ATTEMPT AGAIN

Here goes, for the sake of process, another attempt at the image... and yet another...

Disasters

As we are struggling with the final image with all the words (below it's a first terrible trial), we may as well post some images from our trip. This should actually be organized into themes, such as: buildings, graffiti, and so on. But that sounds like a lot of work!

Hum... obviously related to our image for the Songline is the theme disaster :)

So here are some images of the disasters-to-be that pursued us along the journey.

There was the swine flu everywhere, Air Force One flying close to Manhattan for a spooky revival, tornado warnings and flash floods in Alabama, fires in California...

Listening at the news can be a frightful event for a traveler!

We must learn to hope in the absence of an expectation of progress

We've just updated the map of the Songline (in the title), making it coincide with our actual route. You can also grasp in that map the position where the words were built.

If you go to http://planob-songline.blogspot.com you can find the posts about the construction of the words in their right position in the sentence. Instead of being chronologically arranged.

Absence+Expectation+Of+Progress+We+Must+Learn+In the+To+Hope+Of an

After the construction of the words, the next task is to recompose their position into a sentence. The words were built in specific places trying to achieve a meaningful relation with those places: Absence in New York after 9/11; Expectation in Washington after the presidential shift; and so on. It was a conceptual relation, there's no univocal relation between the word absence and the destruction of the World Trade Center. It's a subjective meaning at best. Also, the construction of the words, their materialization, followed a rule of their own, dependent on the availability of materials, inteligence, humor; or the lack of all the previous.

Now the words will loose their independence and become part of english syntax and it's author intention: a new continent, so to speak.

We will try, in the next few days, to make a graphic composition of the entire sentence using images from our trip. We have already a recomposition of the songline map in the right order...

OF AN

The final stretch of the journey was the return from San Francisco to New York by plane. There was still one word missing. In fact two: of an.

Hope was supposed to be the last word but we had skipped of an.

So, we had one more day in NY before returning home and no idea how to get the two words done.

NY seems to be a city in decay. This decay is not caused by the economical situation, or the collapse of the twin towers. Decay is part of the city, the same way as skyscrapers, the subway and cabs. It isn't a lacking of something, is an urban element in itself, brought about by use and time.

Trash is dumped on the sidewalks for collection early in the morning, pavements are uncared for, century old subway stations with peeling paint are packed with rats roaming through the lines. NY is becoming old and weary. Would we call it historical in Europe?

One thing we were always looking for when arriving in new cities was the historical quarter. That is obviously the European mind searching for the church square, the city council and the central cafe. The place of stability opposed to the unbounded continuity of the american strip. There's no such stability place in most US cities.

In NY there's the Grid and there's the river. The abstract continuity and the natural limit that forces an abrupt transition, a phase transition in the continuum: from homogeneity to intensity.

And there was money, lots of money for a long time, building up intensity, giving it a shape. The effort of building, the immense physical labor, stays hidden behind the skyline. Contrary to other historical buildings - the wall of China, the Pyramids, the Parthenon - what impresses most in NY is not the effort, the power over will or technical excellence, but the investment.

NY is a decaying monument to capital. A beautiful one, by the way.

We made our contribution. 7 dollars and 58 cents, to be more precise.

HOPE

Is there a possibility for hope with reason, when there's no reason to hope? There seems to be a slight and subtle difference between faith and hope, even though they may appear as synonyms in the dictionary. In christian philosophy both are part of the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity (or love). The first being a resolute ability to believe; hope being the capability of not giving up; and charity or love an unconditional compassion for life.

But can the capability of not giving up be reasonable? Or should it be tied up with faith, the resolute ability to believe. In the scientific mind frame we were taught believing seems awkward: we don't believe, we disbelieve until proof is made. To doubt, rather than to believe, is what we are expected to do. To hope, rather than having faith. To resist even though we don't believe.

