Jeffrey Kipnis & Eric Owen Moss: Look, you got it all wrong! (March 2, 2015) Part 4

I want you to hear this I was eavesdropping on the admissions committees for the master's degree candidates be quite at Princeton so all the students they Skype in and stand and Michael Stan Allen and Michael Meredith interviewed them and they say why do you wanna come to Princeton and they just won I don't know who he was maybe was the Shires dude easy huh and so the student they said I really want to understand what this architectural discourse is I really didn't understand that I didn't ever knew it was hard and they said what do you mean he said well I was watching Erik moss and Jeff Kipnis on online they had his conversation and I didn't understand a word of it and I want to go to Princeton and learn what I really wonder is if he's a student from here it's trying to figure out how to answer this anyway so we've done four topic three topics construction personal and philosophies intuitions and how to instrumentalize them and last topic is history history history meaning the the intellectual environment were inscribed in we live in a historic consciousness history in terms of how to make history our our way part of history I'm not gonna screw it up I'm gonna respond to his I'm gonna let him do the introduction and so here's Eric this is actually one of the great things about Sark that we can set up a venue like this and talk about a subject like this and invent its meaning and try to understand it so I wouldn't want to claim this is a talk and you see some of these where somebody gives the same talk in 50 places or 50 times it's not that kind of thing and it should be understood and an investigatory spirit this is the guy without history so you have that to look forward to this is the painting by Corby Courbet mid 19th century and to try to talk about what I'm going to attempt to talk about the question I think the way Kipnis and I set it up was was the topic is what's history and in a more conventional sense history we know and use as a point of reference in architecture and more broadly as a point of reference to explain or to attempt to explain what we think is going on in the world and why and what antecedents it has and and and so on with a presumption that what is behind us has some consequence in terms of what follows us that's the that's the supposition what this is this is not an attempt to the Princeton guys in the guy who watched got it completely wrong 100 percent wrong it is not an attempt to set down some kind of esoteric pro-forma that that nobody can understand as an abstraction which is it irrelevant to what you do and extraneous to your life and you just gotta show up here from 12:00 to to get it go on down go on to the next thing my sense is that this is at least for some of you or one of you or two of you maybe more of you it's something that belongs to your own life or could and it's probably something that you have at least a vague conception of in terms of what history is I think we'll find out it has something to do with the meaning of time or what time is and there are words that are associated with with this topic the present what that is or the past what that is or the future what that is or forward or backward or whether these conceptual notions have any real meaning I mean you've heard me talk on a number of occasions about words and the use of what we're going to do something with Frank in the next couple of days and and and the the the connections are disconnections between what you say or what's done I think is is is very much a part of this discussion I don't think I can tell you what history is like here it is there guys like Jeff would probably know these guys but like Toynbee Marx we mentioned last time oswald spengler who were famous in quotes historians who have a format or a way of putting human life together at least in a certain period and saying this is the way it works and I think saying this is the way it works is another one of these examples of us or we or you or me imposing on events and things and items and stuff a structure or an organization maybe because without it it's impossible - go ahead so it's conceivable that that there is no history at all intrinsically it's extrinsic and it has to do with what we need to operate in the world and what gives our world meaning I wanted to make a couple of references to the pointing to the to the painting by corbeil and a reference to the quotation at the bottom which which I've used before so I don't mean to bore you with it but I think it's another example of an extremely articulate and in some ways sad intellectual character in the 19th century trying to explain the need to explain and the inability to explain what he wants to explain can't do it so this is the desperate man who needs history so I'm gonna read you something ok this is a piece of a poem it's very long poem but I pulled out a few sections oh the raw land without end and the sky without end and man fallen out sprawled on the land the pitiless endless land only the man had end and he trembled for how could he breathe knowing all this endlessness how could he fashion here his home how could he walk not an alien here so fear fury ated he smote the land with gorgeous hatred spat yellow venom at the sky shrieked bloated vengeance while endless land and endlessness of sky impassive waited so this is this is a hypothesis it might argue that the history is created as as as a form or as a structure or as a limit in a context which has no intrinsic limits so the raw land without end and here comes 700 BC 200 BC in Nazca which is a colossal concoction made maybe over six seven hundred years by the number of theories about Nagas you probably know it probably seen it there very abstract geometries there are pure geometries there are animals there are plants it goes over an area of the of the Peruvian desert of about 37 miles one mile by 37 miles fascinating which looks to be a kind of conversation between the people who made it in the sky is there a connection between the earth and the sky so there are all sorts of cultures and all sorts of religions and all sorts of manifestations again about trying to put things together because if you can't put them together you don't know how to put one foot in front of another so this is this is an effort to create lines and and boundaries and limits and a frame of reference in a series of associations that would give meaning so the people who made it actually what they do is of some interest you know the desert is a rocky smooth roughly speaking but rocky and the scrape away the rocks then to scrape away the rocks they reveal with sand smooth sand a little bit like beach sand underneath so that's how the lines that's how the lines are drawn so what I'm saying is the desert is nothingness and into the desert come the lines and the lines put down by the people who put the lines down who assign a meeting a meaning to the lines between them and their culture and the earth in the sky and that allows them to move out of hand sprang tool out of tool machine by number sired out of machine the city there you go the city built on guile the man the lands face altered from face of no thing human to man's face limits what are no limits are bounds where there are no boundaries minutes where hours are not space manacled bisected split geometries man symmetry man pattern man measure man exterior izing man to dwell in man's exteriority up flung the city the B Rouge City the devilishly contrived city the ego city the mega no megalomaniacal megalomaniacal the city of supreme delusion the unspeakable city booming and crashing this is one of a series of images that I that I put up here belongs to a chronology of urban and this one I called the city of instinct which is a slightly different discussion than this one but it has to do with a lack of methods or patterns for making a city in terms of streets or building types or collections of buildings in other words no organizational strategy our priori but a piecemeal structure which is assembled and you learn as you do it so I mean I would prioritize that way of learning but this is less the subject than the subject that the city in this conception that the city belongs not to let's make it a port or let's make it on a trade route or let's make it where a religious event took place it's something a little bit more elemental than that it says we make the city to give our life a boundary and a perimeter and a story and our story takes place in the city but it's our story that's why we made it this is from the first piece on the left so this is from everyone's pal Friedrich Nietzsche and it's actually a well-known piece it's much longer than this has to do with something called the cows of the field - the cows are hanging out in the field not your cows different cows and the cows are hanging out in the field and a chomping away and have no idea what the Jess chumped are what they will chomp or