On Personal Belongings After a Catastrophe

                     

Musical homage and offerings to a dead musician. Santa Ana, CA, November 2024. Photo by Myriam Mahiques 

1.     Receptiveness

Psychology and sociology continuously refer to objects from a technological perspective which is not related to individuals or the collective discourse.

In his book The System of Objects, sociologist Jean Baudrillard adds the (social) imaginary as a a dimension linked to the object: “The object as humble and receptive supporting actor, as a sort of psychological slave or confidant- the object as directly experienced in traditional daily life and illustrated throughout the history of Western art down to our own day. This object was the reflection of a total order, bound up with a well-defined conception of décor and perspective, substance and bound up with a well-defined conception of décor and perspective, substance and form. According to this conception, the form is an absolute dividing-line between inside and outside. Form is a rigid container, and within it is substance. Beyond their practical function, therefore, objects – and specifically objects of furniture- have a primordial function as vessels, a function that belongs to the register of the imaginary. This explains their psychological receptiveness.” (Baudrillard, 2020). In this sense, personal belongings are not just “things”.

 Emotivity and Phenomenology 

Materiality is essentially physical. It shapes the objects, their fabrication technique, the traces left by time. Materiality is apprehended through our senses which differ according to the culture of communities. It is a concept that expands to the idea of “social” and foremost to the relationship between people and things.

Objects achieve a special strength with the feelings they are assigned to. It could be just a simple pencil which was part of an event; for social groups, it could be a procer’s relic. Offerings are left before statues and memorials, then objects are a bridge between the alive and the dead. 

The element of human perception, the understanding, the intangible part, would be the “atmosphere”. Philosopher Gernot Böhme defines “atmosphere” as a holistic, affective, and sensual quality of a space that mediates between the objective environment and the subjective experience of individuals:

“I have introduced the concept of atmosphere (…) to designate that which mediates the objective qualities of an environment with the bodily-sensual states of a person in this environment; the environment in its entirety generates an atmosphere in which I, as a human, feel in one way or another. (…) I sense in which environment I am located (…). The concept of atmosphere is, according to this etymology, a concept concerning the in-between (Zwischen): between objective conditions and subjective states, between object and subject.” (Böhme, 2014)

China and pottery remnants in Altadena after the wildfires. March 2025. Photo by Myriam Mahiques

In an approach to the sensory expression, the previous paragraphs are pertinent to the importance of our findings in Altadena. We have seen multiple objects of daily life with different degrees of deterioration. Pieces of folk-art stand out among cutlery, toys, décor. The Army Corps of Engineers’ contractors were working with heavy machinery, cleaning lots, and preparing the preliminary excavation for soils remediation. There was no possibility of selecting what would be of value for its repair, recycle or return to the owners. The intangible and emotional aspects were not included in the post-fire management protocol.

 

1.     Possible exhibition of objects

 

Objects have their own biographies. David Howes (2023) writes about the social force of objects: “It is not that this force needs to be “revivified,” though, just acknowledged: “When you see an object reconnect with its family, when they hold an old piece of beading or interact with a pipe, it is not the object which is being reanimated but the relationship which is being rekindled on both sides because of the materiality and sensory connection that happens between them.”

There is also an extrapolation of these objects’ meaning. For example, what was décor, and now is a ruin, could become a piece of exhibit in a museum. An example of this, would be the piece of melted glass from the San Francisco earthquake and fire (1906), donated by Grace Gratton Masterson to the Turtle Bay’s Collection in Redding. The piece is exhibited online and at the museum. In this context, the glass could be exposed due to its mineralogical conditions or because now it is part of the fire collective memory.

 

2.     Brief account from San Francisco history

 

Souvenirs hunters and homeowners looking for personal possession after the earthquake and fire in San Francisco, 1906. Photo from the National Archives.

 

Charles Morris (1906) reports the desperation of people trying to save their household effects during the San Francisco earthquake and fire:

“In the awful scramble for safety the half-crazed survivors disregarded everything but the thought of themselves and their property. In every excavation and hole throughout the north beach householders buried household effects, throwing them into ditches and covering the holes. Attempts were made to mark the graves of the property so that it could be recovered after the flames were appeased.” It is interesting that he has used the word “graves” as if the objects had a life once. Implicitly, Morris has assigned to the households a higher level of importance.

