Skateboarding versus Architecture
Jean Poole of Skynoise.net interviews Professor Iain Borden who has revolutionized contemporary architecture with his radical thoughts on space and its non-utilization. His book on skateboarding/ollie, Skateboarding, Space & The City : Architecture and the Body is the context of this particular interview. The book has appeal for both (sub)cultural theorists and those who like to ollie, and unfolds an engaging history of public versus private space and skateboarding as a subculture and filter of urban experience. ————————————— How do you describe your research/book at parties? People use cities in ways different to how architects and planners intended them to be used, and as a skater I wanted to say something about the history of that activity. Sk8ing & theory make unusual bedfellows – how were the seeds sown for your book? In the late 80s I was a PhD student at UCLA, and asked to write an essay on something about LA that I knew about, but no one else in the class knew. I was also taking studying Henri Lefebvre, so writing about skateboarding and spatial theory grew from that moment. I’ve generally been interested in the history of architecture from the point of view of the user i.e. Those who experience and utilised space and buildings, rather than those who design and make it. If writing about music, is like dancing about architecture, then what does that make you? Er, confused in mind and body. How has skateboarding shaped your appreciation of architecture? Skateboarding lets you experience buildings not as a set of objects, designed by architects, but as a set of spatial experiences. By this I mean that moving around on a skateboard makes you consider buildings and landscapes as a set of opportunities to skate, you are constantly sizing up banks, ledges, curves, curbs and so on for their ability to be skated upon. So there is this initial process of interrogation, looking at architecture differently, working out whether it can be skated or not. And then there is the actual engagement with the architecture, using the skateboard and your body in relation to the physicality of the building, and here one appreciates architecture differently again, this time as a direct sensual engagement, less to do with the mind and more to do the living body that we all possess. How does sk8boarding critique architecture & capitalism? Skateboarding is a critique of the Protestant work ethic, the idea that we should always be working to produce something: a product or a service to sell. Skateboarders (non-pros), at least while skateboarding, don’t generally do this, and so skateboarding suggests we can produce different things: expend energy not as work, but as the production of emotions, actions, effort and play. Skateboarding is also a partial critique of commodity consumption, i.e. when not working we should be consuming things. Again, skateboarders use urban space and buildings without buying anything, treating the city as a free wealth for all to enjoy. Can u describe ‘rhythmanalysis’ simply, and how skating fits into this? Rhythmanalysis is the term used by Henri Lefebvre to describe space associated with actions of the body, the space produced by walking, or by moving, or by breathing, or by the cycles of reproduction and regeneration. Space as lived over time, by people with physical bodies. For skateboarding this might mean such things as the speedy space of moving over the pavement, or the rhythmic space of a skater on a half-pipe, or the weekly or seasonal patterns by which skaters return to particular spaces over the course of days, weeks or even years. How has your research affected the way you skate? If anything, I guess it has made me want to enjoy my skating as a bodily experience and as a kind of play and fun for me, that means enjoying simple things like carves and grinds rather than worrying about new tricks, and feeling the concrete move underneath me. I tend to be more of an old school skater than a streetskater . . . 3 things architects could learn from skaters? Take risks. Learn from others. But do it your own way. What interesting responses have u had from architects or theorists? Lots of surprise that this was even a subject worth thinking about it . . . but then a lot of interest in the way other people can use and enjoy architecture in ways the architects never even dreamt of. Do you know any architects who design with skaters in mind? Not really, most architects don’t really get to design major buildings until they are at least in their 40s, and often into their 50s or older. So given that there are now a load of 40-something architects who used to skate in the 1970s, I reckon we are probably due some serious skate-friendly buildings over the next decade or so. Favourite skateboard trick names? Invert, layback, frontside – I like the ones that refer to the position of the skater’s body. Can u recall any good skate-dreams? Hmm, skateboarding tends to appear in my dreams as a representation of anxiety, where I have forgotten how to ride a pool, or some such frustration. Not sure if this good or bad, but at least I do dream about it. . . . What would you prefer to ollie – the skull of einstein, a cloned sheep or a gaff-taped Tony Blair? Definitely a gaff-taped TB – time to make the bugger realise that we don’t all want to be Christian, well-behaved model citizens all of the time. ————————————- Iain Borden is currently Vice Dean for Communications at the The Bartlett, University College, London and Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Augustine on Memory: A Note on Confessions 10.8-37