what they should chomp they have no memory they're not sad they're not happy they're not any of those things it's it's a condition of not knowing and what's what's of interest to me about this is I think I started off by saying that we need a frame of reference that history is a necessity it's a psychological necessity we need to give references and organize meaning so Nietzsche then comes along and and in a slightly different way says yeah you ought to know that whatever that is or history whatever that is but it's anguish and it's difficult and it's painful and therefore once you've made those limits although he doesn't describe it that way and once you understand the context of that discussion what's history what do you have to do in order to go forward you got to forget it and there's certainly an irony in this and we start off by saying it's a necessity it's a psychotherapeutic necessity it gives a context for a discussion whether it is intrinsically so I'm saying it isn't but it gives a context and if you don't question it then you have a frame of reference from past the present to future and so on so he is saying no yes and then say no and that to do anything certainly to do anything in the arts you need to associate yourself disconnect yourself forget about what you've learned meaning you have to operate outside of history in order to be able to act you have to forget time and the other the other little cartoon has to do with with with a subject Jeff and I talked about a few weeks ago which is whether meaning comes from inside or outside or both or how much of each that there are all sorts of things a bit available to us that will make the the the life circumstance intelligible so they say and I think the answer to this would be that the origins of what you do and when you do and how you do it and why you do it if they're to be the genuine and legitimate have to arise internally so these are really two versions there's a wonderful book it's an old book by an Andre Malraux called the voices of silence and it's it's it's not encyclopedia like but it has I think some of that effect and it's it discusses art from the most primitive cave art which is not so primitive to the current day at least to his current day and he he raised his question in that house of shadows where Rembrandt still flies his brush all the illustrious shades from the artists of the caverns onward follow each movement of the trembling hand that is drafting for them a new lease of survival or of sleep and then there's a quote there from ESPN farther time is undefeated usually I think used with reference to quarterbacks who were washed up and so this is a question of I said at the beginning that history has has everything to do with or what time is although we read a poem that said minutes we're hours or not so some conception of our life in time which clearly has limits and what malreaux is talking about is the durability of art which which we talked about in the past if you make something does it last beyond you and the implication is if you make you if you make something and it out lasts you then in a certain sense you beat time and the painting is also eyes one of the most horrible scene this paintings in the product anybody seen this thing it's when you realize this is on the wall of Goya's house which which wasn't thought lived in the house on the wall I can't walk why the thing I mean it's it's it's so good in a certain way in terms of the poignancy of it but it's revolting and how many turns I guess if you're if you're a 12 year old and you watch what you watch now nothing turns your stomach so I can't speak for everyone but for me it's it's it's an extremely tough thing to look at and as I said it was painted on the wall and then when he died they cut it down they put it took it and put it in the Prado Saturn you will recall there are various interpretations and various symbolisms but saturn among other things represents time and the prognosis was that Saturn's children or one of his children would overthrow him and in the story that turned out to be Zeus overthrowing Saturn so Saturn is going around going around eating and that undid everything I never sinned and so Saturn devouring his children in hopes of preventing what history would say so this is an odd role for history that there's history that there's a story there's a prognosis and he's trying to shortcut or change the story as a story and of course in the end apparently he failed but but there's a there's a broader interpretation of this not so different from malreaux which is time devouring itself you know that that whatever comes up is eaten is devoured goes away and so on so this is this is an image you know probably see again from me it has to do with this the pain of history so there's no history and then we invent history and then we understand history and then history is painful so we ended okay we ended I think the word is eschatology the end of the end of time so there's this famous piece by Isaiah and another one the wolf or the lamb and that beat their swords into into plowshares and this Durer etching which is fantastic it's a wood and edging made at the beginning of the very beginning of the sixteenth century I think war famine pestilence and death the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse apocalypse to the final battle that Armageddon time ends because time is difficult in history we need and now we need a way out and this is this is this is the way out of history one other thing I would say I've said this before that what's that the context that the audience for this image on the knew the story so there's a community that knew the story knows the story knows the biblical frame of reference understand it it's a very different problem than we have today where the stories we tend to talk about we at least this group don't have much traction or legibility outside the group where we're sharing this this is this is an alternative and I think I said in the beginning I can't tell you what it is I think I can tell you what it might be what it might not be and I think this is also a piece of the story and it's antithetical I think to be to it of what I was just talking about that history has something to do with making connections across time and defining what time is and conceivably where it starts and how it might end all of which seemed to me to be conveniences that have to do with our own psychological necessities and not to do with any extrinsic method or system that accounts for what history is so this is also very early and and I like that because I think I think there's there's a great interest in people who think they're up to date and contemporary and informed and we can see that there are actually very poignant and useful commentary it's very old I don't know how this is but 2500 years old or something like that and this comes out of Ecclesiastes so you know the Ecclesiastes with all the rivers flow into the sea and the season full and all of that it's it's a kind of it comes and it goes and it comes and it goes and in a context like sci-arc when there are discussions continuously about new and what's new and make it new and all of that and he's saying it's not like that that the the the new doesn't come along but repetition comes along and further in terms of the idea of history that we don't remember you know the line if it's sandy aniline those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it so this is and there's another answer on the subway wall it says even if you do remember it you repeat it and this is a different one which which says nobody remembers and you might this is also true or has some truth to it the the the things that happen that seemed to be so monumental and a certain amount of time passes and then and then the the importance or the focus or the pertinence of the event dissipates and disappears [Music] so this is this is a famous drawing of Blake that that you know and and again it's not so much what God is as what I or in this case he say God is that it that it comes from the personal and there's a proverb in Proverbs there's Moreau tit done when he sets a compass on the face of the deep so this is another this is another effort I think a biblical effort and then picked up 2,000 years later by William Blake to try to give the world an organizational structure and logic that ratifies our need our process of thinking and our need in this case literally the use of geometry to account for what things are and why they are because God's logic is clearly our logic that's said facetiously and and the writer here is is making the point that one that means all of us that you can't separate your your conceptual model from the fact that it's your model there is no empirical model extraneous to you the model belongs to you it's your model and in in in his view that model includes and this gets back to history of history is everything up to what happened a second ago includes a look backwards and an