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09.03.00 - 16.03.00 : fluid thresholds


0 0 Thur. 9th March

i'm finding my way to you - but in the process of building a new home
jane


Thur.16th March

i'm almost there

but in the process have found myself fascinated by all kinds of thresholds - especially window cills and doors the last photographs i took of my old home were of the window cills the last thing to be done in my new home is the tiling of the window cills as i was pondering this i realised that it started to fit with the notion of 'between' and an issue of the public art journal i'd just edited about 'a place between' but also that there is a real anxiety about threshold spaces - as places in between - neither one things nor another there are a huge number of architectural manuals devoted to construction details for windows and for doors - different kinds of sealants for inward opening doors/outward opening doors also measuring the height of doors compared to damp proof membranes and damp proof courses also over the last weeks i've suffered from very bad cystitis - problems with plumbing in the three places i've been living old home/new home/flat in nottingham the plumbing has broken down whilst i've been inhabiting the spaces i don't believe in witchcraft - but again this is i'm sure to do the mechanics of fluids (translation of the title of an essay by french feminist philosopher) - which don't fit happily with solid constructions keeping the water out - at the thresholds also keeping the fluids circulating seems to be a major concern so i'm looking into the threshold design and the plumbing for our new construction - how to keep fluids moving and to allow for seepage but i wonder whether my fellow inhabitants are in aggrement

more on this soon
Jane


Thur. March 16th

the balance between fluids/fluidity and something more 'there', more solid is fascinating, not least because it is so irresolvable (is that a word??)-

I'm very curious about the status of seepage & secretion in relation to sealants, cills and cells - not to mention cystitis! - so often, as has long been recognised, we are encouraged to undervalue the 'state' of what has not yet been (or can never be) organised/rationalised/built and plumbing is carfeully hidden behind walls and floors and doors (usually) - perhaps that is what is so interesting about doors and windows - as well as passageways, foyers, bridges etc. - that they offer us articulations of and with contained 'spaces', in the sense that perhaps we are more inclined on a conceptual as well as an architectural level to see one space in relation to another 'via' the doorway/gateway/passageway/viewway that links them.
and of course in addition to those formalised site of access, there are the informal ones (in Bataille's language also; the 'inform') gaps under doors, cracks in window panes, porpus parts of wood etc., fissures of degradation, age, misfit, over/under use etc. - cavities and slots that emerge as a 'space' lives and that potentially allow for the access of materials/people/ideas not monitorable through the formalised thresholds. (I guess that's why Bataille was interested in ruins)
But something of the inverse of that interests me too - in that these, could one say, more 'transgressive' conduits are only possible because of the spaces they inpinge/infringe? - Don't want to set up some kind of binary here - i know there are models of thinking that bypass this - but i also think it's interesting to think about the kind of movement stability allows.

In relation to this, although on a very different note, these issues tie in very much with what I'm having to do at the moment in terms of designing and setting up the web site for this project. It will be both our site, our society and our gateway - and it's extremely difficult to envisage that when you don't know - as I don't - much about the materials with which it is being built.
So the nowhereness of this particular transition, from these emails to that web site, is one that I think exemplifies many of the issues we face - i.e building and inhabiting spaces/places of physical, emotional, cultural and temporal (and in our case textual) flexibilty, that are also genuine locations/positions/points from which to orientate or procede. But often building these spaces/places we are making/encountering out of stuff we just don't know. So how do we deal with that?
these things seem both really obvious to me and yet really compelling.

mmmmm...... B


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