Amlan Dasgupta The Greek word for truth – or more correctly, one of the several words that appear to have been used – is aletheia. The word figures largely in NT Greek and is usually rendered in Latin by the word veritas. Literally, however, aletheia, from the verb lanthanō with the alpha-privative, would mean that which is unconcealed or even unforgotten, that which does not escape memory. The river Lethe in the Greek underworld is the river of forgetting, by crossing which mortals forget their past lives. This view was famously held by Heidegger, who pointed to the pre-Socratic, specifically Homeric, sense of the word. In the oral world of the Homeric epic it is the poet’s commemorative power that enables him to cross the boundary between the living and the dead, between presence and oblivion. Charles Segal writes: “what is truthful for the archaic poet is not the so much what is factually exact as what successfully resists the corrosive darkness of forgetting”. There are many powerful characterizations of memory and remembering in Greek philosophy which may usefully serve to contextualize Augustine’s own reflections on the subject. Starting from the Platonic discussion of memory in the late dialogues, through Aristotle’s subtle distinction of recollection and memory, to the Stoics, there were a number of important theoretical statements to choose from. Even as Augustine inaugurates a new ethic of memory, there is much he carries over from the past, which is only natural considering his deep immersion in classical culture in his early life. Augustine was certainly familiar with the main arguments of his predecessors, and his own treatment has certainly both Platonic and Stoic resonances. We might briefly point to the fact that Augustine tacitly adopts a position popularized in Stoic physical doctrine, that the human soul, or a part of it, is the controlling principle of the human organism. It is to this regulating, rational faculty that the Stoics gave the name hegemonikon; technically part of the soul, pneuma, it regulated ideally the other parts, namely the five senses, the reproductive faculty and the speech faculty. It was the hegemonikon which received sense-data and retained it either as “imprinting” (tuposis) or an” alteration” (alloiosis). The fundamental power of the hegemonikon was to form presentations or phantasiai, which were conveyed by the senses. Memory was stored phantasiai, but they could produce complex structures: conceptions (ennoemata) or even fictional and non-existent things. Marcia Colish points out that Augustine’s own notion of the soul, while retaining traces of the Stoic position, is immeasurably more complex: he integrates into the Stoic concept of the faculties the distinction between the vegetative, animate and rational soul as put forward by the Peripatetics and the Neoplatonic valuation of the spiritual over the physical aspects of human nature: to this Neoplatonized and Aristotelianized conception of the Stoic hegemonikon he adds “the Christian goal of spiritual renewal and communion” (1990:206). There are three major locations for studying Augustine’s thought on memory and remembering, though the subject is an important one to him, and one to which he frequently turns. Significantly they span a great part of his career, and it is quite obvious that there are some differences in approach. The three primary texts are De Magistro, dating from about 389, Confessions 10, probably composed somewhere between 397 and 401, and De Trinitate, completed not before 422. I shall look today solely at one of these texts for reasons simply of easy accessibility: but also the Confessions are not only the most widely read of Augustine’s works, but from the point of view of the present discussion, clearly one that allows us to form a cogent idea of some of the leading notions that inform Augustine’s thought on the memory. The first 9 books of the Augustine chart the story of his early life bringing us to the critical point of his baptism, his abandonment of the study of classical rhetoric and his consequent entry into the Christian life. The 9th book describes also a number of personal tragedies: the death of his mother Monica and the death of his friends. The 