 

3.     Objects from Altadena

 

A shrine that must be in good condition in the aftermath of Altadena wildfire. March 2025. Photo by Myriam Mahiques

Local art among the ruins of Altadena, March 2025. Photo by Myriam Mahiques

 

 

The Installation “Recycled Words” at the Manitoba Museum was the work of KANVA, a group of young architects in Montreal. Curator Maureen Matthews proposed words on the chairs to provoke thoughts. 2015.

The installation shown above reminds us of the single chair “exposed” among the ruins of the wildfire in Altadena. This chair might have been on a porch.  We see it as a gloomy sculpture that carries a memory of the past life in this burnt house. 

A single chair on the new lawn after the rain. Altadena, March 2025. Photo by Myriam Mahiques. 

In Los Angeles wildfires of 2025, lots of individuals grappled with what they wanted to take with them; the difficult selection lasted just a few minutes. From Gillan Telling’s article “What They Grabbed in the L.A. Fires and Why: Tender Stories from Those Who Left Almost Everything Behind (January 12th, 2025), we cite Sloan Pechia’s story who, apart from a letter from her late grandmother, she carried a poem from a book: “I also took the poem “Imagine a Woman,” which was sent to me in a letter from my mom during my freshman year of college. Reading it and reminding myself that I’m strong is why I thought to take it during these incredibly trying times.”

Valuable personal items that Sloan Pechia took with her during the wildfire evacuation.  Photos by Sloan Pechia.

This is not that everyone has the chance to survive a catastrophe. Regarding this, we recommend reading the work of the Lucy Easthope, a British expert and adviser on emergency planning and disaster recovery.  A great part of the management post-catastrophe is the removal of personal effects that may be returned to a bereaved family. “The item may have little or no monetary value but may mean everything to a grieving family; or to a survivor struggling to make sense of terrible events.” (Easthope, 2019). As we have seen in the Los Angeles wildfires, without an “ethic of care” from all responders, the personal effects are indiscriminately removed to landfill or even incinerated.

 “(…) response plans should therefore aim to prioritize personal effects with a principal aim to identify, locate and restore personal property in a timely and accurate manner that allows survivors and bereaved to make as many of their own choices as possible.” (Easthope, 2019).

It is recommended that strategies for devolution and restoration be devised to enable survivors to exercise decision-making authority over their valued possessions, which hold intrinsic and emotional significance. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London, 2020. 

Bohme, Gernot. The theory of atmospheres and its applications. Translated by A. Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul. In Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts. Issue 15. 2014-03-18

Easthope, Lucy. The meaning of “things”. The evolution of an ethic of care in the return of personal effects after disaster 2001-2019. P. 122-128. In Bereavement Journal.org. 2019.

Howes, David. Sensorial Investigations. A history of the senses in anthropology, psychology, and law. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2023.

Morris, Charles. The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. Told by Eye Witnesses. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, ca. 1906.

Telling, Gillian. “What They Grabbed in the L.A. Fires and Why: Tender Stories from Those Who Left Almost Everything Behind”. People.com. January 12^th, 2025.   

NOTE: this post is also published on AIA Los Angeles blog.

https://www.aialosangeles.org/news/news-and-blogs/

Thoughts on "The Wall of Gazes" exhibited at the MOOLA

 

I had the real pleasure of visiting the current exhibition Arteonica at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA. There were the works of several artists, from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, Brazil. 

The work that impacted me the most was "Wall of Gazes" by Argentinians Mariano Sardón and (neuroscientist) Mariano Sigman. The videos, depicted as transforming portraits were mesmerizing. 

All portraits are superimposed images in videos, the algorithms keep on changing until the face is formed or partially formed. 

