A N T O N A S

the pending text

2011-12-27T15:45:00.000-08:00

The preparation of a novel concerning the blurred distinction between the real city and a literary construction is shaped through an assemblage of printed material on a shelf, in the main venue of the Athens Biennale, Diplareios School, Plateia Theatrou. Collected images, texts, notes, images that refer to the novel and the text's first drafts form a collection of printed and bounded volumes and circular plexiglass prints, enriched week by week during the period of the biennial while the works for the novel were evolving; the presentation of the works for the novel is followed by some descriptions and remarks concerning the situation in Athens during the same period.

Athens during this period occupies the interest of the financial world. The material collected for the new untitled text is divided into two categories, already defined by the novel's plot. The first category concerns a pragmatic reference to a real world and the second one concerns the construction of a non-pragmatic reference, created to be inhabited. A material description of the situation in Athens and an orchestration of fictional data assembled in order to propose the virtual stage of the narration are juxtaposed.

The work was presented during the period of negotiations about the eurozone measures concerning Greece, a period that was characterized by a repeated postponement of any decision concerning the regulation of Greece's debt.

The assembled material included at the end of the show 4 versions of the text, a collection of photos of Athens during this time, a collection of photos from the rooms used and photographed by the writer while writing, photographs of notes, a series of articles from the digital press concerning the negotiations and the evolution of the Greek debt crisis during those months, images from the athenian riots from the TV and images created in order to represent a virtual island described in the novel. The versions of the literature text under preparation are printed in parallel to a description of Athens that the writer undertakes to do publicly during those days, published in a twitter account in Greek. The project was produced in collaboration with kernel for Word of Mouth.

2011-10-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Jrp Ringier in Zurich published the short text The two rooms, that was proposed as a literary interpretation of the Kafka's story "Investigations of a dog", written in 1922 and published in 1931 after the author's death. In Kafka's story "the unnamed narrator, a dog, recounts a number of episodes from its past, in which it used quasi-scientific and rational methods to resolve basic questions of its existence that most of its peers were content to leave unanswered, such as: "Whence does the Earth procure its food?".

Many of the seemingly absurd descriptions employed by the narrator express its misapprehension or confusion about the world, centering on dogkind's apparent inability to realize (or, some passages suggest, unwillingness to acknowledge) the existence of their human masters". The rational dog's thoughts and the impossibility to refuse their rational basis (even if the text shows the impasses they are driving to) relate this investigations to any vain, human effort to conclude about reality through thinking.

The "two rooms booklet" consists of a response to the Kafka's novel that insists at an oposite attitude of beings to keep doing things without investigation. Another most trivial aspect of animality is linked to the condition of tribe and its absurdities. The text is published in Greek.

The same editor published the Atlas of Transformation. The thick book is a publication prepared by Tranzit Display, Prague for the project Monument to Transformation. It is a collection of entries that capture transformation in the recent european history. The book is proposed as a dictionary containing also art reproductions and sketches.

The publication counts already two important design prizes: the one of Most Beautiful Swiss Books, Zurich 2011 and the Best Book Design from all over the World, Leipzig 2011. Its graphic design is signed by Adéla Svobodová. The volume contains entries by Adam Mazur, Adéla Gjuričová, Agela Detanico, Rafael Lain, Alexander Gerner, Alexander Kiossev, Alexei Penzin, Ana Janevski, Ana Paula Cohen, Anatolij Osmolovskij, Andrej Lankov, Aristide Antonas, Artem Magun, Ayreen Anastas, René Gabri, Babi Badalov, Beatriz Herraez ,Boris Buden, Boris Groys, Boris Ondreička, Cabello/Carceller, Cristián Gómez Moya, David Chioni Moore, David Kulhánek, Egon Bondy, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, Erick Beltrán, Ernest Gellner, Fang Hu, Fedor Blaščák, François Piron, Françoise Mayer, Franz Kafka, Frederic Jameson, Frederic Jameson, Georges Perec, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari, Haegue Yang, Hakim Bey, Homi K. Bhabha , Hrach Bayadyan, Chantal Mouffe, Igor Zabel, Ilja Kabakov, Jacques Rupnik, Jaime Iregui, Jens Kastner, Jeong Hwan Joe,Ji Yoon Moon, Jiří Havel, Jiří Přibáň, Jiří Suk, Joanna Erbel, Joaõ Maria Gusmaõ, Pedro Paiva, Joaquín Barriendos Rodríguez, Julia Moritz, Juliane Debeusscher, Karel Kosík, Karl Holmqvist, Karl Lydén, Kārlis Račevskis, Keiko Sei, Keti Chukhrov, Kostis Stafilakis, Lásló Csaba,Leszek Balcerowicz, Lia Perjovschi, Livia Pancu, Raluca Voinea, Magdalena Ziółkowska, Marcel Tomášek, Marco Scotini, Mariano García, Marina Gržinić, Martin Škabraha, Mikołaj Lewicki, Milan Otáhal, Milan Šimečka, Milan Zelený, Miroslav Petříček, Mladen Stilinović, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Nerea Calvillo, Ninotchka Rosca, Pavel Barša, Primož Krašovec, Radim Marada, Raluca Voinea, Raqs Media Collective, Rastko Močnik, Ricardo Basbaum, Sergio Rubira, Slavoj Žižek, Srdjan Jovanović Weiss, Svetlana Boym, Teresa Riccardi,Timothy Garton Ash, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Tomislav Z. Longinović, Václav Bělohradský, Vangelis Vlahos,Vassilis Vamvakas, Viktor Misiano, Vlad Morariu. Yannis Stavrakakis, Yelena Vorobyeva,Viktor Vorobyev, Zbyněk Baladrán, Zdeněk Košek, Zdislav Šulc. The chief editors are Zbyněk Baladrán and Vít Havránek. The project direction was done by Věra Krejčová.

Υπαίθριο Γραφείο

2011-09-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Το Υπαίθριο Γραφείο οργανώνεται ως ανοικτός αστικός χώρος που υποδέχεται εργασίες στο διαδίκτυο. Προτείνει ένα πλαίσιο που παλινδρομεί ανάμεσα στην άρνηση του ειδικού, τοπικού στοιχείου (η οποία συνδέεται με τη σύγχρονη άυλη εργασία στο διαδίκτυο) και στην αντίστροφη έμφαση στο τοπικό στοιχείο, στον φωτισμό κάποιας ιδιαίτερης περιοχής που περισσεύει στο κέντρο μιας παρηκμασμένης πόλης: η ειδική τοπική σκηνή υποδέχεται το "άτοπο πρόγραμμα". Ο χώρος εξυπηρετεί όσους δεν έχουν σταθερή βάση για εργασία ή όσους ενδιαφέρει η ευκαιριακή, απρογραμμάτιστη ή ad hoc οργανωμένη συνάντηση για συνεργασίες.

Το Υπαίθριο Γραφείο δοκιμάζει να υλοποιήσει (με επιτηδευμένη προχειρότητα) κάποια σκέψη για την σημερινή πόλη και ιδιαίτερα για την σημερινή Αθήνα. Η πρόταση συντάσσει φυγές προς διαφορετικούς ερευνητικούς άξονες.

Κάποια σύλληψη για την πόλη προϋποτίθεται της εγκατάστασης. Κάποια επεξεργασία εννοιών όπως αυτή της άυλης εργασίας έχει εδώ την ιδιαίτερη σημασία της. Η σύγχρονη πόλη (πριν αρθρωθεί ακόμη η πρόταση) εννοείται εδώ ως ερείπιο.

Η πόλη δεν εχει φτιαχτεί για την ζωή στη ιδιαίτερη σημερινή συνθήκη. Κάποια μετάθεση της σημασίας του σκηνικού που απέμεινε σε μας ως "Αθηναϊκή κατάσταση" προϋποτίθεται για οποιαδήποτε αστική παρέμβαση. Κάποια ανάγνωση και ερμηνεία μπορούν να μεταστρέφουν τους υφιστάμενους χώρους σε κάτι επερχόμενο. Η επιλογή ενός αθηναϊκού ακαλύπτου για την εισαγωγή κάποιου προγράμματος μπορεί να θυμίζει "αστική ανακύκλωση": ο υπάρχων έρημος, κενός χώρος ανασυντάσσεται ως κάτι άλλο. Το κενό του ακάλυπτου χώρου μεταστρέφεται σε ενεργό "πλήρες" την ίδια στιγμή που προεκτείνει τον δημόσιο χώρο. Η λειτουργία του εξασφαλίζεται με λίγες αλλά καθοριστικές εισαγωγές επίπλων. Η αρχιτεκτονική του συντάσσεται περισσότερο ως έρευνα για τις έννοιες του σύγχρονου αστικού απορρίμματος παρά ως αγάπη για τον σχεδιασμό. Η ρύθμιση των λειτουργιών μοιάζει σημαντικότερη από την προτεινόμενη "αρχιτεκτονική". Δεν υπάρχει πρόθεση αλλαγής της "εικόνας" του χρησιμοποιούμενου ακαλύπτου: κάποιος πλάγιος φωτισμός αλλάζει τη σημασία του χώρου, διατηρώντας την εικόνα του "ως έχει". Στην ίδια "σταθερή σκηνή" (για να θυμηθούμε την Αρχιτεκτονική της Πόλης του Aldo Rossi) παίζεται προσωρινά ένα άλλο έργο. Η πρόταση περισσότερο από την συγκεκριμένη υλοποίηση ενδιαφέρεται για θεσμίσεις της προσωρινότητας.

Κάποιες ρυθμιστικές σκέψεις για τη σύμβαση και τον κανόνα λειτουργίας κάθε περιοχής μπορεί να καθορίζουν με ολοένα μεταβαλλόμενο τρόπο πολλά σημεία της πόλης. Το δίκτυο ξεχασμένων ακάλυπτων χώρων της Αθήνας προσφέρει ενεργές περιοχές ημιδημόσιων προεκτάσεων που μπορούν με προσοχή να περιλαμβάνονται στον αστικό προγραμματισμό της πόλης. Τι θα μπορούσε να φέρει ένα πρόγραμμα για προσωρινές διαχειρίσεις των ακαλύπτων στο κέντρο της Αθήνας: το Υπαίθριο Γραφείο λειτουργεί περισσότερο ως ερώτημα προς αυτή την κατευθυνση παρά ως συγκεκριμένη απάντηση. Χωρίς κόστος το είδος του φωτισμού ενός χώρου μπορεί να αλλάξει προσωρινά τη σημασία του.

Μετά από την αρχιτεκτονική του μοντερνισμού συνηθίσαμε να διακρίνουμε με έμφαση το λειτουργικό προγραμμα μιας πρότασης από κάποια σκηνογραφία η οποία έντυνε το πρόγραμμα ως απλό εξωτερικό κέλυφος. Στη συγκεκριμμένη συνθήκη της σημερινής Αθήνας η αρχιτεκτονική ζητά κάποια στρατηγική αντιστροφή. Οι αρχιτέκτονες καλουνται να σκεφθούν τις νεκρές σκηνές της πόλης ως μεταστρέψιμες, "χωρίς" αλλαγή της σημερινής τους μορφής. Κάποια παραμόρφωση πρέπει να αποτελεί σχέδιο μιας σύγχρονης αστικής αρχαιολογίας. Οι νεκρές σκηνές καλούνται να οργανώσουν καταστάσεις, με προγραμματικές τους παραμορφώσεις, με αλλοιώσεις των σημερινών συνθηκών του κέντρου. Το κέντρο έχει πάψει να είναι φιλόξενο μπορεί λοιπόν να το αντιμετωλίζουμε ως κάτι ήδη νεκρό. Κάθε μια απ τις ζητούμενες σκηνογραφίες επαναδιαπραγματεύεται τις συνθήκες της αυριανής πόλης: ποια προγράμματα ζητάνε υλικές εννοήσεις της κοινωνικότητας στην επόμενη κοινωνία, που θα τείνει να οργανώνεται με άυλους τρόπους;

[ Readings on Immaterial Labor από το Lamb and Lamp Design Group ]

Η πρόταση χρησιμοποιεί ένα πλαίσιο (αυτό του Remap 3) και μια στρατηγική χορηγιών (αυτή του ΙΚΕΑ) για να διατυπώσει ερωτήματα σχετικά με τον αστικό ιστό της σημερινής Αθήνας και με τη χρεοκοπία της αρχιτεκτονικής που ξέραμε. Οι πρώτες σημειώσεις για την αυριανή αρχιτεκτονική περιλαμβάνουν κάποια πρακτική non design που ζητά τους όρους εγκατάστασης αστικών συμβάσεων σε υφιστάμενες σκηνές της πόλης. Σε αυτο το πλαίσιο το ζύγισμα ανάμεσα στο παλιό και το επερχόμενο έχει αποφασιστική σημασία.

Η εγκατάσταση του Υπαίθριου Γραφείου περιλαμβάνει 48 τραπέζια, 100 σκαμπό, 48 λάμπες εργασίας, 9 μέτρα βιβλιοθηκών, έναν εκτυπωτή και έναν ψύκτη νερού. Στον αριθμό 2 της οδού Γιατράκου στο Μεταξουργείο, το Υπαίθριο Γραφείο στεγάζει το info point του Remap 3. Στον χώρο φιλοξενείται το βιβλιοπωλείο OMMU.

