons. Fisch did however receive secondhand details into the problems from women commuters, he elaborates: Female commuters with whom I spoke, including both acquaintances and friends, sometimes explained that with the intense compression of bodies in the packed train, they often felt uncertain whether the hand that brushed or grabbed them did so with intention. But it was not the uncertainty that silenced them; rather, it was the silence. As Yuko, a twenty-seven-year-old female administrator at an importing firm who commutes almost an hour each way on the Chūō Line, confided, while there were times when she suspected someone of touching her, she did not feel confident enough to carry out the required action of grabbing the groper’s hand, raising it up, and yelling “pervert.” She was afraid of the effect such an action would have in the silence of the packed train. For Yuko, riding in the women-only train car is not an option because of where it would place her on the platform at her destination and the crowds she would have to navigate to arrive at work on time.

One can then only imagine the horrors and dehumanization which women feel when riding these trains, especially when packed. Their experience is completely different than that of a male, and one wonders what emotional space they must operate within to ride the train. The Gothic flatline as theoretically laid out by Fisher is a sturdy and difficult idea to unravel, but it should be appreciated for its most novel implications of which infrastructural systems constantly encounter in their interaction with agents of all forms. Deleuze showed a worthy struggle through Bichat’s life and death paradigm, of which he applied pragmatically to societal forces: loud people, TV, neon lights, and society in general. Because infrastructure plays such a crucial part in our lives, whether invisible or visible, it should be crucially analyzed for how the system creates situations of life and death indeterminacy in agents. The Gothic flatline is most appropriate for this analysis because Fisher—though much more interested in plotting cybernetics as the premier motif to encapsulate postmodern society—was almost foretelling in identifying this particular dehumanizing nature of society. Fisher withdraws from this study in an important avenue: while he does realize that these dehumanizing affects are a process of something grander, (it is evident that he is blaming capitalism, in essence) he mainly illustrates this through the analysis of fictional works, particularly theory-fiction and cyberpunk. Though he does give an argument that qualifies the use of fiction, in these works the flatline is a zone where revolution happens—it is imminent, but still a place where progressive things can occur. The flatline in these real world infrastructure history is more nihilistic, or at least unrealized. The first step is to realize the potential of the flatline and where it is creeping upon us in our contemporary infrastructural systems—which I hope to have done adequately here—so that the Gothic flatline becomes visible and can be morphed into a mechanism which benefits the masses.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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The Bullet Train of Camden

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola March, 2022

There is a Bullet Train in the town of Camden which accelerates in speed whenever it kills someone. Its construction began after the recent war and was completed about six months ahead of schedule. There were cries and pleas from the common people for them to be allowed to work on the train; Camden turned into a proto-New York, there was no sleep, no partying, only work and the train. The people from Camden had built a train so efficient, so fast, so unruly, that they had begun to be colloquially known under the nation as the Bulleteers. The people of Camden not only built the train in its novel sensibilities, from laying the tracks down to putting together the train’s framing, but to other more advanced technicalities, such as programming the train’s route as it moved through the crowded city. The train had no traditional conductor in the main shuttle, rather the train network was controlled through a centralized surveillance system completely exterior from the actual location of the train’s operation.

The train was a resounding success in terms of raising the quality-of-life standards in Camden—riding the train was free and was mostly used for commuting to either work or school. The train was also surprising- ly safe, with the occasional junkie causing a scene, but not being widespread enough to deter riders. This was mostly because the city of Camden created a small police force, the Camden Transit Security Force (CTSF), to patrol the metro network. The train had its occasional incidents, mostly exterior, such as cars stopping in the middle of the train tracks or an indecent and illegal scene happening on the train.

It became very apparent however that something strange was happening with the train, a phenomenon that became local to the city of Camden. A train-suicide occurred about a year and twenty days ago—the first of its kind in Camden. No one thought much of it and most focused on the depressing nature of the victim’s background, a veteran of the recent war. He committed suicide shortly after leaving a mental institution by quickly jumping into the path of the Bullet Train. He gave himself enough time to set up a large white canvas behind him (almost like a flag), stood up by two poles, in such a way that the train could not have enough time to slow down to a safe speed. There was plenty of footage, as CTSF has plenty of surveillance cameras around the station, and it was almost like abstract performance art. It was quick, and what was left behind was an imprint of the man’s bloodied and splattered body upon the canvas. Shortly after there was also footage released of the man testing how far apart he needed to position the poles so that they fit perfectly within the margin of the train tracks.

There was no time, or space, to remove the remaining body parts. There was no stopping, in a way that the world didn’t stop when the man died, from the train. In fact, it was statistically recorded that the train got faster. It was a total and completely positive feedback, the train at first would continue normally but only in fast-forward, like a video. Those that got off when this acceleration started were lucky; no one could tell how comically depressing the train could get in terms of its speed. At first it was the vehicles that would start to pile up as the natural rhythm of the train became disorganized. It was a month after the veteran’s suicide that another death occurred, this time a student at the local college who mistimed the speed of their vehicle in relation to the speed of the train. They had once ridden on that exact train to get to school. Again, the network engineers, now more observers rather than anyone with technical determinacy, observed an acceleration of speed. This pattern would continue despite all best efforts, and it was in even legend that a culture of suicide existed in Camden that led to the train’s current speed. The train once allowed the shrinking of both space and time, allowing the people the crossing of farther spaces in a shorter amount of time. Eventually, however, as became apparent when looking at the train, which was Camden in the most universal manner. They would be like those surveillance cameras except for the entire town.

The children of Camden would grow up with communal dares to touch that constant beam of light in hopes of being in contact with something that was everywhere at once.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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Sainte Bernadette Du Banlay (1963) and The Oblique in 20th Century Architecture

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola May 10, 2024

An acceptable framework for which to understand the confusing historiography of 20th century “modern” architecture is to frame the era as an anxious debate surrounding whether the built environment is at the mercy of either form or function. This dichotomy is primarily understood as a design concern, but the continued integration between architectural discourse and socio-politics allows for these conversations to enter a politicized realm. A particular geometrical aesthetic which rose prominently in the 20th century is the oblique. Immediately, there are a variety of modern architectural figures which have directly employed the use and language of the oblique to their advantage–again, not just simply for design, but towards a political and aesthetic agenda. Those of particular note who employ the oblique are the early 20th century Italian Futurists–specifically Filippo Marinetti and Antonio Sant'Elia–and French-based architects Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, who work in tandem, and of which the former is also quite theoretically based. As far back as 1914 does Marinetti state: “That oblique and elliptical lines are dynamic by their very nature and have an emotive power a thousand times greater than that of perpendicular and horizontal lines and that a dynamically integrated architecture is impossible without them.” Marinetti employs short and blunt arguments to justify a gigantic ambition: the end of classical architecture and the embracement of violence, modernism, war, technology, and speed. Hitherto, how can we understand this development and mobilization of the oblique in modern architecture through a close-reading of these architects? In utilizing Claude Parent and Paul Virilio’s Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay Church (1963), along with primary-source written documents from the designers’ themselves (such as the 1997 text Bunker Archaeology), I will move towards an illuminated understanding of this discourse. In the end, there is an attempt to showcase that the oblique does not become mobilized primarily for its functional use (as is immediately inferred) but is rather used as a tool for political and aesthetic means. I will begin by giving an overview of Vilrio’s respective writings’ surrounding the oblique and settle a conceptual foundation for which to understand this concept, including Claude Parent where salient; I will then move onto a close-reading of the Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay Church and validate connections between their conceptual drive and its implementation of the oblique; I will end with a general discussion on the form versus function debate in the long 20th century.

In the realm of architectural theory, few concepts have captured the imagination and sparked as much discourse as the notion of the oblique, despite its immediate nicheness within the field. At its core, the oblique represents a departure from the traditional orthogonality of architectural form, introducing a dynamic and destabilizing element into spatial design. However, its significance transcends mere formal experimentation, touching upon broader themes of movement, perception, and social interaction. But contextualization is essential, as to those unfamiliar with architectural discourse it may appear odd to dedicate such careful attention to a mundane shift in geometrical focus.

Paul Virilio (1932-2018), was a French philosopher and cultural theorist. He is renowned for his provocative examinations of technology, speed, and spatiality. His experiences during World War II, including witnessing the German occupation of France and the bombing of his hometown, deeply influenced his later work on technology, war, and urbanism. These formative experiences contributed to his interest in the impact of technology on society and the built environment. Central to Virilio's architectural thought is the concept of the oblique, which he conceptualizes not merely as a formal gesture but as a fundamental reconfiguration of architectural space. In Virilio's vision, the oblique disrupts traditional notions of stability and symmetry, introducing a sense of movement and dynamism into the built environment. Through his writings, Virilio challenges architects to reconsider the static geometries of modernist architecture and embrace the oblique as a means of reflecting the accelerated pace of contemporary life. Virilio also delved into media theory, examining the impact of mass media and telecommunications on society. He was particularly interested in how technologies of communication influence the dissemination of information and the formation of collective consciousness. Parallel to Virilio's philosophical musings, Claude Parent (1923-2016) was a French architect known for his radical architectural theories and innovative built projects. Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, Parent's architectural vision was deeply influenced by his experiences during World War II and his subsequent studies in architecture. In collaboration with Virilio, Parent advances a radical architectural manifesto centered around the oblique. Parent's architectural vision is deeply rooted in the belief that traditional spatial hierarchies must be destabilized to accommodate the complexities of modern existence. For Parent, the oblique is not merely a formal gesture but a conceptual framework for reimagining the relationship between architecture and movement. Through his writings and built projects, Parent advocates for an architecture of sensation, where the oblique becomes a catalyst for new modes of inhabitation and experience. Their relationship was strong, but eventually waned due to political differences, primarily in their respective responses to the May 1968 students riots. Without a doubt, Virilio was driving the theoretical and conceptual fervor in their relationship, while Parent was much more pragmatic and hands-on. In fact, they had somewhat of a Marx-Engels relationship, as Virilio was kindly employed in Parent’s office with the title of “chief critic.”

Central to Virilio's conception of the oblique is his broader exploration of speed and perception in contemporary society. In his seminal work, “Speed and Politics,” Virilio posits that the acceleration of technological progress has profound implications for the way we experience space and time. His examples mainly stem from military history and they shift chronologically from medieval to modern times, all in relation to the construction of the city and general urban environment. His historiographical qualification of his dromological theory is highly creative and varied, such as his commentary on siege warfare: “Bourgeois power is military even more than economic, but it relates most directly to the occult permanence of the state of siege, to the appearance of fortified towns, those “great immobile machines made in different ways.” The oblique, for Virilio, becomes a manifestation of this acceleration, disrupting traditional spatial orientations and challenging our perceptual frameworks. Through his writings, Virilio invites us to reconsider our relationship with the built environment, urging architects to embrace the oblique as a means of confronting the relentless pace of modern life. Building upon Virilio's philosophical inquiries, Claude Parent translates the concept of the oblique into dynamic architectural forms that defy conventional expectations. Parent's built projects, such as the Church of Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay in Nevers, France, exemplify his commitment to destabilizing architectural space through the strategic use of inclined planes and skewed perspectives. Through these interventions, Parent seeks to engender a sense of disorientation and movement, inviting occupants to engage with space in new and unexpected ways. In doing so, Parent challenges the static nature of architectural form, advocating for an architecture that is responsive to the flux and flow of contemporary life.

At its core, the oblique serves as a catalyst for reimagining spatial experience in the modern built environment. By introducing elements of instability and dynamism, the oblique invites occupants to engage with space on a visceral level, stimulating the senses and fostering a heightened awareness of one's surroundings. In this sense, the oblique transcends its role as a formal gesture, becoming a medium through which architects can evoke emotion, provoke thought, and facilitate social interaction. As we delve deeper into Virilio's and Parent's writings on the oblique, it becomes evident that their exploration of this concept extends far beyond the realm of architectural form, encompassing broader themes of movement, perception, and human experience. Virilio's and Parent's exploration of the oblique carries profound implications for architectural practice in the contemporary context. As architects grapple with the challenges of designing for an increasingly fast-paced and dynamic world, the concept of the oblique offers a conceptual framework for rethinking spatial organization, form-making, and human interaction within the built environment. By embracing the oblique, architects can create spaces that not only respond to the flux and flow of modern life but also actively engage occupants on a sensory and experiential level. The oblique challenges traditional notions of architectural form, inviting architects to move beyond the rectilinear constraints of modernism and explore new formal vocabularies. Speaking less broadly, it will be important to commit towards a close-reading of Parents and Virillio’s 1963 Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay Church project to see how these conceptual ambitions manifest themselves in a direct and material manner.

