The Alchemy of Fear

Did you ever stay in a new place and have a deep fear of your life? Is fear a healthy food for your soul? I have quite a few in the last few months, one in Amsterdam, one in the night train from Lyon to Rome, and a recent one is right now in Sampit. Mostly those fears are the result of one irrational summation of a series of rational analyses. I arrived in Sampit, South Kalimantan yesterday. Everyone in Indonesia still remember the frenzy ethnic killings here in 2001 between the local Dayaks and the Madurese. The images of chopped heads can easily be found in the internet. I recommended you not to search it because I, stupidly, did. That’s one of the reasons that triggered my fear. I was feeling uneasy through out the night and couldn’t sleep until around 2 or 3 am because of those images. That’s the alchemy of fear: I created all kind of nightmarish and paranoia thoughts that were getting worse and worse into the night. That night was the night that I prayed really, extra, double, more, serious, and multiple times before sleep. So I woke up this morning feeling better (of course after making sure that my head is still intact). I was able to go around the city in daylight. It is actually a really nice small town with grid streets and rather clean. I got to talk more with the people as well and understand better the demography of the populations. We went to the river harbor, the fish market, shops, and commercial streets. However in the car we passed by one hotel that they used to put (pile up) severed heads of people in 2001. Ugh. Ugh. And I started to fear again. There were not many things going on at night. We ate a Chinese restaurant by our self in a room about 30m by 60m. That itself was quite surreal. We went back to our hotel and straight to our rooms. I laid down in the bed and felt asleep. That was still before 9pm I think. Then, then I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there were a few policemen outside the room and asking for my identification. I was in fear of course but didn’t think about it. My only identification was passport, so I gave them that and asked what’s going on. After that I went out to the lobby and sat there to make sure everything was okay and I was more shocked when I saw more policemen mixing with a few intel civilians walking around and a big police trucks outside. That’s really scary. Maybe that what some Indonesian migrants in the East Coast felt when there were raids by FBI or Homeland Security. Both are not good, not nice. That is fear working. After talking with some people there, they said it is one of those irregular razias or police searches for prostitution activities in hotel. I know you will say “what” but that’s the way it is apparently here. But I guess maybe that’s just a pre-emptive police operation to clean out provocateurs. Don’t know, who knows. I will be leaving tomorrow to Palangkaraya, the capital of this province. Will let you know what’s up there. Cheers, there.

the other city dwellers, ghosts

Every cities has it's own ghosts. That I know. Really, awful things that happened to the people. Rotterdam and Berlin were blasted and many people died crushed or burned. The tsunami in Banda Aceh. Earthquakes. But the place that I will go today I am sure will some some younger ghosts. Mainly people that died and got chopped up in a brutal ethnic conflict not so long ago. I am little bit worry now though... maybe not as enthusiastic as other cities, maybe. I hope the feeling is wrong this time.

Berlin to Borneo

I was packing again tonight. Tomorrow I will be flying to Borneo. Another journey. The world is a beautiful place. After seeing Berlin with all her drama, Jakarta with all her ruggedness, I will be seeing cities in Borneo (Kalimantan), from the small ones to the very small ones. My dad bought me my first boots a few days ago, ready to go into the jungles.

what and change

On a plane one day, I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. More interesting than I expect. It has quite a few very interesting dialog lines and I don't know if those come from the original Fitzgerald or from the screenwriters. I will share one here.

"It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you." - Benjamin Button

(from IMDb's website)

A Jacobian Struggle

A city is not just a place one merely exists but a living person-like with whom one engages with daily. It’s sensorial, you feel it, you smell it, you touch it, and most importantly you wrestle with it everyday. It is even more so when you walk in the city at night because by then there is no sky and no background and not much energy left. It is just you and the city, face to face, blocks by blocks. A survival act and at the same time a sensual one too. One story that reminds me of that combination of feelings is the nomad Jacob’s struggle at Peniel at night with a being. After a long day of moving, and then alone. Jacob is overwhelmed by that being (God?, Freudian’s dream?, angel?, man?, robber?). But he never let go and employ all his last strength to hold on that being until he gets it. Then he goes to sleep and continue his journey the next day. Therefore I think living in a city, in one’s city, is a serious physical engagement. And when you are traveling to a new place that feeling and sense of engagement is heightened or more documented in your senses. You will get to know a city very intimately after a full day of walking on its surface. Cities have scars, pains, are breathing, constantly laboring, are friendly, occasionally fierce, always traumatic, paranoia, could be sensual, could be unapologetic, could be wringkly or youthful, monumental or monument-like, are faking, are partying. I love cities.

levitation and others

I found a few artists that I really like at the Leopold Museum the other day, the expressionist painter Egon Schiele and expressionist sculptor Ernst Barlach. Schiele’s paintings are very figural yet abstract. His color palettes are cool. The good ones are the Levitation and some other scenes of roof tops. Barlach’s sculptures strangely I found are elevational and quite ‘gravitying’. Meaning, it is not merely an object on a pedestal like the classics. The ‘pedestal’ here is the integral part of the whole sculpture. And that makes it a natural (or of nature) object wrestling with gravity. His pencil and charcoal drawings are so interesting too. It convinces me to keep studying monochromatic arts. The next day, I visited chbl’s gassometer. I think it’s really nice and makes my trip there worthy. Really, it’s much more than interesting or eye-catching images as we have seen before, maybe, in magazines. It’s consistent with their body of works and his philosophy and attempts on urban spaces.

