shots, df

i'm only happy when i shop

– – – – – –



of course, denial is always an option

go read @ brandavenue

receptacle

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

this morning i woke up. i rose and shone. i put on a pair of flannel pants. i went to the kitchen and made scottish breakfeast tea. i poured the tea and drank it. i took a shower. the drain was clogged. a gooey velvety whiteness remained. i dried myself well, especially between the legs and between the toes. i rubbed my armpits with an unscented deodorant stick. i sprayed my wrists with man perfume, rubbed them against my arms and neck. i put on a pair of underwear, baggy black pants and a gray t-shirt with skinny horizontal yellow stripes running across it. i chose a pair of sneakers. i brushed my teeth with tooth-whitening paste, proceeded to floss and mouthwash. i called my boyfriend and caught him lying. i pulled the laundry off the rack and threw it into a pile somewhere. i locked the door and took the elevator. i said hi to the doorman and walked the usual fifteen minutes to the metro, spotting the usual construction workers swallowing their usual foot-long subs wrapped in tinfoil for breakfast. i smoked two cigarettes and listened to country music on the way. i thought about the beautiful persons that died over the weekend, and about the downfall of the american empire and about mexico burning with narco-anxiety attacks. everything was terribly familiar, and yet terribly different. i realized how cities are the perfect imperfect receptacle.

piles

cities as piles, composed of:

abetments
abstractions
addresses
altars
aspirations
backdoors
backlots
bad metaphors
binaries
brandings
breakouts
breaks
burning sensations
calls
categories
carcinogens
characters
climates
conflicts
crusts
days
degradations
deprivations
deviations
diapers
doubts
drivers
drives
duties
empty containers
encounters
epicenters
episodes
erotic transfer
erosions
exchanges
expansions
failures
falsifications
fetishes
frames of reference
generations
gradients
group dynamics
half-finished structures
hidden alternatives
hierarchies
hues
inflections
inequalities
inscriptions
itineraries
latencies
layers
lingerings
malfunctions
(processed) materials
(raw) materials
names
networks
parasites
peaks and valleys
pointless systematizations
power struggles
procedures
products
(chinese) products
questions
radiofrequencies
reactions
rebirths
refractions
regressions
regurgitations
reproductions
sadness
scars
scenes
scores
searches
secretions
smells
songs
squares
strategies
symbolisms
things dead
things living
things we’ve lost
things we’ve forgotten
threads
threats
totems
trials
variations on themes
visual impressions
wants
waste

plus whatever else you might want to add.

introduction to dodospace

1.
the word dodo comes either from the portuguese doudo or doido (stupid) or from the dutch doodaarsen(fat-arse). the dodo was a large non-flying bird native to the isle of mauritiana, famously exterminated by human senselessness. It was also known as walghvogel (disgusting bird) , for its unpleasantly tasting meat. a queer, unattractive and relatively unaggressive specimen that had adjusted to a detached environment, the dodo was only dominant because it remained secluded and free from menace. the arrival of foreign colonial exploiters, pigs and other prowlers sealed the fate of this lowlife yet innocuous creature. before the dodo disappeared, a few live specimens were taken to fairs and colonial shows, but the bird never generated much interest, and its ugliness prevented it from being collected and bred like other more attractive exotic creatures— the peacock, for example—. very few people had actually seen or known about the bird, to the point that it came to be considered a mythological creature. around the nineteenth century, two events brought the dodo back to human conscience: the discovery of a fossilized dodo skeleton and lewis carroll’s self-portrayal as a dodo in his alice tales.

2.
as the name implies, dodospace is extinct: a space that has disappeared and left little evidence of its former existence. even in the likely case of remaining fragments—a familiar detail feature, a hint of the former structure, a trace of paint—dodospace only survives in recollection. thus, it is deformed; renditions of it are usually (helplessly) inaccurate, clouded by nostalgic—or even mythical— delusion. dodospace is what is left of the useless architectures isolated from chronic, accelerated change in a city. dodospace is like the lingering after the clearing of crash sites, those sudden, violent standstills.