From Ars Electronica:

"The Wall of Gazes consists of one screen in which visitors can see how portrait images are revealed by the eye movements of many persons simultaneously. Gazes were captured by an eye tracker device. Around 100 participants were seated in front of a portrait image and the device recorded their gazes for 15 seconds. The screen is connected to a computer and a special software displays the eye tracks stored in a database. Portraits are ever-changing composition, according the gazes captured and displayed by the software." 

The eye tracking data was generated at the Muntref Centro de Arte y Ciencia. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Buenos Aires.

It immediately came to my mind the relationship between architectural perception and neuroscience. I researched a little more about this project, and I was pleased to see that it was applied to migrants' memories, to movement, from one country to another as well.

From Mariano Sigman's page:

"Hiwa K tells that border officer ask immigrants questions about the map of his hometown. Most immigrants, like anyone who is asked random questions about the geography of their city, fail the test. This story is the inspiration of our project. We live in small, sparse fragments of our city. The road to school, the bus to our grandmother’s house, the square where time passed relentlessly. Each person has her own city. In this work we investigate this distant memory of an individual’s memory of the city in which they lived. We looked a map while we heard stories by people who moved from Mexico to the United States, from Syria to Austria, from Bolivia to Argentina. Then we reconstruct this, cutting the trajectory of the eyes on a paper map. Because of its own lightness, this map bends when it leans on wood and forms bridges that connect places that are distant in the city, but close in memory."

I think that it would be a step forward to "measure" the perceptions on the architecture that is affected by the dwellers' memories and traditions. In other words, to leave the 2 dimension of the map and see what happens when people is confronted with cultural information on the built environment. And which is the perception of people while observing this, depending on their nationalities and or their studies degree, their intellectuality. For example, I was walking in my neighborhood and saw the -following- homage for the Day of the Dead. The neighbors, I assume, must be Mexican or descendants, but living in the USA, and are expressing themselves with their hearts. Regretting the losses of their young relatives. 

These articulations, the fine details, the offerings, have a real impact on architecture, the altar is like becoming part of it. The facade is completely integrated to the force of culture. Definitely, the three dimension would be worth of farther analysis. 

Altar in my neighborhood, Long Beach, CA. From my personal archives, November 2024.

*All pictures by Myriam Mahiques, November 2024. Please do not share without permission.

Thoughts about "Hoarders"

Many years ago, one of my posts was about people with compulsive behavior keeping lots of staff inside and around their homes. I'm not a psychologist and I saw this from the point of view of a morphologist, just the occupation of the architectural space.

We had a client, back in 2012, owner of an important house, who used to fill up the rooms with vintage objects, up to the ceiling. She had some illegal constructions and upon comparison with the inspector's pictures, we discovered the owner was relocating stuff and even windows and doors. 

I was surprised, being this my first experience with hoarders. I offered her to buy a nice vintage jar, and she reluctantly sold it to me while warning me "be careful, that's the way you begin to pick up". 
She made the effort to have her legalization plans prepared soon, but she decided not to submit them. After a few meetings with the City inspector, the planner and the City attorney, and due to the inaction on her side, she was arrested and put in jail. Until her brother came back from Europe and got everything done: plans got approved, a contractor was hired to fix the house, which was deeply cleaned, and she was sent to hospital. I don't know what happened then, but I promised the brother to keep the original plans of the house.
Now, trashing old plans I had in a closet, I couldn't get rid of this house blue prints (they are genuinely blue), out of respect for my compromise.

Back in 2018, we had another experience, more serious this time, and the contractor taught me the word: "hoarder". He cleaned part of the house to allow us to take the overall dimensions.

All the time I was wondering how they could live in these conditions where all type of objects, clothes, toys, food etc etc was piled up everywhere.

The lady homeowner had psychological problems, but the husband, after many years of living under the circumstances, seemed to be submissive and in full acceptance of the unhealthy environment.

The son, had a separate clean room and bathroom for himself, like a bubble in a sea of trash.

In my experience, the family accepts the situation and everyone tries to create an independent personal space in the house. This is the best thing they could do.

There's currently a series on Netflix called "Hoarders" which captured my full attention. Not that I like the style of "Big Brother" show, I would have preferred a documentary instead of a sort of short performed novels about the disease.

