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/

The beauty of ethereal structures

Let us remember some definitions of "ethereal:"

Of or relating to the regions beyond the earth

celestial, heavenly c : unworldly, spiritual

lacking material substance : immaterial, intangible

 marked by unusual delicacy or refinement

suggesting the heavens or heaven 

Characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; 

intangible, airy

Of the celestial spheres; heavenly. 

Not of this world; spiritual. 

Chemistry: Of or relating to ether. 

light, intangible

Existing in the air; resembling air; looking blue like the sky; aerial: as, “ethereal mountains,”  Pertaining to the hypothetical upper, purer air, or to the higher regions beyond the earth or beyond the atmosphere; 

celestial; otherworldly; as, ethereal space; ethereal regions. 

tenuous; spiritlike 

characterized by extreme delicacy, as form, manner, thought, etc.

It seems to me that after some years of a continuous fashion of organicism in architecture, not the one emulating Wright´s forms, but the literal shapes of the animals and plants, there´s a movement in architecture that´s more spiritual, sustained by the lightness of materials and as a revival of the Asian beauties. The metaphor of ¨ethereal¨ in all its references, is always present.

I´ve compiled these examples from the last weeks, and there´s more to come. Enjoy.

Cantonese Opera. Bamboo structure designed by architect William Li. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Cantonese opera is one of the major categories in Chinese opera, originating in southern China's Cantonese culture. It is popular in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia. Like all versions of Chinese opera, it is a traditional Chinese art form, involving music, singing, martial arts, acrobatics, and acting.

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

London architecture collective Softkill Design has joined the race to build the world's first 3D printed house, announcing plans for a plastic dwelling that could be built off-site in three weeks and assembled in a single day.

The single-storey Protohouse 2.0 will be eight metres wide and four metres long and will be printed in sections in a factory. The parts will be small enough to be transported in vans and then snapped together on site.

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/02/13/protohouse-2-3d-printed-house-by-softkill-design/

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has been named as the designer of this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which will be a cloud-like structure made from a lattice of steel poles.

The semi-transparent pavilion will occupy 350 square-metres of lawn outside the London gallery. Two entrances will lead inside the structure, where staggered terraces will provide seating for a central cafe.

Sou Fujimoto describes his design as "an architectural landscape" where "the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life [is] woven together with a constructed geometry".

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/02/14/sou-fujimoto-to-design-serpentine-gallery-pavilion-2013/

Stockholm 2013: talks at last week's Stockholm Furniture Fair were held beneath an installation of 11,000 patterned paper sheets by Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh and Finnish artist Kustaa Saksi.

Wingårdh and Saksi staggered the pieces of paper up from the corners of the rectangular area to create a dome accessed by an arch on each side.

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/02/12/stockholm-furniture-fair-installation-by-gert-wingardh-and-kustaa-saksi/

Steilneset memorial. By Peter Zumthor

Architect Peter Zumthor designed this memorial on an island in Norway to commemorate suspected witches who were burned at the stake there in the seventeenth century. Via dezeen magazine. 

This disappearing Church - one of the 14 winners of the "Building of the Year Awards" for 2012. See them all at  http://archdai.ly/boty-12

An experience in Chichen Itza

Photo by Joe Mendel

I've been reading Michael J. Crosbie's experience in Chichen Itza and I can imagine his feelings, though, being born in Buenos Aires, a big city, I'm accustomed to vendors and people bothering us in trains, buses, while walking, children asking for money everywhere in the heart of the City. But it's even worst when you are trying to concentrate on the sacredness of a mystical place.