10th book is in some senses the beginning of a new section, which includes the discussion of memory, time (11) and language (12). The reflections in this concluding section turn back on the nature of personal recollection: what kind of truth value can be attributed to this narrative of personal experience? Do past memories influence behavior, and if so is the result for the better or the worse? The discussion of memory in Book 10 thus introduces a new form of self reflexivity into the narrative: the product of memory now leads to a discussion of the faculty of memory and the process of remembering. Augustine encounters memory in the course of a journey of self realization and self expression: to realize himself through his record of personal experience, and to present to his readers a life that can be read, that is turned into writing. Thus Augustine’s “confessions” in front of God has another kind of audience, that of the readers and hearers of the Christian community for whom it must be an exemplary exercise. In 10.7.11 Augustine says that will transcend even the natural power by which he lives and has the experience of the senses, as this is enjoyed by baser animals too: and in doing so he encounters memory, which for Cicero distinguished man from beast (Tusc. 1.24.57ff). The wide fields and roomy palaces of memory that Augustine describes in the inaugural section (10.8.12) are a storehouse (thesaurus) of images (imagines) which are conveyed to it by the senses. It appears thus to be a repository, a place, essentially a passive faculty, in which the information provided by the senses is stored up: all that which has not been taken away (absorbuit et sepelevit, lit. devoured and buried) by oblivion. It may be noted that the use of memoria is however not wholly fixed, sometimes referring to something like
In the City of Kaal-Ketu
Sumanta Mukhopadhyay Delusion clear field afternoon hops and the sisterly evening lugs him, clutching hands sitting by the bus window why did i think all this the world a quiet family why did I think thus News when news arrives it arrives like an emperor killer king couldn’t give two hoots about us tail up, towards the cowshed we scamper scurry like our forefathers and keep on running when events happen we do not care about news. Lock cold, brass lock i touch and it speaks at night each shard of this broken life soaked in wretched sadness an absent fairytale if you hold on to it a bit more bodily like an old man, it inquires “has everyone come back?” it seeks do I really know how much of the door is outside and how much inside Gita sprinkling a bit of a mirth i see the scene is quite drenched by the evening redness in fields, in the grass the way a restless worm moves to another such grass so darts troop of souls from blade to blade in vedic discipline but as they rush like atheists broken from their spell they speak up about that torn shirt they inquire why hurry if the kids fall behind what then? Bag running, suppose one trips at the moving bus what then? and if one forgot, suddenly to run as the train approached when he beckons he does when he does not he hits you straight at the chest the canvas bag remains and the mother’s talking, bony polestar this bag know this bag is your bread and butter Coma blind in rage you are senseless, about two hours now is this called coma? do i then step out this midnight or tomorrow, early morning perhaps bed, flowers, frankincense, robe getting hold i’d reach straight to the hospital thinking all this i woke up darkly room Poison Tree who are these around tigers, wolves may be milk white dhoti-kurta roots of poison on leaves, flowers, buds, branches milk flows. Touch at a great height the wail that mutes one i write the sound of its saline contour in Braille. Fever the skeleton’s forehead i feel it’s running fever, 100 celsius no fan no cash no light no words a suffocating room. ——————————————— Sumanta Mukhopadhyay works at the Barasat Government College. This is a short selection from his recently published book of poems Kaal-Ketur Shohore. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
The Kitchen
Amiya Sen Translated by Bhaswati Ghosh At a time when there was a drought of jobs, Nirupama felt uncertain on receiving a job offer. Her husband, Salil Dutta, figured that by looking at his wife. He still encouraged her, “I don’t want to force you, but you shouldn’t let go of Lakshmi if she’s coming your way. That too, when the offer has come on its own…” “Is getting the offer everything? How will I cope with that kind of a job?” Nirupama’s voice choked. At forty-five—though she didn’t look much older than thirty–Nirupama was no longer a contender in the job market. Salil Dutta used to work in an ordinary government job. He had a lot of weight to carry, mostly in the form of responsibilities towards his extended family. Like any refined bhadralok, he carried that load despite drowning in debt