assessment of what that look means so this is Lucian Freud his his work is comforting by being discomforting I think and so I put this syllogism to get the the lady that's quoted history is an art like all other sciences in other words what it is the history of history in this rendition the history of history is the history of historians I would say following this it's not any particular version which we have found to be empirically so and then the second piece this is from Freud and you can see what it means in the in the painting the weight or the obligation that art is biographical and he's not the only one to say that I remember Thomas Wolfe you can't go home Thomas Wolfe saying the only thing he could ever write about was himself and I can remember people saying to me doing introductions in the last few years you're really just talking about what you do and so this is whether that's true or not or partially true this is this is Freud's sense of what the real meaning of art and I think by extension perhaps architecture is so if if if art if science is an art an artist autobiographical that makes history autobiographical of you if you accept the logic which means history is nothing more or less and it could be more than a personal rendition there's another another great painting and you know you you know this is all the usual art history class or references you know the church is on one side whatever associations you make with that there's a river or a coil on the other side and this is Bruegel 16th century painting and so these guys are tripping over each other and I think I think there there is a story each one has a different problem with vision which I'm not sure that so but it's it's conventionally that each one can't see but each one can't see for different reasons but I think I think the the the broader conceptual point is that who can lead or can anyone lead or does the idea of lead in a discussion in this case of what's history and meaning and time really belong belong to you there is a guy in Greek mythology called Tiresias so some of you may recall Tiresias who was half-man half-woman and he was blind of course and therefore he was the only one who could see so there's an additional component of this that you have to take your eyes away see meaning to understand in order to to understand and then the quote which is from from somebody you probably don't know has something to do with it with a more relativistic conception of the discourse on history that the same things in an empirical sense so if you wanted to analyze what the dirt was or the rocks were or the formation was it's probably relatively consistent and yet the way of looking at it seeing it and understanding it varies from century to century and I think this is again wrong at least in terms of what we're talking about that it varies not only from century to century but it but it varies from person to person this is a last one and it's it's also a quote that that I've used before and I like like a lot and I would say this is not one dump truck it's two dump trucks and if you read the this is this came off the jacket I took it out the jacket the book years ago when I when I when I read the Foucault pendulum because I think it said something absolutely essential about about where we are and the internet and so on so the truck may represent the ephemerality of what we do of culture of civilization of what goes up what comes down there's a memory of it there's no memory of it maybe what and and I think we have to try to describe what that residue or recollection actually means into whom and for whom and then on the other side they throw in manuscript pages on the masters of the world who live beneath the earth that Cantus undermine the secrets of the solar system the measurements of the grape visit and initiation rites Knights of the temple it's as Rosicrucians brazilian buddha now what do they do with it they throw it all into the jewish computer which of course is the only way to figure everything out and and I think well this is this is also useful to all of us because there's a flood of information on the left like there a flood of there's a flood of buildings and cultures on the right and the question for us is to sort out what all of that might mean in the face of an infinite amount of data and information and how to evaluate it and it may be that in the end that's the purpose of history or an idea of history which would give a context and a meaning and a value and would enable you to go into the Kabbalistic computer and sort the pieces out thank you very much I can't wait to get back to Princeton so that was something airing and I mean it I really I know a lot of people online I know a lot of disciplines and I know many characters and a lot of painters and a lot of scientists I don't know many disciplines that have as wide a range of characters in them as architecture does architecture has goes all the way from just you can't believe you can tie his shoes to that and that was really impressive and I I really appreciate I mean it was deeply moving and honest and and incredibly amazing but I was kind of looking around the room and I saw Tom whisk him and I I hate to say this but there's this incredible look of admiration like he like this sort of does he do that I have got to learn to do that like how do you you know do you have to be Jewish to do that is that really and then I was looking at her not and he was saying why does he do that it was a pretty amazing anyway before we're gonna get started let me just put a couple things on a table quickly before this to end this Eric asked the students that signed up for the course for credit to read a book it was the only time he wired during his directorship any student to read a book in the entire ten years and so they he asked them to read a book by John lukács a historian called something of hit was it Hitler was it go the Hitler of history which is historians critical account of five biographical five histories of his Hitler if I got that correct okay but I mean bit yeah so I thumb I went through it Dory's or today it's a kind of attempt to it's like history has a history right so that's what my point is this is a historian who's looked at histories of Hitler written by other historians and to give a critical assessment of it so at this point in time I mean the point of which which I think was an incredibly interesting exercise for him to assign but it basically means we're in something like a metacritic old we're in a position where we're stepping back from being in history as a metaphysical environment to being aware that we're in history as a operating paradigm of how we view the world and we understand what Nietzsche says that Nietzsche that we can be in history but we can step back from it but we're also not out of it yet so we're in a very interesting relationship that we still don't know how to escape our sense of history determining our sense of self our sense of the world our sense of the truth but we also know there's no such thing as a history or the history or more particularly the embodiment or force of history the angel of history as Benjamin would say the history is a force or a power that has its own movement a teleology or an eschatology as he says that history causes changes in its own right this will used to be called the zeitgeist the oh the original meaning of the zeitgeist was a spirit of the times in the sense of a real spirit a real force of time that would cause its own changes in its own right but Hegel thought this is what Marx thought and so we're not there we're but we're also not out of it and I want to remind you that not everyone else is in this and that this has had a parochial and local effect on a small part of the world which we call Western civilization no one else divides the world into East and West it has effect on our art and our history and our mathematics it does produce a kind of science it does produce a great deal of apparatus no no other civilization that uses that does that the other great civilizations that do not use a teleological or eschatological model of the passage of time to use for current models civilizations like the Hindus or the Vedic civilizations that use reincarnation or cyclical models for example don't produce great Sciences or don't produce great mathematics but they do produce great art great architecture great philosophies and so we share I mean architecture for example is shared in all of those great all of those systems although in very different ways art is shared in all of those systems in very different ways and so it's a very interesting thing they don't have great Sciences they don't have great math they don't have great realism in their art they don't confuse their architecture with a science of art is architecture of science is it a service it is a spiritual practice and so these issues I think become very interesting when you understand that history is a local intellectual construct that