Michael Crosbie is the Editor of the architectural magazine Faith and Form. Here, his words:

I remember it being a very hot day. I had traveled with friends and colleagues this past April on a pilgrimage to the ruins of Chichen Itza, Mexico, one of the places on my architect's bucket list. Now I stood at the threshold of this monumental site, ready to sacrifice myself to the heat (and the occasional iguana) to learn some deep, sacred truth. The anticipation of this adventure, which was organized by the Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality, was almost too much to bear. How would we receive these incredible religious ruins? What secrets would they admit to us as we wandered among them, immediately and over our next few days in their presence? What spiritual transcendence could we hope for, experiencing these mute stone structures of an ancient civilization, one whose primary traces were the mysterious, sacred buildings they left behind? And then it all went…terribly wrong. As I drew closer to the ruins, making my way through a densely forested pathway, I was approached by a child, imploring, “Want to buy a handkerchief, mister? One peso, almost free!” A bit farther on, as I strained to see on my right the outline of the El Castillo–that dramatic flight of steps to the heavens–an alarming growl rose from just off to my left, the sound of a wounded, angry animal of the jungle. Was I about to be consumed before consummating my tryst with these sacred stones? No. It was just another vendor, his long table spread out with souvenirs, blowing into the carved wooden head of a jaguar, the cat that used to rule these ruins. Another vendor next to him hawked tee-shirts, and another beyond offered onyx paperweights carved in the likeness of a portion of the male anatomy, detailed in every way. And there was another vendor, and another, and another, as far as the eye could see. But I still hadn't seen a blasted ruin! We arrive at pivotal sacred sites around the world, our spirits ready to be lifted into communion with ancient truths, to dive into the deepest pools of transcendence, and someone is trying to sell us gee-gaws. Or we turn a corner in Paris, ready to be floored by the aura of Notre Dame, and it is covered with scaffolding. Or it is just closed for the day…no explanation at all. What is the pilgrim to do? The next day in Chichen Itza, we came early. Really early–the ticket sellers hadn't even yet arrived in their booths as we milled around, counting out exact change. I rushed with my ticket down the pathway, not a soul in sight. For a while, maybe only 15 minutes, it was just me and El Castillo, this mysterious mountain of stone that refused to tell me anything. I sketched in peace and scribbled notes. I then walked to the epic ball court nearby, with its rings of stone protruding as witnesses to the ghosts of gamesmen who might hope eternally in vain for the ultimate “do over.” I sat against a wall, the humidity beginning to rise, and looked for a long time at the two facing ball-court walls, silent in their secrets. More notes, more sketches. I was grateful for the silence.

http://faithandform.com/editorial/archive/45-2.php

Space perception of the ¨once blind¨ person

The Graeae´s eye. El ojo de las brujas grises. Pintura digital de Myriam B. Mahiques

I´ve begun reading a very interesting book, ¨The Visual Dialogue. An Introduction to the Appreciation of Art¨, by Nathan Knobler. In page 14, he quotes professor J. Z. Young, an English physiologist who experimented with individuals born blind who, in their later years, were enabled to see.

I´d like to reproduce some paragraphs, as we, architects, tend to think that spatial perception is the same for everybody. At least we recognize cultural differences in our way to comprehend the space (let´s say the architectural space) but this is related to knowledge and brain training. Let´s read:

¨The once-blind person, now physiologically normal, does not ¨see¨ the world immediately.

The patient on opening his eyes for the first time gets little or no enjoyment; indeed, he finds the experience painful. He reports only a spinning by sight, to recognize what they are, or to name them. He has no conception of a space with objects in it, although he knows all about objects and their names by touch. ¨Of course,¨ you will say, ¨he must take a little time to learn to recognize them by sight.¨Not a little time, but a very, very long time, in fact, years. His brain has not been trained in the rules of seeing. We are not conscious that there are any such rules; we think that we see, as we say, ¨naturally.¨ But we have in fact learned a whole set of rules during childhood. (*)

Young goes on to say that the once-blind man can learn to ¨see¨ only by  training his brain. By expending a considerable amount of effort, he can gradually understand the visual experiences of color, form, space, and textures.

These experiments suggest that the sensations we receive have no meaning for us until we know how to order them into a coherent perception. Sensation is only one part of perception. Also included in the construction of a percept is the past experience of the observer and his ability to combine sensations into a meaningful form. To perceive something requires that the observer make a selection of the numerous sensations which are significant for the construction of a particular experience and disregard those which are irrelevant. As Young points out, this requires training. The untrained observer cannot make sense out of what he sees before him.¨

(*) J. Z. Young. Doubt and Certainty in Science. Oxford University Press, London, 1951, p. 62

A city's memory through the wind

Portsmouth flood. From metro.co.UK

Too much has been said about cities and memories. But to relate them to weather's memories, it's not common. Though, I'm always missing my beautiful Buenos Aires and every time I think of it, I remember terrible cold and hot days, huge storms and even snow there was a few years ago.