First, we can speak purely experientially through how the project performs spatially through photographs (fig. 1). As one approaches the church, it immediately asserts its presence with a strikingly angular facade, defying the conventions of traditional architectural form. The exterior walls, characterized by their sharp inclines and dynamic angles, challenge the viewer's perception, inviting them to reconsider their relationship with the built environment. Unlike conventional churches, which often convey a sense of solidity and permanence, the Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay Church appears almost fluid, as if in a state of perpetual motion. Upon entering the space, visitors are greeted by a dramatic interplay of light and shadow, facilitated by the strategic placement of oblique planes and skylights. The interior of the church is characterized by a sense of dynamism and spatial fluidity, as inclined surfaces converge and diverge, guiding the eye upwards towards the heavens. As mentioned above, central to Parent and Virilio's design is the notion of destabilization, both spatially and perceptually. The oblique surfaces disrupt traditional spatial hierarchies, blurring the distinction between floor, wall, and ceiling.

Figure 1: Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay Church, 1963, Nevers, France. Interior photograph.

We can also give a historiographic overview of the church based on John Armitage’s research. To Armitage, the church stands as a testament to their visionary approach to spatial design and their commitment to challenging established architectural norms. The architectural landscape of the Church of Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay is imbued with historical and ideological resonances, drawing inspiration from the military bunkers that lined Hitler's Atlantic Wall during the Second World War. This strategic defensive line, stretching over 4,000 kilometers along the European coast, served as a physical manifestation of power and control, reflecting the totalitarian nature of wartime organization. Virilio's fascination with the spatial dynamics of warfare and the transformative impact of conflict on the built environment is palpable in his choice to incorporate elements of bunker architecture into the design of the church. However, Virilio and Parent's intentions extend beyond mere mimicry of military forms. The incorporation of bunker-like structures into the church's design serves a dual purpose: to evoke a sense of protective enclosure and to challenge conventional notions of architectural space. By refusing to adhere to traditional horizontal and vertical planes, Virilio and Parent create a dynamic interplay of form and function, inviting occupants to engage with the space in new and unexpected ways. Despite its formidable exterior, the Church of Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay offers a sanctuary of solace and introspection within its walls. The interior space, conceived as a grotto in homage to the church's patron saint, Bernadette, provides a refuge from the outside world. Virilio and Parent's integration of religious symbolism into the architectural design underscores the church's dual identity as a place of worship and a site of architectural experimentation.

Finally, we may speak upon how the oblique continues to permeate contemporary architectural design, both in literal geometrical form but also in the same conceptual fervor as Virilio and Parent originally set forth. Christian Sander's analysis of Virilio's oblique theory offers a profound exploration into the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary architecture, particularly in relation to the dynamics of space, time, and human movement within urban environments. Sander meticulously dissects the contrasting approaches of the Architecture Principe manifesto and dromology, shedding light on their implications for architectural design and urban planning. At the heart of Sander's analysis lies the dichotomy between the Architecture Principe manifesto and Virilio's dromology. The former, championed by Claude Parent, advocates for an alternative vision of urban spaces characterized by pedestrian-friendly environments and a rejection of the imperative of speed. In contrast, dromology, as articulated by Virilio, takes a more pessimistic view, critiquing the hegemony of speed and technology in shaping contemporary urban landscapes. Sander elucidates Parent's evolution from embracing technological fervor to adopting an anti-speed stance, epitomized in his text “Le temps mort.” Here, Parent envisions a city where speed ceases to be a prerequisite for existence, advocating for a recalibration of urban spaces to prioritize pedestrian needs over vehicular speed. This philosophical shift underscores a fundamental tension between the rapid pace of technological advancement and the human-scale experience of urban life. Moreover, Sander underscores the relevance of this analysis to contemporary architectural discourse by foregrounding the ongoing tension between circulation and architectural form. Architects now have unprecedented access to tools and methodologies for analyzing and optimizing circulation patterns within urban environments. Digital simulations and modeling techniques allow designers to anticipate and accommodate the movement of people with greater precision than ever before. However, alongside these technological advancements, there is a growing recognition of the need to prioritize the pedestrian experience and community well-being. The emphasis on efficiency and speed, while conducive to certain forms of circulation, can often neglect the human-scale qualities that make cities livable and vibrant. As such, contemporary architects are increasingly called upon to strike a balance between optimizing circulation patterns and creating environments that nurture social interaction, cultural exchange, and a sense of belonging. As Virilio was originally beginning to make us wary of, there is most definitely a politics of mobility and circulation spawning in the modern era.

As mentioned in the introduction, it is now essential to wrap-around and contextualize our findings within the broader discourse surrounding the form versus function debate that has permeated architectural theory and practice throughout the century. The dichotomy between form and function has been a recurring theme in architectural discourse, reflecting competing ideologies regarding the role of architecture in society and the prioritization of aesthetic expression versus utilitarian purpose. For example, a seminal work within the modern architectural cannon that we can investigate is American architect Louis Sullivan’s (1856 - 1924) “Form Follows Function” design dogma, first elucidated in the 1896 text, The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. Louis Sullivan famously argued for the primacy of function in architectural design, asserting that the form of a building should be a direct expression of its intended use. Sullivan's dictum became a foundational principle of modernist architecture, influencing architects such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, who sought to reconcile functional efficiency with aesthetic innovation. This emphasis on functional integrity and efficiency represented a paradigm shift in architectural thinking, challenging architects to prioritize the pragmatic needs of users over purely aesthetic considerations. For architects of the modernist movement, Sullivan's dictum provided a conceptual foundation upon which to build their own visions of architectural progress, grounded in the pursuit of functional clarity and spatial efficiency. However, while Sullivan's emphasis on function represented a radical departure from the past, it also laid the groundwork for a new set of challenges and tensions within architectural discourse. The stark dichotomy between form and function, while initially liberating, ultimately proved to be limiting in its simplicity, leading some architects to question the reductive nature of functionalist doctrine. This is where the work of Paul Virilio and the exploration of the oblique in architecture diverge from Sullivan's functionalist principles. While Sullivan advocated for a direct correlation between form and function, Virilio and Parent's conceptual framework challenges the notion of a rigid hierarchy between the two, instead embracing a more dynamic and expressive approach to architectural design. By introducing the oblique as a destabilizing force within architectural space, Virilio and Parent transcend the constraints of functionalism, imbuing their designs with a sense of movement, dynamism, and emotional resonance. In contrast to Sullivan's emphasis on rationality and efficiency, Virilio and Parent prioritize the experiential and perceptual dimensions of architecture, inviting occupants to engage with space in new and unexpected ways.

This nuanced perspective on the form versus function debate is echoed in the writings of architectural theorist Robert Venturi, whose seminal work “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” (1966) challenged the dogma of functionalism and celebrated the richness of architectural form. Venturi's concept of “both-and” architecture posits that architecture can simultaneously serve multiple functions and express multiple meanings, rejecting the binary opposition between form and function in favor of a more inclusive and holistic approach to design. Venturi's critique of functionalism in “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” heralded a shift towards postmodernism, a movement characterized by its rejection of modernist ideals and its embrace of plurality, diversity, and historical reference. Venturi argues for an architecture that celebrates complexity and contradiction, recognizing that buildings can serve multiple functions and express multiple meanings simultaneously. This concept of “both-and” architecture challenges the binary opposition between form and function, advocating for a more inclusive and holistic approach to design. In contrast to the work of Paul Virilio and the exploration of the oblique in architecture, Venturi's approach prioritizes complexity and ambiguity over clarity and rationality. While Virilio and Parent embrace the oblique as a destabilizing force within architectural space, Venturi celebrates the richness of architectural form, acknowledging that buildings can embody a multiplicity of meanings and functions. Rather than seeking to resolve tensions between form and function, Venturi revels in their coexistence, recognizing that architectural meaning emerges from the interplay of contradictory elements. In the long 20th century, the form versus function debate has evolved from a simplistic dichotomy to a multifaceted discourse that encompasses a range of perspectives and approaches. While functionalist principles continue to inform architectural practice, architects increasingly recognize the importance of considering the cultural, social, and experiential dimensions of architectural form.

In conclusion, the exploration of the oblique in modern architecture, as exemplified by the works and theories of Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, offers profound insights into the evolving nature of architectural discourse and practice throughout the 20th century. By departing from traditional orthogonality and embracing dynamic geometries, Virilio and Parent challenge the static conventions of architectural form and invite us to reconsider our relationship with the built environment. Through their writings and built projects, they demonstrate that the oblique is not merely a formal gesture but a conceptual framework for reimagining spatial experience, perception, and social interaction.

In our theorization, we may be privy to forget that Virilio’s work had quite the public presence, at the very least in exhibition form. The 14th exhibition (fig. 2) titled “Bunker archéologie”, particularly room 5's display of twentieth-century civil architecture, serves as a poignant reminder of the multifaceted nature of architectural discourse. Among the iconic architectural landmarks showcased, such as the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner, the inclusion of the church of Ste Bernadette by Paul Virilio and Claude Parent stands out as a testament to the enduring impact of Virilio's exploration of bunker architecture. This transition from exhibition to catalog sheds light on the evolving nature of architectural scholarship and interpretation. What initially began as a series of photographs, devoid of discernible formal attributes yet rich in historical and metaphorical implications, transformed into a tangible manifestation of Virilio's exploration of the architectural remnants of warfare. The inclusion of people in some of the photographs adds an intriguing layer of interpretation, inviting us to consider the human experience within these stark and brutal environments. The juxtaposition of iconic architectural landmarks like the Guggenheim Museum alongside the more utilitarian and austere bunkers prompts us to reevaluate our preconceived notions of architectural significance. By bridging the gap between seemingly disparate architectural typologies, Virilio challenges us to explore the underlying connections and narratives that shape our understanding of the built environment. The inclusion of the Guggenheim Museum, with its avant-garde design and cultural significance, alongside the stark and utilitarian bunkers, underscores the complexity of architectural history and its intersection with broader socio-political contexts.

Figure 2: 14th exhibition “Bunker archéologie”, room 5: “Séries et transformations”. At the center, examples of twentieth-century civil architecture: the Einstein tower by Eric Mendelsohn, the model for a single-family home by Adolf Loos, the Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner, the headquarters of the High Court of Justice and the Assembly in Chandigarh of Le Corbusier, the Guggenheim Museum of Frank Lloyd Wright, the church of Ste Bernadette by Paul Virilio and Claude Parent (Archives Centre). – ACP 1994W033/074 “Bunker archéologie – Paul Virilio”: communiqué de presse, tapuscrit du catalogue, cartons d’invitations, correspondance, photographies, diapositives, contrats, budget, factures, devis, coupures de presse, projet, 1975-1976.

In this light, the “Bunker archéologie” exhibition serves as a microcosm of the broader discourse surrounding architectural history and theory. Through the lens of Virilio's exploration of bunker architecture, we are invited to reconsider the ways in which we perceive and interpret architectural artifacts, transcending conventional notions of beauty and utility. As we navigate the complexities of architectural discourse, exhibitions like “Bunker archéologie” offer invaluable opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and reinterpretation, prompting us to question, challenge, and ultimately expand our understanding of the built environment and its significance in shaping human experience.

Virilio's philosophical inquiries into speed, technology, and perception provide a provocative lens through which to understand the oblique as a manifestation of the accelerated pace of modern life. His exploration of dromology, or the study of speed, highlights the profound implications of technological progress on the way we inhabit and navigate architectural space. By destabilizing traditional spatial orientations, the oblique disrupts our perceptual frameworks and challenges us to engage with space in new and unexpected ways. In parallel, Parent's radical architectural theories and innovative built projects embody a commitment to destabilizing spatial hierarchies and fostering a sense of movement and dynamism within architectural space. Through his collaboration with Virilio and projects like the Church of Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay, Parent demonstrates the transformative potential of the oblique as a catalyst for reimagining the relationship between architecture and human experience.

