When speaking about how "the reform of the maturita would rearrange social relationships in the country and would (contrary to the promises of the Ministry) alter the culture," Prendergast focuses initially on the ability to share student information as a form of social security for students, how this information "had become a casualty of the postcommunist transition" (122). However, then she makes an odd transition that I don't know what to do with. She says "Tellingly, when the groups arranged their exam environments, each group had its own idea of where the desk should go, and of how the chairs should be arranged, but all agreed there should be flowers somewhere in the setting, because there always were. The exercise could not proceed without the flowers, a symbol of cultural continuity for which no instrumental purpose need be offered and no international endorsement given" (122). Within the place of the testing site, social groups differed greatly on how to arrange it, but one point of unity for them is a use of the space that is not instrumental. This seems particularly important to me because even at the heart of instrumentalism – the location of assessment, an assessment largely constrained and created by non-Slovakian forces (i.e. EU’s CEF, British Council, etc.) – the use of the space within the location became a micro-site of resistance. Assessment and neoliberalism’s drive to account for everything (even the human in the economic) is subverted. Flowers are something with “no instrumental purpose.” The location and usage of space got me thinking about spatiality in general. Especially after Charlie’s great post last week.
I find I rarely go into anecdotes about my students, but here is an opportunity too perfect to not. Right now, I'm working with an AWD student - we'll call this person Prime - who's an architecture student. He's interested in researching what he calls "Post-apocalyptic architecture" - by which he really means a paper on sustainable architecture in extreme environments that uses a zombie apocalypse as an attention getting device. Toward the end of our conference the other day, we were chatting about what exactly was meant by sustainability. Prime said that sustainability was about maintaining live-able levels of resources - food, water, climate, shelter - in order to let life continue. Some of the principles for planning sustainable architecture were understanding the material constraints and resources of the environment, the orientation of its elements, etc. I responded by asking him what kind of life are you saving? Prime looked at me confused and said, what do you mean? I replied, I understand the importance of saving lives, letting life continue. But it seems like that task is impossible without thinking about the way of life you're preserving or creating through the architecture. What kind of relationship with the environment does the architecture encourage? How does the architecture facilitate cultural traditions (i.e. where is the village chief/priest/matriarch's building located and what does it look like compared to the others)? How does the architecture account for, encourage, or discourage religion or other cultural traditions? By sustainable do you mean bare subsistence or will the community cultivate and stockpile specific surplus resources? What type of economies and social relations do these create? If you stockpile resources, do you need to build additional security from outside communities? How does this encourage people to look at others? Life without a way of life is a comatose patient on a table. Each of aspects of a way of life is highly dependent on the organization and arrangement of social space. And whether you factor it into your design or not, the design affects these aspects of the community’s life. Prime responded, “that’s an interesting way of looking at it.” And the subject dropped.
To me, location seems to have a huge impact on people’s identity, their social relations, the kinds of connections they form with nature, processes of production, etc. How their daily lives are (re)produced. But to Prime, these are all unnecessary concerns for sustainable architecture. I feel like Prime and I are approaching the topic with two very different sets of concerns, much like how the Slovaks and the international agencies and organizations approached assessment. And even though I am his teacher… in control of his grade… for whatever coercive affect that might have on how he approaches my class… the micro-economy of my classroom – what it values, what it questions, what it does – is still undermined by the bigger economy of American architecture as a field. But I have no idea how one could resist it. Perhaps, much like the test planners, I can’t. Not really. But perhaps I can only hold out hope that the use made of the space is different in some way. Boy… that’s really depressing. I don’t like that.
Let me think… so while I alone might not be able to change the space of something, perhaps – and this might be the idealist Marxist in me coming out – banded together with others, we could. For example, I hate giving presentations in the Barrs room. And to be honest, the idea of presenting in the new conference rooms just as dismal. A little brighter. But too hot and stuffy to be pleasant. The locations seem clinical and dungeonly at one and the same time. The locations don’t seem to promote the kind of atmosphere and interactions we say we want when sharing our ideas. When I picture sharing ideas there, I feel like I need to be on guard, fully formed, prepared to defend any challenges. In the Barrs room, it feels like I’m facing a firing squad with a blindfold on. In the conference room, I just imagine the blindfold will be removed. The kind of academic community I’d want to live in would be one where sharing ideas was among friends; one where we’d joke about my verbal flubs as if over coffee rather than sit silently as I wade through the next 5 minutes of my presentation. I guess in a nutshell, I’d want the academic community to literally be having a conversation, having fun, and relaxed. But in the locations we have in the English department, this does not seem possible. But why should we be limited to these locations? Why not present in a new location? Say, at Gallagher’s house. This may or may not surprise you, but I have long imagined what Gallagher’s house would be like. When they moved from Nebraska to Massachusetts, one of his daughters started a newsletter to stay in contact with old friends. And as time progressed, she talked with Gallagher about how the genre was changing to fit the situation. She was only… how old… 11? 14? Something like that. What about his home, the things that fill it, how they are arranged to emphasize and de-emphasize things (i.e. like where is the tv?), the people living there, how they interact, would lead a girl to imagine something like that? Hearing stories of the conversations he has with his daughters makes me feel like his house would be a great place to have smart academic conversations and presentations, relax, and joke around. Isn’t that what we want?
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