The house for doing nothing

2011-07-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

The Žižek residence is proposed more as a call for discussion about architecture and politics today than as a specific design concerning a small house or a complex of houses in an isolated Greek island. The house answers one of Žižek's quest for withdrawal but in the same time it seeks a way to reenter a political discourse. A possible Greek architectonic example is elaborated today within Greece's controlled bankruptcy, following the Slovenian theorist's consultation. Žižek writes in his Violence book (Picador, 2008):
“A critical analysis of the present global constellation- one which offers no clear solution, no "practical" advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us-usually meets with reproach: "Do you mean we should do nothing? Just sit and wait?" One should gather the courage to answer: "YES, precisely that!" There are situations when the only truly "practical" thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient, critical analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the duty to enter the Resistance and fight the Germans; Sartre's point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The young man needs to make a decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it.
An obscene third way out of the dilemma would have been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying...”

Nevertheless the character of the Žižek residence even if it is proposed as a place for withdrawal may finally refer to a permanent, voluntary isolation. The Slovenian thinker proposes some distance from the world (a strategy that would "resist the temptation to engage immediately", a proposal to “wait and see” and have the opportunity for "a patient, critical analysis" after the voluntary withdrawal); nevertheless the house shows that, in some cases, the option of stepping back in order to have a distance from society is already problematic from its nowadays setting. The house is of course proposed as a place of literal withdrawal: in the same time, (and I am formulating here already my answer to Léopold Lambert) nothing seems to promise that there is a possible return to the condition that the house declines. The negation of society that the house proposes is in the same time constructing a new community order. The condition of the Žižek's house creates, while it is introduced as a process of withdrawal, different layers of impossibilities to escape the new social platforms that have already moved into the house, (not only in this exotic residence but in many houses) some years ago. The particular manner of withdrawing the house proposes already organizes an intermediate state, structured in between the absolute private sphere and the public function that melt in the inhabitation of the Internet. If we understand seclusion as a step back to the private, then we may agree that what was normally understood as a step back strategy yesterday does not apply today: no way out of this area seems possible. The house is designed as a confinement place, chosen deliberately. Žižek supposes that a "wait and see" strategy may promise anew a political future. But does his opinion present a possible way to invest upon the role of thinking today? Can we save the process of thinking by investing again in the same concept that made it valuable in the western past? The world theory (θεωρία) in ancient Greek describes a way to understand reality from a distance, the way to contemplate things from while we are distant to them in a way that we cannot touch them. The theoretical aspect of reality is related to the possibility of viewing from a distance. This distance that is necessary for a theoretical thought seems difficult for the nowadays Žižek's "withdrawal hero". The way the humankind (in its global north version) relates to its present through the inhabitation of the "Internet living archive" needs an analysis that would invest to the affirmation of the impossibility of distance. It seems that what Žižek presents as the precondition for any serious political position describes also a structural impossibility for the place of withdrawal today to create a distant look. We request a distance from things, we schedule a house in order to obtain this result but this house only shows the impossibility of the scheduled distance. The meaning of "wait and see" strategies is -in this background- ambiguous. The cancelation comes together with the project. Does Žižek mean that after some "images of a changing world" are formed and after some "political thinking" is performed, we could be able to return to the world or at least judge about its problems, propose possible ways to treat the problems in a pensive way? Or does he suggest that this distance is a prerequisite for any intellectual operation? In both cases this house organizes the distance from things as an impossible construction, in many senses: its interior space is produced as an idiosyncratic impossibility of distance that rules any political question concerning the global north. The Žižek's house is a counter project in its "first" reading: it proposes the negation of Žižek's idea; the glorification of withdrawal in the post network society of the global north may propose a problematic task, not because such a strategy is necessarily wrong but because the possibility of creating a condition of withdrawal seems complex today.
The attitude described by Žižek is not determined uniquely by the refusal of commitment to the community: there are many ways for doing nothing. We can retire to refuges in different ways. The withdrawal should not be seen as a political attitude per se but already in its political context. We recall three literary heroes of withdrawal. The first shows a different way to conceive “doing nothing”, in antithesis with the hero of Žižek. Jean Jacques Rousseau describes himself in his Rêveries du promeneur solitaire in a happy condition of isolation, in the almost deserted island of Saint Pierre that some call "l’île de la Motte". Rousseau locates a kind of happiness on his isolation days on the island. “Far niente”, the inactivity of this period is the biggest pleasure he experienced, present in all its sweetness. Devoted to inaction, he could not hold any communication or correspondence, and yet this period is described by Rousseau with great nostalgia. The inertia of his voluntary exile to a place where the author is hiding safely offer delight and a distance from community matters. While the withdrawal is described as enjoyable, it cannot be associated with any technique of responsibility of a political philosopher. Rousseau does not expect the distance to help him recognize new common problems or investigate anew about politics. He lives on the island in order to avoid the community which is presented as a menace and he enjoys this pause of the community life as a happy, early death that makes the hero’s problems disappear. Žižek's hero is not a hero of the “far niente” neither is he negating the community.
The second "withdrawal hero" would be Ivan Gkontsarov’s Oblomov, described in the novel that bears the hero’s name, published in 1850. Within the narrative we meet Ilia Illich Oblomov, a young nobleman, unable to take important decisions or undertake any significant actions. In the evolution of the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed: he stays in bed for the first hundred pages of the text. The book was considered as satirizing the noble class whose social and economic situation seemed problematic in the mid 19th century in Russia. Some laziness or inactivity, a reference to laziness was an important feature of the Oblomof’s withdrawal. And yet no laziness would characterize the Žižek’s "withdrawal hero" within the “living archive of the Internet”. The "pause for reflection" that forms Žižek’s hero has nothing to do neither with a hero of laziness nor with an emplematized hero who consciously refuses of work, as proposed, for example, by Paul Lafargues in his Right to Be Lazy. Labor today is structured differently than in the past. Labor through the Internet often diminishes the importance of spatial factors, it disturbs the oposition between working space and residence. As noted by Negri, labor tends to be determined by an immaterial condition. Franco Berardi also notes that labor is increasingly depending on cognitive functions. The immaterial labor of cognitive functions detaches the working man from the workplace. The work may occur indoors, within the space of withdrawal. The Žižek’s "withdrawal hero" in the present condition may be a normal working human.
The third "withdrawal hero" is the Des Esseintes coming out of the novel À rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature) of Joris-Karl Huysmans. Des Esseintes decides to retire and devote his life in rest and in intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. Des Esseintes is presented as an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and Antihero: he dislikes the bourgeois society of the 19th century and attempts to withdraw into the world of art and the work of his own creations. In the last lines of the novel Huysmans compare the hero's "return to human society to that of a nonbeliever trying to emrace religion". The community appears impossible after the withdrawal. The hero of the house for doing nothing meets necessarily with the community since his withdrawal is radically transformed from the setting of its rules.
The hermit condition in the case of intellectuals to whom we turn our attention today is described through an impossible destination. Firstly, the Žižek’s hero cannot find a “correct” place "outside the community." We do not control even the meanings of such a concept today. Secondly the Ziek’s "withdrawal hero" cannot form the "external perception" as is required by hypothesis : he is defined by a lack of exteriority. Žižek's hero is the hero of impossible withdrawal because he lives in the area where the private became blurred with the public.
Withdrawal is either an impossible task or a necessary condition for the creation of the nowadays community. Léopold asks about the ephemeral character of Žižek's house as a seclusive place: a possible return "back there" may be very impressive. Nevertheless I am very skeptical about the character of this glorious return. The most important factor, in the design of this house would be that (from a particular point of view) it shows a voluntary confinement place. Nothing seems wrong in the withdrawal it organizes since it is performed as a voluntary entrance into an invisible community. Between a person and the community there is no clear limit, if we consider a person as a user of platforms and the community as a function of answering to given protocols or rearranging archive entries. From this point of view a political thinking would have to consider a future of politics in the archive.

The tower of Babel and the open dispersed agora / The system of interpreting a text today may take under consideration the conditions in which any interpretation is performed. We are used to meet people through texts, through tags, through invisible communities and we are also used to see people gathered around images. Discussion in this condition (as a possibility of any transaction between personal computers) forms an always open space; nevertheless, a discussion paradise of an open dispersed agora (that Ethel Baraona Pohl mentions in her post about the Žižek’s house) can also be described as a Babel tower of the common. None of those two different interpretations of the Žižek’s house architecture is privileged. We cannot argue that the Internet proposes a dispersed agora without adding that this agora is not exactly formed as a system of discussion but as a system that always already archives the discussion it generates, proposes its results as partial views, stores them over other similar, and finally makes them difficult to confront. Political decisions in this background can mainly be engagement strategies similar to the ones Žižek refuses in order to withdraw. The Internet discussions are by definition flexible left-overs like the one we are producing now together with Ethel and Leopold, using a foreign language that we all three cannot handle without difficulties. We cannot say neither that the Internet is a contemporary Babel, we cannot demonize it without adding that there are those characteristics of the Internet that can fix open platforms where everything can be posted, rarely in the form of discussion (as it happens now after we settled a chosen scenography). This negation to conclude about Internet, (to refuse to judge if it is a terrible thing and neither consider it represents the heaven of an open agora) is a prerequisite acceptance for reading the Žižek’s house project. Architecture in the condition of the Internet is not simply the creator of a "physical", "empirically experienced" environment; we would reduce the power of architecture if we only conceive it as a function of a "stable, existing" environment. Architecture today is a word to describe the complex systems that form backgrounds for human actions. Architecture would have then to be shaped as a coordination of both sides of the living areas: from one side the "empirical living of the real space" and from the other side, a living that investigates and perform in another interior space where we undertake actions through the web; specifically by answering to the web's different platforms. Does this design of Žižek’s house handle the totality of the matters, posed through such a wide investigation? It cannot. The design can only give form to a wide cockpit. It proposes the inhabitation of a cockpit with a particular relation to the materiality of a culture that understands the human body as a remain of a visual civilization. The uneasiness of such a relationship of space to the human body is also to be treated by the design of the house. Can we think about a cockpit as a place that has a reason "per se" to exist, without taking account of the destinations where it leads us? A cockpit is always a place that has prepared the conditions of a flight; what if this flight becomes the norm of the user? The cockpit becomes then a necessary condition of an unavoidable body, a space that treats the body functions as the excrement of the network activities. We only see in the house the remains of an intellectual life that is rendered invisible through a constant presence in the web. The Žižek’s house undertakes the role of interpreting a provocative fragment of an essay. It does so by unifying the two pieces of the user's experience, the life in the web and the life out of it. The house was always a space of a pause, installing a rupture in the time of the community. It represented an exit from the community. The Žižek’s house is no longer conceived as a space of a pause. The pause is not to be inhabited any more. The pause may be now an exit of the house, an exit of the net. The pause may be a necessary return to the old concept of the world. This would be the new exotic of tomorrow. Inhabiting the house is here identified to an idiosyncratic seclusion in the invisible communal space in which infrastructure, labor, entertainment, community networks and intellectual contemplations are melted in a unified sphere. The house is conceived as the mere ground of this sphere. It may sound normal that if we follow Žižek’s exhortation for "doing nothing" we may return home. Nevertheless today's homes for the humans living in the global north are not such places. If the "withdrawal hero" does not accept this kind of place as a secluded place for studying, what other possibilities could he have? If the Žižek’s house is replaced from a primitive cave or a unconnected spot, its resident will not be able to contemplate an important part of the society; in the same time the Žižek’s hero will be unable to judge about a changing society or perform any political investigation concerning it.

Stepping back is not exactly the condition that negates the networks. It is the function that the network needs in order to be created. While the limit between the network and its outer space is problematic, the question of political intellectual awareness seems also changed. The system of interpreting today's "home culture" could include discussions founded on net communities, performed through particular platforms that in the same time take advantage of the role of images. (I read here critically Richard Sennett: I do not think that the new home culture is necessarily linked to a decline of the political. A new political may be born from the conditions of the Internet) The question would be if it would be productive for future discussions to propose built environments as this "house for doing nothing", entering with rush into fields that show quick realizations of hidden intentions. The Žižek's text can be elaborated in order to conclude into an architecture. This architecture is, from one point of view, evident, through the plans and the images that describe it, and from another point of view the same architecture cannot be anything without an internet discussion concerning it. Three users write each other about their everyday experiences while they look in this idealized seclusion place. What is exotic in this easy communication? From a certain point of view the present discussion shows that the citizens of the global north are always already in Žižek's house condition: they are defined by similar settings.