Looking forward, the legacy of Virilio and Parent's exploration of the oblique continues to permeate contemporary architectural design, both in literal geometrical form and in the conceptual fervor that they originally set forth. As Christian Sander's analysis illustrates, the philosophical underpinnings of Virilio's oblique theory offer profound implications for contemporary architecture, particularly in relation to the dynamics of space, time, and human movement within urban environments. Architects today are called upon to navigate the tension between circulation and architectural form, balancing the imperatives of efficiency and speed with the human-scale experience of urban life. In the broader context of architectural discourse, the exploration of the oblique challenges the dichotomy between form and function that has long permeated architectural theory and practice. While figures like Louis Sullivan championed the primacy of function in architectural design, Virilio and Parent offer a more nuanced perspective that transcends the constraints of functionalism. By embracing the oblique as a destabilizing force within architectural space, they prioritize the experiential and perceptual dimensions of architecture, inviting occupants to engage with space in new and unexpected ways. The exploration of the oblique in modern architecture represents a departure from the rigid conventions of the past and a celebration of the dynamic and fluid nature of architectural form. Through their visionary theories and innovative projects, Virilio and Parent challenge us to rethink the possibilities of architectural space and to imagine new ways of inhabiting and experiencing the built environment. As we continue to navigate the complexities of the contemporary urban landscape, their insights remain as relevant and inspiring as ever, guiding us towards a more responsive, dynamic, and inclusive architecture for the future.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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The Globalized Border as a Concept and Design

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola November 5, 2022

The “Border” is both a conceptual and material artifact with no exact designation of which epistemological force has reign. Despite its abstract and vague conceptualization, it has a widespread allure to the general public. Of course, within the United States our interaction with “the Border” is mainly abstract and political, with many of us perhaps never coming into contact with the Border in our entire life; and even further, because of this politicization there is a common spatial designation of “the Border” in correlation with, to be exact, the border which the United States and Mexico share in our southern region. There are, of course, a multitude of “Borders” throughout the globe, and it is an aspiration of this text to bring these to light, creating a globalized discussion on the Border. But, for obvious reasons (one of these being anecdotal, the simple fact that I am Mexican-American and have confronted discourse with the Border quite frequently) there is a special focus on the United States-Mexico border within this text.

As an example, we can begin to visually analyze the United States-Mexico border for its face-value implications, being cognizant of the fact that, though the Border represents a logistically unitary artifact, it can differ from place-to-place. In the United States, stereotypical visual imagery of the wall probably relates to Donald Trump’s “visions-for-the-wall,” in which the Border constitutes a gigantic, mundane, and securitized force… But the wall must also act iconographically, as a representation of the newfound nationalist sentiment within the United States. Removed from these typical representations are zones of the border which are more closely aligned with Hooverville-like visuals. And, as always, there is a constant propagandic battle to depict the Border as stable and highly-defensible, a fact which is constantly proven illusory through phenomenon which are so simple that they prove somewhat surreal in relation to the “threatening” force the Border tries to instill: catapulting humans and items across the wall; makeshift ramps which propel entire vehicles across the border; ant-farm-like tunnel networks beneath the surface to penetrate the above-ground securities of the border, novel ladders, and so on. There are layers to these nuanced forms of representation, in (I believe) the same rhetoric which can be seen in the communal disgust towards Brutalist structures: too withdrawn from passion, too big and too much of an “eye-sore,” too lifeless and devoid of color, too rigid and violent… The Border would be typically taught to be a “construction,” both in its origination but also in the way it manipulates the surrounding community. But, as I hope to have shown here and later on, it also reflects, and it is the job of the designer to navigate both of these arenas.

As a great example of this “constructive” effort, Harel Shapira conducted a typical yet exemplary analysis of the United States-Mexico border within the framework of an interaction between rural and infrastructure studies. In “The Border: Infrastructure of the Global,” Shapira hones in on Adobe, Arizona, a rural town that is located at close proximity to the United States-Mexico border. In general, Shapira seeks to describe local community reactions to border politics, as well as the interaction between national security technology and a community. Shapira critiques infrastructure scholars for long being obsessed with the urban, and vice-versa, as primarily set forth through the metric of cosmopolitanism and globalization. However, she points out that within rural spaces the notion of “globalization” operates much more differently. For the residents of Adobe, globalization means that you can’t go into Mexico to get your teeth cleaned without a passport. It means that every time you want to go to the grocery store you need to pass a checkpoint. It means having to negotiate your relationships to a security and surveillance apparatus. It means that suddenly your identity, as a citizen, as According to Shapira, Adobe is a “made up” name to protect the privacy of the community members. This article is among a collected volume of fellow articles for a Public Culture issue which was dedicated to urban studies and infrastructure. Adobe, Arizona is not “urban,” (whatever that word truly means), but it is certainly “rural.” It is obvious, and only recently taken as an ailment, that architecture has been interested in urban spaces for so long. Contemporary thinkers such as Rem Koolhaas have pressured architecture to pay more attention to the rural. This is particularly interesting as borders, in their political and infrastructural form, are usually located in rural spaces.

As is typical of many rural American-towns, Adobe has a history of an industrial-boom and its subsequent infrastructural implications—the town seems to have centered around mining. This economic base eventually withered away, but the town did not reawaken under stereotypical globalized economic forces of cutting-edge technology, rather the “business” (if you can even call it that) that revived Adobe was the border. The border, as an infrastructure, is highly visible to local community members; Shapira wants to remind us that borders have a history, and in Adobe they only interacted with the border “as an abstract political and jurisdictional reality…” up until very recently, “... As a longtime resident recalls: For as far back as I can remember, people from these parts were going back and forth across the border. Hell, wasn’t even a border to really cross. You’d walk into Mexico without knowing it.”6 Adobe is a town which is still reeling from the implications of Operation Wetback (1954); many contemporary border strategies and politics, to Shapira, did not stop illegal immigration but diverted much of this flow into Arizona; maybe, here, Adobe “benefits” from another form of globalization but one which is “underground,” mainly to do with aiding illegal immigrants which cross through rides, housing, or stashing drugs for further trafficking, and so on. Shapira notes that, for a town lacking in economic opportunity, the compensation to help these illegal activities is enticing.7 As well, with the border comes a multitude of various “national safety” technologies, further implicating that the materiality of a border goes far beyond a simple wall.8 Previously untouched desert has been cut by new roads. A whole array of military infrastructure has been built, including watchtowers, fences, prison facilities, and checkpoints. Enormous semi-trailers filled with giant concrete slabs move in and out of Adobe. The border patrol speeds up and down the nameless dirt roads, and a ninety-eight-foot surveillance tower juts out of the ground, its ominous red lights providing Adobe its first ever semblance of a skyline. New installations support wireless communications in places that still don’t have telephone poles. Old cattle guards have been moved from their arbitrary location at the outskirts of ranches to the international border. Once meant to prevent the movement of animals, they now act as barriers to the movement of people. Vietnam-era landing strips from nearby air force bases have been reused as material for building a wall along the border; remnants of the war on communism, they are now refashioned for the war on terrorism.

Briefly, in terms of the political climate in this area, Adobe’s residents act in an almost ironic fashion—they are certainly annoyed, or at least have an interest in illegal immigrants, but they are more worried about the state’s securitization efforts and what this means for their personal freedoms. Haslan points out that the local community members speak in typical rhetoric when referring to undocumented immigrants that pass by, but these are usually not politically charged. Some residents speak of giving help to “illegals” as much as they do of pulling out guns on them. A seventy-year-old woman sheltered a “wetback” for five days in her home until his broken leg healed. For Adobe’s residents, illegal immigrants are a “nuisance” but not a problem. It’s not that they take away jobs or that they don’t speak English. It’s that they leave trash everywhere and that they don’t turn off water hoses after they finish drinking from them. For the most part, residents help illegal immigrants. Many leave water bottles in their backyards, and almost all offer them phones to make calls. A particular situation incited political discussion which perfectly frames the relationship between Adobe and the border. A Boeing representative dropped off legal paperwork in April, 2007 to the town librarian, Lisa. They had a five-day window to read the documents and to give their input, which they failed to do because of the rushed nature of the entire ordeal. Shortly after, a “ninety-eight-foot tower with beaming lights hovered over them,” apparently in efforts to further securitize the border—the residents were subsequently furious. Haslan takes account of a plethora of interesting critical comments by local community members as a result of the extension of the border.

[...]

But, the aspiration here is not to shed light on the concept of a Border within the area of discourse concerned with social justice—this level of identity politics is not nuanced enough to develop our interactions and reactions with the Border. Though this area of discussion is certainly interesting and salient, it is no longer efficient to cast light upon those subjected to the authoritarian grasp of the Border within these terms because they cast these subjects as monolithic, rudimentary, and passive. If we look at the Border through the discourse of aesthetics and art we can gain a more interesting and salient image of these in interactions. This may then lead to speculative designs which either disintegrate or make empathetic both the concept and reality of the Border. However, to further muddle this investigation, the aesthetic interrogation of the Border is an immediately odd question to ask. This is because the Border, as is colloquially apparent to the general public, acts to such a functional extent that it is void of any aesthetic ambition. The Border is almost too infrastructural in nature to be thought of as an architectural project; certainly functional, but not designed with any aesthetic aspirations in-mind—this distinction needs to be nuanced. Through looking contemporarily, in an almost case-study fashion, we can see this unity between form-and-function become transgressed by those individuals with a stake in the matter. Further, as will be detailed in this essay, the Border has a deeply conceptual aspect—many aspirations towards designing or dissolving the Border are visible only through ideas.

The Border presents one of the most enriched set of ontological and epistemological scenarios as specific to our postmodern condition; it would be a fault to not speculate our interactions against such a force. I hope to introduce a survey of contemporary Border-discourse, starting with an introduction to theory and idea of a Border, compounding this analysis with its socio-political integration as an object through history; for this section of case-studies I wish to present on Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc and Duchamp’s Door. I then wish to initiate a conversation on the conceptualization of the Border as either an architectural or infrastructural artifact, as well as introducing infrastructure studies scholarship—I will integrate the Centre Pompidou and Adobe, Arizona as case studies for this point. We will then begin to initiate a contemporary discussion on the aesthetic status of the Border, with a specific focus on the United States-Mexican border, as well as more conceptual and ontological efforts—case studies here include Teddy Cruz’s Psychogeography and Ron Rael’s Seesaws. This discussion will then turn global, integrating comparative case-studies to help nuance the battle against the Border. Borders do not necessarily imply a political or authoritarian presence; architects deal frequently with borders, as one can make an obvious link between something as simple as a wall, or a constructed division in general, and its subsequent function as a border; architects attempt to subvert this function of a wall, such as the open floor-plans of Le Corbusier and the De Stijl (breaking open the “box”) free-form plans of Mies van der Rohe. An adequate and simple definition of a border is that the object demarcates space, but it’s up to the localized political, societal, economic, cultural climate to dictate the particular grasps and implications of the Border. To open a discussion on the Border, an act of estrangement is particularly efficient. As will be later made apparent through a discussion on contemporary infrastructure studies, perhaps one of the most debilitating characteristics of Borders is their ability to function nearly invisibly; it is not difficult to begin deconstructing the Border, it’s a highly penetrable, spectacle-like, and surreal object. For example, contemporary American sculptor Richard Serra was commissioned by the United States General Services Administration to create a sculpture that could be placed within an open courtyard space in front of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Manhattan, New York. Serra was quite brutal and uncourteous with the space allotted to him, acting unrelenting with his standard style—the final work was a tilted “solid, unfinished plate of COR-TEN steel, 120 feet (37 m) long, 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) thick.” But, of particular interest besides its intensely abstract and postmodern allure in contrast to the surrounding classical architectural style was its stark placement literally “in the way” of federal employees getting to their place of work. This annoying barrier, mixed with the impenetrable and aesthetically detached object, made for a growing sentiment of hatred towards Tilted Arc. In Ironically enough (or, maybe not so much) is that then-president Donald Trump made an assertive act in 2020 which required commissioned works to reflect “historically significant Americans or events." Further, he required “lifelike representations of people, not abstract or modernist representations.”