This story by Italo Calvino, author of the great book The Invisible Cities made me think about it. Its name is Wind in a City, from the book Dark Numbers. Here, my favorite part, enjoy!:

Storm in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, 2010. Posted by Sebastián López Sánchez. Flickr.com

Something, but I couldn’t understand what. People walking along level streets as if they were going uphill or down, lips and nostrils twitching like gills, then houses and doors in flight and the street corners sharper than usual. It was the wind: later on I realized.

Turin is a windless city. The streets are canals of motionless air fading into infinity like screaming sirens: motionless air, glassy with frost or soft with haze, stirred only by the trams skimming by on their rails. For months I forget there is such a thing as wind; all that’s left is a vague need.

But all it takes is for a gust rising from the bottom of a street one day, rising and coming to meet me, and I remember my windblown village beside the sea, the houses ranged above and below each other, and the wind in the middle going up and down, and streets of steps and cobbles, and slashes of blue windy sky above the alleyways. And home with the shutters banging, the palm trees groaning at the windows, and my father’s voice shouting on the hilltop.

I’m like that, a wind man, who needs friction and headway when he’s walking, needs suddenly to shout and bite the air when he’s speaking. When the wind lifts in town, spreading from suburb to suburb in tongues of colourless flame, the town opens up before me like a book, it’s as though I could recognize everybody I see, I feel like yelling, ‘Hey there!’ to the girls, the cyclists, like shouting out what I’m thinking, waving my hands.

A room´s description with haptic perception

A sensual Victorian interior. From eureka-california.com

I´ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray many years ago, and I should read it again under a new point of view. For example, we can read Juhani Pallasmaa´s book on haptic perception and then, complete the ideas reading Oscar Wilde´s novels or essays about arts and decoration. These paragraphs are from Chapter I of The Picture of Dorian Gray, don´t miss it:

Victorian interior with tall French doors to the garden. From weesiang.com

Another sensual interior from johnobrienartist.com

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

The symbolism of the storming and demolition of the Bastille

The Storming of the Bastille. Watercolor painting. 1789. By Jean Pierre Houël. Wikipedia.org

The notion of a respect for cultural heritage, especially one that lay outside one´s own tradition, was in large part an Enlightenment idea. But the Enlightenment also ushered in a new period of heightened destruction -the French Revolution- and new reasons for the demolition of monuments where their deliberate erasure took on an ideological flavour: this was an iconoclasm that was anti-clerical rather than intra-clerical. (...) In the Revolution, rationality was to replace superstition and divine right with equality. Many churches and cathedrals were desecrated and closed or turned into Temples of Reason. Manor houses, castles and abbeys burned. The storming and demolition of the Bastille (....) was an attack on the embodiment of royal authority. Teh Bastille prison was targeted despite holding only seven prisoners, none of them remotely political. It was a symbol of state oppression rather than a significant site of the practical exercise of that power.

The critic Georges Bataille went further, suggesting that monuments do not just symbolize an enemy but are in themselves the enemy:

It is obvious, actually, that monuments inspire socially acceptable behaviour, and often a very real fear. The storming of the Bastille is symbolic of this state of affairs: it is difficult to explain this impulse of the mob other than by the animosity the people hold against the monuments which are their true masters.

Tha Bastille´s stones were broken up and sold as souvenirs -secular relics almost- a commodification process repeated with the fragments of the Berlin Wall 200 years later.

Plan and view of the Bastille. From Project Gutenberg eText 16962.jpg From The Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Epochs of the French Revolution by H. Goudemetz 

TEXT REFERENCE:

Introduction of the book The Destruction of Memory. Architecture at War. By Robert Bevan. Page 21. London, 2007.