Inaction/ This project undertakes to extend an investigation on inaction; the "raison d'etre" of Žižek's apartment is due to some nowadays modes of inaction. A cynical description of the city after the substitution of many of its functions through the Internet is a prerequisite for this investigation. The notion of political responsibility cannot be the same as before; a gap may interrupt its history. The changes in the concept of identity and its new definitions through the idea of "presence in the web" will determine this new phase of responsibility. If we understand the new possible cities as populations of secluded refuges that may look like congregations of well equipped, networked computer spots, we may need new descriptions of citizenship and of the communities that could replace the urban conditions of the past. The theoretical tradition of responsibility (as epitomized for instance in Levinas' or in late Derrida's works) gives an account of the preconceptions of philosophical thinking needed for the formalization of a political attitude within a community: an interesting part of this philosophical bibliography concerning "responsibility" was projected towards political theory. This theoretical past would need re-elaborations; remodeling the concept of responsibility and rejecting part of its tradition are related to the condition that the Žižek's house. The "house for doing nothing", also proposed as "the responsible house", is published in order to formulate a complex question concerning an attitude that does concern mainly a response to "not real things", a particular engagement to "entries that describe absent things" without needing the reference to any "prototypes". How can we think about responsibility with a new broken concept of identity that does not correspond to the civic identity, with no signature charged for the responsibility of the evolution of things, with a poor world populated by things and a rich world determined by an accumulation of conscious representations.
Difficulty to be patient and theorize / It is structurally difficult to ask for a "patient, critical analysis" of the situation we live in nowadays for three reasons at least. From a first point of view: the wind of global social changes poses practical problems regarding this need of deceleration; in a battlefield, in an open procedure of undetermined fights there is usually no time to install thoughtful distances from facts, especially in the case that rapid changes occur; we do not have the luxury for the necessary step back that could permit any intellectual preparation of thoughtful actions. This first argument is of course similar to the banal proposition that Žižek tries to avoid. Nevertheless let's consider that this position has a right to exist today: it is difficult to avoid the urgency of the evolving situations by a mere negation of them; we have a good example here in Greece. From a second point of view the imposed distance is formed through an idiosyncratic image of the exterior space that tends to be identified to an interior: a series of platforms can represent the exterior space, before it is posed as a problem of representation. The exterior space was conceived as a problem of representation. Today, exteriority is formed as a series of different representations. The networked civilization forms individuals who cannot really get out there, they are not supposed to question unformed fields; in this sense the users of the Žižek's house cannot reach any possible exteriority. They experience a phenomenon similar to the Plato's Cave of his Republic but seen now as an inversion: the cave has no exterior space. The most radical exteriority today is produced as a construction of the "unseen": some archived schemata, some digital landscapes soon visitable through the Internet form its matter. The distance from reality seems to produce the conscious, common and permanent core of the experience of reality "per se". Reality in this condition seems to be an always consciously distant, already represented world.
From a third point of view a "patient, critical analysis" of the situation we live in nowadays conditions would also be difficult because we would need a concrete place with the characteristics that Žižek needs in order to construct the political attitude of a thinker. The neutrality of a house of yesterday is not possible in our residences today. Maybe space lose its privilege of hosting political action within this condition; political actions may not happen any more in the world we traditionally form as architects. But where would then be this political observation place? Where would be this society we cannot configure? If a political attitude has to be formed through the elaboration of a distant view, the lack of distinction between distance and proximity could pose structural problems to its performance. At least this would mean that when we design the house for the "withdrawal hero", we do not consider his political action performed in the correct place; such a place does not exist; we will not expect to see his action deployed there nor in any other "pragmatic environment"; it may be performed elsewhere; we can neither configure the observation point from which the task of observing may be practiced; we neither see the exact target of such an observation. If thinking can still address political matters, it is at least rendered problematic in the condition of withdrawal: it cannot happen if the structure of it includes the confusion between figure and background, between the user and the community; or it may happen in a different format taking account of this other type of inhabitation of "the common" we experience. Thinking cannot be performed in a field of predetermined schemata. Thinking is read for Žižek as an abstention from the "real society" even if "the society itself" lost its meaning in various ways through the last decades. A consciousness concerning the loss of "society structures" is the most intimate core for the fabric of the Internet society "itself". A barbarism may prevail in the first possible future of a multiple, thoughtless "platform making". "Exteriority" is its first important loss. "Exteriority" in this background can only be proposed through the image of a battle field or in terms of a video game. Thinking loses its meaning whilst there is no image or visible narrative proved valuable as a representation for it in this new condition. Thinking as a nowadays human act has no convincing imagery, no slogan, its future depends to inventive graphic strategies. The civilization of writing in the form that we know it may be in "another last phase". What this loss of meaning for thinking would inaugurate? Why do we miss already the rational elaboration of western sociality so quickly and anew, after some centuries that a society of organized rationality was a western civilization target? We may propose answers to this difficult question before we undertake judgments concerning theory and action. What would be the meaning of theory today? What would be a theory without truth? If the concept of "inhabited platform" may be the analog of a city apartment, and if a congregation of platforms may already form invisible cities where every one is already leaving, who is really the actor of these new environment? Who is the actor of this house for doing nothing? The hero of the Žižek's house would be a time function, inhabiting different platforms. The actor is not a simple user but a serial, multiple "person" constructed out of an accumulation of participations in different Internet platforms.

Heterotopia / Ethel proposed the concept of hetero-topia to regulate an investigation about the house for doing nothing and the inhabitant. It is true that in the Foucault's text and in the bibliography that is linked to it, many thematic areas linked to the Žižek's house are present. Ethel insists on Foucault's “fifth principle”, where "he describes heterotopias as a system of opening and closing that both isolates ... and makes ... penetrable" the spaces that constitute them; it is true that such a description seems to be very suitable for Žižek's house. In the same time we have to do another structural remark of some importance, concerning the social field and the place of heterotopia inside it. We may put it this way, by a necessary simplification: Foucault's description of some heterotopic places is interesting because he compares some privileged or sacred places to some dreadful institutions of western modern societies. "Privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis" are compared with some "heterotopias of deviation" : the spaces for adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the elderly" are compared with "rest homes and psychiatric hospitals, and of course prisons, and ... retirement homes" inscribed in a field of the heterotopic side of modern life. A crucial characteristic of heterotopias is linked to a rupture that distinguishes them as isolated places, cut from the everyday life. They do not perform within the everyday flow of time that any society tries to prove as the core of its normality; they occur within the excluded heterochrony of exception. We may quote Foucault:
"Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time - which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance".
Heterotopia cannot be defined as a simple banality of the everyday. It marks a cut to the everyday, we need a time gap to enter its world. And this is the problem that is presented through the Žižek's house. It proposes a negation of the everyday but it fails to constitute it. The negation of the everyday itself forms the everyday. The house intends to mark a difference from the everyday, to form an exterior world, but no, it cannot: it brings its inhabitant again in a banal world where the setting it proposes is known; everything is included in an interior; the exterior of the house is an interior homely function. In this place we have nothing to escape from. In the world the house proposes we are already used into escaping in "its own" manner. We may confess that some of us already live in the condition of escape as if there was a homely character in "escape itself". We inhabit escape. This house that is proposed as an exotic seclusion place is very common. The community of today is structured as an accumulation of such seclusions in the culture of the global North. The exotic land of elsewhere is identified with the most intimate center of the house. The Žižek's house, in this perspective, cannot be a heterotopia; maybe this is the most important problem it shows. It is formed as is a tauto-topia, a permanent symptom for any locus in the global north; a symptom that identifies the social with a number of secluded inhabitations. The social here is symptomatic, it is ruled by the withdrawal that Žižek poses as a precondition for a personal critical return to a social thinking. The house forms a heterotopic field but it is not proposed as such. What is important in this house is that a particular heterochrony is now installed in the core of the constitution of everyday life. We read again Foucault when he insists on this heterotopic character of the garden: "The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world". Couldn't this be proposed for Žižek's house? The house gathers some major heterotopic charasteristics. Yes, but in the same time the house claims that the nowadays global north society is constituted by an internal distance to itself. An uncanny generalization concerns this idealized exodus place: the house creates a simple image for the permanent condition that rules the everyday character of life; it proposes (while it is presented as an example of exception) a total narration for the everyday. Žižek's house is not as exotic as it should be; driving oneself out of the society is not a heroic operation; the seclusion that follows the negation of the community seems to be now the fundamental cell of the common; the house fails to provide the step back to the "withdrawal hero", because it represents in the same time the move toward seclusion and the openness to the community. In the same time its inhabitant would never be secluded, could never withdraw from the social even if this was the reason why the "withdrawal hero"'s refuge would be built. The inhabtant of this house is always already in the condition of community, experiencing nevertheless, in the same time, a permanent withdrawal. Considering the civilization of the global north, Žižek's "withdrawal hero" could be the most common person of the everyday life: withdrawal is the cell whose multiplication creates nowadays communities. If this is the presupposition of a political thinking (a distance from the social) and if today's sociality is defined by this distance then we will miss the opportunity to think because of a architectonic problem. This condition that is constructed as a house of thought, is structurally an observatory that cannot observe the field it is supposed to contemplate from a distance. The inhabitation of the distance is Žižek's house most critical characteristic. If we inhabit the distance from the social, if this inhabitation characterizes today's online sociality, we would be trapped in an interior with no limits. An interior with no limits has obviously no way out, no exit. Sociality in this case may be a big ensemble with single rooms of secluded people. If the seclusion place coincides to the idea of a permanent exoticism we may miss an observation point, necessary for any exterior contemplation of things and we may miss theory.
This house would have to be proposed as an exit room. It could be a heterotopia if it was a real place of escape as Žižek wanted it to be. But it is designed to form a question. Is it so? It engenders escape, keeps escape as its permanent program. But in the same time this escape would have to be permanent and therefore it may structurally be identified to its opposite, the enclosure in a place where it is impossible to escape from an "escape program". The world "escape" has a global north nowadays meaning. Escape can propose no exotic options any more. Seclusion, in this case, proposes neither a solitary attitude. The isolated house is not excepted from the community. Nevertheless, a city apartment was normally conceived as a part of a whole; the city was a system of congregated, categorized apartments: the apartment was the particular part that corresponded and represented the individual's position in the city and a sharing strategy of a finite land. Geometry is crucial for a city because it is introduced in order to count the surface of the land and calculate the different systems of sharing that give birth to different city planning strategies. The city was composed as an analogy to an archive, concerning this exact reference to a finite landscape: the city inhabitant's role was related to this particular belonging that was related to the apartment's status.

The responsible house seems to be formed by a negation to this "city sharing" condition. Its prototype is not produced out of sharing an existing finite land but out of an image of a house in an "exotic" infinite landscape similar to the video game interfaces we encounter in the Internet. There is no finite surface to share determining this project: the land it is proposed for could be any land. In an Internet city the sharing options for the space seem based to a possibility of infinitely extending the available field: the online and offline space that "we" will occupy in the future would be a space that can never be "itself" and will always be infinite, composed as an interior: at the same time it will always be a conscious representation of something always already missing.

The promise of lying

2011-04-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Σε ένα δοκίμιο του Charles Fried αναφέρεται ότι το ψέμα είναι σαν μια υπόσχεση (ότι θα πω αλήθεια) που αθετείται ευθύς αμέσως (δεν λέω τελικά την αλήθεια). [Αναφέρεται στο δοκίμιο του Κωσταντίνου Παπαγεωργίου: "μερικές Αλήθειες για το Ψέμα", Ισοπολιτεία, 1, Δεκ. 1997.] Αντιστρόφως προς αυτή την ρήση ενδιαφέρει περισσότερο σήμερα κάποια υπόσχεση για ψέμα που τείνει να διαμορφώνει το κοινοτικό φαντασιακό και την πολιτική συνείδηση. Η επικράτηση θεωριών που αναφέρονται στην αποδόμηση ή σε συναφείς της πρακτικές που ονομάστηκαν στην αμερικη μετα-δομικές έχει λίγη ίσως σχέση με κάποια πρακτική συνειδητής παράκαμψης της συνάφειας των θεωριών προς τα γεγονότα ή ακόμη με την επίσης συνήθη πρακτική της πολιτικής ψευδολογίας που περιγράφει και ονομάζει τα φαινόμενα από δηλώσεις σχετικές με αυτά ή ακόμη με πρωτοβουλίες που υπακούν σε τέτοιες αμφισβητούμενες περιγραφές ή δηλώσεις. Ο πόλεμος του Ιράκ ή η κατάσταση στο Αφγανιστάν ή ακόμη η συνθήκη αποδοχής της πρόσφατης λαϊκής εξέγερσης στην Αίγυπτο υπακούν σε αποφασιστικές δηλώσεις σχετικές με τα φαινόμενα οι οποίες μπορούν να οργανωθούν ως πόλεμοι ή ως συνθήκες ειρήνης αναλόγως προς την ιδιαίτερη περιγραφή που παράγεται κατά την ανάλυση των φαινομένων.