In 1989, the site-specific object was removed by a public vote. Acting as food-for-thought, the Border here is stark and impassioned though not impermeable; the people here chose not to be demarcated by space in the way which Serra deemed artistically fit. Some people could deal with the annoyance, but could not deem it aesthetically viable (even, in a fiscal sense, as their “tax dollars” went towards paying for such a work) because of its mundanity. But, we can become quite malleable and experimental with the concept of the Border. Semiotically, dealing with the concept of a Border is destined to be riddled with cultural complexity. This is because the object not only demarcates space but is an object that demarcates in general—the entire premise behind the Border-object is to directly create an “other.” The Border, especially now, is ingrained within our culture and society in an “ordinary” or “given” fashion; though, with slight nuance depending on our political alignment (either disgust and contempt or sincerity and security). Marcel Duchamp’s Door, 11 rue Larrey (1927) presents a simple yet provocative avenue of analysis to nuance our conceptual basis surrounding the Border. Again, Duchamp’s project is quite simple; perhaps it is not even a “project” at all. He commissioned a carpenter to create a “solution” to a corner in his Paris apartment which was the transition between multiple different functions (or, spaces) of his household, as well as allowing more space to be saved. Whereas this cross-section would necessitate the construction of two-doors, Duchamp instead opted for a door directly at the right-angle intersection between the two rooms… This creates a novel phenomena where the singular door can close off two rooms.

As Americans, this may seem purely quirky, but it disturbs a uniquely French proverb, the saying that a door “cannot be closed and open at the same time.” Lydie Sarazin (Duchamp’s girlfriend) stated the following: “But people have forgotten the practical reason that dictated the necessity of this measure and they only think of it as a Dada provocation.” at the time) stated in her memoir that in May, 1927, she walked out of Duchamp’s restroom and was seen naked by his brother-in-law, it was after this incident that the singular-door was constructed—Bernhard Siegert states the following. With respect to the proverbially binary circuit-logic of the door, Duchamp’s door, which can be simultaneously open and closed, is justly paradoxical. If one space is opened, the other is automatically closed. Duchamp’s paradoxical door is thus always simultaneously open and closed. The door quickly acquired the reputation of being a “Dadaist provocation,” but the door was not in the least dysfunctional. To the contrary. The door in the Rue Larrey processed and stabilized differences: between public and private, between naked and dressed, between woman and man; it regulated the traffic between the passage of a look and the passage of a naked body so that both passages mutually and automatically ruled each other out.

I posit that one of the most concrete and genuine frameworks from which we can analyze this dichotomy between aesthetic and function can be understood best through our conceptualization of the Border as either an infrastructure or an architecture. There does not seem to be, within the contemporary state of architecture as a discipline, an integration or appreciation of infrastructural technologies, networks, or systems on a wide-scale.21 Infrastructures which reside within a built environment seem to be afterthoughts, somewhat “left aside” to those more interested in the functionality and logistics of the built space rather than its design or aesthetics: contractors, engineers, and so on. These infrastructures are, roughly but not limited to: electrical wiring, plumbing and water, antenna and internet cabling, ventilation and air-conditioning, trash and its subsequent disposal, water fountains, hand-sanitizer stations, etcetera. These crucial components of a building are almost “too functional” to be depicted in an aesthetically pleasing manner. But, I believe that we have already encountered a project which weirdly, or maybe tellingly, what seems to be “hip” nowadays is to let the “guts” of the interior space come out. The “guts” here are the various infrastructural capacities of the building in question. This is showcased in a variety of different functional spaces: clothing stores, restaurants, university buildings, and so on. There is an almost postmodern allegory to this phenomena. Though, I may certainly be wrong, as I have mainly experienced architectural discourse through the history of technology. Though canonized as “high-tech architecture,” a remnant of speculative and utopian architectural projects from the Cold War era, the Centre Pompidou represents an obvious connection between infrastructure and architecture. One can appreciate this relationship innocently, as the building itself is an iconic statement designed specifically to not hide any of the internal systems which make a building hospitable—scaffolding and framing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical wiring—are all propped up unapologetically.

The Centre Pompidou represents an aesthetic framework from which to analyze infrastructure, but what about the political implications of infrastructure? Discourse on infrastructure only became recently institutionalized as a genuine “discipline” within academia and scholarship. Though infrastructure has an interesting etymology and has certainly been the topic of various discussions, we can pinpoint Susan Leigh Star’s 1999 article titled The Ethnography of Infrastructure as a starting point. Star’s entire article if fascinating, but the “tenets” of infrastructure she lays out are emblematic enough to give a general overview on the “character” of infrastructure: embeddedness, transparency, reach or scope, learned as part of membership, links with conventions of practice, embodiment of standards, built on an installed base, becomes visible upon breakdown, and is fixed in modular increments not all at once or globally. Arguably the most interesting and problematic feature that Star identifies is the notion that infrastructure is “visible upon breakdown,” meaning that, usually, infrastructure remains “invisible” to the human experience. This is, of course, generally true, but a fervent critique was aimed against Star that depicted her analysis as not encompassing those cultures and societies which confront infrastructure in a blunt fashion—these rebuttals are primarily from scholars which study the Global South, research here generally suggests that actants are quite cognizant of infrastructural systems because of their fragile (not always in some “failing” scenario, the topic can become quite nuanced) relationship with these technologies. This era of infrastructure studies that was ushered in was completely dominated by inquiries that were framed within political, social, and cultural discourse—infrastructure was the emblematic form of technology for which to understand the world because of its highly nuanced (almost postmodern) interactions with actants.

We have seen the Border depicted on a multitude of conceptual levels, first conceptual, then aesthetically, and finally infrastructurally/politically. We can look towards contemporary designers and artists in their attempt to grapple with such a nuanced built object, a desperate attempt to understand how to work with, or against, the Border, both in its concept and ontological reality. There are a multitude of interesting contemporary examples to take survey of to further expand our theoretical and historical fervor which should, in the end, translate to an attempt to speculate and implement a design of the Border. The examples I wish to integrate are quite ontological and political in-scope, to help underscore the materialized realities and potential of Border-thought. Ron Rael is a leading designer within this avenue of border-design, and many of his creations can be appreciated in a novel and innocent sentiment. Rael is best known for his Seesaws, a project which was located directly at the United States-Mexico border, the Anapra zone to be exact. A see-saw is placed through the metal-slits of the wall with a jointing-mechanism at the center, making it so that local community members may interact with members across the border in a playful fashion. These sort-of subversions are not passing to Rael and his studio, but something which requires strenuous analysis—in his Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, Rael unleashes a fury of possibilities to make humane the boundary between these two cultures: Bicycle and Pedestrian Wall; 27 Cactus Wall; 28 Dam Wall; 29 Hydro Wall; 30 Fog Wall; 31 Wastewater Treatment Wall…32 The list goes on.

For Rael, though the boundary presents obvious philosophical and theoretical implications, it still remains intensely real, authoritarian, and materialized. Poetry, philosophy, and quirky anecdotes are integrated into the analysis, but the real-world implications are the most important references. The work is critical in the most typical sense, not remaining only reactionary but genuinely trying to extend design-practices and possibilities which completely subvert our typical understanding of boundaries; a sort of “why not?” is asked. Vestiges of the original authoritarian rule are introduced when the wall has been turned into a bicycle pathway; turned from steel into shrubbery; contributing energy to local communities by way of solar panels; acting as a net for a volleyball game… Teddy Cruz (a contemporary of Ron Rael), on the other hand, seems to still reserve potential for stylistic and “aesthetic” elements within boundary-thinking, in the exact same spaces in which Rael finds functional designs. I believe this is because Teddy is cognizant of the lostical and authoritarian reign of the border, but wants to find ways to not make the surrounding community members monolithic (here, Chicano and Latino people).

Though Cruz seems to be arguing for a functionalist perspective, he means this in somewhat of an ironic way. His design practice constantly recycles local material and items, what others would consider “trash,” to get a sense of the local milieu; his studio collages and thinks artistically about the surrounding environment. His San Diego infoSite project is the most salient Here. Teddy Cruz’s San Diego infoSite is a commissioned work of ephemeral architecture that was inserted within existing strategies of cross-border recycling. The temporary structure combined salvaged materials with elements related to recycling processes—such as truck beds used to transport crushed cars to recycling plants—and dynamics of transit and transportation. This is all to say that, even in these desperate situations, there still remains tension between function and style; Rael and Cruz’s work shows an interaction, a soothing resolution, between both of these diverging phenomena within the context of a tense political and material situation. We can begin to take stock of what this estrangement has allowed us to speculate about the Border on multiple levels: Borders, with enough public engagement and distaste, can be destroyed; Borders are transient and vapid. An object that’s seemingly pretty heavily “set in stone” but which also has quite contradictory implications; Borders function both on a highly conceptual and ontological level. The resolution between these two realities is contested; Borders are not inherently authoritarian—through application we can take advantage of the design implications which arise from the simple demarcation of space.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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Metabolism (1960-1988) and Infrastructure

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola March 31, 2022

Scholarship within infrastructure studies have not fully realized the potential of understanding the relationship between infrastructure and architecture. Interestingly, the methodologies and theories set firm within this subfield are incredibly pertinent to the study of architecture in terms of both criticism and history. This includes discourse set forth in reference to the supposed “invisibility” and/or “visibility” of infrastructure, politics, power, and infrastructure, infrastructure and affect, and much more. The inquiry surrounding further developing the relationship between infrastructure and architecture can be appreciated in a novel sense—infrastructure is thought to be static in terms of its malleability, neutral or “invisible” in terms of its relationship to power structures, and “standardized” or without a clear sense of design or empathy—as opposed to architecture, which is deeply intertwined with theorizations on plasticity, aesthetics, design, and emotion. It is evident that infrastructure plays at least some part in the design process of an architecture project, but to what extent? Where do infrastructure or architecture begin and end in the timeline of the building process? Do they eventually begin to blend into one another? Why are buildings immediately appreciated for their face-value aesthetics, mainly attributed to its architectural design, rather than the infrastructure which allows for the logistical foundation of this beauty? Is this interaction always seen positively, or is infrastructure perceived as an impediment to architects? Is there an aesthetic to infrastructure? Do we conceive of infrastructure to be as potentially “creative” as architecture? Do we design infrastructure or do we simply plan it?

The “Metabolism” movement in post-WW2 Japan is a salient movement to unravel these questions surrounding the intersection between architecture and infrastructure. The so-called “Metabolists” were an architectural collective which can now be contextualized as an icon of the global movement beginning in the 1960s involving a large growth spurt of similar underground collectives, such as Archigram, Team 10, and Ant Farm. An incredibly passionate and eccentric group, it is difficult to not single out the Metabolists for their ambitions, feats, or lasting influences. The Metabolists are known for their elaborate built environment projects, which incorporated both theory and praxis. As will be explained later, the Metabolists (either by themselves or when thinking back retroactively) had conflicts with this “group” format—I argue that the individual members themselves should be analyzed by their own merits instead of being analyzed under the larger and vague framework of “Metabolism.” However, this does not mean that it is not useful to conceptualize them within this larger group setting for the sake of productivity. In essence, the Metabolists were a group of young and ambitious architects (of when the title of architect was not a “respectable” career in Japanese society) which either were cognizant or grew up directly out of war-torn Japan. Because of the war, they experienced fragile urban environments, primarily within the avenues of transportation and housing, and they also encountered the razed cityscape of Tokyo, most of which appeared to them as an open canvas ready for their plans. They based most of their design principles on the physiological process of Metabolism, something always to be progressive and shifting, never static. They thought of the interconnectedness of the body and imagined the city as a living organism. The most notable work done under the identity of Metabolism was designed by Kisho Kurokawa: the Nakagin Capsule Tower. It is primarily here where we can pick hints on a Metabolist pondering the intersection between infrastructure and architecture, Kurokawa states: One reason why the Metabolists are so exemplary is because they are still reflected upon in contemporary times. They have been in the news recently because the Nakagin Capsule Tower is set to be demolished: “A hotel system and sales apartment building, the Nakagin Capsule Tower building consists of two major structural elements: two steel frame and reinforced concretes towers — one eleven and the other thirteen stories — housing elevators and equipment piping, and capsule rooms that were almost completely finished when attached to the towers.” What is highly relevant here is that, no matter the realized form of Kurokawa’s theories and dreams of capsule-life, there still remain at least some logistical remnants of infrastructure. Here the two steel frames are artifacts which will act as the “stereotypical” infrastructural form—long-standing, hastening, and static—these objects will make possible the nomadic architecture that is capsule-life. This is only scratching the surface in terms of what the Metabolists thought of infrastructure, and it is also now important to understand the nervous state of urban life in Tokyo which the Metabolists were reflecting upon when conjuring these futuristic plans, and which will serve as a backdrop for most of their interests in infrastructure.

