http://www.karenyontzcenter.org/mindbody/inspiration/default.htm
". . .While playing with Alex on the floor with some trucks and blocks, he began to show me how to build a house. First laying down some blocks and then telling me to build walls, correcting me when I did not build it right. It was as if my parents were sitting with me and my blocks as a child, showing me how to build my first house. It was at this moment with Alex my two year old son, telling me how to build a house, reinforced those same "rules of building" my parents had shown me. It wasn't about the colors of the blocks or the shape of the house; it was about the foundation, the walls, and the actual construction process. . ."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please refer to the URL for more details, if interested.
I recall my son building with blocks, then my daughter gleefully delighted in knocking them down. It seems to be human nature to knock down that which is built up. I am not sure why. Maybe its competition. Maybe its just wanting to know the effect of gravity. Maybe its a way of asking to see another way of building. Maybe not. Not sure. In the urban world, it is economies that dictate the decision to raise a building, and replace it with another. Sometimes beautiful architecture is destroyed in this way. Sometimes Nature makes the decision as in the force-of-nature against human settlements. And, sometimes ideology causes the destruction. There may be an aspect of greed and envy in such affects. On the other hand, it may be just trying to get it right, or to see other possibilities. The following excerpt from an article on Iraq may be related to the process:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ECPR/publications/eps/onlineissues/autumn2003/feature/persram.htm
". . .This raises one of the fundamental themes of postcolonial studies and of the future of Iraq: modernity, or, more to the point, modernities, and who has the monopoly. If there is only one modernity, the challenge for Iraqis is about how to maintain their modernist secularism, whilst retaining a non-Western identity. The character of this challenge can be seen in the way the recent demolition of Iraq's cultural heritage has been discursively constructed. A council member of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq compared the destruction to the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in 1258, and the 5th-century destruction of the library of Alexandria. Some of the most important artifacts of a civilization whose origins rival, in narrative power, those of Western civilization were destroyed. Millions of books were burned, thousands of manuscripts and archaeological pieces stolen or destroyed, ancient cities ransacked, universities trashed (Robson, 2003). The US Defense Department had made it a priority to protect the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, but the US Civil Affairs Brigade in Kuwait - despite promises made to (note) American researchers - were not able to protect, in time, museums, libraries and the sites of historical heritage. Intentions do not withstand Donald Rumsfeld's response to the looting and destruction, which is a prime example of how culture is not a discrete category that is mappable onto neo-liberalism, but is instrumental in making itself true and empirically verifiable. A free people, he said, is free to commit mistakes and crimes (Salhani, 2003). The concept of freedom, as conceived by one of the hegemons of corporate globalization, is thus revealed: it includes the ability of newly-formed subjects of 'old-fashioned European-style colonial occupation' (Ali, 2003) to exhibit to the world the willingness and capacity to self-destruct, thereby reducing the civilization they represent to an irrational episode within the Fukuyamian terminated history that is already forgetting it. Western - specifically American - modernity retains its monopoly. "
I try to make specific connections to art and architecture in my postings to the list. I would encourage all subscribers to the list to do the same, since this list is for discussions of art and architecture, and basic design and applied design.
.H.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "brian carroll" <human@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 3:32 PM
Subject: building peace (vs. architectural war)
> [title: heads-of-state // state-capitals]
>
> the cold war was a war in our minds
> (consider vietnam in today's news)
>
> it was said to be won in the physical
> yet the mental war never stopped
>
> it is time for a new peace between worlds
> between the minds, to work together
> towards a new peace, and the physical
> to work towards a peace yet manifested
>
> the cold war inside us must stop
> it is destroying us all, everything about us
> that is good, decent, worthy as people
>
> we are not each other's enemies,
> ourselves our greatest enemy and
> without friends, we must protect our
> selves both together and apart
> as our futures require this
>
> it was never binary, or if so, the physical
> war was won, the mental war was lost.
> though the analogue of each is more
> towards true, both lost-and-won, each,
> and changing, no need to keep fighting.
>
> new grounds, foundations, relationships.
> new diplomacies, actions, possibilities.
> it starts with peace, of mind, of bodies.
>
> to forgive, a necessity to be freed,
> memories remain, the pain, forever witness
> yet change and transformation bring futures
> never imagined, dreamed, or foreseen
> and magic happens here, between us
> humans in all walks of life, in many ways
>
> cease fire, of the mind, of the bodies
> cease the destruction of the bodies, of the minds
> the insanity of war lives within people, to-day
> daily, never ending, and relentless
>
> please, please bring peace
> please remember the children, all children
> young and old, who have suffered, are still
> suffering, from the pain of this unending war
> please bring peace back into the world
> into the hearts, into our lives
>
> may it transcend our limits
> and bring us into another world
> where we are brought back together
> from the brink of insanity, into today
> and ready to act for all, with all in mind,
> in body, to build a new world as one
>
> --
> The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
> To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
> To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
> Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
>
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
". . .While playing with Alex on the floor with some trucks and blocks, he began to show me how to build a house. First laying down some blocks and then telling me to build walls, correcting me when I did not build it right. It was as if my parents were sitting with me and my blocks as a child, showing me how to build my first house. It was at this moment with Alex my two year old son, telling me how to build a house, reinforced those same "rules of building" my parents had shown me. It wasn't about the colors of the blocks or the shape of the house; it was about the foundation, the walls, and the actual construction process. . ."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please refer to the URL for more details, if interested.