Λόγω της φθοράς που υπέστη τον τελευταίο καιρό η έννοια της αλήθειας, μοιάζει να χρειαζόμαστε κάποια άλλη λέξη που θα συντηρήσει την ηθική θεώρηση των φαινομένων. Θα έπρεπε δηλαδή να επιχειρήσουμε να σκεφτούμε τρόπους για την ηθική αξιολόγηση που να προκύπτουν από κάποια υπόσχεση ψέματος: είμαστε πολύ περισσότερο κοντά σε αυτή την υπόσχεση, μέσα στην διαχείρηση οποιουδήποτε κοινοτικού λόγου, παρά μέσα στην αντίθετη: η επιδίωξη ενός αληθινού λόγου δημιουργεί μονάχα κενά προτάγματα. Είναι η περισσότερο ύποπτη στρατηγική ακόμη κι όταν επιχειρείται να διατυπωθεί από θιγμένες, μη ηγεμονικές μειοψηφίες που έχουν με προφανή τρόπο αδικηθεί. Η σημασία της καταστροφής του αληθούς λόγου δεν έχει ακόμη αποτιμηθεί συστηματικά. Η συνθήκη "έκφρασης της αλήθειας" μοιάζει να οδηγεί ευθύς σε παράδοση στην αφέλεια και οπωσδήποτε σχετίζεται με απώλεια της εξουσίας του ομιλούντος απέναντι σε εκείνον προς τον οποίο απευθύνεται. Αν υπήρχε ακόμη ένα ίχνος δυναμικής της έννοιας της αλήθειας θα έπρεπε να την αναζητήσουμε στην ιδιότυπη τροπή που λαμβάνει ο λόγος όταν παραιτείται από κάθε εξουσιαστικό μηχανισμό. Όταν αναζητά γκρεμισμένος κάποια διαφυγή από σημαντικές απορίες χωρίς να εγκαθιστά στη θέση των αποριών οποιεσδήποτε βεβαιότητες. Ο λόγος έχει χάσει τα σύμβολα της επάρκειάς του αλλά δεν καταφέραμε ακόμη να εκμεταλλευτούμε πολιτικά την ίδια τη δυναμική της ανεπάρκειας. Ακόμη και σε αυτή την περίπτωση, όπου η αλήθεια ονομάζει κάποια παραίτηση, η ίδια έννοια της αλήθειας ισοδυναμεί με κάποια άρνηση πειθούς παρά με κάποια επιβλητική δύναμη πειθούς που θα συνδεόταν πάλι αναγκαστικά με κάποια εξουσία της ορθότητας. Περισσότερο η έννοια της αληθειας σχετίζεται πια με την εθελούσια παραίτηση από οποιαδήποτε διεκδίκηση εξουσίας και αυτό καθιστά την αλήθεια δύσχρηστη.

Με δυο λόγια η παραίτηση από την δυναμική της αλήθειας που έφερε τις πιο σημαντικές αλλαγές στην δυτική κοινωνία του ορθού λόγου οδηγεί σε κάποιο βάραθρο: σε αυτό τον τόπο του βαράθρου, εγείρεται ένα σημαντικό ερώτημα. αν δεν υπάρξει άλλη διανοητική κατασκευή έτοιμη να παραλάβει το βάρος της ηθικής συγκρότησης της κοινότητας, τον ρόλο αυτόν θα αναλάβουν πίστεις προς διαφορετικές ιδεοληψίες. Πίστεις επομένως εκείνων που δεν έφτασαν μέχρι την εννόηση του προβλήματος που διατυπώνουμε. Υπάρχει μια συνθήκη λόγου και κάποια γεγονότης έτοιμη να δεχθεί την ιστορικότητα αντίληψης του λόγου από τον εαυτό του. Η πρόοδος του λόγου πέρασε κάποια ιστορικά καταγεγραμμένη διαδρομή από την φάση της εμπιστοσύνης προς εαυτόν στην ενεργή αντίληψη της σημασίας του και στην τελική άρνηση της παντοκρατορίας του. Οι έννοιες της πίστης στην νέα εποχή ζητούν συστηματικές μελέτες. Είναι απλές σκηνοθεσίες; Με ποιόν τρόπο μπορούν να ελέγχονται; Αν ελέγχονται ριζικά πώς συνεχίζουν να είναι πίστεις;

Η καταστροφή της αλήθειας συμπίπτει με μερικές άλλες κατασκευές οι οποίες θα εξεταστούν παράλληλα με την αλήθεια και την περιπέτειά της προσεκτικά. Η πρώτη κατασκευή είναι η συντριβή του εγώ μέσα στα κοινοτικά δίκτυα. Η δεύτερη κατασκευή αφορά τη συνθήκη της προσωρινής πίστης που -με κάποια ασταθή επάρκεια- είναι παρά ταύτα ικανή να συγκροτεί φαινόμενα.

Σε κάποια πρόσφατη ομιλία του στην Αθήνα ο Alain Badiou μίλησε με ανανεωμένο ενθουσιασμό για κάποια έννοια ηρωισμού σήμερα. Μίλησε για τον ήρωα σε μια σημερινή διάστασή του. Ένα ναρκισσιστικό μοντέλο αυτοεπιβεβαίωσης και απόδειξης της σημασίας ενός επίπεδου ρόλου είναι ό,τι πιο ενδιαφέρον βρίσκω σε αυτή την δήλωση. Ο ήρωας σήμερα είναι η λέξη για ό,τι πιο τετριμένο και αδιάφορο. Είναι ένα ακόμη δυναμικό άβαταρ που δεν έχει τη δύναμη της επερώτησης μόνον και μόνον επειδή του παραχωρήθηκε μέσα στον τρόπο του επερχόμενου πολιτισμού ο ειδικός αυτό ρόλος: ένας ήρωας δεν μπορεί να ακουστεί ούτε να πείσει. Είναι ένα ακίνητο σύμβολο που δεν μπορεί να κάνει άλλη χρήση του λόγου παρά μόνον μέσω δηλώσεων. Η δήλωση είναι η δύναμη του ήρωα. Η δήλωση είναι το τέλος του λόγου ως μηχανισμού συνεννόησης. Μέσα σε κάποια κοινότητα που συγκροτείται με αρχαϊκές λογικές, μέσα στο ολοένα ενδυναμούμενο Διαδίκτυο ο ρόλος του προσώπου σχετίζεται με την δημιουργία μιας καρικατούρας με περιορισμένη δυναμική λογικής συνεννόησης. Όσο εργάζεται κανείς, με την χρήση λέξεων-κλειδιών ή με την επιμονή σε ολοένα συχνότερα επανεμφανιζόμενα και ενδυναμούμενα επιχειρήματα κλισέ, στην συγκρότηση τέτοιας καρικατούρας του ήρωα, τόσο περισσότερο μπορεί να κατασκευάζει την εικόνα της παρουσίας του σαν να ήταν εκεί μονάχα μια μεγάλη ψεύτικη μάσκα ή ένα κατασκεύασμα character παρόμοιο με εκείνα που γεμίζουν το ζωντανό αρχείο του διαδικτύου. Ο ήρωας σήμερα μοιάζει να αποτελεί ένα ακόμη avatar ενός κακοφτιαγμένων μηχανισμών που παράγονται σε ετοιμασμένες πλατφόρμες. Ο ήρωας είναι πρόσωπο που οργανώνεται καθώς χαρακτηρίζεται πολλές φορές με "like", μένοντας κενός όσον αφορά το περιεχόμενο της σημασίας όσων διατείνεται.

Η συνθήκη της προσωρινής πίστης που μπορεί να συγκροτεί πραγματικά φαινόμενα είναι η συνθήκη της ακυρωμένης εσωτερική ρηχή πίστη στην οποία γυμνάστηκε το πνεύμα των ανθρώπων κατά το πέρασμα από την πολιτική των πράξεων στην πολιτική των δηλώσεων. Η πολιτική των δηλώσεων είναι εκείνη που παρεμβαίνει κατασκευαστικά επί του κόσμου των φαινομένων με την προοπτική της ηθελημένης παραποίησης που αποκρύπτει την βούληση. Την συγκρατεί μια αποθήκη ψευδολογιών, ένα συντακτικό μετωνομασίας των συνθηκών της διαφοράς σε συνθήκες άνευρης ησυχίας. Τίποτε δεν είναι περισσότερο σύνηθες σε κυβερνήσεις ή πρακτικές της σημερινής πολιτικής σκηνής από την εξάσκηση σε αυτή τη μετωνομασία. Η ρηχή προσωρινή πίστη συνιστά την κατασκευή αυτή της πολυετούς πια εμπειρίας του σημερινού ανθρώπου μέσα στον τρέχοντα λόγο. Ο λόγος έγινε πολιτικός λόγος και ο πολιτικός λόγος εφθάρη τόσον ώστε να χαθεί κάθε εμπιστοσύνη στον λόγο. Η συνθήκη της ρηχής πίστης μπορεί να προξενήσει βία χωρίς έλεγχο της σημασίας της, καθώς λείπει στην προσωρινότητά της η συνθήκη ελέγχου της λογικής πρότασης με την οποία ήταν οπλισμένος ο εκλείψας πολιτισμός του ανθρωπισμού.

Αλλά μπορεί κανείς να σκεφτεί ξανά για το περιεχόμενο όσων φανταζόμαστε στις δομές εγρήγορσης του λόγου; Σιγουρα όχι, αν σκέφτεται κανείς με τους όρους της συγκρότησης του ιερού λόγου που άρχισε με την εκτύπωση της Βίβλου και συνέχισε με την δυναμική του βιβλίου. Αν το βιβλίο χάνεται, χάνεται επίσης μαζί του και η δυναμική υποστήριξης της πίστης για τα γραφόμενα. Η έννοια της προσωπικής ευθύνης για τον λόγο που εκφέρει κανείς εξανεμίζεται ή τουλάχιστον "αλλοιώνεται ολοένα" κατά τον τρόπο που αναλογεί στην προσφορά μηνυμάτων που θα στέλνει κάποιος σε μπουκάλι, πετώντας τα στον ωκεανό. Ο ομιλών, εκείνος που εκφέρει τον λόγο δεν αναλαμβάνει πια τον ρόλο χειριστή του αυθεντικού λόγου, δεν ζητά πια πίστη στο δικό του προσωπικό όραμα: αν το κάνει αυτό συμβαίνει γιατί πρέπει να μας διασκεδάσει με κάτι ακόμη που πρέπει να μην είναι αδιάφορο. Στην καλύτερη περίπτωση δοκιμάζει έναν χειρισμό μέσα σέ ένα λογικό σχήμα. Ο λόγος δεν καλείται να επεξηγήσει τα φαινόμενα ή να δοκιμάσει τα όριά τους. Ο λόγος όλο και περισσότερο οργανώνεται σε πολύπλευρες αφηγηματικές τροπές που κατατεμαχίζουν τα φαινόμενα με τον τρόπο των τραγουδιών. Το φαινόμενο είναι ένα σύστημα τραγουδιών που περιγράφουν με άκαμπτο τρόπο συστηματικές αποσπασματικές περιγραφές του. Σε μια ερωτική ιστορία χωρισμού μπορούμε να περιγράψουμε το συμβάν μέσα από ένα πολλαπλό σύστημα με την εξής έννοια: θα έχουμε ένα τραγούδι που θα μιλά με τη φωνή του απατημένου εραστή, ένα άλλο για την φωνή της ερωτευμένης γυναίκας, ένα τρίτο για το σπίτι που καταστρέφεται, ένα άλλο για το δωμάτιο του κρυφού έρωτα: όλα τραγουδούν το ίδιο φαινόμενο αλλά ο τόνος τους υιοθετείται από την απόφαση δέσμευσης σε μια προοπτική. Κάθε τραγούδι γεμίζει με πίστη στην προοπτική αλλά το αρχείο των τραγουδιών μένει υποχρεωτικά χωρίς πίστη. Κάποιο είδος ρεπουμπλικανισμού των φαινομένων είναι επί το έργον. Τα φαινόμενα παράγονται ως σύστημα πληθυσμού αποσπασματικών περιγραφών που δεν καταργούν η μια την άλλη αλλά "συμπληρώνουν" κάποια "σφαιρική" αντίληψη.

Το επείγον σημερινό διακύβευμα θα ήταν να αντιμετωπίσουμε τους πληθυσμούς των τραγουδιών, το αρχείο των περιγραφών της πίστης, με μια διαφοροποιημένη πίστη: την πίστη στην εναλλαγή της πίστης και στην δυνατότητα της μεταβολής (alternation) της προοπτικής θέασης: η μεταβολή βρισκόταν μέχρι χθες στον εσωτερικό χώρο των διατυπώσεων και όχι έξω από αυτές. Αυτό ήταν η παρακαταθήκη κάποιας παράδοσης στην παραμόρφωση που έκτισε ο δυτικός πολιτισμός πριν βρεθεί εκτεθειμένος σε κάποιο περισσότερο σύμπλοκο πλανητικό σχήμα. Κι ωστόσο για αυτό το επερχόμενο πλανητικό σχήμα που παραβιάζει την πιο ισχυρή δυναμική του δυτικού πολιτισμού η ίδια η Δύση δεν είναι ανεύθυνη. Η ρεπουμπλικανική σύσταση των πραγμάτων και του κόσμου είναι η βάση πάνω στην οποία οφείλουμε να σκεφτούμε την ακύρωση κάθε λόγου της αλήθειας. Μπορούμε να εγκαινιάσουμε κάποια ηθική μέσα στη συνθήκη κάποιου υποχρεωτικού ψεύδους; Η αρχειακή σύσταση του κόσμου (που βλέπει κάθε τι ως σύστημα διαφορετικών προοπτικών) μπορεί άραγε να δεχθεί και να εκτιμήσει εκ νέου την βία της λογικής διαφοράς;

The Meteorite Unit

2011-03-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

Dezeen published an architectonic description of the Meteorite Unit. Α simple inversion was the first quest that inaugurated this project. The reversal had an urban value. What would happen if the typical block of Athens would turn inside out through a decision that necessarily concerns a minor part of it, one small propriety? The challenge was to convince that even on a such small scale building we could think about the reversal in an urban level.