What is stated is that 19M people in the USA suffer from hoarding disorders. And they are showing some extreme examples.

It seems to be a common factor, which is the lack of interest of the son/daughter in a long period of years. They go away from home, being incapable of dealing with their parent/s disorder and when they come back (they are brought back in the "show") they are repentant they have not seen or realized what was going on inside the house in question. Or with the person in question.

It feels weird to me that a son or daughter does not know how the parent is living this way for so long years, but not all families are the same.

Grievances and tears are abundant and worst of all -in my opinion- is the participation of a licensed psychologist who admonishes the hoarder, in the effort of making him/her realize of his/her bad doings, and what is more, she gives a public diagnostic of the psychological health of the hoarder. 

Which doctor would publicly state the patient's diagnostic openly to the world???? "It's a mental illness!" That is stunning, at least in my mind. And of course I am not criticizing her experience and wish to help, it's just I would have preferred more privacy for the addicted.

Of course, she appears to be a counselor and they are not her patients. And I'm assuming the family is being paid to show all the procedures for the extreme cleaning up in a very short period of time, let's say three days, before Code Enforcement shows up. And this is never enough.

An interesting "legality," is that the cleaners must not take the junk away unless the owner gives them permission. Which is very difficult because what is junk for some, is precious to others. If the hoarder does not allow the removal of objects/ trash, then it could be considered a robbery.

A case that has made me sad, so far, is Patricia's, a lady from Indiana, whose house is deeply full of trash accumulated along 30 years, infected by rats, dogs and human feces, the house is collapsing due to the extra vertical loads and all its component materials are biohazardous given the feces and rotten organics have been absorbed by walls, flooring, foundation. The house is unsafe and worth demolition, but at the end we learn Patricia comes back and her son in law (or so relative) is making some improvements in the house to leave it "somehow" habitable. Because that's the main point, is the hoarder able to live back in the house? Is he /she able to get his/her pets back?

Can he or she be treated or is it a sort of dementia? And it is clear that the whole close family needs therapy.

Coming back to Code Enforcement, they shouldn't let the hoarding reach such a critical point because setting aside the decrease of the property(ies) value, it's absolutely unsafe and contaminating. It seems to me they do not notify the family, but just the homeowner, who cannot understand what is wrong.
In the cases I personally know, not a single social worker was sent to the property. It was all related to the building, to the construction. I see it as a weak point.

NOTES: 
All pictures are screen shots from the "Hoarders" show on Netflix.
On episode 5, another doctor is presented: psychiatrist Melva Green, who has shown a lot of support and compassion. And she helps the hoarders (two of them) to get to the root of their problem which -apparently- is a consequence of their poverty in childhood. 

The intriguing poetics of the inside-outside in an open space

 

I've been at the Shipley Nature Center, which has been opened in 1974 with the aim of educating children on how was California (I should say Southern) 100 years ago.

There are several trails, with different objects, including boomerangs and stones that help the teachers to explain history and indigenous life.

Next to one of the trails I've found two wooden tables with objects aligned on it, which I presume are old musical instruments. The shadows were hard and I was delighted to see the game of light and shadow inside the apse surrounded by trees and wilderness.

And I had this feeling of asking myself if I was inside of a special "room" or outside in the open air, it was confusing, specially when I moved around and could capture the darkness while the tables were in full sun.

 

So, after downloading my pictures, I grabbed one of my favorite books, Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and open it randomly, and found these words that helped me reflect on my experience:

"To benefit by all the lessons of modern psychology and all that has been learned about man's being through psycho-analysis, metaphysics should therefore be resolutely discursive. It should beware of the privileges of evidence that are the property of geometrical intuition. Sight says too many things a one time. Being does not see itself. Perhaps, it listens to itself. It does not stand out, it is not bordered by nothingness: one is never sure of finding it, or of finding it solid, when one approaches a center of being. (.....) Sometimes it is in being outside itself that being tests consistencies. Sometimes too, it is closed in, as it were on the outside. (...)