It is no secret that Japan was left devastated by World War 2. Tokyo, of course, was no exception to this devastation, as can be seen by the razed cityscape after the war had ended. Both primary and secondary literature make a point to state the devastated nature of the built environment after the war, with a specific focus on the dire housing situation in highly-populated cities such as Tokyo. This housing situation was seen to be a problem of infrastructural capacity. This photo by Gerry paints an emotional picture of these infrastructural catastrophes. This historical context is salient to the work of Metabolists for obvious reasons, in their designs for their future, they always made sure to look retroactively. There is a solid argument to be made that the progressive and malleable architecture designs that the Metabolists aspired for was, in part, an integral vision for many of their projects, such that their buildings would be well suited for the unpredictable, logistical, and utilitarian needs of the people. But, there is also mounting evidence that the Metabolists were interested in infrastructure-in-itself for entirely logistical and utilitarian means. Metabolists repeatedly speak of the “anxious” and “nervous” state of their beloved Tokyo, most of which is immediately referenced to be a problem of infrastructural proportion, such as housing and transportation. But then again, some Metabolists such as Maki and Kurokawa thought in a more dreamful way on the potential of infrastructure.

In regards to the members diverging between their thoughts on the use and potential of infrastructure—it becomes rapidly clear after reading into their material that, though perhaps a common and general initial ambition drove them together at first, they were by no means a theoretically cohesive unit. They envisioned the built environment of the future, especially as time went on within the group's lifespan, in incredibly divergent ways. Group members came and went, they constantly fought, and—though not necessary to be seen as a “cohesive” group—there were varying opinions surrounding who the “leader” of the Metabolists was; the usual suspects for “leader” were either Tange or Kawazoe. This essay will then now follow the structure of plotting individual members and their beliefs surrounding infrastructure.

Kisho Kurokawa Kisho Kurokawa was the most prolific writer among the Metabolists, writing over a dozen books, including his highly popular Philosophy of Symbiosis, Urban Design, and Homo Movens. This high activity, according to himself, is because when he’s not actively designing a better world, he’s constantly theorizing about one. Kurokawa is also an adamant critical theorist, bridging the gap between a multitude of disciplines such as economics, sociology, anthropology, law, and so on. He takes large inspiration from French 20th century philosophers, even considering himself a Marxist (until his 1958 trip to Moscow), and he seems to be heavily influenced by the works of Giles Deleuze. Kurokawa was not hesitant to make immediate connections between the more biological prose of Metabolism in relation to Deleuze’s theory of the rhizome, networks, and systems theory. Kurokawa himself also had an affinity for network theory, and this would guide him to move from designing singular buildings to entire cities. It is the theory of rhizome, a society without a center, which paired so well with Kurokawa’s distaste of the oppressive nature of the International Style and modernism in general (thinking of himself fervently as a Postmodernist), and his appreciation of tradition, culture, and the fringes of society. Kurokawa coalesced these depots of knowledge into his understanding of infrastructure, considering the phenomenon as a suspicious vessel of modernist ideology. Kurokawa is an endlessly interesting figure, but his beliefs on the intersection between infrastructure and architecture can be contextualized well by a specific project he headed in which he designed a housing project for the Bedouin people in the deserts of Libya. This particular account is an application of his “philosophy of symbiosis,” which is an elaborate critique and attack on the oppressive ideological fervor of modernism:

[...]

In general, Kurokawa believes modernism to act in a far too structured fashion, not allowing for the fringes of society to flourish. To Kurokawa, the modernists also put function ahead over form, which inhibits the creative potential of the individual. This modernist tradition is accounted for by Kurokawa by post-war ambitions to create safer and more utilitarian built environments and to make houses which function as places to meet standards of living; a prominent figure here is Le Corbusier, and the architectural collective which he led to realize these ideals, Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Kurokawa was commissioned by a leader of one of the emirates (as he had worked with them before on an unrealized project) to design housing for the Bedouin population in the desert of Libya. Kurokawa saw it as an opportunity to synthesize Arabic and Japanese culture, perfectly in tune with his philosophy of symbiosis. But as to why the Bedouin demographic in particular, Kurokawa explains:

[...]

They had already contracted an unnamed American architect to help them out with this, but the project was apparently not going well. When Kurokawa came to inspect the buildings, it was immediately apparent what was wrong. The American had tried to force Western modernism down the throats of these nomadic peoples, and apparently to Kurokawa the American had created houses which were reminiscent of those you “might encounter in California.” Kurokawa noticed that the Bedouin people were not even living inside of the house, instead they were living in tents outside the house and let their livestock live inside the homes. This is because, in the extreme heat of the desert, the houses would become like furnaces because of a variety of ignorant oversights, primarily, the houses were fitted with modern air-conditioning by the American architect, but they broke down quickly in the extreme heat of the desert mixed with the insulation of the houses. Kurokawa became inspired by these tents that the Bedouin were living in, as they were extremely cool in the hot desert, so he got to work. When I met the American architect who designed these buildings, I asked him why he had designed buildings that no one could live in. He replied that he didn't expect the Bedouins to be able to live in the houses from the start, but that eventually the peoples of the developing nations, such as these Bedouins, would have to turn in their camels for cars and their tents for homes and enter modern life. Since that was the case, it was important to teach them to do so as quickly as possible, and training them to live in that kind of housing was one step toward that goal. Here we see a typical case of the dogma of Modernism, based on the values of the West. According to this way of thinking, the functionalism and technology produced by the industrial society of Europe has raised the quality of human life and is bound, sooner or later, to spread over the entire earth. All cultures — whether China, the rest of Asia, or the Islamic countries — are bound to advance under the banner of Western civilization. In the end, Kurokawa designed buildings that were more in tune with the desert environment, both in terms of infrastructure and architectural form. For example, to mimic the high-rise cooling system of the Bedouin tents, Kurokawa designed a windmill-like system to be installed in the chimneys of these buildings for a more organic cooling operation. Further, though the buildings were set up in a suburban-like neighborhood system, the individual houses were malleable because the individual units which made up the house (kitchen, restroom, living room, etc) were customizable and moveable by the homeowners.

Fumihiko Maki Maki was a contemporary among Kurokawa, as he was also a progenitor of the Metabolist group; Maki was very young when he joined the Metabolists and he contributed to the manifesto booklet the Metabolists distributed at the World Design Conference, 1960. His impact was immediate and intensely visible—along with Masato Otaka he authored a short-text “Towards the Group Form.” Group form, or collective form, is a theory that would entice Maki for his entire life. As with the other Metabolists, it might be more correct to state that urban planning was of more interest to Maki than architecture. As stated before, the post-WW2 infrastructural ailments in housing and transportation were highly visible in Tokyo, the Metabolists (and Maki was no exception) took these disasters as inspirations and contextualization for most of all of their projects. Maki was obsessed with coordinating urban systems that would not act in a manner of modernist oppression, in a Kurokawaian manner, yet also incorporate urban technicalities which matched the pace of modern life: The biggest issue in contemporary politics and economics is the organization of an orderly society without sacrificing the fundamental freedom of the individuals who make up the society [...] In architecture and urbanism, as in politics and economics, we must build up new concepts and methods that will not only strengthen the individuality of our visual environment but also endow the physical forms of our world with qualities that truly mirror our rapidly changing society. We believe that the concept of group form we are now proposing will be one of the most vital methods in this respect. Maki had considered and been taught the modernist agenda for how to conduct urban planning, referencing the modernist hierarchical and over-encompassing system where movement throughout the city was very strict and rigid. He shows a clear-cut diagram of two systems, one system with a “skeleton” that organized the entire city and in which you could not arrive at a specific node without a specific route, and another diagram with less of a skeleton and one that resembles more of a rhizome, showing no signs of a center and a system which allows for multiple avenues of direction to reach specific nodes. He clearly prefers the latter form, but he is left wondering how urban technologies, such as infrastructure, could be integrated into this system without taking away from the individual, local, or regional flair. His “solution,” which he is still trying to perfect (he is still working, at the age of 93), is this idea of group form: there is no rigid system yet there still remains a collective consciousness. Maki tries to not be simply theoretical but very practical, as he lists what is necessary to conduce this collective form: Consistent use of basic materials and construction methods as well as spontaneous, but minor, variations in physical expression. Wise, and often dramatic use of geography and topography. Human scale preserved throughout the town. (This is frequently in contrast to superhuman landforms.) Finally, sequential development of basic elements which predominantly, are dwelling houses, open spaces between the houses, and the repetitive use of certain visual elements such as walls, gates, towers, waters, etc.

In essence, Maki aimed to create local towns which maybe seemed to be without any strict direction yet were capacitated to make quick movement towards any specific urban need. He admired the “older” systems—villages in Morocco or in Greece—which were aesthetically fragrant yet also structured in such a way that allowed them to be infrastructurally malleable. Whereas the other Metabolists, especially Tange and Kawazoe, were thinking of megastructures which would encapsulate entire cities, Maki instead wanted to scale back and think more locally. This was not a simple divergence, the Metabolists fought hardily over what they considered the best way to construct the future environment would be. Beyond group form, Maki had incredibly interesting things to say about the phenomenology of urban living. Again, in reference to the anxious and nervous state of post-war Tokyo, Maki had tried to theorize and create a more calming and stable environment which would both be liberating and also logistically fervent. Maki found an avenue of interest which connected infrastructure technologies with the perception and structure of city life, most likely in reference to his particularly trying times. There are also a lot of hints towards another contemporary French movement, psychogeography and the Situationists, of which he may have been influenced by Kurokawa..? The movement systems which most profoundly affect the dynamics of the city organization are automobile, mass transit, and pedestrian. Expressways encircle and penetrate the metropolitan area in an ever increasing number; cares pouring into the core cripple and clog movement there. Webs of local streets spread between the expressway framework, serving as feeders and absorbers to it. Public transportation systems, buses, railways, and subways — interconnect parts of the metropolitan area, concentrating at the core and other critical points. Pedestrian ways including parks, malls, plazas, sidewalks, etc, weave a continuous pattern over the entire city and bring people to their final destinations. Generally these systems only loosely recognize and relate to each other, frequently causing peoples’ bewilderment and impressions of chaos. This chaos refers not to the lack of structure, but to the difficulty of piercing it; and the problem is not one of restructuring but one of making understanding easier. A person moving through a city must be given visual clues and explanations of where he is and where he is going, of what these places are, and how they are related to each other. Though I’m not entirely sure what to make of this statement, it is incredibly interesting that, according to Maki, you can have structure and peace within urban life without a strict infrastructural form to back this up. Perception and understanding is not about grid systems, plumbing, or electricity, but rather about how the individual feels within the environment. This is entirely in tune with the mantras of psychogeography, of which is an attempt to combat the “spectacle” of modern built environments and to find solace in the more organic and down-to-earth urban spaces. Anecdotally, I am reminded of the grid-system which organizes the entire Salt Lake Valley, and how every single address is a reinforcement of the Latter Day Saints power over Utahn culture (roads are designated a number based on how far away they are from the temple in downtown Salt Lake City).

Kiyonori Kikutake Kikutake was another progenitor of Metabolism and contemporary of the other figures listed so far. In terms of his relationship with infrastructure, what is mainly salient is his theory on artificial ground and, almost oddly enough, a cultural history of landlords in Japan. I did not have time to inquire deeply and efficiently enough into Kikutake’s theory of artificial ground, as it is much more nuanced, but in its most basic sense its the aspiration by Kikutake to reclaim the sea and to create land which can inhabit and meet the needs of urban peoples. This would seemingly help society calm their nervous emotions surrounding the clustered and chaotic landscape of Tokyo. He theorized this by creating plans for the Tokyo Bay, a big patch of water near Tokyo in which artificial ground could be created and therefore be suitable for new homes, transportation, work, and so on. Kikutake is an example of “Metabolism” speaking on the topic of technology, or infrastructure, but not bringing up the other term; Tange also does this as well, speaking at length of infrastructural technology without ever referring to them as such. In my thinking about contemporary architecture, I use three basic viewpoints: “new forms, “technology as an impetus,” and “development of order.”[...] Technological progress has brought about a universal elevation of the values of countless multitudes. It has immeasurably raised our levels of civilization. However, architecture is still restrained by local restrictions. For this reason, I believe, the person has not yet been freed to develop fully on the basis of technology. We must correctly utilize technology as an impetus in building a contemporary architecture that will be more abundant, more individual, and more human.