3.
what is the use of dodospace? before it actually disappeared, dodospace did have a function, albeit a marginal one. nonetheless, this minor role was deemed unimportant—occasionally dangerous, or at least uncomfortable—and the space was therefore ruthlessly and carelessly erased. dodospace was once a place for outcasts and odd types: unproductive twelve o’clock drunkards and hookers switching shifts, petty thieves and pushers, queers out to mingle, class clashes and infrasocial frottage.

muckracker

i never knew i had a calling.

tis the season

summer is here, and candyland is getting all watery-mouthed at the prospect of monocle bashing. issue 15 is out featuring the livability report or whatever they call it, with the magazine's take on what makes cities tick. this year the team has made and extra-big effort of sounding more like actual people, and the volume is fat, rich and obviously cared for. so, it is only fair that i likewise dedicate myself to a comprehensive and lengthy fustigation. i just hope my stomach holds up.

stay tuned.

shit

speaking in the broadest of terms, cities are basically great complex piles of shit; accumulations of active waste, both physical and abstract.

nycorbusier

le corb sailed towards manhattan and:

"saw a fantastic, almost mystic city rising up in the mist. there is the temple of the new world. but the ship moves forward and the apparition is transformed into an image of incredible brutality and savagery. here is certainly the most prominent manifestation of the power of modern times."

he named nyc the catastrophe féerique, the great enchanted catastrophe.

toppings 12 : night and the city

in 1949, jules dassin left the states fleeing mccarthy and his blacklist. this is how his 1950 night and the city got to be filmed on location in postwar london.

the city is fog and grey and like eliot on crack. in the opening sequence, we're dropped into this thick stew of soot and scoundrels: the smoke (i.e. london) is portrayed as a foul underbelly of streetlife and nightlife and streetypes and angels of the night. it seems the whole city, scarred and traumatized form the war, sustained itself on vice and swindle: from the petty thieves and information peddlers (taxi drivers and waiters are the prized informers of the main character in the film, harry fabian, a nightclub "promoter", conman and hustler) to the usual big bosses that control the law enforcement, the quids, and the entertainment (sex joints and wrestling). picaddily is clogged with street vendors and black market traders and hordes of professional beggars and drunkards. the effect isn't quite dickensian: more than victims and pour souls, we're presented a merciless jungle of every man and woman for him and herself. and all of it is accepted, planned, choreographed, market-driven. the quest for development (for power and advancement) is suicidal. progress is reduced to making it big, which in turn requires falling (in the biblical sense). the city is the dark after-dark, the darkness after darkness (even the daytime shots are full of darkness). the remains of urbanity, the gentlemanly ways and the civilized conversation are part of the farce: "excuse me sir, would you be so kind as to allow me to break your neck, please?" but before you can reply, out of common courtesy, you've already been snapped.

compared to night and the city, cronenberg's eastern promises is cotton candy exotica. it's not the russians that are rotten.

* i'm recovering the toppings themed posts, but since this whole blog has pretty much become a shameless deviation from architecture itself, i'll just stick to poking at architecture and citythings in film.

cavity

barcelona is full of cavities. i love the weary industrial remains of poble nou or poble sec, the empty, windowless weddingcake castles of older parts of the eixample. even though the city pains itself in presenting a dazzling and sophisticated face for tourists and urban consumers (formerly known as citizens), barcerlona can't really help herself from exposing her dirty bottom every now and then. i love the for sale signs popping up everywhere like bad weeds, hinting at the housing crisis that should sooner or later have spain by the balls. i love the failed attempts at wiping the naughty away in sake of tourists (the raval, or the little "forest" in glòries that still caters to midnight–even midday–cruisers in search of a quick fix, despite being right next to nouvel's cucumber)(actually, it probably serves as inspiration to do the nasty). i love the after-tourist dawns down the ramblas or the gótico, with the day's refuse piling up, and the fresh stench of piss and guts.

dirty

i'm staring at the cover of the latest issue of harvard design magazine. it's an ugly cover, with this generic ciudad perdida shot (could be bogotá, rio de janeiro or the outskirts of mexico city) and a really bad render of some sort of wacky aluminum-clad community hub connected to a ludicrous aerial tram system (public transport, i assume). this is typical of the "western" (first-world) or "westernized" (u.s. or europe-trained) perspective on what architecture (formal) can do for "non-formal" cities.

first off, there is no such thing as a non-formal city (just like there is no such thing as a "formal city"). you can speak of informal settlements, economies, housing, interventions, dynamics, processes, architectures ... but not cities. the clear split between formal and informal, especially at the city scale, is pretty much useless. one always pervades the other and vice versa. one engenders the other and vice versa.

i open up to page 3, the editor's letter. i find it relatively insulting: he talks about dirty work and third world urbanization, and then goes on describing the rest of the issue (computer-generated ornament and parametric design) with a terribly narrow statement of: "meanwhile, back in the developed world..."  this is the usual inability i find most primermundistas have when trying to grasp the extent and pervasiveness of informality, and recognize it not as a localized or "culturally determined" phenomenon, but as an active product of globalization.

it reminds me of the speech impairments most gringos (and spaniards, and french people for that matter) suffer from when they try to learn a foreign language, they are so little exposed to this type of difference, and feel they have little to none incentives to actually make an effort.

but the thing is they do need to make an effort, now more than ever. it's not a matter of waiting for informality to creep up on the pure and pristine and algorithmic west. they're already knee-high in it.