Increasingly one has less reasons to go out onto balconies in Athens. We find less reasons to have street windows in the buildings. Street balconies are prescribed by building regulations with great accuracy but they do not represent any more any particular option of use in this city. In the Meteorite Unit the reversal strategy concerns the front and rear of the building. It is performed in an emblematic way including a change in the position of the windows. A building skin elaborated with reused metallic grids is proposed to the street, while the openings of the building are found in a new interior space. An urban plateau is proposed for the city, created out of the private space of the site. The focus of the building was shifted to the interior of the urban fabric and the decisions about the building mold the urban fabric.

[ First prize for unrealized building 2008 - 2011 by the jury of Steven Hall, Finn Geipel and Panagiotis Tournikiotis, DOMES review of architecture ]

Robbery as Art

2011-02-10T00:46:00.000-08:00

The theatrical scene is a jewelry shop in Greece where a robbery is operated. The actors enter covered; they are conscious that they are filmed. This kind of acting in front of the CCTV cameras directs a particular choreography where the actors have to hide whatever may be characteristic in their moves and appearance. The theatrical rules concerning the two actors are here different than the ones we find in Bertold Brecht's or Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski's theories on theater acting. The actor here has to be invisible through his capacity to operate quickly and with the most common moves. The actor has to avoid anything that would characterize him as the hero of an act or as a function of his self.

The Urban Hall

2011-01-24T21:44:00.000-08:00

The Urban Hall is a double project. It includes the architecture for a square of Athens in Plateia Theatrou and also the architecture of an immaterial platform that includes or determines a series of predefined actions that alternate in this same urban spot. Architecture in this project may thus be, from the first point of view, the institution of an empty place. From the second point of view the most important architectonic move would shape the frame that would allow the performance of some urban acts. A system of changing functions would characterize this space and the most interesting political question will then be: how this idiosyncratic urban curating could be realized. The design only makes easier a possible stay in the area through the grid surface of the roof and a fan field that covers the lightly shadowed square. This particular urban instrument, proposing predefined situations, is the name of a question: the question about the common in this particular "always before bankruptcy" post network era.

A first possible situation that is related to the condition of the area today and particularly the condition of the drug addicts would have to do with some alternative projects of hospitality, with alternative centers for drug addicts. This proposal could include different perspectives over the use of drugs or even expand a health care strategy creating for example an open city hospital. Such a decision would have to oscillate between a realistic interpretation of a problem and an understanding of art today: in this particular example one could think about a call to artists to act in the frame of this problem. A curatorial strategy would possibly include the installation of related artistic works from artists who would possibly reinterpret some of their work in a city level such as George Hadjimichalis or elaborate tactics that would perform other type of art works through different art practices, asking from artists to pose small scale social agendas and treat the city conditions as the necessary frame for possible art pieces. A system of small urban interventions can be introduced in the city as a concession of public space for such subtile work. The question about the curator of such a mechanism is the most important one in this proposal. Nevertheless the staging of the platform is elaborated here as a call to recognize a part of the city as an instrument that could perform different functions. The definition of an empty space would not give to the city an extension of its normal urban fields but would create a condition of an Urban interior in order to provoke predetermined, theatrically conceived events. Neighboring areas that can soon be included in this zone of prepared actions, using performativity in order to work towards the clarification of a political agenda in a practical manner.

In her post about the project Ethel Baraona Pohl insists on the idea of creative activism that can be the core of the Urban Hall's management. She refers to the book Did Someone say Participate? co-edited by Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar. "Markus Miessen pointed in the book [ ... ] that in a time when city centers become increasingly polarised and drawn towards seclusion, the communication between people and states in particular needs to be revitalized, since one of the positive side-effects of globalisation is the realisation that today’s most pressing problems seem to exist regardless of place and location. This point is closely related with one of the conditions that can validate this project today as a particular function of a different era". It is important to be conscious about the common character of the global problems. On another level Athens poses its own platform of proposing its problems. And it may be interesting to make a representation of Athens as a violent meeting place of two different mechanisms: the first one could be the anarchic, vivid, unrepresented, always changing system of immigrants that inhabit a part of the empty city center; the second mechanism would be the legal frame that define an individual in the EU, unable to manage this massive wave of immigration, at least in the center of modern Athens. Athens is this idiosyncratic function of a city where an unpredictable meeting of an unrepresented population of immigrants and the frame of the European citizenship is performed. The Urban Hall is not a building but an Urban Instrument that could organize new city functions.

Time after Time

2010-12-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

Τα Κτίσματα

2010-12-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

Τα Κτίσματα, (The Buildings) theater script with postscript By Yannis Stavrakakis, (just published in Greek / Agra editions) is performed in Chania Crete, Kydonia Theater (directed by Michalis Virvidakis). The book cover is designed by the author and Yannikos Vassiloulis. The theater play investigates the way values are constructed : two brothers rent the empty and abandoned buildings of their unwanted property one by one to a person who pays in order to demolish the buildings without any obvious reason. Order here.

The duplicated bridge

2010-11-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

Archdaily published the duplicated bridge, a design competition entry, concerning a new bridge in Slovenia.

This project responds to the problem of designing a second bridge, parallel to the existing one in Maribor. The new bridge is proposed here as a mere unification of two indifferent riverbanks; a transformation of the riverbanks that such a bridge could undertake is more important than the possible shape of any added construction. The riverbanks that are nevertheless very close to the historical center of Maribor. The new bridge is thus an opportunity to treat the riversides and propose a transformation of them into a part of the vivid city center. The provocation was to propose an urban strategy and refuse the narcissism of a beautiful bridge. Furthermore the strategy of this urban investigation would be to boycott the trivial operational linearity of a bridge; boycotting linearity would form the urban character of the proposal. If the urban space is more important then the bridging element, the design will have to organize the duplicated bridge (the old and the new bridge as a unified system) as a meeting function. The city's rhythm is already regulated by the existing bridge. We have to think about the interconnection of the two junction systems not as if the only result will be a substitution. A complex urban condition is to be analyzed and elaborated anew by this system of duplication.

1. The project aims to transform the river at this part of the city into a "water living room".
2. The new bridge will not only mark the two riversides and the manner through which they link but also propose the "architectonic program for a stay" in the bridged areas.
3. A junction between the older bridge and the new one will have to be possible. The shape for the junction will mark this particular "duplication of the bridge". This bridge's originality will have to do with the non authentic character imposed necessarily by this substitution of a bridge from another. A hybrid urban space can be elaborated through this junction of two parallel bridges.
A high, flexible meeting construction is proposed in order to host meeting activities in the river.

Yerevan's Crossroad

2010-11-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

Seen from the 8th floor of the Shirak hotel, a crossroad in Yerevan, during the night of September 11 - 12.

Weak Monuments in Armenia

2010-09-14T02:59:00.000-07:00

One of the 10 big metallic books (constructed after a consultation of 3000 documents) and one projection from the show "Weak Monuments" in Thessaloniki are exposed in Gyumbri, Armenia, in the frame of its 7th Art Biennial. A new installation interprets this part of the archive; the work was proposed as an idiosyncratic system of reading the city's urban fabric.

This particular presentation organized for the Gyumbri biennale is focused on the material selected from the murder of George Polk, the American journalist whose dead body was found on May 16th 1948 floating on the sea, in front of the White Tower, in Thessaloniki. Polk's last appearance was done while he was entering a boat, in his way to meet the leader of the communist guerilla government of the mountains Markos Vafiadis and have an interview with him; different narrations can be supported for his enigmatic death if we follow the documented material of the particular archive.

For the first panoramic presentation of more than 100 Thessaloniki's public murders, (10 metallic books and more than 30 projections), the chosen exhibition site was the Bar Association of the city itself. In this first show the use of an archive was immediately projected to a description of a city; an urban understanding of the reception of an invisible blood bath of "everyday life" is in the core of the first "weak monument"'s concept of the city. In the perspective of such an interpretation a weakening of the traumatic events organize already an urban performance. The archive itself shows its possible urban and political dimension. It is in this sense that the documentation of the murder spaces (the spaces that receive the murder in a city) and an archive of documents on the events function in an analogous way. In the Biennial of Gyumbri the show was spotting to an important political murder that could be significant for a local reading even today. A single murder takes the space of the showing room. Nevertheless the documents that are shown, as part of a multiple move, can be considered as "weak monuments" only if we access their information in a frame conceived by a multitude of other examples. Only while examining together a population of murders we can get an urban representation. A city is inaugurated when a mechanism of oblivion is installed on a built field. After such an observation, different architectures of control, justification or negation of oblivion can propose the responsibility of different readings about the events. Responsibility is related to a particular weakness that may rule the social memory.

Another text about the weak monuments archive is published on the occasion.

Athens and some thoughts on urban mechanisms

2010-09-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Greek architecture scene is in the same time interesting and problematic following the country’s idiosyncratic financial position in the world. In this condition it seems urgent to think again about the city. The Greek city seems to show a problem of the next decades for the cities of the former west. The city is obviously not only a matter of architecture; on the contrary it seems that architects are distant viewers of phenomena that change radically the city’s consistence. But the most interesting condition for architecture in Greece is the one that is not attentively examined by professionals; the transformations that are taking place now will rule the practice of the city’s constructions in a wider sense during the following years. Athens cannot be thought as the typical western city as conceived some years ago. Athens becomes an exemplary urban congregation that could represent an unknown future city. We have to forget thus for one moment what architects are doing in Greece in order to be more precise describing the Greek architecture: not as a function of what is built by Greek architects but as the complex transformation that takes shape in the Greek capital. The transformation shows in the same time a city ruled by immaterial structures (the city’s digital infrastructures are modernized enough to construct a big part of its communal systems) and -in parallel to this extended immaterial network- a growing problematic materiality appears for the first time after many years in the city streets. The city cannot even feed or host in a satisfactory level its inhabitants. The separation or the schism between problematic material restrictions and "non-problematic" immaterial infinities (both describing normal, pragmatic functions of the present city) is an urban characteristic that may be proved structural for the cities of tomorrow. The population is divided by its relation to the infrastructure. A growing digital network replaces the communal factors of the modern city’s systems. “Participating in the infrastructure” does not only refer to a determination of every infrastructure by digital technologies, (used in order that the water flows in the water network or the electricity is distributed in the extended urban field); many more communal platforms are now already determining the social life of every modern city. The citizens of many contemporary cities are already experiencing the “foundations" of other community structures through digital networks. The platform that was ruling the modern cities as systems of sharing space and as sets of rules for coexistence seem to be less and less important in the construction of urban communities. Other invisible platforms applicable to groups of people communicating via Internet are determining a different social life. In the same time, in Athens, an uncontrolled immigrants wave brought in the empty center of the city different populations. The city was not prepared to accept them. The city's waste and its excrement are the only source of possible life for its new inhabitants. Any concept of waste becomes then crucial for the city’s material function. People are living in abandoned parts of the city. People are systematically searching and collecting different categories of garbage in order to recycle parts of it in order to collect some money. Athens as a city of tomorrow is characterized by its modern derelict empty center. The city's future will have to do with its recent past. Its administrative center was formed as a system of offices and stores that were structuring its street level. A big number of offices are now empty. Many shops are closed. The streets themselves are sometimes inhabited and the buildings that form them are not inhabited any more. The transformation of the city will be decided after a certain control of this city emptiness. We do not know yet what the empty urban centre will be. It is this regulation that will happen with or without the state that will determine the most interesting factor about architecture of tomorrow in Greece, the character and the specificity of a post apocalyptic view concerning the modern remains as an element for the future. Architecture in Greece is determined by the luck of its capital's center. Can this condition give us material to think about an architecture that will perform limited operations with important urban goals? Can some urban strategies be deployed not only in Athens and not only in Greece after this lesson of Athens? The program of the next decades architecture is necessarily fixed: ways to perform constructions in the urban level with minimum cost and maximum of "urban effectiveness". This effectiveness can mean different programs; they can be undertaken in different ways. The character of any possible urban effectiveness and the visions that may lead to action are at stake.

Athens is thus an emblematic city not only because it incarnates a particular relationship to an ancient past; it introduces the western world to the narration of an upcoming global bankruptcy.

Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state: The city was then a decadent small town but it was inaugurated as the capital of Greece because of a strong need to incorporate a glorious past of ancient Greece in the new state's rationale. The new city's plan was proposing from its first plan of Kleanthis and Schaubert the incorporation of the ancient remains in the new city axes. The main part of the existing settlement was on the Parthenon. While the archeologists undertook the to highlight the classical remains in the Akropolis, in order to produce one of the most important symbols of origin for the western civilization, the new city of the Bavarian king had to be installed as a proposed reference and a continuation of the ancient city. Concerning the first modern city plans, a triangle defined by important spots as the Parthenon, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos or the new palace of the Bavarian king introduced the idea of a historic continuation that could immediately relate modern Athens to the glorious time of ancient Greece. Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects, educated in Europe, designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. A concern about the loss of values today may be also related to this inaugurative moment of the new Greek capital, where a forgotten past was proposed to be the past of a state that would have to reinvent its language and its history.