The idea to build the word, was to bring a watering can to a beach and use water to darken the sand in the shape of the letters of the word hope. But the unsuspected plays part in our endeavors. The thing was that the Wallmart store we went to, on our way to Stinson Beach, didn't sell watering cans. And we didn't have that much time to get the word done. But they sell chinese umbrellas. You know, the ones in cocktails?

For sure there's no relation between a watering can and a chinese umbrella for cocktails. But in new Mexico we were given the idea of writing the word with ice cream cones. That was when we planned on traveling with an iranian architect to San Francisco. We thought that it would be nice to have the word written in Farsi and then Alexis found out that the Persians were the inventors of ice cream. So we would do the word in Farsi using ice cream cones. Ok, that may have been a twisted thought with a political innuendo.

But we were traveling alone and the idea of having chinese umbrellas for cocktails also seemed related to a certain idea of Californian lifestyle.

So we took three bags of umbrellas and went to the beach.

We laid a grid, the Grid, as referred to by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York, and populated it with umbrellas. They resembled little sundials or some sort of a parade. Each member of the parade becoming a sundial.

Then we opened the umbrellas in order to get the letters done. We could have tried to write hope in Farsi using the Grid. The Grid would allow for all languages to be written. Hope resides in Babel? Is architecture entitled to lay a claim on hope? How?

We are in an architectural journey and the Grid came in our rescue. Hoping with reason, when there's nothing reasonable to hope for.

TO

In the previous post we were already out of our programmed route. After leaving New Mexico the Songline should have headed southwest towards Arizona. Instead, a shorter travel distance to San Francisco was taken, going through Colorado, Utah and Nevada. This was mainly for time sake given that we stayed longer than expected in New Mexico.

In El Rito we had already tested the construction of the word TO. The ambitious idea was to make a citation of David Hockney's Pearblossom Hwy, 11-18th April 1986. One road made of superimposed images, with funny details throughout the entire collage. The purpose was to make visible the deceptive goal of reaching a destination. Roads are traveled to go somewhere and to come from somewhere. They get us there and back. To and from can refer to the same place, every destination is a departure place as well. That is disturbing, even though is obvious, because it means that we are always missing the goal. Going to somewhere is always and at the same time getting from somewhere. The word to establishes motion in speech but not a destination. So the word to only makes sense as a process of dislocation, always undetermined, never really focused but diverging indefinitely.

After the word was done we waited for the wind coming in the opposite direction to blow the newspapers off the road to where we were coming from in the first place.

Apart from all this, the photo composition really needs to be worked...

IN THE (RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME)

Occasionally we stop to take some pictures, relax or eat. This time we stopped to make one of the words of the Songline. We were looking for a road with a view and this one, somewhere on HWY 50 - The loneliest road in America, seemed perfect.

The word was TO and the plan was to place newspapers in one lane of the road making the letters. It was windy and the newspapers were flying away as soon as we placed them on the pavement. After a couple of trials we were ready to give up. In fact we did give up and moved towards the car.

That's when we realized this dog, looking at us:

The dog was lying, didn't seem to be hurt, there was food around and an empty bowl. It seemed that she (we found out latter that it was a she) had been abandoned, with some food and water.

At the time we didn't notice some marks from tires on the asphalt.

Once we took the water from the car the dog stood up and started drinking as we poured it into the bowl. The entire gallon disappeared in no time!

As we were getting the car ready to take her with us, another car pulled over. The driver asked us if that was our dog - we said no. So, she said, let us take the dog, Mattie is her name, I have the contacts of the owner, there was an accident on the 15th and the dog has been lost ever since.

It seemed weird that two people suddenly appearing from nowhere would have that much information about a lost dog ... anyway, this seemed the best chance of getting the dog out of that place. So we gave our emails and asked them to send us some images of the dog with the owner.

We decided to make one word in this place. We still had some words to do. The word TO didn't seem appropriate, so we chose IN THE. There was some dog food in small squared shapes around that we used to make the word, as if it was a roman mosaic.