we are trapped in and just to give you a little bit of before that there was theology or that what we call was we call it religion there was a time when God or religion determined the truth that if you were going to go to hell because you broke the 10 commandments you were really going to go to hell and the fear the eternal damnation of your soul was not a believer of faith it was a fact like putting a match to your finger would burn is a fact and so when you hear someone torturing kids or throwing kids out or killing people that have just come from a bollock clinic because they they're afraid of them and you're here that they did that out of superstition they didn't do that out of superstition they did that out of a fact we call it a superstition they we call it their belief system it's their fact so you have to remember that what we think of as our facts are are facts that are come from our metaphysical environment which determined first by the fact that we live in a historical world but others don't you know and others what we call their superstitions or their mythologies or their faiths practice entirely different practices and so but one of the things that moves through all of these things fairly smoothly are art practices like architecture so I think it becomes an interesting thing so I just wanted to set that as a place to begin with and then we're gonna have a conversation this is the last conversation it has been incredibly fun I hope it hasn't been too private I hope you'll get involved particularly if you've read the Luke Conte story I mean the Lukacs book so you were giving an account of let's say the larger context of history and I think you know the idea of the untimely meditations is with that particular quote from but the larger idea that we need to forget history comes from the use of abuse of history which is a really wonderful and easy-to-read essay by Nietzsche and when he lays out history as a set of techniques when you can use it and when it's to your advantage and when you when it gets abused when it turns into an instrument of politics for example or when it turns in two ways you can abuse it so it's called the use and abuse of history I recommend it to you and one of the ways you this idea that you need to forget it often you need to forget history when it becomes it's an abuse when it's used to against you for example in the question of precedent you know precedent is an important idea in law in the sense that you don't want to change the law frivolously but the question is is precedent an important idea in architecture do what are the persistence ease in architecture that you know for example do should we pay attention to the patterns that are contained in an existing type in a sense of a precedent and honor those patterns for what reason you're at the right volume yeah it depends on how you want to narrow the discussion I mean in in the tiniest sense associations like Tom's doing this thing the 100 whatever it is you doing a list of a hundred oh yeah yeah okay so I was talking to him about a and and and we were just talking about that down what it is that you know Tom's been trying for a while to go around through a group of our characters yeah why go to those characters is another question and it's part of this discussion in a way but but presuming certain people to have an especial expertise and then to list buildings of the 20th century a hundred that that that influenced you that are meaningful to you that are useful to you there's no real explanation of why they're useful or how they're useful or even the meaning of the term useful and all that applies to what you just asked I mean I don't think there's any intrinsic reason why anything that was done yesterday ought to be a model for something which is done tomorrow why should it be so you're asking for you asking that well you're asking me whether precedents are useful I mean when you describe when you wander around and you look at what's done and then you assemble a certain amount of information one thing was in it was of some interest when who sooo how was it here the other day which is not a particularly distinguished lecture in terms of verbage but showed a lot of material that most people don't see from around the world and what you start to understand and it's always fascinating is what you think you know and what you actually know which is not a hell of a lot so I don't know that the precedents that are conventionally recited in institutions like the one you just mentioned may not be the precedent for anything in other words the president for Culver City might be Stonehenge or let's go so what precedent for what reason to what purpose and I think what what I'm saying is that that decision ultimately ought to belong like a lot of decisions that give your life meaning or an attempt to give it meaning belong to you that's all and you have to decide so you could ask someone who said okay I I used a certain geometric frame of reference to make the Sydney Opera House okay I took an orange and I and my associations with geometry go back to proverbs when God put a compass on the face of the deep so I know if God put a compass on the face of the deep I can put a compass on the Sydney Harbour that's my precedent God did it I can do it okay but I mean if if you know that earlier work contains already in it a lot of knowledge about the patterns of life about the akan other words it already contains a lot of work in it and you use that because it's a shortcut to understanding that knowledge and you can build on that knowledge well I don't know if there any shortcuts I mean that's that's the question we're sweating you say I'm doing a studio now and it has to do with prototypes rooftop is a prototype quadrangle as a prototype and the supposition in those is that in fact there are lessons to be learned but the caveat is are there lessons to be learned not if so fact are there are lessons to be learned so that's to be determined that's another model of history rather than just a large metaphysical environment like you laid out I mean that's a model of we can learn from the past by I learned the game quickly so I can move forward with as an expert more expediently rather well that's what happens that's what happens so if you sit here and talk to Wolff and you say the wolf hey we're gonna get to that well I mean wolf whoever it is this week he's very important on this question well you say you say this you say to somebody hey guess what when you work today how different is that from working 35 years ago because what you're saying is in the interim you learned something and what you learned is what how to get from here to there in a straighter line and if that's what you learned maybe the the way you did it at the beginning was better than the way you're doing it now well okay then I'm gonna you're asking me that I was gonna close on this question I'll go ahead and move to it now does it matter to you actually I think you said it in your talk so that's over I know that was so yesterday don't quote me that's so 20 minutes ago I know but you get the can you seem to like the quote people I don't quite understand they're there a point of reference especially some people to me okay useful to me do you mind can I can I just tell you my attitude about quotes this is kind of to do with him but when somebody comes to me and says a quote like he just said what I would like you to think to yourself is so what that's what I'd like to know is do I give a damn what he like I don't care who said it I like to care do I agree well let me take you back to your friend Andre Malraux okay who did I guess one or two things and I think his only point you know the argument that it's the best Greek playwrights aren't Aeschylus Sophocles or Euripides or Aristophanes the best one is at the bottom of the Aegean and you never met him yeah okay because we don't know so mal Rose are and that may be true but we don't know except our supposition as always what we know is what is it then somebody comes along and said wait a minute dinosaurs had feathers after the years of you know so I I think the point is that those those references change and malreaux seem to be saying that what indoors has whatever staying power is I mean if you think Ecclesiastes hangs around so it's not so much it hangs around and Hemingway writes a book and he and and he calls it the Sun Also Rises and the subject of the book is in a different way the subject of Ecclesiastes but he given it gave it a different context in a different meaning so I think you're completely right when you quote something that's not like saying someone so said it and therefore insane you flecked it's not like that but I think it is acknowledging this melrose point which is that if there is some durability which doesn't leave out the possibility that better things have gotten lost because sure as hell in terms of the other point in Ecclesiastes that nobody remembers anything there's probably plenty of