This introduction concerning this interesting city can be enriched by a thinking on urbanism; towards some possible reconsideration of values some new notions determine the elements that constitute a community today. The particular moment we begin an investigation for the city and its condition imposes some constitutive elements for the description of the project. A bankruptcy shows a fertile ground for a reinvestigation of the given; in the same time Athens, is a particular city concerning what can be understood as given; this idiosyncratic city's landscape is formed by a contemporary ground covering a population of ruined fragments. A first series of athenian projects were treating aspects of the bifurcated landscape the city provides to any contemplation of it; explanations are given in an older text written in Greek: a particular consideration of the attic landscape serves as a drive for those works. The landscape of Athens is then not considered as a mere visual result but as an intellectual function that introduces, in a surface contemplation, the consideration of an invisible "civilized underground landscape"; an underground field covers the key of the landscape's constitution. The invisible material, organizes the view of the landscape; a missing element rules the gaze to the city. The loss of the ancient town grants visitors a particular place to "visit" and an idiosyncratic way to contemplate. On the modern city level the visitor can observe this complex urban cover, an artificial, self-sustaining built landscape, presented as always already hiding something "more important" than what it reveals; the modern contemplation of the Greek capital is linked to a mooring that recognizes in the observation of the urban phenomena what is lost under the city's ground floor. An idealized, material, existing and in the same time absent underground space is established. Athens is inaugurated as a modern capital through an installation of mooring. Three of the projects treated directly the existence of an idealized earth in Athens.

The first one concerns a rearrangement of Koumoundourou square; the proposal for an excavation of an area that covers important classical and archaic ruins and a recovering move that follows it, offer a city square in this same area. A double periscope was then proposed for a reconsideration of the rupture between the past (understood as a function of an idealized ground depth) and an obvious present. The periscope served as a tool that systematized both a mechanism of idealization and a way to materialize some invisible undeground.
The second project is called "the one year bridge"; it deals with visible athenian ruins; those ruins are proposed to the visitor as a result of excavation; they lay 4 meters lower than the city streets level. Many areas of Athens are ruled by an undecidability concerning the relation between the lower ancient level and the modern higher one. The "one year bridge" proposes a light construction prolonging Salaminos street to Ermou: a possibility for urban transformations undertaken with light temporary structures is under consideration here. What would a temporary urbanism of this type may lead to? Can we add into a solid urban fabric some important scaffold-like bypasses or street extensions? Insisting on the temporary character of such constructions we may seek the most important changes, experimented with the less solidity. This principle can orient a modern inhabitation of important ruins. How can light, temporary constructions organize important urban acts? Athens is traumatized from inhospitable archaeological voids. It can be locally transformed with the introduction of constructions that may have the structure of the scaffold used by archaeologists. Scaffold-like structures and temporary regulations can transform the city into a field of unfinished projects, research productions in a permanent testing phases. The ruin fields of Athens provide an interesting working hypothesis. The one chosen to be elaborated is the ancient cemetery of Κεραμεικός. A simple prolongation of an existing modern street to one of the more important city axes (Ermou, designed already by Kleanthis and Schaubert in the first modern plan of Athens as a capital of the new Greek state in the 19th century) marks again a continuation in a place where a rupture imposed to the city the void of an archeological site. A traumatic urban act of an excavation intervenes in the street network. The trace of the "one year bridge" overpasses the ruins of Κεραμεικός, proposing a particular view to the ruins of Πομπείον and Δίπυλον that are found there; the wooden bridge provides a new way of contemplating this important but not spectacular ruin ensemble. Maybe this temporal character represented a nightmare for many versions of urbanism of the past; a contemporary urbanism will have to include flexible proposals for some materialization. Cheap, short term materializations would have to replace some of the stable strategies of the past. The question will not any more be to find a correct finished form, but to test alternative possibilities. Another way of understanding an urban field as an archeological territory would be possible if we treated the modern city's equipment as such a system of finds. The Syntagma square project elaborated this idea by proposing transpositions of the piazza's marble stairs in order to install a meditated emptiness. The Athens toilets project proposes an underground toilet system that brings together the ruins and the modern city's literal excrement. A spectacular interpretation of the sewage system techniques is proposed in a city that has a characteristic relation to its underground space. Treating the shit and the ruin form parallel underground systems that could be handled together.
In front of a possible global bankruptcy, Greece may move faster towards an end of financial normality. Athens is in front of a new condition: in the frame of the Greek financial crisis, a dream of return to prior situations may be proved impossible. Athens could be the city of this impossibility; it may also elaborate strategies of transformation, forgetting the past of the city's typical practice and forgetting also some tested old urban strategies, inherited as systematic actions, facing older problems. Some shifting, temporary urban mechanisms can be accepted because of the city's quick transformations. What transformations of the city do we refer to? From the one side a number of the city's immigrants who populated Athens in order to improve their condition are trapped now in Greece without being able to live in a decent way any more. From the other side this same financial condition drives some small businesses to stop their service. This is already obvious in the center of Athens where the presence of emptied shops, free for rent is more and more obvious. In front of this situation we do not seek an impossible final form of a new city but generic micro-schemata that propose systematic answers to typical situations. Systematic architectonic reactions that can run in low budget responses to recorded malfunctions can be proposed with the form of open predetermined platforms: the platforms can frame possible individual contributions by citizens, individuals or the municipality functioning as open calls. The generic schemata could form flexible material strategies related to the general character of an area. Constructions could be proposed as interventions to situations mostly. Maximum changes of situations with minimum expenses would have to form a manual of urban tactics. The questions of drugs, of prostitution, of the important number of immigrants may form an always shifting, continuous urban research; those populations form a moving "unwanted mass" that circulates in the city's core; this is the way those populations are perceived by Athenians and left out of the Athenian urban system. Their urban nomadism creates changes for the real estate; their stability would not make such big profits; the inclusion of those populations into the city’s networks is a legislative target for an athenian urbanism. Those populations remain invisible in a legislative level; we have to invent endings of this invisibility that will provide urban space for any alternative population.
A new Charte of Athens would have to investigate an urbanism of bankruptcy; not a set of rules anymore but as a series of material, possible, local answers, temporary constructions, related to non permanent transformations; the global economy situation, orients towards the unknown. The architecture in front of bankruptcy confronts the challenge of investigating some not normative, neither already tested possibilities : alternative solutions for architectonic problems become obligatory. A systematic research that re-elaborates the values of the early past concerns already architecture and urbanism. Some possible answers constitute narrations that treat the city's particular moment. The answers to this condition may lead to idiosyncratic reuses of wasted material of Athens; the project concerning the Athens terraces was proposed in 2008. A system of metallic frames and an elaboration of old metallic grids formed elements that organized horizontal surfaces meant to cover the city's terraces with a metallic pergola; this urban and architectonic structure could serve as a cooling system; selected temporary vegetation would be added in order to organize visitable places. The project can only be accomplished with a transformation of the legislative frame concerning the propriety right and the possible uses of the roofs in this city. A possible realization would enter this strategic view of a new urban rationale for Athens if it provides a frame for works to be undertaken from the inhabitants of each block.
A similar structure of an empty frame that could welcome reused abandoned material could allow a reconsideration of the athenian street surface. This pattern was elaborated during a workshop concerning a particular area of Athens (Kerameikos - Metaxourgeio). A temporary consortium of Greek architects proposed some works in collaboration with some citizens and interested developers. The one proposed by Antonas office deals with a strategy of the urban surface of the street.
An irregular grid, composed by linear concrete elements, structure the platform of this design. The empty rectangular surfaces are prepared to host construction waste or to reuse unwanted material. The project describes a pattern and, in the same time, it proposes a way of filling the empty surfaces that are formed by this pattern's installation: a visit to the municipality's warehouses of construction materials proves that there are a lot of wasted or second hand materials, not usable because found in small quantities. A construction material can be composed by a recycled waste of the Athens market; glass and aluminum cubes can be treated in order to be usable for those surfaces. The motley material will be used to complete this pattern and finish the surface of the proposed urban floor in an analogous way a traditional Greek tissue, kourelou, was composed by remains of old clothes.

Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz

2010-09-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

Saronic golf

2010-08-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

the Piraeus Tower

2010-07-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

A description and some pictures of the Piraeus Tower were published in Archdaily by Ethel Baraona Pohl.

The tower is proposed as a monument of cancellation. This was the priority of the design. As such the Tower would have to be reinstalled in the port as a pervert, multiple move: at first, the building had to refer to its idiosyncratic past. This simple observation served as the starting point for the building's design. The tower was constructed as a technically challenging structure to prove the 'modern facade' of the seven-year dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974) and remained unfinished till now as the evidence of a failure. The notion of cancellation is the concept that determines the architecture.

The challenge for this design was to reinterpret this short history with an architecture that would treat the existing tower as a monument or as an idiosyncratic ruin. From the other side, an inhabitable interior office space was prescribed by the program of the competition.

A presentation of cancellation may rule the treatment of the modern ruin. A design based on reuse of existing structure with existing local waste materials proposes a pervert recycling of the cancellation principle. The reflection for another version of a Tower in the port, should conclude at a prematurely ruined, unfinished but hospitable building. A particular sophisticated scenography would need to present an inhabited modern ruin more than a symbol of power. A partial presentation of its beautiful derelict structure oriented the elaboration of its facade.

Transparent Cells and Flying Trees

2010-05-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ethel Baraona Pohl posted the Transparent Cells in ArchDaily. The project was published in 2009 from TU Delft and it concerns the design for a New School of Architecture after the old Jacob Berend Bakema's building was burnt. The building interprets visually an invisible network of people communicating through the Internet. It concerns a new school of Architecture and its form is given to the invisible social student life by the placing of independent glass units in an elevation that serves as an interface or as a simple presentation screen. The main elevation is meant to function as web site, where we see users online. Things changed radically in the conditions of a university studio of architecture during the nineties.

The big amphitheatric studio of Harvard's GSD, could represent a structure embodying one of the more spectacular possible frames for an architecture workshop in the early past.

(Harvard GSD, from yan da's flickr box)

Such a concept for a studio has no real practical value today. The conditions of sitting and working on architectural drawings are different. A studio today is a space of mediated communication through existing invisible networks. The networks are present and the communities are formed in flexible ways without that we see them.

The studio was performed as a table work, now it is a work done through screenings. The student works are operations done in front of screens; the works do not differ so much from normal office works as was the case in the past. The network circulation of drawings and photos is more quick and efficient than the traditional public presentation of them. The school works as a tv channel or a newspaper; it has to follow the media rationale: work to be produced in order to be seen and criticized by a community that is not necessarily found inside the school. This condition needs other conditions of sharing that depend more to a net strategy than to a communal space syntax. Communities are formed in an abstract space and the dialogue is to be performed in sophisticated Internet platforms.

metallic box

2010-05-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

(found here)

concrete beds revisited

2010-03-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

The Concrete Beds project is found again in an interesting book by Mona Mahal and Asli Serbest, published by Gerd de Bruyn for Institut Grundlagen moderner Architektur und Entwerfen (IGMA), Universität Stuttgart. The work is presented within an analysis of the concept of speculation and some of its histories in Architecture.

This 2004 project proposes prefabricated beds of reinforced concrete to be planted in a rocky seaside landscape in such a way that they look like scattered caves. Wires and tubes are hidden in the "natural" ground not to disturb an imagery of "semi-natural" life in caves while constituting all the benefits of a hidden infrastructure.

How Architecture learned to Speculate is a limited edition.

transistor archaeologies

2010-03-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

ladders, slides and horizontal bars for a roof field

2010-03-01T03:48:00.000-08:00

An installation of a large number of ladders, slides and horizontal bars in selected Athenian center blocks. The added metallic objects are supposed to be placed by artisans working in Athens without general or detailed architectonic plans: the description for the execution of the construction would be the only design; an indication of the connection points and the type of each connection is what replaces here the architectural drawings. The program could conclude with bridging different city blocks through suspension bridges.

View of Athens from above: the urban landscape hides its upper field and its contact with the sky.

waste design strategies

2010-01-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

Positive and negative re-use.

dpr-Barcelona published last week the waste design project. The challenge was to re-use construction waste in order to built new "buildings". The waste is used in its most "clear" form: in this work the waste can be read either as a series of finds or as a mass. A combination of these two understandings of waste form the design mechanism of this offices "waste tower". A mass of waste is shaped for its main building. Some old big recipients are chosen to organize a green elevation.
We can argue that the reinterpretation of a find is a positive reconstruction of it. We reorganize a strategy for an object while we re-invent a possible re-constitution of it. In a second productive mode the object was deluded in a volume of mixed recycled mass.

How an architecture can be thought in this frame? Architecture will either be condensed in a operation concerning the object or it will occur as a creation of empty spaces in a mass of "lost finds". A complex attitude that uses recycled objects in order to create such voids in the mixed material mass could be the work of a negative design. It is supposed to create negative places out of the use of tanks, kegs and other preexisting structures that can permit the creation of vacant places. In a smaller scale, plain volumes can be used in order to give form to "furniture" designed negatively.