And off we went on our way across Nevada.

After some miles there was this small city called Austin. We decided to stop for a meal at a curious looking bar called International. As we were going in we noticed a sign in the old western way saying reward.

The description corresponded exactly to the dog we had just left. In the sign was also the name of the dog and the contact of the owners.

So that was how the ladies knew all that information! And the $1000 the likely reason for not having mentioned us the entire story ...

In any case, we called the owners informing them of what had happened and asking to please send us some images of Mattie.

We just got them. There's one image of Mattie recovering and another from the truck where she was going.

This was the time in our journey that made us most happy for just being here: in the right place at the right time.

LEARN . THINGS THAT (DON'T) HAPPEN AGAIN

After our previous failure at writing LEARN we tried again. This time was in Abiquiu Lake, close to El Rito. The idea was to get the word sank into the lake, suspended in the water, while maintaining its shape. The cardboard with which we cut the letters didn't hold that well the contact with water and was totally destroyed after just some second in the lake.

Here are some images of the "technical" procedures and the failed attempt to transport the word into the lake:

So, after our two previous failures at writing LEARN ... we tried again - that's what learning is all about, right? This time was in one of the islands in Abiquiu Lake, using stones. Ok, it wasn't that creative but we wanted to get the thing done! And a lot of effort (and even pain) was put into the word as the sand in the island was terribly hot from the sun.

So if there's a lesson to be learn from the construction of the word it may well be: why take so much time and effort learning something, when ignorance is immediate? (this is a lesson and a quote by memory from Calvin & Hobbes).

FACADE

The Facade project is a concept to be formalized as an installation. The original idea was adapted (made site specific or, given that it uses local earth, specifically site) to the El Rito Campus. During 5 days we tried to achieve a perfectly spheric object made with straw and earth. There were many difficulties in attaining that goal, so the result may be considered a prototype for a future full scale piece composed of many spheres.

Find below an explanation of the concept and some images (all images and the above drawing by Alexis Elton):

Façade is intended to be an oversized broken strand of pearls made from earth and seed sprawling through the field near the observatory at Northern New Mexico College in El Rito, New Mexico.

This dry arid climate is far from where pearls are harvested. Encountering a series of large-scale pearls composed of organic materials in the desert challenges the symbolic meanings that society ascribes to these precious objects. Pearls are valued as jewelry — objects of value, beauty, and purity — and yet are also associated with decadence and excess.

Façade is an attempt to foster a dialogue between nature and culture, and the fictional, inflated value that we place upon beauty and permanence. By removing pearls from their ordinary context their relevance is put into question. Displaced, these naturally decomposing forms will become nothing more than a façade of what they once were, acknowledging that the cyclical force of nature renders everything obsolete. The conception of Façade derives in part from the seminal interventions in the land previously initiated by artists of the 1960s and 70s, including Robert Smithson, Agnes Denes, James Turell, and Walter de Maria to name a few.

The Façade pearls are made of mud and grass seed; they appear opalescent like a pearl. In agricultural terms, each pearl could also be known as a giant seed ball. Farmers typically use seed balls to distribute seeds, which are encased in a mixture of clay or compost, and are placed on the soil’s surface. As the mud ball decomposes the seeds find their way safely to the soil. This planting method has been used for centuries and is especially useful in dry and arid climates.

The seeds will produce grass, growing on, in, and around the remains of the decomposed pearl. The actual rate of decomposition of the pearls will vary depending on the heat, rain, and the interventions of small and large animals. It is a natural progression, earth to earth, or in this case, sea to earth. The pearls, from oysters that live in the sea, sprout grasses that will live in the high desert.

MUST

After 5 days of hard work we finally managed to finish the word Must. On Saturday rained a bit in El Rito but the walls were protected on time.

The walls aren't protected against the rain so ultimately they will dissolve (or be demolished).

Thanks to all the participants in the workshop for dispensing so much effort into the construction of the walls.