Blogged with Flock

china

before china earthquake news falls to background noise (remember myanmar just days ago?)

currently, the media is unsurprisingly focused on rescue and relief measures. no doubt there will soon be an afh call to build houses for the victims. and then architecture headlines will go back to the soon to be completed jaw-dropping olympian projects, the koolhaasian cctv tower, etc. by then, all will be well and forgotten (architecture is just a dandy vehicle for distraction, evasion and distortion). responsibility and other issues will probably stay well buried along with remains and the debris.

for me, the eartquake rang bells from 1985. the devastation that tore through mexico city at dawn on september 19th that year generated not only rage, and despair and loss -material and personal, physical and emotional- but a true political and architectural aftershock.  the rotting rule of  the PRI (many of the grand buildings that were completely wiped out by the earthquake were actually public buildings: hospitals, housing complexes, government offices, etc. built in the heyday of the authoritarian "desarrollista" or developmentalist state) became unbearably exposed. the root of the political and social organization upheaval that eventually led to a local (and then national) challenge and end to the one-party-rule system can clearly be traced to the terremoto.

Blogged with Flock

reboot

we don't go to cities. cities come to us

(mark wigley says, i agree)

what next

a collective shame in the wake of this fiasco has left a massive crater in our understanding of modernity and modernization. what makes this experience disconcerting and (for architects) humiliating is the city's defiant persistence and apparent vigor, in spite of the collective failure of all agencies that act on it or try to influence it – creatively, logistically, politically.

yours, rem

glossy grossy

don't get me wrong. i love city of sound. it's smart, sympa, and usually impeccable. i have a problem with monocle, though. i'm totally into the idea of working "with the system" or even "within the system" instead of "against the system" countercultural neohippie or neomarxist naomiklein crap that's been proven useless before. but sometimes, if you get fucked up the ass too much, you might start to actually like it and forget about the reason you accepted to take it in the first place. ¿what makes cities desirable? ¿livability? ¿what do the guys and gals at monocle mean by livability? ¿niceness, correctness? ¿managed, unconflictive diversity? ¿shinyhappydirtfree "urban villages"? my god, ¿what is this? ¿the XIXth century redux? a perfect little cityscape of delicious breads, cakes, "textured milk", special edition knitwear and outsanding service, a milanese laundry, fresh seasonal blooms "without a dyed carnation or celofane wrapper in sight"... jesusxist, ¿who are these people? ¿are they SERIOUS? ¿is this what snotty british folk crave? ¿this is your idea of global dynamics? ¿picking the bestest and cutiest boutiques and shops and espresso bars in the world and cramming them on a single street so you can walk back and forth in beautiful pointlessness? i probably wouldn't want to live in any of their top 20 liveable cities (¿honolulu?) anytime before i'm like 40 or something. and i already do... ¿am i wrong? ¿are my sensibility and my idea of what makes cities cities a result of me being damaged thirldworld goods? ¿am i the only one here who finds this neoaristocratic citybeautiful cityslick gross? ¿why am i writing my questions with upsidedown question marks at the beggining?

beat.mx.2

"when i lived in mexico city at the end of the 1940's, it was a city of one million people, with clear sparkling air and the sky that special shade of blue that goes so well with circling vultures, blood and sandthe raw menacing pitiless mexican blue. i liked mexico city from the first day of my first visit there. in 1949, it was a cheap place to live, with a large foreign colony, fabulous whorehouses and restaurants, cockfights and bullfights, and every conceivable diversion. a single man could live well there for two dollars a day. my new orleans case for heroin and marijuana possession looked so unpromising that i decided not to show up for the court date, and i rented an apartment in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood of mexico city.

i knew that under the statute of limitations i could not return to the united states for five years, so i applied for mexican citizenship and enrolled in some courses in mayan and mexican archaeology at mexico city college. the g.i. bill paid for my books and tuition, and a seventy-five-dollar-per-month living allowance. i thought i might go into farming, or perhaps open a bar on the american border.

the city appealed to me. the slum areas compared favorably with anything in asia for sheer filth and poverty. people would shit all over the street, then lie down and sleep in it with the flies crawling in and out of their mouths. entrepreneurs, not infrequently lepers, built fires on street corners and cooked up hideous, stinking, nameless messes of food, which they dispensed to passersby. drunks slept right on the sidewalks of the main drag, and no cops bothered them. it seemed to me that everyone in mexico had mastered the art of minding his own business. if a man wanted to wear a monocle or carry a cane, he did not hesitate to do it, and no one gave him a second glance. boys and young men walked down the street arm in arm and no one paid them any mind. it wasn't that people didn't care what others thought; it simply would not occur to a mexican to expect criticism from a stranger, nor to criticize the behavior of others.

