#on dwelling

[lazlomag-blog]

Gino Paoli, Il cielo in una stanza, 1971

Quando sei qui con me questa stanza non ha più pareti ma alberi, alberi infiniti quando sei qui vicino a me questo soffitto viola no, non esiste più. Io vedo il cielo sopra noi che restiamo qui abbandonati come se non ci fosse più niente, più niente al mondo. Suona un'armonica mi sembra un organo che vibra per te e per me su nell'immensità del cielo. Per te, per me: nel cielo. 

[lazlomag-blog]

ON OUR SHELVES_part II

 La Central's Picks...

La disolución de la estancia

Transformaciones domésticas 1930-1960 by José Morales

selected by Nuria Solsona

Domestic domain as something close, personalised and special is nothing new. However, it was a novelty between the nineteen-thirties and sixties. It was brought to light by the concerns of some architects who were worried by social facts that they felt were related to a need for change in ways of inhabiting.

 This book encompasses several examples of the first dwellings that have one thing in common: their architects strove to take the concept of the room as an intimate and comfortable space a step further. These are rooms whose design transformed domestic space, changing the habits of the dweller in respect to space and leisure time. Stretching from the vanguard to the late nineteen-sixties, the examples given detail how domestic transformation has contributed to the approach of architectural space to its use, which is inseparable from the personal.

Le Corbusier started by changing the inhabitant’s point of view, reconsidering proportions, heights, views; Sert domesticated leisure culture and dissolved the room by means of external light; Charles and Ray Eames, without a doubt, created the maximum exponents of a happy celebration of daily life… Many more examples provide an overview of the history of architectural comfort and the inseparable relationship between the psychological and the spatial.

Private and intimate needs are just as much behind the idea of inhabiting as is collective desire. That is why “rooms” always look beyond the window, relieve as much as protect bodies and are dissolved into the exterior landscape of intimate dreams.

This publication won an FAD Architecture prize (2006) in the category of “Thought and Critics”.

                                   “The Interventionists. Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life”. Editors Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette. Catalogue from the exhibition “The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere” organized by MASS MoCA, from May 2004 until March 2005. 

selected by Mireia Saladrigues

This book is not a traditional exhibition catalogue. It works—as its subtitle says—as a manual with tactics for civil disobedience, building low-cost shelters for life in the streets, glimpsing at the behind-the-scenes world of business, performing in front of surveillance cameras, GMO food-testing units, managing free speech and dissidence and all other kinds of tools for developing your own politics. The projects are ordered into four different chapters: Nomads, Reclaim the Streets, Ready to Wear and The Experimental University, making them easy to access. These practitioners, who work more comfortably within a community of activists than in a gallery, might not bring about a social revolution in the age of global capitalism, but they will most likely inspire acts of resistance within our everyday lives.

[lazlomag-blog]

The Found Diary by Conor Creighton (excerpt)

ph: Marco Bulgarelli and Maike Pullo

This text comes from a bundle of old diaries my girlfriend found when she was moving out of her apartment. They were under her sink in a plastic shopping bag. She's nosey, and it was her place after all, so she had to look inside. Even though they were badly damaged we could still make out the incredible tale of a man's life.

Friday Dec 1

Blue skies. I’ve fallen in with a gang who I don’t trust for even a minute. There’s four of them. Grizzly street men. Their smell reminds me – as if I needed reminding – that if I don’t turn my fortunes around fast, I’ll be so far removed from the real world that they’ll never allow me back. They spotted me begging in Defiled Square*. I’m a good beggar. It’s because I’m recently on the streets and I’m young and I guess people imagine a few cents here and there might save me, so they’re generous. The other guys are so much a part of the streets that people just walk past them. They might as well have plaques at their feet instead of cups. Anyway they came over all aggressive at first so I offered them some of my takings. They liked that and it’s then they started talking about heading south. They’re leaving on Monday they told me. If I didn’t want to freeze to death during Polish winter I should join them. I have nothing to loose. I’m in.