If we multiplied images, taking them in the domain of lights and sounds, of heat and cold, we should prepare a lower ontology, but doubtless one that is more certain than the ontology that reposes upon geometrical images". 

REF. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. P. 214-215. USA 1994.

Though taken out of context, I think Bacherlard's words apply to my subject.

Please do not download my pictures without permission.

Details from ¨Sacred Realms: Temple Murals by Shashi Dhoj Tulachan¨

 

Sacred Realms: Temple Murals by Shashi Dhoj Tulachan From the Gayle and Edward P. Roski Collection.

I´ve been enjoying this great exhibition today at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. It´s impossible to capture the beauty of the whole temple murals but at least I am sharing some details. Please do not reproduce without my permission.

From the Museum´s web page:

¨ The nine oversized paintings shown in this exhibition are all the work of one extraordinary 69-year-old Buddhist monk named Shashi Dhoj Tulachan, a second generation thangka artist living

in Tuksche, a remote village located in Mustang, Nepal's northernmost district adjacent to Tibet.

Shashi Dhoj Tulachan has devoted much of his life to the restoration of a nearby 16th century gompa (Tibetan monastery) known as the Chhairo Gompa.

He is part of a local initiative, the Kali Gandaki Foundation Trust, which is dedicated to raising money to preserve the Chhairo Gompa.

The practice of thangka painting is centuries old and is an art carried out by highly trained monks for the purpose of teaching about Buddha and the tenets of the Buddhist religion. The overwhelming amount of detailed imagery in each painting includes deities, mythologies, and the use of repeated and abstracted design. For those seeking enlightenment, thangka paintings exist as objects of meditation.

The paintings in this collection are not thangkas in the traditional sense. Thangkas are usually much smaller and are rolled on canvas so that they can be easily transported and hung anywhere for teaching. The thangkas exhibited here are similar in size to mural paintings found in monasteries. These paintings also deviate from the rules for the creation of a thangka where the exact use of color, shape, proportion, characteristics and qualities of the imagery are all strictly regulated.

Shashi Dhoj Tulachan has painted this set of images by combining the traditional motifs of one of the foremost schools recognized by high-level monks in Tibet today, the Tibetan Karma Ghadri School, with images that are purely and cleverly of his imagination. The vibrant colors he used are made from natural mineral pigments.¨

Tree bark with "ancient or futuristic" inscriptions

I had to meet a client today and he was late. I was waiting for him at the parking lot of a warehouse, the place was empty and there was nothing interesting to see, except for a single yellow flower at the entrance. Until I got closer to this tree, apparently a common tree, no flowers, a straight trunk.... And I looked in detail, and first of all discovered some spheres adhered to the trunk. 

If you look at the next picture, it is almost perfect. And then, the textures, like tiny futuristic inscriptions. I say futuristic, as they remind me the perforated cards that were used at the beginning of the computers era.

But there was still more.

A weird stain, a natural carving as a hieroglyph.....

A tiny spiral and a rectangular depiction without bark, like Indigenous symbols,

And a man made inscription, very old I suppose, like initials.

I am always fascinated with barks but this time I've got more than expected. I hope you enjoy my "abstracts," I'm posting them as an homage to PI day.

The medieval Hereford mapa mundi

Two details from the Hereford Mapa Mundi. Screen shots from my computer

The SXIV medieval Hereford,  is the largest intact mapa mundi that is not comprehensible as a modern map, because it is the representation of the Medieval view of the world, with its architecture, history, monsters, animals. It pictures the human knowledge in only one piece of art.

Though the unconventional orientation has been to east, when it is turned around, some geographies are recognizable, like Italy, the Northern of Africa, Greece.

The Victorians considered this map a monstrosity, because it has an ancient characteristic called ¨augmentation:¨  the horror vacui of the first cartographers made them fill the ¨map¨ with all kind of figures -from the real or mythological world-, even with non existing rivers, mountains.
Watch this video to learn more about the Hereford map:

As a bonus:

A Babylonian world map, known as the Imago Mundi, is commonly dated to the 6th century BCE. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria, Urartu and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river" (Oceanus), with seven islands arranged around it so as to form a seven-pointed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps