The Funambulist Pamphlets: Vol. 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins
About this ebook
published on The Funambulist, collected according to specific themes.
These volumes propose a different articulation of texts than the usual
chronological one. The first twelve volumes are respectively dedicated
to Spinoza, Foucault, Deleuze, Legal Theory, Occupy Wall Street,
Palestine, Cruel Designs, Arakawa + Madeline Gins, Science Fiction,
Literature, Cinema, and Weaponized Architecture. As new articles are
published on The Funambulist, more volumes will be published to continue
the series. See all published pamphlets HERE.
The Funambulist
Pamphlets is published as part of the Documents Initiative imprint of
the Center for Transformative Media, Parsons The New School for Design, a
transdisciplinary media research initiative bridging design and the
social sciences, and dedicated to the exploration of the transformative
potential of emerging technologies upon the foundational practices of
everyday life across a range of settings.
Our species has made a
declaration. Let us call this the Reversible Destiny Declaration. We
will not just take it anymore. We will no longer throw ourselves into
the mortality waste-baskets. Shall we put it in the following gentle but
firm way? Oh yes we shall! Enough is enough. We have decided not to
die. And how do we go about doing this? Through architectural
procedures, made explicitly to help us reconfigure ourselves. If you do
not yet know what an architectural procedure is, you will know soon.
Start with this declaration, and never back away from it: we have
decided not to die. ~Madeline Gins
Volume 8 is dedicated to The
Reversible Destiny Foundation created by Arakawa and Madeline Gins. The
Foundation is much more than an architectural practice. It articulates
art, philosophy, poetry, architecture and, to some extent, science in a
dialogue that benefits each of these disciplines and ultimately serves
one of the most radical ideas that apply to architecture: the action of
non-dying. Guest authors include Shingo Tsuji, Stanley Shostak, Russell
Hughes, and Jean-François Lyotard.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Towards an Architecture of Joy - Architectures of Joy: A
Spinozist Reading of Parent/Virilio and Arakawa/Gins's Architecture -
Applied Spinozism: Architectures of the Sky vs. Architectures of the
Earth - Architecture of the Conatus: "Tentative Constructing Towards a
Holding in Place" - Architectures of Joy: A Conversation Between Two
Puzzle Creatures [Part A] - Architectures of Joy: A Conversation Between
Two Puzzle Creatures [Part B] - Domesticity in the Reversible Destiny's
Architectural Terrains - Reversible Destiny Loft in Action: A Tentative
Report from a Resident by Shingo Tsuji - A Subversive Approach to the
Ideal Normalized Body - The Counter-Biopolitical Bioscleave Experiment
Imagined by Stanley Shostak - Funambulist Paper #35 / DIY Biopolitics:
The Deregulated Self by Russell Hughes - Letter from Jean-François
Lyotard to Arakawa and Madeline Gins - Architectures for Non-Dying
Creatures: The Artistic-Philosophical-Poetic-Architectural Work of
Arakawa and Gins - "All Men Are Sisters": A Joy Named Madeline Gins
About the author
Léopold Lambert (born in 1985) is a French architect
who has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai and currently resides in
New York. His approach to architecture consists in a delicate
articulation between theoretical research and a frank enthusiasm for
design. Such an articulation has been explicated in his book Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence
(dpr-barcelona, 2012), which attempts to examine the characteristics
that make architecture an inherent political weapon through global
research as well as an architectural project specific to the Israeli
civil and military occupation of the West Bank. He is also the author of
the graphic novel, Lost in the Line.
He finds his architectural inspiration from films, novels, and
political philosophy books, rather than in architectural theory texts.
He is currently collaborating with Madeline Gins for her Reversible Destiny Foundation
(created with the late Arakawa) whose philosophical and architectural
work is highly influential upon the role of architecture in relation to
the human body.