*Defiled Square is probably a reference to Defilad Place in Central Warsaw

Monday Dec 4

We took the train this morning at 6am. When you sleep rough, you always wake up early so it was no big deal. We sat between carriages and passed time seeing how far along the aisle we could roll a penny. It was just an excuse to crawl around on the floor looking up the skirts of passengers. We had sardines two days ago. I still get the taste every time I burp… The oldest guy explained our trip like this – because so many homeless men die every winter in Poland, the rail authorities don’t check for tickets if you want to head south somewhere warmer, and survive. In this way, Poland exports its problems and we get a free road trip right into the heart of Czechoslovakia *. We arrived into Prague and marched straight out of town in a hurry. Keep your head pointed at the ground and don’t look up until you see suburb, they said to me. My gang are all big men. Sure they’re withered and broken from years on the street but their shoulders were made working ploughs and factories. Still, they were so scared of running into Czech bums that we spent less time in that capital than the sun does in winter. As we walked the gang traded stories of hapless tramps getting their legs set on fire and dangerous bastards only too happy to chew off an ear to prove a point. I listened and didn’t miss Prague for a second.

*This actually still happens today in Poland. It’s been an unofficial arrangement since the winter of 1977 when temperatures in Poland dropped to minus 40 and almost two hundred homeless men died.  Also, our author’s reference to Czechoslovakia suggests that the trip was made pre-1993.

Wednesday Dec 6

I have two new holes in my socks. They look like cheese. Man is Vienna ever rich. It’s been decided that we’ll stay here till Friday to clean up. Soon as we hit Hungary we won’t get a penny and the best way to see Serbia, they say, is quickly. They told me this morning that the plan was to make Athens early next week. It’s strange, since I set off I didn’t know where we were going, I just knew that we were getting away from a winter that might kill us. Now that I know we’re going to Greece, I’m excited. Austrians don’t have too many bums to contend with so it’s a lot like taking candy from a baby. Pavel stole a scooter. He just walked up to the bike, ripped the plastic off the ignition and had it hot-wired in a minute. We bombed around Vienna like clowns. Whenever we ran out of petrol, we’d just pull up beside another car, Pavel would pop the petrol cap and make me suck and spit the gas from the car into the bike. Every time a drop managed to squeeze past my tongue I’d wrench and Pavel would laugh at me. Next time you can steal the bike and I’ll get the gas, he joked. It was only when he crashed the bike into a lamppost and were both running away, I realised we hadn’t even been wearing any helmets. Pavel’s the luckiest hobo I’ve ever met. 

Conor Creighton has a monthly blog were he publishes short stories, you can check it here: http://www.shortcouples.com

[lazlomag-blog]

Gil Scott-Heron, Home is where the heatred is, 1971

A junkie walking through the twilight I'm on my way home I left three days ago, but no one seems to know I'm gone Home is where the hatred is Home is filled with pain and it, Might not be such a bad idea if I never, never went home again Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why Hang on to your rosary beads Close your eyes to watch me die You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it God, but did you ever try To turn your sick soul inside out So that the world, so that the world Can watch you die Home is where I live inside my white powder dreams Home was once an empty vacuum that's filled now with my silent screams Home is where the needle marks Try to heal my broken heart And it might not be such a bad idea if I never,  If I never went home again Home again Home again Home again Kick it, quit it Kick it, quit it Kick it, quit it Kick it, can't go home again

[lazlomag-blog]

Benjamin Lindenkreuz, from the website project Every Day Louder.

www.everydaylouder.com

[ponderlusts-blog]

to be honest i've been dwelling

all day. all week.

when will the thoughts cease? if all you do is think, then all you have to think about is thoughts.

tell me there is truth to this. or better yet, tell me there isn't. tell me that it is the mark of a genuine soul, a thoughtful person, a perceptive spirit to be constantly bound to incessant thoughts. tell me my obsessive nature isn't eroding my sanity and pushing me further towards the edge of delusion. hah, that's it - lie to me.

dreams offer some release, until they are day-time fodder. and then i'm wondering if that joke we were laughing at last night was once held between us for real, like something tangible, like a small little envelope (paper) for holding and opening and relishing in, because small little envelopes are impossible not to love.

my subconscious cherishes you, but then it taints my conscious thoughts.

should it still break my heart that you were once so attainable? truthfully, it breaks my heart that i should have surrendered so much opportunity and potential to my self-fulfilling prophecy that if i were to have you, it would break me. and this has been my preferred flavour of (melo)drama, but

 i wish you could know that i was once the silliest thing ever, tossing my eyes skyward at the idea of being captivated by a marriage to an ideal. that's all you were, that's all you are, and yet you persist.

i wonder who else can see this.

i wanted, i wanted, i wanted. now i want for something less than wanting.