electricgecko

In my life, in moments of clarity, in moments of being close to myself, the world has felt abstracted, foreign and incompatible. In these moments, I have felt akin to the patterns of eroded signage paint on tar, to the shapes of the clouds, to insects resting on a sun-basked leaf. I have felt disconnected, yet at home in the cracks and ends, at home inscribed into the patterns, nowhere to be found but somehow. (010717)

I grew up in a small town at the end of a country. There were few people like me. I learned to live inside my head for long weekends and days that failed to make a connection. I left the town the first chance I got. I don’t think about it much, but I still carry the worlds I made there. In a way, I have been cast from that place: its entire opposite, its negative form, but sharing every wrinkle in great detail¹.

1. Ich schrieb diesen Text für Craig Mod’s Ridgeline-Newsletter, der sich mit dem psychologischen Zustand des Gehens auseinandersetzt. Er ist ein Beitrag zur Sektion Fellow Walkers, zu der Craig fragte: What shell have you been torn from?. Er erschien in #38. ↩

The Heathrow Hilton is my favorite building in London. It’s part space-age hangar and part high-tech medical centre. It’s clearly a machine, and the spirit of Le Corbusier lives on in its minimal functionalism. […] Inside, it’s a highly theatrical space, dominated by its immense atrium. […] Most hotels are residential structures, but rightly the Heathrow Hilton plays down this role, accepting the total transcience that is its essence, and instead turns itself into a huge departure lounge, as befits an airpot annexe. Sitting in its atrium one becomes, briefly, a more advanced kind of human being. Within this remarkable building one feels no emotions and could never fall in love, or need to. — J.G.B, Notes on Love, Death, Architecture and Modernity. Kompiliert von Studio Muoto.

Marseille: a landscape overrun by infrastructure, flowing, abruptly ending on geologic barriers. Inhabited caves and machines, steep cliffs of built limestone, a sea of lives lived extending into the horizon, up and under bridges, weaving foot traffic through houses and below kitchens and gardens. A drawn city, a pastiche on paper, all colorful dust and complex views. A decidedly non-urban urban space, a grown stone organism, a Moebian landscape, a Cité Obscure.

My strength, and my problem, is that I usually know exactly what I want, which is this amazing gift, or a huge ego problem. It’s both, I’m sure, and I forgive myself if it’s an ego problem. I’ve learned to do that. So it’s not like I invite people to interpret my work. I hate that (…) Being able to do it all on my own, I’m able to set a standard.

Nihilism is a trapdoor but no one said the basement was inhospitable. Work with what you have. Make silk from the cobwebs.

Es fehlt ein Verb für die Tätigkeit, die im Halb-Zustand zwischen Programmierung und Gestaltung stattfindet. Es ist beständiges Tasten auf der Suche nach einem angemessenen Gefühl für ein bestimmtes Interface, nach der korrekten Balance aus Physik und Assoziation. Teils ist es Konstruieren, teils räumliches Entwerfen, teils händisches Formen des Materials. In dieser Tätigkeit geht es langsam voran, aber Konstruktion, Gestaltung und inhaltlicher Ausdruck entwickeln sich zugleich, die falsche Trennung der Disziplinen außer acht lassend.

Das Raunen der Stadt am Kanal. No sightlines, all sound, Wärme wie spät übergezogene Baumwolle in der Sommernacht, so ungewohnt auf den Armen. Alles Samt/Wildenbruchstrasse.
(May 29-30th, 2017)

Architectural volume sets me free. Something about the measured, decisive nature about the act of building seems to leave me in a calm state of mind. Event imagined architecture or music evoking vast spatial configurations affect me in this way. The oppresive void-weight of contained spaces frees my mind, as if its unfelt, but persistently imagined pressure is required to keep my thoughts together, to crystallize my brain and soul into a state of peaceful creativity. I wonder if this is a mere reminder of the only dream I can remember from my childhood: A gargantuan black ball of infinite mass and heaviness rolling or falling, ever coming close to destroy a small potted plant, but – to the best of my knowledge – never actually doing so. I remember the feeling of tremendous weight converging with total weightlessness. Complete stasis, black float.

The possibility to answer a direct question with the words „I do not know“ is a surreal, almost magical conversational option. There are many things I do not know, including about my own preconceptions and decisions. Stating this truth, however, seems like eluding a duty, seems like failing somebody dear. I rarely take the option, instead electing to come up with some mental scaffolding or a haphazardly constructed theory about my motivations. These may be well-intended. Sometimes, „I do not know why“ is the truth and the most elegant reply, especially when the question concerns an innately personal decision. (Listening to Mr. Sakamoto)

Whenever you make sense of the worlds, I fall silent, Odile Decq, Blixa Bargeld, Martin Kippenberger, Rick Owens, Danah Boyd, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rainald Goetz, Yohji Yamamoto, Michael Jordan, Peter Zumthor, Christian Kracht, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Werner Herzog, Elfie Semotan, Jack Self. To be extended.