good stuff that guy that god-forgotten right nevertheless I would say the reason for some of those quotations which you know Kierkegaard had had a common don't ever quote me which is along don't ever quote me because it's all like this and when you do this when you do this you've you've disconnected all the pieces you can never disconnect the piece if you disconnect the pieces you've lost the meaning don't quote me you lost the meaning okay yeah so weird weird acting in defiance of his a of his admonition so I'm willing to do that all I'm saying is when I put that stuff up or an image up this is a context which lends itself to that for better or worse when I do that that that is not to say go read this go see I would say of any of those things go see the thing in the prado which is sure you do it doesn't mean right I think to honor an effort or efforts by a few people over a long period of time that that have touched on these subjects in very different ways and they're useful if you're dealing with those subjects they're useful and they're productive not by allegiance not by I must sign up for the party of Koya or Romney but I am but but because I know that if I'm trying to learn it's worth it's worth trying to learn and what I would say about this this whether an architect 35 years ago is the same architect today is and if that architect is different and if that architect has learned to expedite over that period of time then there's also an argument that yata unlearn it whether that's intellectual and physiologically possible in other words that you have to start over all the time the argument was always at Saarinen was one of the rare guys that did that maybe Utzon too it started over and started over and started over and sometimes it stumbled and sometimes it didn't but but but the confidence in what they did and the laughs of an enduring confidence in what they did I think would be my answer to depress it in place when you you I know quite a few architects and that this question is a question out of admiration for all of these and although I have to say I prefer the people who are gonna answer you who I think will answer this yes or I hope you will the question is this do you not as an intention or an ambition when you design a work but are you aware of and look forward to the possibility that your work will find a place in some sense in the history of architecture I think the answer I think the answer is yes but I don't know that that's the motive for doing it I was I think the more primary motive would be I mean I was talking about trying to get from here to there and my way which obviously can be criticized from a human point of view for lots of reasons because not only what it includes but because of what it disregards and what problems that makes but for me it was a way to try to deal with a raw land without end that's how I used it and whether architecture gets to be used that way by everybody but you mentioned also in your talk that in some sense if it does then there's been some verification of its staying power yeah it's been my now Rowe was saying people are fighting for that right that you fight for your staying power not not in some sense of because of its promise of immortality but just sort of a verification of content of content right in fact I wanted to say that to the students you oftentimes say meaning and they always and I think it confuses students and also critics that just as a trick next time you hear Eric on a review or giving a lecture and he uses the word meaning substitute consequence just there's all kinds of he means meaning but it can mean all sorts of things it can mean effective meaning it could be performative meaning so if you just substitute architectural consequence it will serve equally to you it's creative but does it have to mean paraphrase what what you just said it we did it it's a really good point and I and I appreciate it and I support it it does ultimately point to the difficulty of talking about anything or writing about anything because the fact of the matter is almost any talking and any writing relies on a series of Associated meanings or supposition all of which are completely suspect or most like somebody can stand up and talk about the past and the present in the future what's that you know the little kid why why why why and so that I think the point is a good point it probably probably applies to lots of discussions with lots of people and I think the one thing that I've tried to do here and in the office too is is to be aware of the fact that what you're saying is based on something and what is it actually based on and is that an enduring basis for for making a decision and if it isn't is that the premise for making decisions like precedence so given the fact one way I think I know that I've come to learn as I go from where you guys going come back here now get out of here sit we don't care about you anyway so the way I a kind of rule of thumb I have about architects that care whether their work gets inscribed in history or not is whether they value and keep an archive of their unbuilt work doesn't always work but it seems to work although it doesn't quite work in this formula you do Reisman does some people do because they think it might be worth a value to their estate you know so they kind of store everything and stuff like that but for example Frank Gehry keeps it all but Frank Gehry when he when he does a project and it doesn't get built or it gets ended he will not think or talk about it anymore as far as he's concerned once a project is out of the movement towards building it's out of his mind completely he loses interested in it totally it has no life for him you know although I think Frank who told you - Frank I mean I've worked with him for a long time I wanted to write a book about ten and Bill projects I trust him it's not that he doesn't think other people might be fine that interested in life but he doesn't I mean for maybe six months I'm sure he was unhappy about losing the China project for the number of months but it just for some reason he just detaches himself from it for example I know three or four unbuilt projects at Frank Gehry that are better than any built project he's ever done as I'm sure you do I can't get him interested in publishing him he didn't even want to do the Peter Lewis house so I mean any of that sort of stuff but I think he knows he feels confident that his work is gonna find a place in history based on his buildings so he's a person who just thinks architecture is the building but I think he also thinks his work will go down in history because of the buildings and these are two people you're gonna be talking to this week and I want to raise that Wolfe Prix I've come to believe earnestly when he tells me and you and I hope someone from this arc this audience will ask him has absolutely no interest in his place in history as an architect in a sense that because of his past because of his cultural relationship to architecture and because of his political relationship to architecture he believes rket the building shapes the lives of people and he believes that a good architect or good architecture thought that way has a profound effect on transforming the lives of people in a political way in a existential way I think he understood that that was the consequence of his growing up in Vienna when he did and how he did and that's all he cares about and he will make I think if we ask him this question you asking this question on Thursday he'll make snide and cynical remarks about yes that's you know I don't care about history yeah you know what I care about is money and all that stuff but he the fact is I really do believe he thinks that an intellectualization of the work the processes of historical consideration the objectification of the work in this environment really our misguiding or have have a tendency to act as misguiding forces in the field and that one must continue to focus on the fact that buildings himself have the transformative power and until you keep that in the forefront you're missing the point of the work and he when he was here with Tom it's the quit he asked it with a lighthearted sense and a love of young architects I think but you can also see the desperation that he's worried that no young architect cares about that anymore even knows it anymore and I tell you something if you listen to the Raymond Abraham I mean I don't think you got this story right but if you listened to his lecture which was an unusual lecture last year he gave and because Raymond is Viennese a detailed retrospective on the roles of various characters including whole line including Raymond in a litany of characters and associated meanings what's inherited and zone and son so he actually constructed an including work that wasn't built and so on so I would say there's there's in many ways more to wolf than Keith Richard I think he's no question about come on that's gonna be short I mean wolf is one of the