The science of architecture

¨THE Science of Architecture, followed out to its full extent, is one of the noblest of those which have reference only to the creations of human minds. It is not merely a science of the rule and compass, it does not consist only in the observation of just rule, or of fair proportion : it is, or ought to be, a science of feeling more than of rule, a ministry to the mind, more than to the eye. If we consider how much less the beauty and majesty of a building depend upon its pleasing certain prejudices of the eye, than upon its rousing certain trains of meditation in the mind, it will show in a moment how many intricate questions of feeling are involved in the raising of an edifice; it will convince us of the truth of a proposition, which might at first have appeared startling, that no man can be an architect, who is not a metaphysician.¨

REFERENCE:

The Poetry Of Architecture Cottage, Villa,Etc (1881). By John Ruskin under the name of ¨Kata Phusin¨. P.1

Read the book:

http://www.archive.org/details/poetryofarchitec005277mbp

Environment and feeling

Forest. Image from educacion2.com

¨The problem of how environment and feeling are related comes to a head with the question, can a sense of spaciousness be associated with the forest? From one viewpoint, the forest is a cluttered environment, the antithesis of open space. Distant views are nonexistent. A farmer has to cut down trees to create space for his farmstead and fields. Yet once the farm is established it becomes an ordered world of meaning -a place- and beyond it is the forest and space. The forest, no less than the bare plain, is a trackless region of possibility. Trees that clutter up space from one viewpoint are, from another, the means by stand one behind the other as far as the eyes can see, and they encourage the mind to extrapolate to infinity. The open plain, however large, comes visibly to an end at the horizon. The forest, although it may be small, appears boundless to one lost in its midst.¨

REFERENCE

Space and Place. By Yi-Fu Tuan. Spaciousness and Crowding, p. 56. Minnesota, 2007

The city and its symbols

Palmanova

Consecration cross, Norfolk, UK.

The city is a place, a center of meaning, par ecellence. It has many highly visible symbols. More important, the city itself is a symbol. The traditional city symbolized , first, trascendental and man-made order as against the chaotic forces of terrestrial and infernal nature. Second, it stood for an ideal human community: ¨What is the Citie, but the People?¨ True, the People are the Citie¨(Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act 3, scene 1). It was as transcendental order that ancient cities acquired their monumental aspect. Massive walls and portals demarcated sacred space. Fortifications defended a people against not only human enemies but also demons and the souls of the dead. In medieval Europe priests consecrated city walls so that they could ward oof the devil, sickness, and death -in other words, the threats of chaos.

Lotus garden, India

Masonic church

REFERENCE:

Space and Place. By Yi-Fu Tuan. P. 173. Visibility and Chaos. University of Minnesota. 2007

Pictures´references:

Palmanova http://www.fsgfort.com/DB/C083/30/19a.jpg

Consecration cross http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1394962

Lotus garden http://debu7370.blogspot.com/2009/10/shri-shirdi-sai-speaks-2nd.html

Masonic church http://media.photobucket.com/image/city+and+symbols+/FangShen/

Scratch and sniff events at theaters: the scent of the movies

Japanese house surrounded by nature. How great it must smell! Picture from arch-sc.com

Architecture and senses. Here is another example, not exactly for architecture, but I can imagine it must be interesting to be sitting at the theater, watching a movie, and in the meanwhile participating with our senses. My husband reminded me that in Farenheit 451, Bradbury mentions a tactile sensation at the theater, I don´t remember, I have to read the book again. The system explained here is a simple board containing different fragrances, that you put below your nose. This is an excerpt from the article by Leonie Cooper, for Guardian.co.uk:

¨Scratch and Sniff, is a series of events aimed at enhancing our understanding of the arts through smell. Each month, a group of around 40 people gather to sniff perfume while watching film clips, or listen to talks about geography and history. This event is called Scent of the Movies and involves sampling unusual scents like Jasmin et Cigarettes, and then matching them to film clips – the idea being to make us think of what a film might smell like.