I recall my son building with blocks, then my daughter gleefully delighted in knocking them down. It seems to be human nature to knock down that which is built up. I am not sure why. Maybe its competition. Maybe its just wanting to know the effect of gravity. Maybe its a way of asking to see another way of building. Maybe not. Not sure. In the urban world, it is economies that dictate the decision to raise a building, and replace it with another. Sometimes beautiful architecture is destroyed in this way. Sometimes Nature makes the decision as in the force-of-nature against human settlements. And, sometimes ideology causes the destruction. There may be an aspect of greed and envy in such affects. On the other hand, it may be just trying to get it right, or to see other possibilities. The following excerpt from an article on Iraq may be related to the process:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ECPR/publications/eps/onlineissues/autumn2003/feature/persram.htm
". . .This raises one of the fundamental themes of postcolonial studies and of the future of Iraq: modernity, or, more to the point, modernities, and who has the monopoly. If there is only one modernity, the challenge for Iraqis is about how to maintain their modernist secularism, whilst retaining a non-Western identity. The character of this challenge can be seen in the way the recent demolition of Iraq's cultural heritage has been discursively constructed. A council member of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq compared the destruction to the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in 1258, and the 5th-century destruction of the library of Alexandria. Some of the most important artifacts of a civilization whose origins rival, in narrative power, those of Western civilization were destroyed. Millions of books were burned, thousands of manuscripts and archaeological pieces stolen or destroyed, ancient cities ransacked, universities trashed (Robson, 2003). The US Defense Department had made it a priority to protect the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, but the US Civil Affairs Brigade in Kuwait - despite promises made to (note) American researchers - were not able to protect, in time, museums, libraries and the sites of historical heritage. Intentions do not withstand Donald Rumsfeld's response to the looting and destruction, which is a prime example of how culture is not a discrete category that is mappable onto neo-liberalism, but is instrumental in making itself true and empirically verifiable. A free people, he said, is free to commit mistakes and crimes (Salhani, 2003). The concept of freedom, as conceived by one of the hegemons of corporate globalization, is thus revealed: it includes the ability of newly-formed subjects of 'old-fashioned European-style colonial occupation' (Ali, 2003) to exhibit to the world the willingness and capacity to self-destruct, thereby reducing the civilization they represent to an irrational episode within the Fukuyamian terminated history that is already forgetting it. Western - specifically American - modernity retains its monopoly. "
I try to make specific connections to art and architecture in my postings to the list. I would encourage all subscribers to the list to do the same, since this list is for discussions of art and architecture, and basic design and applied design.
.H.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "brian carroll" <human@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 3:32 PM
Subject: building peace (vs. architectural war)
> [title: heads-of-state // state-capitals]
>
> the cold war was a war in our minds
> (consider vietnam in today's news)
>
> it was said to be won in the physical
> yet the mental war never stopped
>
> it is time for a new peace between worlds
> between the minds, to work together
> towards a new peace, and the physical
> to work towards a peace yet manifested
>
> the cold war inside us must stop
> it is destroying us all, everything about us
> that is good, decent, worthy as people
>
> we are not each other's enemies,
> ourselves our greatest enemy and
> without friends, we must protect our
> selves both together and apart
> as our futures require this
>
> it was never binary, or if so, the physical
> war was won, the mental war was lost.
> though the analogue of each is more
> towards true, both lost-and-won, each,
> and changing, no need to keep fighting.
>
> new grounds, foundations, relationships.
> new diplomacies, actions, possibilities.
> it starts with peace, of mind, of bodies.
>
> to forgive, a necessity to be freed,
> memories remain, the pain, forever witness
> yet change and transformation bring futures
> never imagined, dreamed, or foreseen
> and magic happens here, between us
> humans in all walks of life, in many ways
>
> cease fire, of the mind, of the bodies
> cease the destruction of the bodies, of the minds
> the insanity of war lives within people, to-day
> daily, never ending, and relentless
>
> please, please bring peace
> please remember the children, all children
> young and old, who have suffered, are still
> suffering, from the pain of this unending war
> please bring peace back into the world
> into the hearts, into our lives
>
> may it transcend our limits
> and bring us into another world
> where we are brought back together
> from the brink of insanity, into today
> and ready to act for all, with all in mind,
> in body, to build a new world as one
>
> --
> The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
> To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
> To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
> Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
>
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html