really he knows I think he's really torn on this issue but I think deep in his soul he would he wants to believe that the legacy of his work will be the performance the psychological political performance of his buildings on a population you know it's what's interesting about that and I realize now I forgot I had a piece up on ingore what which is as far as we know a religious center with temples in other words preserve which excludes a big piece of what is conventionally understood as cities and the interrelationship of people in cities it's a religious zone it's a huge one and it's not understood over time because it's broken and it's lost and the people are gone and all of that so there's another aspect of the relationship of time and architecture or time and art which has to do and how much time we talking about and it's not it's just 20 minutes ago and and so that there are that there are things which which interested me very much which emerge or Riya more with associations that are suppositions you actually don't know I remember this business was Stonehenge and there's somebody stuffed it into a computer and say well it's pretty good for amateurs and then somebody else came along and said no no it has nothing to do with that that's you imposing you on so on and so on so I do think that that in in a contemporary sense I mean I don't know what if you looked at BMW and in 300 years whether the Associated meanings would would still be there or in 3,000 years would they be there and and and the time question is is just a question of interest and I have a feeling it's being asked in a more contemporaneous sense but I think when you look at look at work and I think mal ROS reference I mean mal row started with let's go that's where I picked it up well if you look at David Watkins rise of architectural history which I don't recommend it's a really boring book by a real you will discover interestingly enough however that teaching architecture as a history rather than a technical craft that you can learn by by you could go visit some well-known buildings but teaching it as a history of masters and canonic buildings the first architects that you know that were educated in that system even though they were primarily educated in ateliers were right Corbin Mies so the the birth of modern architecture is the birth of an architect educated in a historical context I mean I think it's a very interesting and that's when issues like the way one travelled to learn architecture was not just a travel to learn construction techniques or stuff or cultural differences but also to visit most important monuments and important so in a sense architecture in a sense we go back when we rewrite our history back to the let's say the pyramids but it begins then and it's a fairly new discipline and you know we don't call ourselves master builders we call ourselves architects and so this is a we rewrite our histories over and over and over again to make them older and older and older again as you know I keep trying to go back when I want to keep going back is again asking ourselves in in what ways do we have history and I'm admitting and what are the possible ways that we're acting historically and not for example I don't think it's true any longer that the legitimate sites historical sites of architecture and historical performances of architecture are real building some real sites and I think it's been a long time since that's been the case I think we've known for a long time in our own field that unbuilt projects have exercised as important a force in the discipline as built projects certainly we know that I mean I don't know I could go you know if I wanted to be obscure I could name all sorts of unbuilt projects but if I don't if I you know let's just say the bibliothèque nationale of cool house or all sorts of stuff your cement build project everybody's got unbuilt projects that we know in the cannon the cannon that we teach in that hundred and that list that Tom will put together all built he's he requiring it to be I'll bill there's another list coming it's but it's it's totally idiotic just to say all built I mean because that's just well it's just like Tom I don't mean to say tom is totally idiotic but it's not that far off tom is a great architect but he himself his own work his best some of his best work is unbuilt work Nora how's he gonna put a second about Nora put it in the second list at the second list of influential undealt work I think I don't you have to ask him but I think anyway but do we start to admit that publication is as important as building you do you sure like to publish oh I don't I don't fact you seem to like to publish a whole lot yeah I don't think you can confuse I mean if you have if you have four or five characters working for 15 years building the pterodactyl you can't replace that with twelve pages in a magazine it's like you're extrapolating experiences there's a complete non sequitur everybody they both so the meaning to the people who did it who shared it and which will probably never at least in a literal sense be understood by anybody who looks at it in a book or in a magazine that's that's the meaning and dance the meaning in a day-to-day sense if you look at what's going on with us with this high-rise building and it's steel and the core is this and the Isolators are that and the ribbons are this and the glass guy and the process of actually going through that never mind meeting with 25 people in the building department and the experts and the peer of you who have 26 opinions on whether the things gonna fall down or not and there's something about it defines your life I mean it's it's in if we're better or there's a there's a tension in it there's you don't know how it's going to come out and I got it and it is completely different then within publishing which is if you're publishing buildings a retrospective okay now we know it didn't fall down or I guess maybe you're now it didn't fall down now we know it didn't fall down and we're gonna show off at the moment and we're gonna tell you how we did all of these things and we're going to tell you as if we knew from the beginning what would end but I can tell you if you came to me three years ago and asked me whether the pterodactyl would get built I would say likely and I think my proclivity to lean in that direction but those columns were standing up there resting for ten years and building so I think that's what it's about okay let me ask you a different quote it's lightly different way you know the story of Giulio Romano and rot and Raphael walking through any any historians in the audience do you know this story Giulio Romano and Raphael walking through and falling into the tomb of Nero's Treasury so what's the story they find out that the climb that they find out that classical architecture was actually painted colors yeah so you know this story I mean here's the problem is I'm gonna tell it I'm gonna make it a good story but I'm gonna get some of the facts wrong and then some stupid historian is gonna correct me scientists okay the point is this all of the Renaissance the point is to history they learned was wrong know that the Renaissance and the Baroque thought all of classical architecture was white because all of the paint and the color had fallen off Giulio Romano and Raphael fall into this tomb in which it had been protected and they discover that all of it including more likely than not the Parthenon and everything else had been painted and so we looked at in at Ohio State discussing besides exactly you know is that it's talked about what I'm saying is there's a perfect case of the building not being what you said I mean that in fact the publication which was new that's the building over time I know but it knows over time there's a story that the best Aeschylus is in the bottom of the Aegean you actually don't know so what they thought that would they were doing is honoring the right and real thing and all they were honoring was a bad publication well I just didn't have the information there's always nothing you have the information they dis love you go if you go to the British Museum is I'm trying to help her nons work here this is if you go to the British Museum had or recently had an exhibition with the Elgin marbles and yes someday you'll go back with the colours yes this is how we think similar if you go to the Yucatan you go to Chichen Itza this is go to the ball court and you go to the ball court and Chi Chi nice and it's all very austere stone then you look up and like the far most obscure corner where you get the least weather and so on and so I realized after five hundred years you see little red and green Nero's house Nero the toughest son of a in the world Trajan dumped his forum on top of Nero couldn't couldn't crush the thing and you it's also true in Nero's house this is a tough guy and all of this Walt it's tough and it was painted with some filigree stuff it was he was mean I mean I don't know