all his working life. After that, the inevitable happened. As he stepped on the shore of retirement, he was in deep sea, with no coast in sight. Attempting to cross the shores on a broken boat would be like counting the hours to one’s death. The family had to surrender the government quarter to find shelter in the stable-like shed of a rich man’s house. Having been used to a life of struggle, Nirupama didn’t complain. For years, she had rowed the boat of this impoverished household with remarkable skill. But when she could no longer manage with her husband’s 150 rupees of pension, she too had contemplated working—at any petty job. She kept it to herself, however. Nirupama was afraid of the outside world. That’s when the offer arrived. Some well-to-do women had started a service centre for underprivileged Bengali girls. The chief project was having nakshi kanthas stitched by disadvantaged women from East Bengal. It was an ambitious project. Apparently, the government would earn hefty revenue just by selling those kanthas. A shelter had been opened for nearly a hundred women—widows or abandoned by their husbands—and their children. Nirupama would have to assume charge of the shelter. There was a time when Nirupama used to play the sitar quite well. Not that she couldn’t anymore, but time was scarce now. Sitar was what drew the attention of Bardi or Mrs. Basu, the director of Srimangal. Nirupama had once played sitar at a women’s soiree held in the government quarters. Mrs. Basu was the chief guest there. She had since maintained contact with Nirupama. The elderly lady appreciated Nirupama’s talent and was affectionate towards her. She had brought the job offer. Nirupama was afraid. Terribly. To begin with, she had never had a job before. Moreover, despite being poor, they were cultured, educated people. But none of those underprivileged women were sophisticated. They formed the society’s fringe. “Why are you so worried, Niru? Take up the job and find out for yourself. There’s nothing to fear. You are an artist after all. Food and clothing aren’t the ultimate ends of one’s life. We also need artistic sensibilities for the soul’s development. That’s why I suggested your name. In your free time, you can entertain them with your music. All they do is worry about food and squabble with each other. They don’t even know that a world exists beyond all that.” That was what Mrs. Basu had said. Another world! Nirupama didn’t say anything, but felt a sting. It occurred to her how women like Mrs. Basu had no work at home, were lavished with luxury, wealth and rich husbands to look after them. That’s why they had embarked on providing entertainment to others. But did the “other world” of Nirupama exist just because she hadn’t come out on the street with a begging bowl? Sadly, Nirupama was bhadralok. Salil Dutta said, “Women are working in every field. These days, no middle-class family can survive on one person’s income.” Nirupama couldn’t take it anymore. She had almost screamed, “Then why didn’t you drag me out on the road thirty years ago?” “Did I know then that the country will be divided and we will lose all our land and belongings?” “If I only had a capable son…” Tears streamed down her face before she could finish the sentence. All this was the first act. With time, Nirupama became too tired to quibble. She would quietly listen to whatever her husband and Bardi had to say. The situation at home had worsened. For days, she had been serving rice boiled with salt and a spoonful of turmeric to family members. She was still scared to death to go out and work. Mrs. Basu hadn’t given up though. For two months, she kept hovering around Nirupama. One evening she showed up unannounced. Nirupama had just finished washing the dishes. As tenants, they had only one small room. In front of that was a tiny cemented area with a tap in one corner. The same area was also used for cooking. The tap was defective and ran ceaselessly, leaving the whole place wet all the time. The bottom of Nirupama’s sari had become wet. It was December in Delhi. Still shivering, she said, “Please go inside, Bardi; I’ll be right there.” Mrs. Basu flashed her characteristic gentle smile and said, “Nah, dear, I won’t sit. Come with me; I will show you Srimangal. It’s such a beautiful, expansive, ashram-like place on the city’s outskirts. Come, you will like it.” “I have to cook, Bardi…” “Come back and do that. How long will it take in the car anyway?” “You go, Ma, I will prepare everything for dinner. You come back and cook,” reassured fifteen-year-old Shampa. She was in class ten and lately had been busy because of the approaching annual examinations. There was a secret reason behind her selfless act—she felt a sense of pride when an esteemed lady like Mrs. Basu took her Ma through the neighbourhood in a car. Nirupama ended up being even more scared after meeting the women at Srimangal. They had always been