mexico was basically an oriental culture that reflected two thousand years of disease and poverty and degradation and stupidity and slavery and brutality and psychic and physical terrorism. it was sinister and gloomy and chaotic, with the special chaos of a dream. no mexican really knew any other mexican, and when a mexican killed someone (which happened often), it was usually his best friend."

continue

touring the bush (21) : l.a.tinópolis, parte one (zoots)

topping black, white and asian, the latino population count for l.a. (a.k.a losángeles) exceeds 9 million (considering the whole metropolitan area), and the city is one of the few big u.s. of a. cities with a latino majority. l.a. is at the forefront of what mike davis calls the “latinization” of large central cities across the country, from chicago to dallas to new york, while samuel huntington poops his pants. losángeles is the second largest of all mexican, salvadorean and guatemalan cities all in one, and has one of the world’s largest spanish-speaking urban populations.

even so, as davis himself affirms, at least until very recently, a certain “invisibility” of latinos persisted in certain urban scenes and sectors. that doesn’t mean latinos don’t know how to show-off. maybe it’s the baroque in us sureños, but as a way of countering this social, political and economic invisibility or marginality, latinos have proven to be masters at these games of conscious excessful display, usually concentrated in cultural practice and symbols, from food to style to speak to place gestures. latinos are big on markers.


in the urban history of l.a., there are particularly “colorful” (sometimes blood-red colorful), intense city-marking moments. after decades of white-washing (anglo mass migration and domination came full-throttle in the 1850s, and hispanic l.a. dropped from suddenly second term to practical cultural erasure), it wasn’t until the 1940s that l.a. felt the serious first shakes of the new latino inflow.


even before watts 1.0, latinos were stirring trouble in the zoot suit riots that sparked in l.a. in the summer of 1943. the zoots set the tone of urban (conflict) activism and confrontation that would follow in chavez ravine, the chicano movements of the 60s and other l.a.tino political urban squabbles. but zoots were beyond mexican or chicano, even beyond latino. zoot subculture was an (ethnically charged) offshoot of early bigband jazz/pop and jitterbugging (like the zazous in prewar france, or the swing kids in weimar germany), and shared the elements of these earliest blurry pop/youth style movements (before rock n'roll and before flower power) that ended up being -sometimes unintendedly- highly political. even though zoots were usually associated with pachucos, mexican-american proto-punksters, the gang element was not inherent to them. zoot-suits started in dancehalls and ended on the streets.

in his essay "the zoot-suit and style warfare,” stuart cosgrove notes that “the zoot-suit is more than an exaggerated costume, more than a sartorial statement, it is the bearer of a complex and contradictory history… these youths were not simply grotesque dandies parading the city's secret underworld, they were (quoting ellison’s the invisible man) the stewards of something uncomfortable , a spectacular reminder that the social order had failed to contain their energy and difference.…”


these issues of extreme styling, marking difference and tease tactics still permeate contemporary cultural and political latino production in l.a., on different terms and scales, from gangs to graffiti to front lawns to demonstrations; going beyond simple fashioning to a deeper, more enduring set of spatial practices, including mainstream urban politics and real estate, the ultimate city-markers.

next : l.a.tinópolis, parte two (power shift)

let's all meet up in the year 2000

roofed cities and other wacky ca. 1900 postcards of an imagined year 2000
@ the awesome paleo-future blog

playitas

mi (méxicocity) hometown is prone to tragicomedy. easter holidays usually aggravate this inherent tendency. rickety station wagons and over-packed vw combis clutter the roads, fat people on rooftops soak up the sun in their underwear, and some poor guy is crucified in front of millions of fans in a whacked-out hyperrealist representation of the passion of the christ.


now we're adding another feature to the semana santa circus list. following relatively succesful experiences in paris, berlin and other far-from-the-sea cities, the city government has inaugurated its own version of urban beaches.


4 of the beaches will be scattered around the city. more than 4 thousand people flocked to one of the largest ones (in the former olympic village area) on opening day. the fake beach-within-reach covers 1500 m2, and 170 tons of sand were imported from nearby sand mines, along with tanning chairs and palms to give a more authentic feel (even though the beach is a few meters away from the main inner-city highway, the periférico).


despite the showers and the cold, the beaches up to now have been a real success. they cater to all : obviously, the folk who don't have the cash to get out of town during vacations, but also prd lovers, and those of us who always enjoy a good dose of pure innocent folklore and gaudiness. the only ones who are disappointed, apparently, are snotty little fresas (local yuppie scum), who quit vacationing in acapulco cause it's full of nacos (folkloric gaudy people) this time of year. bad news : the mayor just brought acapulco to you!