James Craven, a perfume expert, gives my thoughts about Jasmin et Cigarettes a nudge: "Like Garbo, Dietrich or Harlow in a satin gown," he says. I find myself starting to imagine that sultry 30s starlet Joan Crawford. Suitably stimulated, we watch Marlene Dietrich, dressed for the cabaret, in the 1930 film The Blue Angel. "What does this scene smell like?" asks Lizzie Ostrom, co-founder, with Craven, of Scratch and Sniff. "Sweat!" one man shouts. Other more pleasant suggestions include powder, patchouli and hairspray.

This isn't the first time fragrance has been used to intensify an artistic experience. Walt Disney wanted to spray auditoriums with jasmine and incense during screenings of the 1940 film Fantasia. Then there are the famous failed attempts to introduce smell to TV and cinema audiences in the 1950s, such as AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision. The film-maker John Waters lampooned these in his 1981 film Polyester. Before the film started, cinemagoers were given a scratch-and-sniff card featuring such delicious odours as pizza and farts.¨

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/08/scratch-and-sniff-smell-cinema

Haptic architecture: the eyes versus hearing

Eye. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

¨In Lucien Febvre´s view: ¨The sixteenth century did not see first: it heard and smelled, it sniffed the air and caught sounds. It was only later that it seriously and actively became engaged in geometry, focusing attention on the world of forms with Kepler (1571-1630) and Desargues of Lyon (1593-1662). It was then than the vision was unleashed in the world of science as it was in the world of physical sensations, and teh world of beauty as well. ´42 Robert Mandrou makes a parallel argument: The hierarchy (of the senses) was not the same (as in the twentieth century) becase teh eye, which rules today, found itself in third place, behind hearing and touch, and fra after them. The eye that organises, classifies and orders was not the favoured organ of the time that preferred hearing.¨

The gradually growing hegemony of the eye seems  to be paralell with the development of Western ego-consciousness...¨

From The Eyes of the Skin. By Juhani Pallasmaa. Page 25.Great Britain, 2005

Assumptions through lighting

Image from archiseek.com

I began reading ¨Dubliners¨ by James Joyce, and would like to share with you the first paragraph, where the main young character is looking at the priest´s window, day after day, trying to understand if he has died or not. The light through the window is the only element he has for his assumption.  Phenomenology and the architectural perception represented in the light, is part of the building´s architecture, in its minor scale: the window.

¨There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of the corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world, and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softely to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.¨

DUBLINERS, by James Joyce. Page 9. USA, 1976.

Párrafos de ¨El Vértigo de la Sobremodernidad; Ciudades del Anonimato y Turismo Etnográfico II¨.

El texto que sigue, pertenece al excelente artículo del Dr. Adolfo Vasquez Rocca ¨EL VÉRTIGO DE LA SOBREMODERNIDAD; CIUDADES DEL ANONIMATO Y TURISMO ETNOGRÁFICO. II Parte.¨. Dejo abajo el link para quienes quieran completar la lectura. Las fotos pertenecen al artículo del Dr. Vasquez Rocca. 

¨Las figuras del desplazamiento –el viajero, el vagabundo, el paseante, el peregrino, el emigrante, el exiliado, el expatriado, el turista– trazan sus recorridos transitorios o permanentes en medio de geografías divergentes, de lenguas ajenas, en medio de objetos y rostros desconocidos. El viajero, el ser en tránsito, figura antropológica de la diferencia siempre enigmática e inquietante, cuya trayectoria en los márgenes modula los espacios simbólicos de la modernidad es alguien que debe ajustar cuentas con su propia condición desplazada, con los materiales volátiles de la identidad y hacer del "hogar" no ya un lugar físico sino "una necesidad móvil", una tienda de campaña, un deseo cambiante pero permanente– de "otro lugar", un característica tensión hacia otra parte.

