TAI-E3156 - Approaches to Writing, Lecture, 25.4.2022-23.5.2022

I could have dropped Salammbô of Gustave Flaubert, my very first book and first mind blowing reading when I was a kid. Or I could have dropped some text of Bourdieu or Durkheim which have been helping me in developping my thoughts and my critics towards our modern societies. The fact is I don´t know too many english academics writing and I wanted to share with you a text of Dogma, an architecture and urban design office from Italy who wrote an essay called "The forest and the cell: Notes on Mosej Ginzburg's green city".

This article talked about the notion of disurbanism and the attempt of installing green cities as a decentralized, distributed and cityless way of living within a territory. This concept made in the 1930's by soviet architects was an attempt to contest urban cities seen as a capitalistic approach of life.

I enjoyed this text as it explained that 100 years ago, we were already trying to think further the ways of understanding our territory and it makes me wonder what could have happen if this idea would have go through and spread all over the world. Would we have the same contemporary interrogations? And would we be fighting climate change?

Unfortunately I can't share this article as I couldn't find it online. But if anyone is interested, I can make a copy of my book. The article was originally published in the n°45 "Into the woods" of Harvard Design magazine

Otherwise I can this text of Niina Käyhkö, Olavi Granö and Maunu Häyrynen called "Finnish landscape studies – a mixture of traditions and recent trends in the analysis of nature-human interactions". The text is neither thought provoking nor pleasing to read but it gave me a really good compelling approach of what is done in Finland for my thesis research. It also gives loads of references for continuing research.

Kiitos

The Wrong Places. A text by Miwon Kwon

I encountered this short text while being in motion, somewhere between plains, trains, buses, and taxis. I guess I was hectically trying to cover my daily reading once I encounter this perl. I believe it was shared with me by one of my colleagues from Inland Academy. It was good timing for me to encounter this text - it has great insights into the way one's relation to his/her/their practice within the professional art field is created within capitalism. In this text, one will find genuine insights from a curator on the way living in the contemporary feels like. Curators discuss her own relationship to time, body in motion, and how she feels the professional art field inflicts certain emotions that become the driving force for operating. While thinking of her thoughts, I am wondering about existential questions one may have in regards to the practice that one is following: what is the value of what I am doing and for whom? Can I change the way I operate and what is the price of it? What is needed to day and who is in charge of my decisions. It is a wonderful short text that I invite you to contemplate together.

http://artandcrap.com/ensayos/ursula-k-le-guin-being-taken-for-granite/

Ursula K. Le Guin ~ Being taken for granite

I appreciate this text because of its simple but really precise way of writing, in between colloquial language and prose poetry, using rhythm and repetition, playing with words. I like the way Le Guin thinks her mind, body and mud through matter and translating it into word-matter, using humour while taking it really seriously.

I also like the way it is built, like a 'loop', starting with "Sometimes I am taken for granite."  and ending with "Do not take me for granite". It' giving me this impression of forming this object 'text', reminding me of the way the object 'book' was described in The New Art of Making Books by Ulises Carrión.

I am now thinking how to have a permeable and porous way of apprehending research through the medium of writing, and how to talk about science while staying sensitive.