This quote is particularly interesting because of Kikutake’s assertion that technology, at least to him, is acting as a barrier towards human growth. This assertion will pair well with his nostalgia of land ownership, but it’s interesting to see that despite the more hopeful infrastructural aspirations which other Metabolists held and dreamt of, Kikutake seems to be much more cynical about the potentials that technology can allow you. To Kikutake, architecture is debilitated by the logistical needs of technology, so here we get some salient comments on infrastructure acting as a creative barrier to the more “aesthetic” freedoms of architecture. Kikutake acts as a disruptor to the more academic sensibilities of “infrastructure,” as a term, I came into this line of research with. Though some Metabolists may never refer to infrastructure, or some may only use the word “technology,” Kikutake directly refers to infrastructure but in a more obscure sense.

[...]

I am not quite sure about the dynamics of “infrastructure” in the pre-war Japanese era, and I’m also not sure if Kikutake is referring to literal physical and logistical infrastructure, or a more abstract infrastructure such as cultural or societal mechanisms. By stating that his architecture was an act of protest, perhaps we can gain new light on Kikutake’s aspirations to create new patches of land, such as his application of artificial ground on the Tokyo Bay, so as to reassume identity as a form of landlord. Of course, the comment is immediately ironic because of the seemingly Marxist-oriented nature of the Metabolists, in particular Kurokawa (but we have also een why this might not be the case), so for Kikutake to identify himself as a landlord is particularly interesting. Further, perhaps the status of a landlord is/was much more different in Japanese society, I do not personally know.

Kenzo Tange Kenzo Tange was the most senior authority within the Metabolists and he is widely considered, in competition with Kawazoe, as the “leader” of the Metabolists. There are a lot of intergroup problems and logistics that are interesting to work out here, but in relevance to infrastructure, it is most salient to state that there was a lot of opposition against Tange for his somewhat overly ambitious plans, or more specifically his tendency to build megastructure projects with hierarchical skeleton systems, as mentioned before by Maki. Tange is an example of a Metabolist who speaks at length about technology with relevance towards infrastructure, but he never directly refers to infrastructure as a term. He raves about the need to build urban transportation and housing to meet the needs of the booming population, primarily during the span of 1960 (the birth year of Metabolism), in his A Plan For Tokyo The telephone, the radio, television, the portable telephone, the video-telephone—all these indirect means of communication will doubtless continue to develop and to cause changes in the social system and in the structure of life [...] Mobility determines the structure of the city [...] Automobile traffic—individual transportation—requires a new system in which the city, the transportation network, and architecture are organically unified [...] The speed and scale of contemporary life call for a new spatial order in our cities.

Here Tange brings up infrastructural technologies without directly referring to them as such, and what is even more interesting is his discussion on media technologies which other Metabolists such as Isozaki would be cognizant of; what is most interesting is his passing comment of a “video-telephone,” which is of course now a fully realized technology. These media technology theorizations will be more developed in another Metabolist, Arata Isozaki, but on the behalf of Tange this reference to an organic unification between urban systems and architecture is highly interesting. For Tange, one system does not need to bow down to the other, and they can work with each other for newer and more fruitful aesthetic combinations which are also intensely logistical.

Arata Isozaki Arata Isozaki was a later-term Metabolist, beyond being a part of this collective, Isozaki also has a strong solo professional firm, and he is still working at the age of 90. Because Isozaki was operating in the later stages, he spent much more time theorizing about what William Gardener terms as “liquid cities.” Though philosophically dense, the theories of Isozaki and the liquid city can be attributed to the postmodern nature of signs, facade, and simulacrum, as conveyed by thinkers such as Kurokawa, Baudrillard, Deleuze, and many French 20th century philosophers. With the Japanese—in terms of the Metabolists themselves, retroactively, and from members of the society—reflecting on the rush of Western capitalism after World War 2, many critiqued the depthless nature of their built environments and relationships. Isozaki was no exception:

[...]

critical theory analysis of images, in some sort of Baudrillardian style, but unfortunately I’m not too sure on what it means in relation to infrastructure, particularly media infrastructures. Isozaki took this theory seriously and tried to practically apply it in his solo work. There are many examples of blueprints for projects which his firm worked up which show buildings in a transparent form, only indicating a very basic and abstract outline. What is interesting is that, unlike the Centre Pompidou, there is no indication of the “innards” of a building: the plumbing, electricity, framing, et cetera—instead the buildings are opaque and depthless when removed of their architectural facade.

Overarching Discussion and Conclusion I wanted to touch base with my original questions and qualifications for why this study is valid and interesting in order to synthesize my thoughts in a more collective way. On the topic of infrastructure, believe in the past workshops a question was raised on whether or not any definitive term could be instituted to summarize what infrastructure “really meant” for the Metabolists. The main methodological issue here is that I’m asking somewhat of an irrelevant question to the Metabolists. For example, I take prominent scholars such as Larkin’s and Star’s tenets of what the study of “infrastructure” is as my baseline, and during my timeline of analysis I believe that infrastructure was still in its infancy as a “term.” It is then much more fair and efficient to give a general overview of what the individual members offer in terms of conceptualizing infrastructure, regardless of jargon:

Maki: Incredibly interested in finding a balance between urban planning, and therefore infrastructure-related planning, and individuality; which goes into his theory of group forms.

Tange: Usually never directly refers to infrastructure but talks a ton about infrastructure-adjacent terms, such as housing and transportation.

Kurokawa: Interested in urban planning, and therefore infrastructure in a sense, as a vessel of modernism, and he is therefore in disagreement with such efforts which do not take into account the local culture and try to balance both ends.

Kikutake: I didn’t inquire much into Kikutake’s idea of an artificial ground, which seemingly had some relation to infrastructure, but he does reference infrastructure directly at certain times, such as the landlord quote I mentioned in the last workshop. To be honest, I’m still not too sure what to make of this comment. In terms of what I personally want out of infrastructure, I believe that Tange’s are the most stereotypical, but that the plights of Maki and Kurokawa seem to be asking the more interesting questions, in terms of what infrastructure means in terms of modernism, the state, and oppression, and what infrastructure means for individual creative outburst. Nevertheless, there is still a ton of interesting content here to be analyzed under the theories set forth by the history of technology. Though Tange may not directly refer to infrastructure, his aspirations to organically integrate both logistical urban systems and architecture are incredibly inspirational. Furthermore, all of the Metabolists offer incredibly pleasing and aesthetically pleasant visual material to aid their literature, of which can be appreciated by a visual study in its lonesome.

It will now be effective to go back to the questions I asked myself when starting this class project: It seems evident that infrastructural planning plays a part in the development of design from the mind of an architect, but to what extent? It seems as if the Metabolists in general looked upon infrastructural requirements positively, mainly because they were looking so anxiously at the “panicked” state which Tokyo was under after WW2, such as the housing problems I mentioned before. In any case, there were two main yet slight worries: one, that there wouldn't be a good balance between large-scale highly-structured planning and the ability to be more individualistic in terms of the built environment. And two, that infrastructure would act too fervently as some sort of proxy of the state and act as just another vessel for “modernism.”

On the topic of the Metabolists being passionate and deeply ambitious with their architectural plans: to what extent did they think about the infrastructural implications of their designs? To put it simply, they thought about it a lot. Definitely some more than others, but the housing and city frenzies in Tokyo after WW2 were definitely sharp on their mind. Repeatedly they would refer to things that could be categorized as “infrastructure,” such as housing and transportation, but would never directly refer to the term “infrastructure.” And on the topic of whether or not there is an aesthetic to infrastructure: in terms of the sources I looked at, there seemed to be no particular analysis of the creative or aesthetic potential of infrastructure, it was mainly utilitarian, which makes sense given the problems they had to face. Maybe this is a “privilege” of sorts which can be allowed when societal pressures aren’t so prevalent. At the very least however, a lot of their diagrams of drawings of “infrastructure” were pleasing.

Finally, as to why I think that these questions matter in the first place, in the case of the invisibility versus visibility debate, I think that at first one of the main arguments by infrastructure scholars was that infrastructure was heavily invisible, but later these arguments came under attack and there was a greater nuancing on this boundary. I think this particular case within the era of the Metabolists is an example of infrastructure being highly visible. Time and time again the Metabolists mention Tokyo in a “state of panic, anxiety, or nervous breakdown.” They are, of course, referring to problems of infrastructural proportions, such as housing and transportation problems. In the case of infrastructure seeming to “lack empathy.” I believe this is tied most heavily to the idea of infrastructure being “invisible,” but because it is highly visible in this particular case, I believe that societal members knew exactly where to channel their disappointment with post-war life.

On this nuanced sense of infrastructure being used as a potential avenue of critique in response to megaprojects. Again, as I mentioned before, I believe this to possibly be the most interesting implication of this analysis, as especially drawn out by Kurokawa, Maki, and Otaka. There are two interesting avenues here, for one, there is a thought that megaprojects would not be malleable enough to fit the infrastructural needs of the people, especially with such a booming population and economic growth. And second, that far grandiose and generalizing urban planning would deprive people of individuality and creative passion.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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Interpretive Theory and Physics

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola October 28, 2020

Efforts towards explaining the dichotomy between the STEM and Humanities, its history and its implications, should be something of grand value to new students in higher-education. What is even more important however is to teach that this dichotomy can be sewn together. This effort will probably be seen as arduous because of its nuanced sensibilities, especially when getting deeper into the matter; the divide is seen as just that at first, strictly black and white, but I think that the theory of interpretation can ease this process immensely. Another problem that can arise from this process is that the remedy seems to be primarily inside the field of humanities and its subsequent techniques, strategies, ideology, and tools–so nevertheless, the emphasis towards combining the two fields can still be primarily seen as a mainly “humanitarian” effort. This is not by fault of either discipline, it’s important to notice divisions and similarities, it should be stated that the dichotomy works as some sort of Yin-and-yang paradigm. This is not to say either that there is no real or applied division, the aim should be towards being collaborative and successful through such methods–Albert Einstein wrote in a memorial for Ernst Mach: "How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there no more valuable work in his specialty? I hear many of my colleagues saying, and I sense it from many more, that they feel this way. I cannot share this sentiment... Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens…” And why do I say that the theory of interpretation is a useful methodology for sewing this divide? For the same reason that epistemology has been such an important field for epochs. I think in interpretation we can see the most basic and yet grandest ties between the two disciplines–further, I think the subscription mostly towards Stanley Fish’s theory of reading and interpretation is the best for this paper, especially when in combination with the excellent example of a historical experiment on the theory of temperature by Marc-Auguste Pictet. More specifically, I wanted to approach this from the perspective of applied interpretative communities, from Fish’s side, and to also research the scientific community that Pictet was working with, especially in his confrontation with positive cold and Louis Bertrand. I also find it important and interesting to relay this back toward our contemporary timeline, giving a short analysis into postmodernism and the theory of hyperreading. A roadmap is given at the end in order to best map the trajectory of thought within this paper. There will also be attention towards an approachable and sensible reading, as I think that both fields would appreciate.

First, we are to give an elaboration towards Fish’s work-reader and interpretive community theories, we will also give a short history into the literary theory that Fish was trying to correct. The foundations of interpretive theory go back to circa late 700 C.E., in contrast to the socio-linguistic turn towards literature going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. The former is much more interested in why and how–referred to as hermeneutics in the theory–whereas the latter is more interested in structure, form, and type–referred to as poetics in theory. It’s important to note that both are interested in specific works, as is canonical with some mediums such as Norton, and they have been both deeply entrenched within the history of reading as a whole and especially the history of reading and knowledge in the United States, though literary theory is arguably more invested in hermeneutics. Further, it should also be duly noted that works under the canon are not specifically put there by any central authority. That could have been the case before, but now it’s much more up to the intellectual community in question. Literary giants such as Dante Alighieri and Friedrich Schleiermacher were among the first modern leaders to deal with a central problem in hermeneutics called polysemy–basically, how to deal with such varying interpretations towards a body-of-work, especially one in great need or worthiness to be interpreted such as the Bible. Dante and Schleiermacher came up with various techniques and skills to structure interpretation; interpreting, to them, was a form of art. The most popular technique that was conceived was on the side of Dante, what he came up with is referred to as the four-fold method, constructed by four different layers of interpretation: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. The method is always based on the literal meaning of the passage but the higher levels leave room for allegory (interpretation). As remarked, the norm in contemporary teaching is that all prescribed readings are looked at as complete mysteries which need discovery and investigation–the students have the freedom of allegory, but they know the teacher will always be there to act as the basis towards their reading. As is with STEM, though one may know the application of the science, the teacher is always there to guide towards the true theoretical implications of the application. What I mostly wanted to illustrate is that Dante, Schleiermacher, and Fish (who we will discuss in the next passage) all think that interpretation is an art. This is not to say that they are similar in ideology, in fact they are very different. For Fish, however, literature was better analyzed through its situation within a reader-response paradigm, meaning that literature is only as much as can be interpreted and experienced by its audience.