MUST . 4

These are some images of the construction of the final wall/letter.

EXPECTATION . Update

Well... it's true that the word is unreadable (see the post Expectation), but the fact that something grew in this place is quite amazing! Thanks for the picture!

MUST . 3

At the rammed earth workshop we finished another wall/letter. The original idea was to take the bricks out of the wall and get a void in the shape of a letter, but we will probably let them inside the wall given that the different colors that the bricks have are pretty cool!

The day was passed trying to get a spheric sphere :)

There were a lot of technical problems and even a structural failure at the end of the day that kept us working until it was dark. If all goes well we'll get a final mud layer with grass seeds in the morning and the final lime wash in the afternoon.

MUST . 2

... still trying to get a sphere and 4 rammed earth walls ...

On the rammed earth front we moved to the second letter/wall trying a different mixture of earth. Part of the corner collapsed as we removed the form, so we'll try changing the mixture again for the next wall:

The second stage of the sphere was trying to get a close-to-spheric shape and applying a first layer of earth so that the shape can sustain itself:

MUST . 1

After New Orleans our schedule determined that we would go to New Mexico through Marfa and El Paso and from there up to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and El Rito. Given that we were supposed to be in El Rito in time to start the workshops for the Adobe USA 2009 conference we had to decide to shorten the route. After Dallas and Fort Worth we went north towards Santa Fe.

So, we are now in El Rito and have already started the two workshops that we are suppose to instruct. One of the workshops will be directly related to the Songline: it will be the construction of the word must. The second workshop is a colaborative work with Alexis Elton and is also related to the Songline (but without the use of words): it will consist in building a 5 feet (or 1.5 m) tall sphere out of straw, jute and earth that will have embedded grass seeds near the surface.

In the next few days we'll be be posting images of the development of both workshops. So here are some images of the rammed earth workshop:

And some images of the second workshop, being the first image a preview of the object and the remaining images being the first procedures of the process: cutting and knitting the jute:

NEW MEXICO . FIRST IMPRESSIONS

WE . RECOLLECTING THE PIECES

One thing is clear by now... we would need another month traveling to achieve interesting word-constructions! We are running after our megalomaniac schedule, this time we were in a hurry to start a 15 hour drive to New Mexico.

Anyway, we made an effort to "make sense" out of the construction of the word we. We knew about the reconstruction effort being made at the Lower 9th Ward (see previous post) so we went there to build the word from the Songline.

After a brief survey of the place we found a sewer access saying water, which sounded appropriate for our purpose. We then collected garbage and things that were left abandoned after the hurricane: bottles, rubber, wire, one ring... The wreckage of previous occupancy. After the recollection we organized the pieces into the word we. Trying to make sense out of devastation.

RECONSTRUCTION

Almost 4 years after Hurricane Katrina remains way too visible the effects of Katrina in large parts of the city.

One of those areas is a neighbourhood called Lower 9th Ward. Located in one of the poorest parts of New Orleans this area was violently affected by the collapse of one of the barriers that protects the city from the Mississipi river. After the destruction of the buildings most of the inhabitants (amongst the poorest in the city) couldn’t reconstruct their houses from personal savings or from bank loans. So the plots remained abandoned.

There are some non-governmental programs that are trying to find alternative funding options to reconstruct the houses in the 9th ward. The foundation Make It Right is particularly active in the area we visited. Patronized by the movie actor Brad Pitt this organization seeks donors to buy the materials and other alternative ways of helping low income owners to pay for their new houses.

The buildings follow architectural projects from american and foreign architects and must have a high level of energy efficiency and be placed on stilts so they are less exposed to future floods. Materials, colours and the overall looks remind us of the French and Spanish architectural tradition visible in many parts of the city.

On top of the post are images of three new buildings in Lower 9th Ward and below three old buildings in the French Quarter.