Aquí, según cabe aclarar, no se trata de la figura romántica del viajero, sino de una tumultuosa y agitada masa de pasajeros recurrentes; flujos que se agolpan en las aduanas y que no dan lugar precisamente al descubrimiento de la singularidad del otro sino más bien al recelo, la resignación, la jurisprudencia o la xenofobia. Pero quizá algo de aquella investidura persiste, incluso cuando la globalización no ha dejado ya territorios "desconocidos" ni extrañezas que sorprendan demasiado a los propios emigrantes: se tiene ya una imagen, mil veces reiterada, del lugar al que se llega, una idea de la lengua, una colectividad previamente afincada, una visión de los objetos casi universal. Lo que persiste es justamente la distancia de la intimidad: lenguas, olores, sabores, ritos, estereotipos, rasgos que "caracterizan" la pertenencia a una comunidad y que suele aludirse como "intimidad cultural".

A este respecto, la generación de una iconografía, una re-creación plástica del imaginario patrio, un trabajo y una experiencia artística compleja en la que el sujeto emigrante, sujeto en crisis por razones políticas, sociales o culturales, vive un intenso transe fantasmático con el espacio, ya sea el que abandona, el que recorre, el que ansía o al que llega, poniéndose a su vez a prueba con los otros en los que despierta la potencialidad de tolerancia o de hostilidad. Objetivamente el viaje migratorio no es sólo espacial, sino también –como hemos señalado– tránsito existencial.

La necesidad expresiva configura una iconografía del extravío individual y social. No se trata de refugiarse sino de extraviarse, lo que hace de la representación del viaje una metáfora del olvido. En la pintura contemporánea el fenómeno migratorio adquiere así expresiones que van del imaginario del viaje como registro turístico, la inmigración ilegal y las variadas formas de la deportación. Del turismo a gran escala en la era de los trasatlánticos al fenómeno de los balseros cubanos, de las Bellas Artes al etno-arte, multi-cultural, híbrido, o chicano ciber-punk. Estas manifestaciones del arte contemporáneo conforman la memoria de la diáspora, modos de reapropiación psico-artísticos del territorio, de la "necesidad móvil" del "hogar" que perdura bajo la forma idealizada de un retorno al territorio que se añora.¨

http://www.atinachile.cl/content/view/974017/EL-VERTIGO-DE-LA-SOBREMODERNIDAD-Y-LAS-CIUDADES-DEL-ANONIMATO-II-Por-Adolfo-Vasquez-Rocca.html

Enjoying negative emotions

Abkhazia. Picture by Sergei Loiko

Georgian refuges in Abkhazia. Picture by Sergei Loiko.

When I posted the abandoned houses´ pictures, I commented I felt a kind of attraction for them. The same happens to me when I see some pictures of ruins, and this is not that I am not sorry about the situation that caused the ruin. For whoever shares my feelings, here I have some excerpts from the article ¨The paradox of horror¨, by Berys Gaut, published in the book Arguing About Art, edited by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley.

Ruins of a house. Picture from site.mynet.com

¨One can also enjoy other ¨negative¨ emotions. One can enjoy disgusting stories, and there is a minor genre, poular on college campuses, of ¨disgust¨movies (...)The negative emotion of anger can also be enjoyed: irascible inidivduals sometimes seek out situations in which they will have an opportunity to get angry. Likewise, it is possible to relish a feeling of quite melancholy, dwelling on the sorrows and disappointments of life, and weeping for the sadness of the world.

Phenomena of this sort have been noted by several philosophers in the last decade, and have been seen as key ingredients in the solution of the paradoxes. (....) Two kinds of theories have been advanced to explain how the enjoyment of negative emotions is possible, but neither is entirely satisfactory as it stands. The first is the ¨control thesis¨, develpoed by Marcia Eaton, and refined by John Morreall (...) Morreall holds that one can enjoy negative emotions when one is ¨in control¨ of the situation which produces the emotions, where control is understood in terms of an ability to direct one´s thoughts and actions. (...)

The second, more promising view of how it is possible to enjoy negative emotions has been developed by both Kendall Walton and Alex Neill. They deny that these emotional responses are intrinsically unpleasant. They both speak as if it is a purely contingent matter whether or not people enjoy the emotions themselves. It is not the emotions themselves that are intrinsically unpleasant, they hold, but , rather, it is the objects of the emotions which are unpleasant or disvaluable.¨