The proposed building can be used as a particular office complex. It is constituted by 3 different distinct volumes: the first is a scaffold designed as a staircase and corridor structure that is linked to the second volume through some light bridges. The second volume negotiates the idea of negative design in the particular case of an installation that receives in its interior old used kegs. The third is a proposed structure that could be named floating garden and may be seen as another tactic for reuse of tanks, stabilizing them through strong and thin titanium beams and columns in order to create a vertical garden.

the flickr set on the project

tv impressions

2010-01-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

We read in Wikipedia that "on an empty channel, an analog TV receiver shows a "snowy" noise pattern. This particular "snowy noise" that was an everyday experience will no longer exist within the next years after the victory of the digital tv. We may already feel that this snow shows something lost. One can create a similar pattern on a digital channel when not using a digital TV converter box.

the last seat condition

2010-01-08T14:22:00.001-08:00

This common phenomenon of people choosing the last bus seats in order to sleep, may be the origin of the Hotel Bus project. An emptied, reused Bus can serve as a space for parallel beds. Find the Hotel Bus in the projects collection, through the "project" tag.

the singer and the armchair

2009-12-22T06:22:00.000-08:00

A new "double" novel written in Greek and published by ΕΚΔΟΣΕΙΣ ΑΓΡΑ in Athens. The story can be projected to the changes of a single room that changes shape and content when different furniture are moved in or out. Plans of the 4 versions of the room are included. The cover maybe represents a fifth version of the room idealized. Ἡ Τραγουδίστρια καὶ ἡ πολυθρόνα. * ** *** ****

inhabited observatory

2009-12-19T05:43:00.000-08:00

Ethel Baraona Pohl's post about the inhabited observatory proposes a reading of the particular building as a constructed balance between the banality of some existing material and the unpredictable distorting power of this same banality. The gap between banality and the visionary character of its distortions can be crucial in this era that may not envisage creativity as a set of ex nihilo extraordinary constructions but in the contrary as a set of unpredictable interpretations of the déjà vu.
An inhabitation of the space between banality and unpredictability, between norm and exception is a possible background to think again on architecture. The inhabited observatory is proposed as such a building: its parts could be encountered fragments of existing buildings, found all over Greece; the building could be read as an accumulation of small storehouses, water tanks, ruined secondary spaces in the countryside; never erected yet with such a voluntary arrogance this semi-ruined material is supposed to transform abstract insignificant finds to a house and a monument. The possibility of an inhabitation of this construction is thus meant to suggest a monumental look to vanishing, unimportant building fragments, never proposed as self sufficient architectonic matter. In the same time the inhabited observatory questions about writing (as a usually forgotten possibility of architecture) and about the constitution of an "empty" area through a construction of its center.

2009-12-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

found in Andy Cropy's blip collection

city floor works

2009-12-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

Munich asphalt and pavements, details, 2009.

2009-12-08T16:47:00.000-08:00

cabin monument

2009-12-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

A particular naming can transform a find to something we used to call a "work of art". The name for this conceptual construction would be "Gaze Monument". We name "Gaze Monuments" conscious transpositions of objects to unexpected areas. Sudden descriptions that are proved similar to constructions. Some things (that could already be writings) explode and reach areas "in which they don't belong"; they then are structurally formed as "gaze monuments". Either provocatively, as here for instance, or silently, objects can be proved the testimonies of "other discourses". The object, an action, a composition or any element installing reality "as such" can undertake the role of a particular definitive transformation. The work of this transformation would be a conscious change of meaning of the element. A Gaze Monument would than be the disturber that disarranges the symbolic order of things. Showing it as a non ordinary piece may already formulate a sabotage strategy.

A metaphoric structure could be for example obvious in the "cabin monument", found during a walk in Munich, 2009: it maybe expresses the possibility of different inhabitations proposed for a stable marble basis. The piece can be shown as an open possibility of hosting whatever statue in the same place. A possibility of a monumentality for replacement could be at stake. We can remember Lenin's first politics of monuments that prescribed wooden sculptures or provisional honorary sculptures for the acts or the heroes of the revolution.
Is the Cabin Monument an empty monument or does it shape the structure of the monumental? The Cabin Monument could be presented for instance as a quest for investigation about the ethical construction of memory. From another point of view the Cabin Monument pose this inverse question: can we think of ethics without memory? Can a provisional monumentality form an enough strong foundation for future ethics? Can ethics exist without a strong, monumental, symbolic order? The Cabin Monument could be a paradoxical word, pronounced in a non existing language or it could function as a particular question; as a destabilizing fragment of reality, in the same time obviously included in reality's most banal side. The transformation of some forgotten objects into important things is a silent work; it is the production of a particular recognition or a perverse reference that can substitute the work of art with a construction of the gaze. Such constructions, such intellectual distortions can form a series of steps in a city level. The city would then be an idiosyncratic museum of banality. Nevertheless such a museum is more a museum of seeing. A "gaze monument" would mark a responsibility for seeing. In the same time it does not require more creative energy then the distorting power of any intellectual occupancy.

Munich and the question of banality

2009-11-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Open discussion with Alexandros Fthenakis in the Architecture School of the Technische Universität in München about the recent work in the TETE A TETE series. The work was this time presented with a rhetorical emphasis to banality and within the dialectics between normality and exception. A short reference to Victor Schklofski and to his "Art as Technique" could maybe form the center of a view to the work. The first point made was that we could begin an architectonic investigation about the civilization of contemporary remains. In a future civilization we would have to handle existing objects rather than create new ones. The inventive character of the future would not be "creation per se" but a work of possible reuses of some existing stuff. This attitude could find its past in objets trouvés strategies and in ready made works but in the contemporary conditions this aesthetic moves turn to a necessary practice, or are marked by ethical characteristics.
The second point had to do with the post production architectonic tactics and particularly with the composition in an archive condition. In this background putting together different things could form the structures of future constructions not only as a necessary acceptance of decadence but as a work of memory. Inhabiting the remaining objects of the past's overproduction obliges to a series of works that include architectural creation into a particular space construction organized out of space fragments. DJ, VJ, SJ are particular modes for treating the plethora of the existing things. The aesthetics of collage can be seen through this point of view as intellectual exercises of directing particular co-existences.

Many interesting comments from the audience followed by many long fascinating walks in the city of Munich, normally considered as boring. Important "finds" invented and series of new notes in the black notebook #19.

an apartment in the keg vehicle

2009-11-22T06:44:00.000-08:00

2 versions for a keg vehicle transformation to an apartment. The space is visited through the roof openings with the use of vertical ladders. A big circular window is proposed for the part of the vehicle that is turned to the front cabin of the truck. For this purpose a reinforcement of this front part will be necessary.

A design in such a procedure, is the formation of a particular naming. Furthermore the deformation of an existing way to name particular things; the importance of a particular find is always in the center of such a procedure. An archeology of a given thing calls an architect to discover, crop, cut, paste, distort and transform. This intellectual act and this architectonic act is ruled by some commands of photoshop. Images have a strange role in this particular archeology of the surplus. We share its items as if we share concepts. Some Sol Lewitt's sentences on conceptual art can have a different meaning here: 'Ideas can be works of art'. 'If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics'. 'All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art'.

A constructive naïveté, where naming and defining is in the same time identified to the artistic character and to the 'work of art' 'itself', is under preparation. We examine fragments cut out from their background and rediscover new possible promises that they could give us. An ironic post digital culture will investigate the depth of this present civilization of the plethora.
The keg apartment is proposed as a program. The keg wagons can be detached from their cars and can form more stable units for a certain period. We can imagine areas where a number of keg vehicles can structure a slow mobile community that could arrange the nearness or the distance to particular neighbors through the particular place that each apartment could have.

The project was published by Ethel Baraona Pohl. Posted also by designboom, abitare, eatingbark, arkitekturaz al dia and some more: wellandgood, doobybrain, likecool, oobject, appzombie, opendeco, io9, expresslayout, fhycse, thedesignblog, kcsr, iamchic, apartmenttherapy, gizmodo, inhabitat.

the hinge as a time structure

2009-11-09T04:56:00.000-08:00

[from the Oxford Dictionnary]

We could construct a possible ontology of architecture based in the concept of hinge. The hinge would then be a generator of every possible architectural condition: the control of difference in space would be undertaken by the hinge. Furthermore : we could read the Georg Simmel's essay about the bridge and the door as a particular silent honor to this architectural piece that is absent but maybe omnipotent in the text. If we keep thinking in a Simmel's background we could also add in this "hinge syllogism" a particular view connecting the possibility of constructing views over the fragmentary and the "holistic". Still the hinge can be proved to be the regulator of this particular mutation from the part to the whole for which Simmel writes in his Philosophy of the Landscape.

parlez-moi de lui

2009-11-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

work shift

2009-11-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

One page stage script for a theater play in Greek.

weak monuments show

2009-11-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

A function of the city as murder place is constructed and shown in the Bar Association of Thessaloniki (Tsimiski & Pavlou Mela - 18.10.2009 - 17.11.2009). The project could be a curatorial one but the curated material is found in existing, real archives of the city and in some significant rooms and halls of the city: lawyers offices, the court house, police stations, the city's morgue, funeral offices, the criminology department of the city.
Thessaloniki's murder urbanism is related to the presentation of the infrastructure of murder; this is done through the creation of another archive including drawings, documents and texts. The drawings describe part of the city's equipment for the reception of murders. This description is mostly done through plans and sections of the places that receive or are awaiting for the city murders. This murder infrastructure is linked to a concept of modern urbanity. A particular mapping of the city through its illicit lethal acts detects the murders as theatrical, unrepeatable city actions. An intrusion in some of the official murder archives materializes the approach to the city's murder infrastructure. In 4000 pages of selected official documents the names of the protagonists were erased. Furthermore a series of texts are printed in the multiple show's catalog: theoretical texts treating murder in the city, historical texts, narrations, short interviews from the medical examiner in Thessaloniki's morgue, from a toxicologist's specialist, from a professor of criminology in the University of Thessaloniki and from other murder specialists. * *

The catalog's picture by Petros Phokaides.

cyprus again

2009-10-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

An interesting table was set with Athanasiou, Yoka, Pilidou, Antonas, Toumazis and Papoulias. Some considerations and reactions after our presentations in Nicosia were recorded, in Greek. The next day, during a long walk, a particular emphasis was given to new unimportant aspects of the heterogeneous city. Unremarkable places still offer the most remarkable views. The new Jean Nouvel's construction site is maybe one of them: the quality this huge dig will not be compared to the final architectonic result. Nevertheless the dig is now a real important building.

Weak Monuments inhabitation

2009-10-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

The room of the spring and the summer 2009 in Thessaloniki, Kastritsiou street 11, close to some important murder sites of the city.

to piraeus

2009-09-13T01:51:00.002-07:00

Traveling towards the North, Aegean sea.

The Chania room

2009-08-23T18:42:00.001-07:00

Once again back to the strange semi ruined convention center MAICh, in Souda, near Chania; a place that should be used as a thriller movie background. Big corridors, strange elevators and paradoxically working photo cell systems for lighting. This year's novelty: a good speed internet connection, working through ethernet cables in these rooms.

KAM 2009

2009-08-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

"Tαξινομητικές κατασκευές, αρχειοθετικοί μηχανισμοί, ιεραρχικές μικροδομές και αποκρυπτικά σχήματα με τον πεζό τρόπο σχεδιασμού επίπλων με ιδιαίτερα ράφια". The poster is made by lambandlamp design group.

London Bridge

2009-08-06T01:42:00.000-07:00

The Antonas Office proposal for London Bridge, published in Arch Daily, by Ethel Baraona Pohl, and also in daily tonic, design(dot)fr & design daily.
Also announced in antonas flickr set.

the 3 walks monument

2009-07-19T16:50:00.001-07:00

London open air bookshop

2009-07-19T16:49:00.001-07:00

Lancaster again

2009-07-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

London was this time very hot and the hotel was unbearable during the evening.

The Prague's Monument

2009-07-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

A sculpture is constructed in Prague, May 2009: the construction is an observation of the roof opposite to the hotel room. The shape of the description is the sculpture's shape: this short film and a series of photographs.

2009-05-13T15:24:00.001-07:00

Greek version of Neufert, old edition of the book that every European architect kept in his cupboard before its content (frequently updated) became digital. We can read Neufert as a Norbert Elias book's extension, covering the changes of what a modern stable life was supposed to mean. Also check anarchitecture.

the crane room conflict

2009-05-09T03:24:00.000-07:00

Many people hate the crane room project. Ethel Baraona Pohl announced it in ArchDaily. It was also published in Phat City, Mippin, damonj.spaces, insidefeeders, bbs.fuyiplaza, archimag, arch.m6699, boiteaoutils, arhinovosti.
The crane room project is proposed through a double strategy concerning the reuse of crane mechanisms.
The first element of this strategy follows the rationale of moving rooms: the bus hotel, the keg apartment, the floating room are part of a vast research about a nomadic housing, reinterpreting existing old vehicles or mechanical particles of a recent past.
The second element proposes an installation of the crane mechanisms. The installation challenges the idea of another narration : it has to do with the apocalyptic mythology of the end of water. A desalination unit is the only technology needed to create sweet water out of the sea. The crane rooms are proposed here as forming a possible complex by the main source of the future's water; in the same time the complex of founded crane rooms allows the preservation of the individual shell and the creation of a landscape out of it. The project is also proposed as a comment about the Internet society, depicting in an landscape project something strangely familiar: a concrete image of this abstract social condition that humanity experiences for the first time in its history: the crane rooms landscape is a well known image. We live in such a landscape even if this same landscape seems so exotic; inhabiting a hypnotic "control panel - cell" the inhabitant of the globe can also be conceived as an inhabitant of a small restricted universe. Through this conception of a distorted social constitution, the crane room ensemble is related to older projects such as the no wall house, the open air housing, the night shelters, the concrete beds or the RealFake house 2.
In these design works, designing is less important than the architecture of the narrative construction; the reuse of existing structures is usually important. An archeology of existing elementary technology and the reinterpretation of it in unexpected ways are crucial within the design process. Designing in some of the examples is a curatorial project that orchestrates existing things.