NEW ORLEANS . FIRST IMPRESSIONS

LEARN . EXCUSES FROM ALABAMA

There are many possible excuses (and we'll name a couple), but the fact is that we won't be writing the word learn as planned, if at all. The idea was to build the word with the help from the architectural students at Auburn University enrolled in Rural Studio.

The first thing was that we arrived in Auburn and Rural Studio is in Newbern, some 200 miles away! That wouldn't be a problem since we'll be driving some 6,000 miles in this journey and coincidentally Newbern was on our way. We were also told that students weren't on campus at this time of the academic year, so no help from them!

Still we thought that it would be nice to see some of the great buildings that Rural Studio has managed to build in a rural and economically depressed area.

It would be particularly interesting to understand the organizational and financial aspects of Rural Studio. We wanted to learn how they work. The word could have originated in this process.

Truth must be said that we weren't encouraged to visit Rural Studio ... Still, we were considering imposing ourselves :)

But then the meteorological conditions made the final decision for us. Heavy rain, a fierce thunderstorm, tornado and flood warnings that lasted the entire morning held us at Montegomery, halfway between Auburn and Newbern.

Given all this obstacles we decided to skip Newbern and head further down to New Orleans hoping that the word will appear somewhere along the way.

All things considered we have a lot of good excuses. So, please, excuse us.

PROGRESS

Now, this was a complex construction! It took us one entire day in Chicago taking pictures and a lot of hours of Photoshop to come up with the word progress.

To make this long story short: we wanted to make visible the word progress in a way that would oppose a straightforward reading of the word. This was achieved using a backward calligraphy reflected in the sculpture Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, placed in the Millenium Park in downtown Chicago.

The writing was done with 3 sheets of colorful wrapping paper fixed to cardboard. Together the 3 boards would fill 2 concrete modules in the plaza floor. These 3 pieces were moved into the various positions to make big letters. Pictures were taken at each position and then composed using digital software.

In a literal sense the letters were never exposed as in the image. It took an artificial device to make them visible. The way we made the word plays not only with the idea of progress but also with the idea of process, meaning, space, direction and time.

We even had to make a plan for it:

LETTER S SEQUENCE

WORD SEQUENCE

CHICAGO . FIRST IMPRESSIONS

SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA

Somewhere in Pennsylvania we made the word of. We made it three times:

One using small reeds intertwined in a wired fence;

One using small wood chips from a highway restaurant;

And one drawn in a christian puzzle book.

EXPECTATION

These are some of the images of the construction of the word expectation in Washington. The word was placed in Lincoln Square, right in the main washington axis, which connects the capitol, the mall and the white house. In it there's a statue of Lincoln with a dedication to the emancipated slaves.

In the process we were doing the same gestures of the slave depicted in the statue.

The process consisted in cutting letters from newspaper, which were then used as a form to plant grass seeds, bird seeds and flowers. The seeds were placed on a bed of compost and watered in the end.

WASHINGTON . FIRST IMPRESSIONS

ABSENCE

This was the result of our efforts in NY to build the word absence. It reflects the fact that we couldn't find local support to help us out. So the thing turned out to be pretty simple and individualistic.

We've first cut the letters from paper, then spread them in different locations in NY. There's really no logic in the places we've chosen, some are well know landmarks such as Seagram building or the New Museum, some are just anonymous streets or generic places such as the subway.

ABSENCE AS PRESENCE

Each street has it's own fingerprint. This fingerprint seems to defined by the buildings but also by the voids they leave in between. We found that the presence of the sky is as powerful as the presence of the buildings.

NY . FIRST IMPRESSIONS

DEPARTURE

We are starting our journey. The first goal is to write the word Absence, somewhere and somehow in NY.

It seems appropriate, even thought it was not on purpose, to start the journey with the word Absence: to leave is to become absent. And so, in a way, we are already becoming the journey: singing the world, our daily life, into absence :)

And if nothing else it's a one month vacation to enjoy!