about a feet pyromania you know all I'm saying yeah so I just what I'm saying is I don't think that I mean what you're saying is by the time you put the hysterical labor of love into it there's no way you're going to let yourself say that there's an equal different different purposes a different means but in a day to day since you're not gonna live up there are many and I have always been many authentic contexts for architecture that are historical context I mean the role of history what would them so history is no longer weird it no longer has a single authorizing force it no longer has a single ability to identify a context there is no person who can so that if the problem of Lou conscious book is Lukacs is going to arbitrate this discussion as if there will be a final arbitrage you know and our problem today is we maintain market for pot for final arbitration because we do live in historical and rational I know it's funny you know I was looking at this yesterday trying to make a couple images to talk to Frank and Frank dumped some money and sorry but I don't and to you and and there's a prize given and yes name I know and there's a quote that I think that accompanies the price and when I give it to somebody's I have to read the quote I'm gonna have to but I thought it was an appropriate quote and it's from your favorite historian Thucydides yeah it's about the so you know this is Frank contemporary discussion of quotas from 5th century or 4th century Athens and it says something something like these people were born never to be at peace with themselves and to prevent the rest of the world from doing so and that was my caricature of what Frank did my friend my favorite is from 25 rank is 90% of the stuff that's built in the world is and then what I'll I want to add the answer to that was the percentage was too low no but my what I think he should then say is thank God for them you know yeah I know what's coming that leaves a place for what I'm doing that's how else can like what if it was it anyway other places are there questions about history any thoughts any guys from you who read the book you didn't read the book you get you get let me get any student who been pick somebody it was in your class just point to him you read it did you buy the book ok how is the hand that feel buying a book have you ever bought one before alright have you ever been forced against your will to buy a book before no no and you'd heard a Hitler yeah notice how I mean the me the right direction the book itself was interesting where it kind of a like for to me as a personal view on the book is that um how he deconstruct the idea of the era of Hitler as a devil side like not as a figure of devil like it's more of a how and what happened around him and then seeing it critically outside of the historian point of view kind of things so that was really you never start to not trust him I don't personally I don't really trust a historians point of view in terms of when it comes to history like it just yeah but that made me did you not trust lukkage in other words you say personally I don't trust historians and as you're reading this book he's made some good arguments but I don't know at the end I no I don't think so so my question is does that leave you thinking I wasted my time no certainly not it's just so another it's just I know like it's more important for me to know what others think about what other stuff is instead of me saying that this is the truth this is what I should believe in and this is what it's going for kind of thing yeah now there's a book by philip k dick called the man in the high castle it's a book about what as if Hitler had won the war hmm should now read that book alright I'll check it out I mean there are other ways to read this story you know of course anyone else so actually I have a question for you in terms of the discussion not more book you mentioned about they're like sometimes the unbuilt projects are more powerful than the build project and I kind of want to see your point of view if we as an architect value so much of those archives there's so much of a history of unbuilt project then what do you do like where is the definite line between arts as on discourse and architecture as in this course because to me something is not built is there's a lack of sense of real skill into it and then I think that is what it makes difference between the art and architecture but if we value the unbuilt project as more than the build project then where do we stand in terms of the architecture and where do we stand as an architect hmm what do you think about the tower Babel you know it it's a you think well first of all you probably think it was unfinished you don't really think you really do think it was unfinished I I abstain you do I mean I think then built projects I think for example an unbuilt project is a way one architect can communicate to another architect an architectural idea much like a score is the way a composer can communicate to another composer a musical idea the building is a performance it's important but it's not the apotheosis of the competitive of the of the accomplishment but you know this is important and I there are there are issues that belong to the construction of a building that never belong and can't belong to a hypothesis yes or a draw nor models an idea so you also have to talk about who you're talking to or why you're having the discussion I think it's probably pretty clear that something which has a physiology or a geology or a physical presence has greater likelihood of having a much more substantial constituency it talks to a much bigger audience and conceivably an audience which is not a learning audience and we could question whether the learner audience is actually learning or the whether it just repeats themes that it's been taught to repeat so a broader discussion belongs to building I think in most cases now the Tower of Babel whether it was built or not would would be an exception but I don't think that would be the equivalent of Alevis woods drawing wouldn't be no I know it was a cheap answer but then I get then I have like six out of seven of the what they call ancient wonders of the Western world I guess that's a cheap answer to I mean your life is but let's go with an easy with bibliothèque nationale by OMA very influential with influential building actually would have been a horrible library that had been built or here's a better one Andrews agos proposal for the graduation pavilion that Marcelo actually built was actually we've been horrible he thanked his lucky stars the day Eric relieved him of the responsibility of having to think about it but as it but as a proposal as a concept as a way of thinking about using available materials as a way of something that connected the history of the school it's you know old practices about delivering the space about connecting to the pterodactyl I mean it was a really fantastically interesting project that I can teach you that project and you will learn a lot of architecture you'll learn a lot of our communication from him to a certain group of faculty to a limited number of Architects in this context a really profound sketch would say and so I do think what Eric just said is really important each of these things matters a great deal also lots of bill projects by the time they get built end up being compromised by the building to the point well that's that's the other side of the equation that that can you can you hold on to do you know what matters and where you can concede I know I've had a lot of these discussions and some of our friends talking to me and said for you it's you know my way or the highway or something they're not gonna change anything this is just not true I mean I don't know if it's a complimentary or or the opposite but it's not true the process of actually realizing difficult technically difficult issues has to do with a kind of dexterity which is not the same as a conceptual imagining of the project we've talked about this it's a different skill set it has to do with dealing with people it has to do with an understanding of techniques and what might happen that doesn't necessarily always happen what it takes to get it to happen and I think it takes in an association between the idea of the building as drawn and the reality of the building has built in as I said what of the first has to be sustained in the second or you're dead in other words if this is made out of tin and I make it out of Adobe is at the end of the building I mean Disney Hall was stone it's made out of stone that was it now it's made out of metal yeah this is how it was originally won a competition it was made out of stone in fact what happened was they said it couldn't be built but the story is less the issue then somebody made it like I quit you want to build it out of metal go get somebody else you know and you know this goes on every day Liz and Rick's Road museum that was supposed to lo be a load-bearing wall and now