09.05.00 : diatecture

Tues. 9th May

Again, sorry for being so long away. But I'm back now! I was fascinated with the 'living in books' thread. It obviously is something that many of us feel quite strong about. I was stumped myself I have to say. Stumped by my own question! Just couldn't think of a 'single' book that constituted a residence for me. At least not recently. I think it may be to do with having spent the past few years in a rich migrant relationship to reading. Quite like Sergio was saying really. Poaching and squatting and dipping in and out. A lot of those books have been theory too, so they certainly had more of a 'short stay' aspect to them than somewhere I met set up home.
But when I think of it, that is a very similar description of the way that I have actually occupied 'living' spaces/places in that last few years of my life too. I guess it's not surprising that we might not only live in what we read, but live the way we read (or read the way we live). Strangely though for me I think I do the opposite when it comes to writing (or indeed making other kinds of work). I think in that case I tend to make work/write what I cannot live. And yet the writing/work is a 'living out' that gets its meaning from its relationship to my world and the world in which it is 'read' - so there is of course a curious relationship there. (oh, getting dangerously close to a loop back round to 'living in books'!)
it's that threshold thing again that cris and Jane were talking about. Questions of access and containment. But it's more than that too I think. I think what I'm curious about is that way in which 'place' is not merely determined by a set of socio-spatial relationships, but is also determined by 'creative' actions - things we do that 'make', that 'say'. (I really wish I could find a better way of saying this). Perhaps I'm just simply talking about meaning. Or perhaps, that if a place is a set of relationships, then those relationships can be made of anything - utterences, actions, material stuff.
Read a bit of an essay by Foucault on the way down here on the train, where he was talking about 'spatial' as opposed to 'temporal' concerns characterising 20thc relationships to knowledge, understanding, power etc. In the 21stc we're already well into and beyond the spatial, into realms of the virtual or the psychogeographical. I'm really compelled by this. Not least because I move around a lot, but also because I feel that out of our increasingly fragile and fragmented relationships to place, there is material (rubble?) from which we can explore the making of incredibly rich and 'alive' new kinds of places (maybe I'm talking of Foucault's 'heterotopias', don't know yet, need to read the rest of the essay!).

I think of this as a practice of 'diatecture', instead of architecture - buildings through buildings - and I'm not talking about some divine 'perfect' place I guess I'm just talking about places that we have a hand in making. That we don't just live in, but we live with.

again another ramble - seems to happen when I start writing emails to you all. Hope it makes some sense.

Perhaps in fact I've been doing just what I've been talking about while writing this email - not 'rambling' at all but being in a place that I was building while being in it.

!!

best B