Fish’s theory was not incredibly new, its beginnings can be seen in the description by Aristotle in Poetics that art should be seen as an experience, a drama. But as Dante and Schleiermacher would say that reading and interpretation is an art-in-itself, Fish would say that reading and interpretation is an art of which the grand value is in its effect on the audience. Moreover, what reader-response theory tries best to illustrate is the conventionalized behavior behind interpretation and reading. What is that conventionalized behavior? It’s up to the interpretive community, a term that we will deeply explain later, but to give another contemporary example, think of the techniques that are given to students, especially in the United States, on how to read–something so conventionalized that you never give it any attention. Close reading, the reading technique that is most popular in the United States, is something much more akin to the ideologies of Dante and Schleiermacher. Close reading is easily executed and easily taught, in correlation with the “easy-to-use” structure it was engineered around in the early 1900’s. It’s a quick and easy way to see illumination within a passage without having a lengthy background in literature. Fish is not interested in changing the technique of close reading for another that better suits reader-response but rather how reader-response works under the contemporary technique of close reading and any technique hereafter. Conventionalized behavior as stated by Fish can also be understood as competency, the competency to infer information from literature–”it was a dark, stormy, and gloomy night on the day of Halloween”–the literature is trying to foreshadow suspense, horror, drama, and downfall. To be duly noted, how would this read if someone from a culture that does not entertain the art of horror or suspense interpret this passage? Probably just a mere description of nature, right? Fish uses the term tacit knowledge to call these conventions, this is immediately interesting because tacit knowledge is a term borrowed from the philosophy of science.

Further in ode to the philosophy of science, Fish used an experiment to validate his idea that interpretations are not solely based within the literature itself but rather through the experience and tacit knowledge the reader has. Fish was teaching a class in 1971 which surrounded the intersection between linguistics and literary theory, his students had been learning “how to identify Christian symbols and how to recognize typological patterns and how to move from the observation of these symbols and patterns to the specification of a poetic intention that was usually didactic or homiletic.”1 So before the class started he wrote the names: “Jacobs-Rosenbaum, Levin, Thorne, Hayes, and Ohman” on the blackboard vertically-stacked, he told the class that it was a poem, the cohort proceeded to analyze the poem for its typological rhetoric, structural patterns, and religious significance. Of course, this is very peculiar–Fish (though he gives benign reasons as to why he chose those names, none of which having to do with religion) gave his cohort basically gibberish, asking them to decipher a codex which did not have any original intention. Nevertheless, his class was able to churn out incredible and sufficient analysis of the so-called poem–Fish replicated this experiment with universities everywhere, getting the same result, validating his theory that interpretation lies within the interpretive community and does not need “original interpretation” in order to be comprehended. A valid counter-argument would be to ask: maybe it’s not a question if we can but if we should, appealing to the fact that there are many perceptions and interpretations, going back to polysemy. Think of popular practices such as peer review2 that basically reinforce the tacit knowledge of the community at hand. Though we might think of interpretation as personal, do we not learn our knowledge from our peers, the peers learning their knowledge from their teacher, their teachers giving out grades and comments, the teachers working under specific departments within specific institutions? Say a teacher wanted their students to write a paper arguing in favor of a one-party system and a student ended up writing about bioethics–though there might be interesting interactions in those disciplines, there must be a subscription to the conventions in order for anyone to make sense or get ahead. Even further, when Fish presented his list of names to his class, why did they not exceed the conventional boundaries of interpretation? Why was there no correlation of the names to, for example, the field of thermodynamics? It might not be so much a problem that there are too many varying interpretations, but rather that the reinforcement of interpretations creates a lack of originality, by no one's fault. There are even more interesting implications but I do not want to get on the fringe of postmodernism, as an interpretation of Fish can lead to theories surrounding the arbitrariness of models, structures, institutions, and knowledge–STEM especially is not fond of these implications. Instead, what we will take from Fish and apply to physics in the next section is interpretive communities, lack of originality, and conventionality.

The following short historical account into the interpretive climate of temperature during the lifespan of Marc-Auguste Pictet (1752-1825) will have the same message as I’ve already illustrated in the interpretive battle between Fish, Dante, and Schleiermacher. We will be analyzing Pictet’s experiment into radiant heat and his discourse into the findings with Louis Bertrand that led him to do a subsequent experiment into radiant cold. Experimentation in the field of radiant heat was sparse and undirected from the span of 1570 to 1770, appearing in many regions and languages, with the historical basis seeming to fall on the ancient Greek witnessing of the burning mirrors of Archimedes. The experiment that started the popular discourse into radiant heat had to do with the heat of a single coal igniting a combustible object solely on its reflection of the heat by mirror; by 1780 two important laws had been discovered: radiant heat is different from ordinary heat and its properties of convection and conduction and also that radiant heat was different from light but obeyed the same optical laws as light. Pictet’s teacher and mentor, Horace-Benedict de Saussure, was incredibly interested in meteorology and geology; when Saussure retired from his chair of philosophy appointment at academy at Geneva, he made sure that Pictet was appointed to the same position–both of them were a part of the Genevan intellectual community. Saussure researched the application of heat to metrology and geology, so it makes sense that Pictet’s chief work was his “Essay on Fire.” His essay was dedicated to the research on the “reflection, refraction, and absorption of radiant heat.” He conducted an experiment that finally validated assumptions that radiant heat was different from light while also obeying the same laws of light, a figure of his experiment will be shown below, in true Lacanian-esque manner.

It’s important to note that Pictet had plentiful suspicions of his own experiment, the logistics and the validity of the experiment, something he had plentiful exterior experience with. Before completing “Essay on Fire” he did research into radiant heat research being done in Florentine, Italy–the community there had lots of worries about the validity of their own experiments, especially when trying to conduct experiments on the radiation of cold, so they never came to any actual solid conclusions. Pictet debriefed the results of his experiment with his colleague at the Academy of Geneva, Louis Bertrand. Bertrand’s main field was in mathematics but he was also interested in electricity and thermodynamics, his novel question to Pictet was innocent to me, asking whether or not cold could be radiated–in Pictet’s diary he states: “I confidently replied no; that cold was only privation of heat, and that a negative could not be reflected. He requested me, however, to try the experiment, and he assisted me in it.” The experiment was structured exactly as in the figure above but this time the “Hot or Cold object” was a flask with snow in it, the thermometer of air immediately dropped several degrees until it eventually reached a steady temperature, Pictet poured nitrous acid on the flask and it lowered the temperature of the thermometer even more. How could this possibly be? How could something without heat possibly reflect any positive or negative temperature? To put it even more colloquially, how could a shadow cast light? To give a slight historical account of the interpretive community that Pictet was working in, the third edition of Britannica (1797) had interpretations such as: “‘if a body is heated, the cold ought to fly from it’’ or other quotes of general uncertainty such as: ‘‘to lay down certain principles established from the obvious phenomena of nature, and to reason from them fairly as far as we can.’’ I believe this situation to be quite similar to Fish’s class experiment, in relation to STEM one can think of the makeshift CO2 scrubber that the Apollo 13 crew had to make because of failure in their second oxygen tank, having to retaliate against the large amounts of incoming CO2, they built this a filter out of things on board of the Apollo 13 shuttle: duct tape, tube socks, spacesuit hoses, plastic bags, and more. Pictet’s experiment on the radiant nature of cold was groundbreaking and shocking to the field of thermodynamics, though it seems like in the field of physics, illumination is not always so quick. What followed were such statements: ‘‘Heat doesn’t really exist ( being a mere absence of cold), yet certain phenomena could fool us into thinking that it did.” And other statements that detailed the inconclusive nature of the results: “...and they appear equally conclusive in establishing the existence of radiant cold, as the other experiments are in establishing the existence of radiant heat”9 So, in grand essence, the point is made that since literature is all-encompassing, nothing can escape the grasps of the interpretive community. Not STEM or the Humanities. Conventions are spotted all throughout Pictet’s research, before and after, because of the interpretive community he was engaged in prior to talking with Bertrand, he thought that there was no possible way cold could be radiated. Even then, the interpretive community of figures such as John Murray (chemist from Edinburgh) were extremely suspicious of the findings, seeing as it completely went against his own ideology.

I will provide a quick and interesting relation back to literary theory. Close reading is popular and has been for quite some time now. The effects on the academic community in the United States in following the technique of close reading for so is easily shown. Does it always have to be this way? Because of the invention of the internet, fast information, and institutions such as Canvas, should we change reading techniques? Literary theorist Katherine Hayles thinks so. In the field of Digital Humanities the remedy seems to be moving towards a technique called hyperreading, the technique to properly accommodate the change from reading physical texts to texts that are now primarily on screens. Hyperreading involves techniques such as skimming: “quickly reading over text for gist of its meaning; this is where the F-shaped pattern comes into play” and juxtaposing: “when you have two or more screens, tabs, or documents open at once and jump between them.” Do the characteristics of hyperreading: searching, filtering, skimming, hyperlinking, pecking, juxtaposing, and scanning provide a better structure to interpret texts than the technique of close reading? Does STEM literature require more close reading? Would STEM or the Humanities benefit more from hyperreading than the other? I hope that my attempt to sew together the dichotomy between STEM and the Humanities was useful and interesting. I personally used the discipline of physics for my paper because I find physics the most interesting of all the sciences, though I’m sure there are very interesting ties that can be made into fields such as psychology, data science, biology, chemistry, and so on. I’m sure there are also very interesting ties when the sciences are used through the techniques of critical theory, primarily reciprocal illumination. There are bound to be findings when reading physics research through a critical lens and there already are, for example, the application of the entropy law to natural resource consumption within economics.

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slimeinnocence · 19 days

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Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial and Postwar Minimalist Politics

Mario Ramirez-Arrazola April 09, 2023

Introduction To the younger American generation, that is to say Generation Z and millennials (the primary demographic taking this course), the historical fact and premise that Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial would cause such fervent criticism would come off as a surprise, maybe even shock. As immediately appreciated—an indented pathway sloping slightly downward as affixed to a row of sleek and black granite-slabs each engraved with a list of those who died fighting in the war—there is not “much” to receive. Of course, there is an immediate consensus that the entire constellation is worthy of monumentality, mainly in relation to the evocation of the “dead” through the names upon the walls but also the site, Washington D.C., the political-hearth of the United States. But, there is then an immediate resignation—though the project is in direct contrast to the historical monuments nearby, the project is not particularly site-specific. This “indent” could have easily been placed anywhere. So, why was there such agreement by the jury that Maya Lin’s proposal was worthy of winning the competition if nothing is really “said” And, further, if nothing is really “said,” then why the initial uproar? I aim to answer these two questions by constructing a modest mapping of the emergence of minimalist thought, with Maya Lin and her memorial design at the nexus, during a period of political fragility in the 1960s United States as a result of their recent defeat in the Vietnam War.

There are some immediately apparent dimensions to this “uproar” in response to the unveiling of the design. For one, Maya Lin is Chinese-American, and this fact was particularly hard for the “traditional American” demographic to swallow after their defeat, especially one which involved directly fighting combatants in the Asian region of the globe. Maya Lin, at the age of 21 and still an undergraduate student at Yale, had to defend her design against these attacks before congress, and a concession was made to please those in opposition which led to the insertion of an obviously “American” symbol near the memorial, The Three Soldiers by Ross Perot, an infamous American businessman who later led the most successful third party candidate race in United States history during the 1990s is even quoted with having called Maya Lin an “egg roll” [2] in reaction to her design. Another apparent dimension to this uproar was usually staged as an attack against Lin’s inexperience, but these were usually thinly-veiled attacks towards her gender, race, culture, ethnicity, and so on; these attacks are illustrated well in Memorial (2016), a play choreographed by Livian Yeh. In Yeh’s reenactment, Maya’s veteran backlash is showcased by Col. James Becker’s (John Kooi) belief that “due to her age, inexperience, gender, and race, Maya is not only unqualified to undertake on the memorial’s construction, but in doing so, is directly insulting the American people, its history, and the veterans that served and died in the war.” [3] Lin is even quoted as having said that she wouldn’t have won the competition if it was not held “blindly.”