The structure of the blog will start, from now on, to be chronological (the top posts being the most recent). If we get any of the words written they will be posted in their right placement in the mystery sentence in this blog:

http://planob-songline.blogspot.com

SINGALONG

The SONGLINE proposes a perception of Progress as something not determined by a goal but rather by the process of becoming something undetermined.

We've challenged ourselves to build a sentence taken from the book Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit by Joshua Foa Dienstag, along a cross country trip in the United States from 24th of April to 24th of May. We'll be using the materials and will available at each stop. So we are totally dependent on local support to get things done.

So we'll whistle, but only if you singalong!

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

NEW POST (click the title below to see the new post, or scroll down):

Reproduction and Newness (April 4)

LAST UPDATED POSTS (click the title below to see the updated post, or scroll down):

San Francisco (April 23)

New York (April 16)

NEW YORK

word: ABSENCE

partners: Carla Leitão /

date: 25th to 28th of April 2009

concept:

To use light and/or shadows to produce the word Absence. The word seemed appropriate for New York as it so strongly relates to 9/11 and the following void left by it.

conceptual image:

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

DIARY ON THIS LOCATION:

"This image was taken right next to the subway at ground zero. Strange office and security guard underneath a giant Holtzer like text screen. Very, very bizarre text. I think it's the headquarters of the LEEDS organization. NYC is still very sensitive. I was dragging a bucket of dirt and people wanted to know what it was. I was told not to talk about 911." J Harford

We just got a preview of the word ABSENCE from James Harford. It's a natural graffiti. Planted grass seed. Tear Drop Park. NYC. Adobe and seeds. West St. between Warren and Murray.

"The point is to travel. Fulfill the mandate of the song. Simply." J Harford

WASHINGTON

word: EXPECTATION

partners: -- to be determined --

date: 29th to 30th of April 2009

concept:

To highlight people's expectations brought about by political in a democratic society. This seemed totally relevant given the recent presidential elections. And particularly regarding the present social, economical and financial turmoil in the US and elsewhere.

conceptual image:

This vision of EXPECTATION was made by Joana Pinheiro after Paul Spooner.

If we plant some fast-growing seeds (maybe Canary Grass - Phalaris canariensis) with the shape of the word EXPECTATION, after some time birds would come and eat it away.

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

CHICAGO

word: PROGRESS

partners: -- to be determined --

date: 1st to 4th of May 2009

concept:

To make visible the importance that technology has in the idea of progress. In "developed" countries, technology and progress seem inextricably tied, as if they where correlatives. We'd like to make use of some high-technology device to produce the word in Chicago. Could this be a 3D printer, or one of those clay-cutting-robots that produce prototypes for the automobile industry?

links:

3D printing

clay car

house of cards by Radiohead

conceptual image:

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

NEW ORLEANS/AUBURN

word: LEARN

partners: -- to be determined --

date: 6th to 8th of May 2009

concept:

Lessons to be learned, or at least to be considered. How to level economical differences in response to a catastrophe such as Katrina or in response to housing needs in depressed communities.

Links:

Rural Studio

Make it Right

conceptual image:

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

DIARY ON THIS LOCATION:

April 16

Is this some sort of a water printer? Take a look here.

March 23

We got the suggestion to go to the Indian Mounds of Mississippi.

"Periodically, the Mississippians would raze one of the wood-and-mud structures, bury the remains of a deceased leader in a fresh layer of earth, and erect a new building on top." (quotation from www.nps.gov)

These are man-made structures meant for ritual purposes.

EL RITO

word: MUST

partners: Quentin Wilson / Kurt Gardella / James Harford / Alexis Elton /

date: 11th to 15th of May 2009

scheduled activities:

# lecture -- 15th of May -- Northern New Mexico College, El Rito Campus

# workshop -- 11th to 14th of May (2 Workshops)

concept:

El Rito has the Adobe was the trigger to the SONGLINE project. We were invited to coordinate two workshops that are part of the Adobe USA 2009 conference. One of them is a workshop about traditional rammed earth, the other about the contemporary use of earth in art and architecture. In the contemporary workshop will have the help of the artist Alexis Elton, a sculptor who has worked with adobe as an art material. Elton often refers to architecture and the creation of structural form, a confrontation with the natural processes of creation and decay in time. So we MUST be there on time!