Piraeus Port Works

2009-04-30T02:05:00.000-07:00

An architecture work in the Port of Piraeus: the custom storehouses and chemical laboratories represented through an archeology of finds. Published for Going Public 08 in Port City Safari, Silvana Editoriale, Milano, editor: Claudia Zanfi.

2009-04-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

Found here in yannikos' del.icio.us account.

2009-03-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Lebbeus Woods about architecture in BLDG blog:

[ ... ] "we’re living in a very odd time for the field. There’s a kind of lack of discourse about these larger issues. People are hunkered down, looking for jobs, trying to get a building. It’s a low point. I don’t think it will stay that way. I don’t think that architects themselves will allow that. After all, it’s architects who create the field of architecture; it’s not society, it’s not clients, it’s not governments. I mean, we architects are the ones who define what the field is about, right?
So if there’s a dearth of that kind of thinking at the moment, it’s because architects have retreated – and I’m sure a coming generation is going to say: hey, this retreat is not good. We’ve got to imagine more broadly. We have to have a more comprehensive vision of what the future is".

accident

2009-03-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

2009-03-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

the amphitheatre house, nominated for the Mies van der Rohe award 2009, presented in arch daily; a text in Greek about it here.

2009-03-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

ALEXANROS hotel Monument

2009-03-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

2009-03-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

Luxemburg Hotel, Thessaloniki, Room 204.

2009-03-17T16:49:00.001-07:00

2009-03-17T16:36:00.000-07:00

Security panel for the port's administration offices, Thessaloniki.

2009-03-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

2009-03-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

2009-03-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

Found in ethel baraona pohl's twitter account.

2009-03-01T02:47:00.000-08:00

The buildings : script in Greek

2009-02-23T03:14:00.000-08:00

2009-02-23T02:41:00.001-08:00

2009-02-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

The Athens House Monument.

2009-01-22T02:25:00.000-08:00

Internal division of the person: construction of the person as an assemblage of separate thematic boxes. Found in dukemagazine.

2009-01-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

Fever in athens.

2009-01-01T05:43:00.000-08:00

The real Fake house 1, also known as the fixed timber house, published in Metalocus 23, architecture magazine and presented on its cover.

The real Fake house 1 in flickr.

On August 11, 2005 a structure was located in Kalamaki, on Mt. Pelion, not far from the sea. The wood frame had been erected, i.e., the construction was in the phase before concrete is poured into the moulds, which in Greece, are customarily made out of boards. The structure was photographed for the first time. On August 16 of the same year —the existing condition of the wood frame was documented, photographed yet again, and videotaped. Design blueprints created from that construction stage, using data and measurements obtained during the visit, although the structure, within the space of a few days, was no longer recognizable.

A restoration study based on the original records was then operated: the study preserves, with archaeological rigor, the frozen image of the structure exactly as it was documented in August 2005, even though the appearance of the structure had already drastically changed. The plan aspires to create some kind of temporary living quarters in the interior space defined by the wood frame and the excavated area under the same space. *

2008-12-31T09:10:00.001-08:00

The air condition Monument, Cyprus, Kyperounta, Troodos Mountain.

2008-12-10T02:36:00.001-08:00

The living room in the Cyprus House, inhabited during the fall semester of 2008. The table at the right was used as the main working place of the residence. The morning light was passing through the kitchen to the coach; a particular smell of coffee was always there. During the night there was a possibility of a wireless internet connection but always very slow, shutting down about 2 o'clock when the unknown neighbor who was using it without locking it, was probably going to bed. Pdf texts automatic readings operated through macBook trivial facilities and film projections on laptops were executed during later night.

2008-12-05T03:40:00.000-08:00

The no wall house describes a place, formed as a conventional household including all the electrical equipment and some elementary facilities of a house, while it is connected to an autonomous sun power station and the internet and left basically roofless. This work is proposed to be installed in adequate landscapes in this accelerating global warming planet condition, together with desalination units that form the water sources of tomorrow. The water depends to power units that desalinates it and power depends to sun. Reverse osmosis systems will be crucial for this treatment too. The work also can be read as a comment to Archizoom or of Superstudio, revisited today.

2008-11-24T17:13:00.000-08:00

Μorning sun in the Cyprus House bathroom.

2008-11-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

Νομίζω πως ίσως πρέπει να γράψω κάτι για το θέμα της ευθύνης. Μοιάζει ηθικοπλαστικό αλλά έχω ευθύνη για την ευθύνη, ενώ -μάλλον- δεν μπορώ να αναλάβω ευθύνη. Θυμάμαι τον Νίτσε όταν γράφει θετικά για την ανευθυνότητα. Και βέβαια θυμάμαι επίσης τον μετά Λεβινασιακό λόγο για την συγκρότηση του προσώπου με την ευθύνη, τον λόγο του Ντερριντά για την ευθύνη: ένα βάρος με γεμίζει για την ευθύνη. Ο άλλος στην ευθύνη γίνεται βάρος. Θα ήθελα να μπορούσα να ανταπεξέλθω στην ανευθυνότητα που είναι τόσο ωραία και γοητευτική. Η ανευθυνότητα είναι ένας παράδεισος. Αλλά ο παράδεισος χωρίς άλλους είναι προβληματικός χώρος. Και η παρουσία του άλλου μοιάζει ευθύς με ευθύνη. Η πραγματική ανευθυνότητα μοιάζει με απουσία του άλλου. Στην καλύτερη περίπτωση η ανοχή του άλλου επιτρέπει την ανευθυνότητα. Κάποτε θα σκεφτώ, νομίζω, πώς η ανευθυνότητα μπορεί να γίνει ζητούμενη. Αυτό θα απέβλεπε ποτέ σε κοινότητα; Θα υπήρχε ποτέ κοινότητα στην ανευθυνότητα; Όχι στις απωθητικές μεγάλες μαζικές κινήσεις πλήθους. Θα έπρεπε να γίνουν εργασίες για την περιφρούρηση της ανευθυνότητας. Ίσως ατομικά πειράματα ανευθυνότητας και κοινές αναλήψεις ευθύνης. Να ίσως μια πρόχειρη μεταφροϋδική σκέψη για το πολιτικό στοιχείο. Άνοιγμα στην ανευθυνότητα η συγκρότηση του προσώπου, δέσμευση στην ευθύνη η μόνη κοινότητα. Ένα τρομακτικό ρήγμα χωρίζει το πρόσωπο από την κοινότητα, ρήγμα που φανερώνεται όλο και πιο καθαρά στη σημερινή συνθήκη. Το πρόσωπο φτιαγμένο από ανευθυνότητα σαν avatar του διαδικτύου, η κοινότητα σε αναζήτηση χαρακτήρα. Και οι κοινότητες της ανευθυνότητας που οργανώνονται στο διαδίκτυο; Κατασκευάζουν είδη πληθυντικών προσώπων των οποίων ούτε την δύναμη έχουμε αντιληφθεί ακόμη ούτε την σημασία.

above athens

2008-11-15T16:46:00.000-08:00

roofs of athens, first prize in architectural competition,

ministry of planning & environment, greece

The project undertakes the unification of some athens blocks through the position of some particular grids. The proposed structure is constituted from recycled grids of the athens metro, the sewerage system, the rain drains. The technology of green houses is used in order to obtain the maximum of green using the minimum of earth and water.

2008-11-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

hairdresser in plateia eleftherias, south Nicosia

2008-11-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

Nicosia Water Tanks presented in Liminal Zones workshop, Nicosia.

2008-11-06T00:34:00.000-08:00

hairdresser, north nicosia

2008-11-02T01:10:00.000-07:00

BUS HOTEL

2008-10-30T01:47:00.000-07:00

Hotel BUS : A small bed and breakfast hotel settled in a transformed bus; proposed for long distances commuting and for "tours" in specific areas. Its idiosyncratic character asks for different inhabitations. Reuse of existing 2 levels bus, design without exterior change of the vehicle.

* * * * *

2008-10-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

* * * * * *

Αριθμοί εκδόσεις Άγρα

2008-10-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

The journey is long only while traveling.

The streets that lead to Nicosia in the south and in the north.

2008-10-11T02:44:00.000-07:00

Under Limassol's pier, 6.10, morning.

2008-09-20T14:30:00.001-07:00

Get your own - Open publication

Interview from the catalogue of the greek participation in venice biennial of architecture 2008.

2008-09-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

venice change of weather, september 2008.

2008-09-15T22:32:00.001-07:00

Mestre, bed and breakfast.

2008-09-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Island Built Event 1 in Galleria Contemporaneo, Mestre, till October 12. * *

2008-08-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

flickr' super market collection

The condition of shopping and some new scenes for it, through an insisting focus in a specific super market in Chania, Crete the city - meeting place for a group of architects, artists and theoreticians.

2008-08-22T01:04:00.005-07:00

the floating room

2008-08-22T01:04:00.001-07:00

The floating room is an empty catamaran formed as a single habitable space.

The floating room is proposed as another way of working within the condition of image archives. It shows a systematic attitude to interpret disjunction. There are 3 elements in this archaeology of the boat that are not immediately obvious. The first element is a precise warehouse door photographed in Crete in 2005.

This door, treated in a symmetrical way in order to represent a simple paradoxical facade, was presented already in 2004 Biennale di Venezia as the no foundation building.The second is the paper “emballage” interior of a NOKIA cell phone, model of 2006. It was photographed and elaborated with distortions and virtual deformations of its images. The third element is a typical catamaran boat photographed in the port of Volos in May 2008.
We can generalize and think about nowadays condition in relation to this work of assembling. This architectonic move of combining 3 separate elements, found in an image archive, gives us an idea about what thinking will possibly be in the next era. Differently than intellectual investigations of the past, we may rather find their future dynamics closer to abstract irrational assembling force. Assembling images may form the paradigmatic field of this future intellectual inquiry. Thinking would rather be a structural transformation of images. An aesthetic treatment of this image potential is performed in the Floating Room project. Carrying in its single form a door, a box and a boat, it structures an unformed narration with neither needing any driving linear argumentation, nor proposing the rational subordination to any concrete, particular logic. This move of assimilation forms the mythological origin of an object without explaining why we could need this result as an objective presence. This may show a future of rationality. A projected form is proposed to be accepted or not. Architecture could possibly replace a part of thinking. Aesthetic priorities are meant to substitute a function of logic. Walter Benjamin would maybe call understand this as a big loss. Vilem Flusser wrote already, many years ago, about this possible future gap. The question about the specific intellectuality of aesthetics remains intriguing. After an assemblage as this one is done, we may accept it or not, build it or leave it, adopt it or refuse it. Adoption or refusal may show the limits of any thought proposed today. An assemblage is not proposed to be controlled within the context of any traditional, rational elaboration. It can be accepted or refused without consideration. In the archive era this may be a possible framework for the future of thinking. If in the past we were working for intellectual hybridity and for multiplicity, within the conditions of nowadays we will have to step back and think within the conditions of an imposed multiplicity what do we have to construct.

2008-08-22T00:55:00.000-07:00

Abandoned semi ruined hotel in Naxos; common visit with Andreas Angelidakis.

2008-08-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

"The continuous monument", to be visited within the next days, only for a few weeks, national road Athens Salonica, between Thermopylae and Lamia; 1 km of light, white blocks creating a line of 2.5 meters high, a personal work with a reference to Superstudio's Continuous Monument.

2008-07-26T05:17:00.000-07:00

athens pavement's grid

2008-07-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

2008-06-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

These days were very hot.

Monument to Transformation

2008-06-15T04:48:00.000-07:00

From the Bratislava's Monument to transformation #7. The Antonas participation here.

2008-06-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

yannikos vassiloulis' sending...

2008-05-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

Working in bed, volos, may 2008.

2008-05-26T02:31:00.000-07:00

The person was taking pictures of a strange derelict youth center in Hydra, thinking that this place is ideal to perform a pharmakis project. The person hears a dog barking. The person finds out that at his right, a dog is corded together with a lamb. The two animals are approaching to him, the dog seems very aggressive. Judging from the barking the dog seams approaching but the two animals have now disappeared in the small streets of Hydra. The person tries to step quickly into a room that is not his house but will serve as a provisory shelter. The person sees the lamb appearing again, the dog is then not far.

2008-05-26T02:26:00.001-07:00

Designing tumbs.