For the Absurd

8/13/2019 For the Absurd

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Michael Meredith isreadingisreading

From: To:Subject: FW: FW: FW: RE: FW: Misreading MisreadingIn fact, what characterizes the neo-avantgarde is the relentlesstwisting of the boundaries of the architectural - in terms of itsmedium, loca tion processes, thematics, and materials - bytransforming its modes ofproduction and reception as well as itsinstitutional settings. Improbable as this goal may seem, thesepractices aimed at once to establish and to undermine a disciplinaryidentity, as opposed to simply confirming a commercial orprofessional one.Informed by the events ofMay 68, this second generation of neoavantgarde animated a consideration ofpost-liberal social andinstitutional models through a misreading of the discipline sclassical and modernist) terms: the informe in place of idealform, beauty or delight), falling or instability for firmness), andfiction for commodity or the empirical facts of unction).

- R.E. Somol s unpublished phDDear ,

As you are aware, the current situation, it can t go on(the last few times we ve hung out J has reminded me ofthat Marx quote, you know the one - History repeats itself,first as tragedy, second as farce. After he says it, all I canthink of is what happens after that, the third or fourthtime). Architectural production appears listless, caught in africtionless ever-twisting of boundaries to such a degree thatno technique or idea dies.

After the quote-unquote end ( 90s Decon) we no longerhad clear historical narratives of progress, only a shiftingtopography of production. For a while it was all good, butwhile everyone was partying like it was 1999, the so-calleddiscipline must have atrophied because I don t even know ifwe can still call it that - maybe there s a discipline, butnowadays there are no clear methods of evaluation or25


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analysis . In place of the discipline, all that's left is history. Isuppose it is liberating for some. This postapocalypticcondition has been elaborated by our friend (JohnMCMorrough] in his article Ru(m)ination - you know,the one about architectural ruins and zombies, which I wouldsay for better or worse, defines the current generation. (I 'mnever sure how generations are defined, but I think I'm in agroup after yours, because you were part of my education - asort of drug of choice for me and many of my classmates, onethat made our world more focused and stranger. It's how Iimagine those As-Seen-on-TV High-Def-Vision sunglassesmust feel.)

So, if the neo-avantgarde that has been illustrated soconcisely is a parade of well-known avatars for individualarchitectural mediums - Hejduk the symbolic, Venturi theiconic, and Eisenman the indexical - followed by thegenerational reaction against it from Koolhaas (program)and Tschumi (event), then what about the possibility of a newzombie avant-garde (the neo-neo-neo-neo?-avantgarde)j is iteven possible? Would you see yourself as some idealizeddisciplinary holdout, like Charlton Heston in The mega Manor could it be the case instead that individual mediums,techniques, or genres are no longer related to any specificarchitectural avatar - that theY re all available for use, allthe time? It might even be the best way to produce arepetition of misreadings, combinations, and superimpositionsthat becomes instrumental in the production of new effectsfor architecture - the rampant and promiscuous collapse ofinforme instability, and fiction with their predecessors form,firmness, and facts/commodity, etc.

Yes caffeinated repetition pushed toward collapse isinstrumental to our methodologies of production. Our grayis no longer the low vernacular realism of Venturi, but thepolychromatic spectral vomit of rainbows that constantlyshift between psychedelic effect and scientific code - wherearchitecture is neither hardcore realism nor a criticaldialectic. It oscillates within the space between unstable andfirm, fact and fiction, semantics and syntax, representationand the real. Facts are great, but theY re not enough. Ifanything, this ambiguous space between states is theconstructed representational space of narrative and stories.(Architectural narratives provide a counterpoint to the dullcontemporary architectural discourse, which has retreatedinto the technical - both a pedantic-technical formalism andthe seemingly all-powerful, moral-pedantic-technicaldiscourse of function, performance, and sustainability. I'm126


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not sure what's worse, zombies or hippies, but zombiehippies have got to be even worse.) If anything, it is bothpositivisms - formal and functional - that we are workingagainst. Ultimately, we're interested in the representationaland imaginary project of architecture, which can be asimportant as any built project, if not more.As an aside: Am I the only one who thinks Tafuri got thesocial completely wrong? The representational project of

architecture is the more social project, especially consideringour media environment.

Message truncated due to sizeIn terms of what's next (if we assume that imagining thenear future of next, as opposed to the far future, isinevitably a personal act), our approach toward architectureis becoming more and more explicitly post medium - like art,where painters produce videos or make objects, sculptorsmake T-shirts or food, etc. - a constructed representationalspace where institutionalized and dialectical readings of art/life, real/fake, fact/fiction become intentionally exacerbated,frustrated, and problematized . This shifting temporal spacebetween production and reception is where we locate thearchitectural project. Our generational crisis is not how toengage the real world but how to operate within theequivocating world of genres - the commodification of thesocio-political (disciplinary) world of architecture to thepoint where it is all good. Familiar methods of going towarda degree-zero architecture are no longer possible because it isjust another genre. (For instance, the grid is no longer a metaor non-figural a priori nothing; it is iconography, justanother sign among signs.) Our proposal, for the time being,is to play both within the world and the archive, to exacerbatea multiplicity of genres and referents simultaneously in orderto produce something that's easy and difficult to classifythrough multiple ontologies. It's an avant-garde practicethat we are trying to maintain - a playful and productivegap between production and reception that's key to all avantgarde work. Frankly, it requires at least twice as much effort .

As you know, it isn't the architectural rhetoric, nor thedrawings, nor the house itself that makes Eisenman's HouseII ultimately interesting or relevant, but the relationshipbetween them. It is not the poetry of Hejduk, but theunsettling superimposition of the poetry and the constru:: :::r:The irresolvable collapse of subject and object relation: :;.::.:of fact and fiction) into strange architectural ub e :>:.:.=127


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MICHAEL MEREDITH IS A PRINCIPALIN OS (ALONG WITH HILARYSAMPLE) AND AN ASSOCIATE PROFES SOR AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITYGRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN.

that misread, rewri te, erase, and repeat history - and I knowit might be fleeting, utterly futile, irreconcilable, andtemporary - is what we re working on, at least for the nearfuture.Hope you re doing well.Best,xxxxPS - Here s a link to our latest video, tell me what you think.

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For the Absurd