Links:

USA adobe 2009

conceptual image:

Please go HERE for a brief explanation of the SONGLINE.

SAN FRANCISCO

word: HOPE

partners: Ronald Rael /

date: 20th to 23th of May 2009

concept:

Hope as arrival or destination is the concealed idea behind progress. If we are riding progress we must certainly be getting somewhere. But what if progress could be apprehended as process rather then destination? At this point we will disclose the sentence written along the journey. There will be an online exhibition here and some physical one in a place to be determined.

conceptual image:

DIARY ON THIS LOCATION:

April 23rd

There certainly is a difference between watering a desert for the sake of doing it - let's call it Hope -, than doing it believing that something unpredictable will happen - let's call it Faith. We are not sure what kind of difference is it, but one expects the unlikely, the other likes the expectation - something like that :)

(Image by Joana Pinheiro)

07 - (UN)RULE OF LAW

Arguably the rule of law was one of the major achievements of modern democracies.

The rational and fair balance of conflicts arising from the general pursuit of colliding, and scarce interests.

And yet what would be truly exceptional, and useful, would be the unrule of law, something most religions have found to be attractive: life after death, miracles, reincarnation, paradise, remission of sins.

Computer software has developed this possibility most efficiently: the undo command, the copy / paste, the mirror and flip commands, and so many other; all have this unnatural ontological status. And yet there's no strangeness in using them anymore.

How often would we push the Restart button, should it be available in our lives?

06 - REPRODUCTION AND NEWNESS

We carry Reproduction ability through sex (imperfect reproduction being the most useful for evolution purposes), and we carry Newness (as a counterpart, not as opposed, of Reproduction) in our ability to use our brain and body for something other than reproductive sex (feel, think, learn, express, and so on).

Through Reproduction, we can only develop within a relatively narrow boundary. We can become this or that (short or tall, human or a snail), but hardly this and that at the same time; we cannot undo what has been done; and we always get extinct.

Through Newness we can manipulate, reflect, distort; become this and that (a scientist and a priest, human and snail); undo what has been done; and achieve some sort of permanence.

In this sense, Progress as “improvement” can only act upon Newness, given that in Reproduction many uncontrollable variables act upon it (the Uncertainty).

Under Newness there’s the opportunity for making plans, developing politics and ideologies, assessing the results, and finally re-establish new goals. Checking if Progress has met the expectations.

Under Reproduction there are no “improvements”, only higher levels of complexity, and increasing levels of redundancy.

Progress as “improvement” (under Newness) depends on simplifications, morals, or technologies: follows a path.

Progress as “complexity” (under Reproduction) denies every simplification, and is irrevocably independent: makes a path.

Until Newness meets Reproduction in genetics laboratories.

05 - WORK IN PROGRESS

One fair description of Progress could be: the state of increasing complexity of systems; be it biological, technological, social, legal, economical, or other kind.

It sounds fair in the sense that information in those systems gets accumulated, instead of starting anew every time. This allows for increasing levels of complexity, unattainable if it didn't exist a past, memories, or other supports of information. It can also be interpreted in a Darwinian perspective in relation to species. The possibility of producing an eye depends on some other and less complex biological structure originally sensitive to light.

But of course this remains problematic, since evolution doesn’t seem to operate out of ”increasing complexity”, but rather out of “increasing usefulness”, or adaptative effectiveness.

Meaning that even if there were light sensitive structures in a species living in dark caves, it is unlikely that the structure would become an eye. And also, if a species that has developed an eye moves into a dark cave, for some environmental pressure or competition with other species, it will likely “loose” it’s eyes. There is no abstract goal to produce an eye (but it seems irresistible to do it).