As much as these various negative reactions are worthy of study and should be taken seriously, within this paper there is a particular focus on the negative reaction in relation to the memorial’s minimalism. Minimalist in the sense that the memorial was seemingly bare, silent, non-representative, uncomforting, and so on. Minimalism, in general, is an avenue of discourse and aesthetic which has had its fair share of discussion (both good and bad) within various circles, but it is not particularly new to designers or artists, and certainly not something to get too obscenely riled up about as of now (unless without specific provocation). Certainly, to be anti-lavish or anti-ornamental is a cornerstone within the progression of modernism, as infamously laid out by Adolf Loos in Ornament and Crime, “Modern ornament has no forbears and no descendants, no past and no future. It is joyfully welcomed by uncultivated people, to whom the true greatness of our time is a closed book, and after a short period is rejected.” But, there was an obvious resentment of this design choice by the general public (obviously, those aligning more with conservative attitudes), “Lin’s vision was decried as cynical and nihilistic because it refused to speak in the familiar language of classical columns, figurative sculpture and bathetic inscriptions.” [5] This minimalist question is also seriously raised within scholarship as a form of discourse: “One result of such an analysis is that the much debated politics of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is it pro- or antiwar, or some combination?” [6] This paper aims to understand and unravel this negation of overt representation. With close attention, the shadowy and laden monument is in direct opposition to the classical, white, and historical precedent of Washington D.C.’s National Mall—what led Maya Lin to choose negation and what was the cultural context which led to this negation’s backlash?

Historicization: Finding the Origin To begin, I would like to start in a somewhat particular spot, a decision which will later make sense in terms of its use in “setting boundaries.” It is no secret that, despite its initial backlash, the Vietnam War Memorial has become embraced, but what is more interesting is that it has become institutionalized within the canon of American monumentality. For example, even in this course we are directly being told to study it; and for many of us, including myself, we learned about this monument in high-school, most probably through taking the course in AP Art History. College Board, an entire institution in-itself, decided upon the Vietnam War Memorial as #225 of the 250 works in total which compromise the entirety of “art history,” at least within the context of a year-long high-school class—it belongs to a particular unit, the “Global Contemporary | 1980 C.E. to present” section, among other works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Jean Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Nam June Paik, Frank Gehry, El Anatsui, Kiki Smith, Ai Weiwei, Zaha Hadid. [7] This is all to say that Lin’s work is put alongside the most iconic names in contemporary art. Her inclusion is not simply a temporal statement, that because Lin’s work was monumental and happened to occur during the late contemporary period she deserves inclusion, this would be completely antithetical to the conduction of history as a practice. Symbolically, her work is included because it’s emblematic of postmodernity (whether this be the entire era or only certain tidbits, such as minimalism), but also narratively, as the curriculum developers included her based on certain criteria and pedagogical use. These are my “boundaries,” that the analysis must be salient to the concept of historical negation (basically, minimalism) as a cornerstone of postmodernity and also acknowledge its controversial status within society. Or, to put it bluntly, the black-and-granite walls are excluded if solely discussed within a material sensibility, but included if the discussion may lead to an unraveling of the connection between materiality and historical negation. We will work in a collage-like fashion through the various processes that “made” Maya Lin’s memorial a minimalist icon, both in conceptual and material form. [7]

Maya Lin’s Lineage (Orientalism) To begin, it’s somewhat cliche but necessary to state that the “seeds” which led to the eventual growth of the Vietnam War Memorial were perhaps planted far before its actual conception. Lin’s immediate lineage is quite remarkable, her father Henry Lin (1915-1989) was a ceramicist and was born in Fuzhou, China; he would eventually become the dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts where Maya Lin would later learn about bronze-casting during her high-school years. Lin’s mother, Julia Lin (1928-2013), was born in Shanghai, China and came to the United States in 1949 during the Shanghainese communist uprising, eventually becoming a poet and academic. She is the “half-niece” of Lin Huiyin (1904-1955) who, in short, was the wife of the supposed “father of modern Chinese architecture,” but she was astounding in her own right and is typically titled as one of the “first modern woman Chinese architects.” She is further connected to Chinese royalty and revolutionaries. Nevertheless, this heritage may be interesting but completely useless in contextualizing Lin’s design motives surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, but there remains some interesting allusions towards minimalist attitudes. I basically didn’t even realize I was Chinese. I was a kid from Ohio. I’ll never forget it: somebody asked me, “Well, do you think it’s ironic that you’re of Asian descent and you just did the Vietnam Memorial?” and I looked this guy in the eye and I said, “It’s completely irrelevant.” A lot of critics would say, “Oh, there’s so much Zen in her work,” and I’d be saying, “You’re just reading into it—that’s you, not me […] As an architect or as an artist, my aesthetic voice—there’s a simplicity that I’ve always loved. One could say that I’m influenced by my cultural heritage, but at the same time, I’m born here, I’m American […] My work tends to introduce all-natural materials, very much a remove from the busy-ness of life. There’s a quieting down. It’s almost—I don’t want to say meditative, because a lot of people have said that, and I don’t know if they’re projecting, “She’s Asian; she makes meditative spaces.” But at the same time I am very drawn to creating a sense of calm. A moment of stillness. And maybe that is slightly a more Asian aesthetic, whatever that means.

Design Methodology and Lin’s Minimalism This allusion towards being “American” is an interesting dimension, as Lin seems to be nostalgic of her upbringing in the rural and Midwest landscapes of Ohio. This relationship to nature and stillness, as inspired by her interaction with nearby Hopewell and Adena Indian burial mounds, is undoubtedly a metric which has influenced her integration of minimalism. These ecological sentiments are echoed by both Lin and her audience, for one she has directly claimed that “I’m very much a product of the growing awareness about ecology and the environmental movement… I am very drawn to landscape, and my work is about finding a balance in the landscape, respecting nature not trying to dominate it.” Her design methodology (as she recalls using even during a young age with the Vietnam War Memorial) is vast and personal, but with respect and a particular perspective towards the ecological environment. She first moves through the site and its emerging context through a textual description and eventually a model/visual format—then, she makes sure her projects take up the least possible amount of negative environmental impact. [15] This so-called “Eastern Esthetic,” though somewhat ignorant, is not the only characteristic her work has been titled, the main of which is her navigation through various dichotomies: “I feel I exist on the boundaries. Somewhere between science and art, art and architecture, public and private, east and west…. I am always trying to find a balance between these opposing forces, finding the place where opposites meet… existing not on either side but on the line that divides.”16 In the end, as a designer (she received an M.Arch in 1986 but is not a licensed architect), Lin simply wants to “make people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world but also the psychological world we live in.”

The Competition Acknowledging Lin’s central ambitions is useful to give context to her particular minimalist headspace in the design of the Vietnam War Memorial, as well as the competition in its entirety. To begin, her interest in the competition was somewhat logistical, as she needed to pick a senior-year project at Yale and decide upon a group activity. She had just finished an assignment (both class and instructor unknown) which dictated her to mock-up a WWIII war memorial. In her research she was primarily inspired by the historical factoid that, before WW1, many war memorials focused on the victors, or in other words, the nation-state or those missing, instead of the fallen soldiers. The introduction of the modern identification tag therefore changed the scope of a war memorial in terms of content. [18] This interest in “the lost” was further engrained by the comments of a professor in a seminar she was taking at the same time of her mock-up project. Coincidentally a few weeks before I submitted the design to one of my professors, Vincent Scully, in a seminar I was taking, described one of the World War I memorials I had previously studied. In his description he talked about it as a journey towards an awareness of loss. I realized how close the experience he described was to my design for the Vietnam memorial—though formally they couldn’t have been more different. [19] Given the competition guidelines, which were only recently released after her mock project, she deemed her design suitable for the ordeal. We had also just received the guidelines for the competition which stipulated that the names of all those killed be listed, and that the memorial be apolitical and contemplative in nature. My design evolved into two black granite walls, placed below grade, engraved in chronological order with the names of the men and women who gave their lives in the Vietnam War. At the apex where the two walls join, the dates 1959 and 1973 (marking the beginning and end of the war) “meet,” thus closing the circle of the time span of the war. A veteran can find his or her own time on the wall, and all visitors would be able to see themselves reflected in the names. I wanted the memorial to create a private and personal connection with each viewer to those names. The memorial’s sighting is directly related to the presence of both the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, tying the three together physically and historically.

Of course, what is immediately interesting is that, although Lin may have been aspiring towards a certain political message of somber retrospection, it could be argued that her own subconscious deflective methodology and the competition guidelines in themselves steered the project to what we know now. Beyond the guidelines, she quite obviously relays back to her ecological attitudes, constantly remarking after her initial site visit that: “I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal.” And further, “On seeing the site in Washington D.C. over Thanksgiving break, I had an impulse to cut open the earth. I imagined cutting into the earth and polishing its open sides, like a geode.” [22] To Lin, the memorial is not architectural, it’s entirely an earthwork; seemingly, she not only wants to help the postwar healing process but also the earth in general, as a general entity.

Conclusion: Minimalism and Memorial Returning to Abramson’s intricate analysis of Lin’s memorial and its minimalist sensibilities within an art-historical context gives great illumination. For one, Abramson believes that unlike pertinent minimalist projects occurring at the same time (such as Richard Serra’s Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation), Lin’s approach is a twisted form of minimalism, one that uses the approach to find statements in non-statements. The affair presents facts, not a specific attitude: “This information is produced for her bureaucratically by others—the Department of Defense, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Yale's Office of Institutional Research.” [23] The project, in its entirety and in collaboration with both the guidelines and Lin’s personal dogma, does not attempt to reconcile the amount of damages caused, on any scale, as a result of the Vietnam War. It is not critical by any means, placing itself among 1960s minimalist trends and artists such as Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Carl Andre. Yet Lin perfectly encapsulates a particular headspace as unique to postmodernism: the refrain from action, a bewilderment and confusion with history and memory, silence as a statement, and a general feeling of hopelessness in the face of contemporary problems. The entire ordeal is a mere and wimpy statement which can, again, can be tied back to Lin’s ecological passions: Instead of using the alienating, nonart, industrial materials of minimalism steel, aluminum, or concrete Lin used luxurious, polished, artful granite. Instead of being emptied of extrinsic, referential meaning, Lin's monument clearly possessed a subject outside itself. Instead of being in conflict with its environment, Lin's monument gently worked with the earth and paid respect to its neighbor.” [24] Lin utilizes minimalism not only to extend these passions but also to curtail the public-opinion, to negate nationalistic endeavors in a place where no such feelings deserve reign. The controversy arises entirely within representation. A provoking linesight can be found within commentary on the project as elitist: “Early on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was insulted by populist critics as minimalist, a slur intended to connote obscurity, arrogance, and elitism. Indeed, the design, especially in the first renderings and models, did seem to possess a minimalist genealogy.” [25] Indeed, if we think novelly and innocently, we can begin to understand the public’s doubt—imagine a war veteran at the unveiling of this monument, just coming back from a war in which (as the iconic Vietnam-era Fortunate Sons song by Creedence Clearwater Revival suggests) you fought with unimaginable loss which only furthered your poverty and uplifted the wealth of some completely uninvolved agent. And, on top of this, you get told “how to feel” or “how not to feel” about the entire ordeal by an Ivy-league student. Many veterans, politicians, critics, and the general public read its refusal to explicitly glorify the war or frame the listed soldiers’ sacrifice in recognizably heroic terms as an ideological statement, proof of Lin’s—and the memorial’s—purported anti-war position. Its detractors perceived it as “a monument to defeat, one that spoke more directly to a nation’s guilt than to the honor of the war dead and the veterans,” describing it as the “black gash of shame,” the “degrading ditch,” and a “wailing wall for draft dodgers and New Lefters of the future.

Uniquely, or tellingly, the memorial’s unveiling mirrored president Regan’s inauguration, and in a similar act to Lin, he did not participate in the 1982 unveiling. He would eventually praise the memorial, as in his 1984 speech, but this is all to say that Lin’s minimal attitude was pervasive and uniquely postmodern. It is clear that this neoliberal attitude and disdain for anti-nationalism has worn off. Perhaps, we have Lin’s bold yet wimpy attitude to thank for the public’s contemporary appreciation of minimalism.

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