Punches

I met quite a few people on the road and they are all interesting. But there are two groups that give me a little inspiration. The first is a Danish-Spanish guy who is living with his Italian wife in Mantua. We talked on the train. He just quited from his own packaging company and planning to start again solo. I liked his business/sales attitude that is to sell a succesfull product you need to be able to sell yourself first. That's a lot of what we do too, or what we need to do if start our own practice, right? The second group is my recent roommates two architecture students from Norway. So they are probably four years younger than me. They were in Vienna to visit a site for the competition they were doing. I chatted with them about many intereting things and learned something about the Norwegian school system. Once you graduate from architecture school there you are immedietly licensed for Level 1 Architect and allowed to do small scale projects. Not like in the US where you have to go through the exam and licensing process. One great thing they are trying to do though is to push the limit of that and trying to figure out a way that make it legal and safe for student to do real projects. Those projects are small scale projects that do not fit the economy of an office. Isn’t that a good idea for training young architects. Students are already doing it there but illegally. Just before our conversation they already found and were working with a ‘customer’. But they were a little disappointed because they just got an email from that ‘customer’ that he already found other architect. It’s like a punch in the face, one of them said to me. But that punch and a few more down the road I think will make them strong, I think. That is an inspiration. Thanks guys! Thanks for the Linies too.

Lamentation in Vienna

Today is the fifteenth. A few more days from now it is your birthday. I remember because every year you always ask me what I want to do that day. I remember because I like the way you think and expect the present you want to buy for yourself. I like it I remember because it is just the other side of the mirror of me. And that is why I am always intrigued by you too, the flipside of the mirror of me, always opposite but strangely familiar. I am currently in Vienna, a place that I told you I really want to be years ago. I say that because Vienna represents an improbability of my imagination at the time. So here I am now, don’t know what to feel, it’s quite bare inside, but just want to imagine again: to be there. There, is a time when I talk about wanting Vienna. When I remember that I want to move back through time to there and be with your smile. Idiotic and lame, I know. But so was Vienna. Can it possibly be? That is the question I asked then and I will ask again now. This is for Question only and I don't expect Answer to come.

be still

This is just a clip from NYT's article today on Mike Nichols exhibit at MOMA. I think he is right. Silence or stillness is a lot more interesting. And I think we all need it, a meditation, a prayer state, to meet self and Creator.

Self-portrait at the Welt

It was April 13th, 2009 11.40 AM when I encountered it. A moment I will never forget. Walking up out from the subway station at Olympiapark, I unexpectedly arrived right in front of the Welt in Muenchen. It was really a breathtaking project. I was absolutely stunned. W. Prix once told us that one moment in his life that got him into architecture is Corb’s La Tourette. He visited the site when he was young and mesmerized by it. Before that he was already quite familiar with what an architect does. His father was an architect and he spent many times in his office. But his presence at La Tourette was the defining moment. He said to himself, “if this is architecture then he wants to do it.” Munich is that moment for me. After Firminy and Munich. It sealed my fate to architecture. I have to say sorry to my other personalities and closed the door for them. I think this is what I will do for the rest of my life. I will spend my life to do this kind of architecture… architecture that is so heavy and light, architecture that gives so generously to the city, to the people, and to the individuals. Whether I arrived there or not, although it will take many turns and detours, but that is my direction.

Most importantly my main motivation and faith in the ability of architecture to subvert social and political structure is confirmed. Architecture is not a decorated shed. I love Venice and I took pictures of the Palladios there, but the Renaissance turbulences are far over. I saluted Borromini for starting this impulse to deconstruct the classical. I appreciated the Baroque for demonstrating their uncomfortness with the return to classical movement. Although we, today, owed Alberti for pioneering the discursive practice of architecture but the manifestation of his theory and the blooming of Renaissance and it’s many off-springs was regrettable, I think. If Firminy ends a 100-year chapter in modernism, then Munich starts the next one. It is anti-facade, anti-classical, and downright modern that is it’s embrace and search for cinematic effects with architecture.

Photos for Cissy

Update on The Plan

This trip is a personal pilgrimage for me, maybe a little “Grand Tour”. But the apex of this trip is definitely the one that I will be making tomorrow to Firminy to see Corbusier-Oubrerie’s Firminy church, completed in 2006. It is also the last of modern architecture to be built. Will that christen me to be a modernist then? Or will that church represent my Jordan river? Time will tell.

When I started school, my first assignment was Jose Oubrerie’s Miller house. That was almost 9 years ago. I considered those era as my Romantic Agony age (still in my art history fever from the Louvre). So it would be good, I think, to end it also with another Oubrerie. So that church will be a closure for my education. It is also a climax for the plan that I have plotted for many years. The subplot then is to see the only and all three religious buildings by Corb: La Tourette, Firminy, and Ronchamp. Other than that, that grand agenda, hahaha, Lyon is, a surprise, pretty. Paris is like a sized down beaux-art NY and is braggy. Amsterdam is chic. Bonn is cute. Koln is delicious. La Tourette is really floaty. I took plenty of photos and started to feel overwhelmed now on what to do with them. I know I have to be diligent and post them ASAP otherwise it will never get out.