it's occurred this that to John it or none we have the same contractor and walked in the same contractor who walked into the the high-rise what's now been called the rapper which has no columns and no beams and said it's great we can make it look like that we're gonna give you columns and went to the owner with that and said we got to put columns in this thing otherwise you know and we said we quit and the owner for the moment stuck with it so yeah I mean that happens in this process and and I think I think the art of it and I think it is an art form of some kind has to do with negotiating a process with with banks with tenants with clients with technique somehow all interrelated with conceptual content and trying to sort those things out any more questions yeah okay no anybody else call in from Skype this better be short super short we can then I'll go back to you and then I'm gonna wrap it up go ahead okay my question is about like the rewriting of history if we're telling the story again and again is then history that we look back on is the time relevant like in last year's bian Ali a lot of the people who were showing showcasing the elements of architecture were showing the dates of when everything was happening and the progression of it is that is that relevant now or can we start looking at history as a catalog and not really take that into consideration I mean you guys decide for yourself if you need those things to be facts all of those trappings are trappings to reassure you that they have a factual 'ti and those factual T's reaffirm their significance for being on the wall they've been chosen from it's not everything from that date so they've been put there to produce a persuasive effect and then they've been given those labels to have that persuasive effect to have the magic trick it's it's a it's what a magician would call a misdirection okay so as long as you understand it's a magic trick with the misdirection and the fact that's on that wall as part of the misdirection then you get to choose as as long as you're not a victim of but you've just paid you paid money to get into the be an alley or you got in for free but you knew you were supposed to pay money then you understand you went to a piece of theater and that you are enjoying the performance of a magic trick either one is okay with me but if you think you've just seen a piece of scholarship that's a fact in some set in some reasonable historical context that you can make a relatively objective judgment then that's your problem then you're just another architect no you know like it seems to support the ban or something yeah right which is histor will remake until next weekend until history will be make again and I love this but they think there is something about the discipline they choose to make history relevant like for example amazing history matters to a point but history's never get confused with criticism or the contractual discourse is irrelevant yeah you just need to know the facts ok the peninsula more whatever but amazing is all based on present ness in fact how many lives you see with this procedure or not so there is something about architecture in terms the value that we place in history there is another diffusion control on ourselves absolutely Eve and moral apparatus to what we do know what you're saying but you're making it you making an assumption you're using a word as if you know what it means I know what it means I know you like no no no we have to assume certain thing we know what you means that it because you've known everything has a second meaning I guess we don't we don't you don't have to us we don't have to assume anything you got to answer whatever you need to assume the fact is what is ESPN said in a literal sense is so automatically so if you assume history is a record of absolutely everything like the Brazilian computer so since it's part of absolutely everything it is part of the picture unless you can see outside of the picture which allows you to hang on so it allows you they don't agree with me well if if you can see outside the pictures so ESPN is technically correct well you agree with me I don't why you're pretending no what I'm saying is how you see outside the picture that's how it you agrees to the Catholic make it even more parochial we're not in Ohio we're on the coast okay yes maybe I can I think I can satisfy both of you in the sciences let me put let me let you let me notice let me call to your attention in the in the sciences what's called the history of science is everything that's not a science anymore so when you study the history of physics you're studying everything that used to be physics that isn't physics anymore when you study physics you study everything is still physics so you study the physics you're not saying in 9th in 1986 we learned this 19 you just say here's the sciences here's what we learned today here's what you got research and then when you go study the history of physics you say this used to be used to think this we quit thinking this because we learned something new but the frame against the same point that her nan made the frame of reference is the history of the atomic bomb the history of the sciences who is the scientists who invented it yeah is it that's not the history it's a tiny piece of a discussion about the structure like man learned a matricide it's a decision Roosevelt and Truman and it's a political learned that when you learn to make an atomic bomb you learn how to make it's not you wouldn't have learned to make an atomic bomb Nevada said ghosts go use that energy to make a hospital I know but or a sublet what he said was in architecture when you learn architecture you learned the history as part of doing the work that's just a convention it's not a well it is a convention convention what we talked about was whether the convention convention operating precedent is intelligent you asked the question I don't think the answer was yes but I mean thank God we're still in that convention because if we're not then we're gonna go back to teaching architecture like a technology well that's not the other option what's the other option so let me close this quickly one last question anybody I cut you off you want to ask it go ahead and your presentation you should include a quote from Ecclesiastes and it was not the King James Version because he's classiest he claims after 3:15 which says the past is the present the present is the present and the future the present say that if you please 3:15 in the King James there are now there are now different translations not only in language but in English so the King James Version of the Hebrew Bible which is what you're talking about has a recognizable translation it's not what you're saying that may be your interpretation there are other interpretations what's the point you like the King James quote the quotation of you show was misleading I thought I mean his misleading in other words it says something that you would wish would say something else if there's translations neither one of you speed the original language I guess the point I was making is that what we have with the presidency you're talking about history and what Solomon was saying what you have is the moment and the moment is similar to quite his process in reality way deal with entities it's occasionally situations well you probably know Solomon well I know why don't both of you I think the quote that I used has to do with memory and the meaning of the quote as I understand it is that people repeat and pede and don't remember overtime what they did they don't learn they don't remember there's no remembrance in my personal experience I recognize that it makes sense to me so I would stand on the interpretation I got to go hang hang I wants a good read Proust he answers both of these problems I just want to remind everybody as we're closing sorry to cut you off but this is a difficult problem to negotiate in 1989 there was a book written called the end of history and last man it dominated political and neoliberal discourse everybody was talking about a very important book there's almost important as the new book capital in one year it was wiped off the map by digital culture so I think it's really interesting to read the book to think about the book and to see the effect of computers it wasn't wiped off the map by digital culture is not at all true it was wiped wiped off the map because the content did I can be fallacious did I step all over your human presentation my ending that's not what happened I don't care but I do it's just my ending what the end of history was followed by a war in Kuwait I know it didn't look like history it ended at all I know so it lost credence anyway forget it thanks for coming guys [Applause]

Channel: SCI-Arc Media Archive

Views: 423

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: History, Architectural history, Historicism

Id: tdVa_4QiA4k

Length: 97min 30sec (5850 seconds)

Published: Fri May 18 2018