This becomes problematic in relation to Progress, because it means that Progress, in a

biological sense, doesn’t seem to follow a determined goal, as if there was an ideal, let’s say, human being, to be achieved. Rather it seems to have been a result of context, proceeding step by step, but on a winding road. Under construction, as it were, but without a goal. Work in progress as a process and not the works of progress as the result.

This puts the concept of Progress under a different light, in the sense that sees it as a product of change in a random direction, rather than a producer of change operating in a determined direction. Progress becomes the unexpected result rather than the deterministic operator; adjective, instead of noun; independent rather than dependent; subversive rather than teleological.

Progress seems to be produced out of amalgamation, rather than out of a plan.

We don't necessarily like Progress better this way.

04 - DOUBTS

An Uncountable Infinity (For Felix Gonzalez-Torres)*

(...)

My defenses are tender, gone mostly.

I try to believe that I don't need them anymore.

But my circumstance remains within the realm of normal accidents

and the weather. Of these I am subject still and happily;

they allow me the comforts of uncertainty.

Doubts are my hope.

(...)

* in Roni Horn, Phaidon Press Limited, 2000

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Also take a look at Roni Horn's work on Iceland

03 - TO SUCCEED BY FAILURE

In his 1982 essay Progress versus Utopia, or, Can We Imagine the Future? *, Fredric Jameson proposes that the idea of Progress is a particular concept that stems from a "properly capitalist mode of production" and as the consequence of a temporal sense which doesn't recognize the past as an historical necessity to reach the present and scans the future for some ineffable meaning: "Capitalism demands in this sense a different experience of temporality from what was appropriate to a feudal or tribal system, to the polis or to the forbidden city of the sacred despot: it demands a memory of qualitative social change, a concrete vision of the past which we may expect to find completed by that far more abstract and empty conception of some future terminus which we sometimes call 'progress'." (p. 284)

And just as previous world views and temporalities found literary counterparts, such as the historical novel, capitalism found as suited for it's temporal perception, the Science Fiction (SF) genre. That is not to say that SF is apologetic of capitalism, or otherwise, but only that it addresses time as a ductile matter proper to a capitalist perception, one that replaces "the historical by the nostalgic" (p. 285), and fantasizes about the future, sometimes as Utopia, sometimes as Dystopia.

From this, the essay questions if what is being pursued in SF, as an utopian genre, could honestly be seen as attempts of envisioning prospective presents or, as is defended, as a mechanism of unveiling the present in which the writer (and ourselves) are immersed. But don't we see the present close enough? The answer would be that, precisely, we see it too close, enacting some kind of blindness: (...) the present - in this society, and in the physical and psychic dissociation of the human subjects who inhabit it - is inaccessible directly, is numb, habituated, empty of affect. Elaborate strategies of indirection are therefore necessary (...) to break through our monadic insulation and to 'experience', for some first and real time, this 'present', which is after all all we have." (p.286/287)

We should point the critical stance that Jameson stresses towards "this society". Not just the capitalist society, but more specifically to a consumer society "with it's rapid media exhaustion of yesterday's events (...)" (p. 285).

Jameson is speaking from the 1980's: "We have seen that in the moment of the emergence of capitalism the present could be intensified, and prepared for individual perception, by the construction of a historical past from which as a process it could be felt to issue slowly forth, like the growth of an organism. But today the past is dead, transformed into a packet of well-worn and thumbed glossy images. As for the future, which may still be alive in some small heroic collectivities on the Earth's surface (...) seeks to intoxicate itself with images of death that range from the destruction of the world by fire, water and ice to lengthening sleep or the berserk orgies of high-rise buildings or superhighways reverting to barbarism." (p. 287/288) And this just reminded me of writing about Rem Koolhaas' Delirious New York.

It is from this perspective that the final part of the essay addresses SF, as a literary genre that still has the power, not to overcome the status quo, but to make it visible: "(...) what is indeed authentic about it (SF), as a mode of narrative and a form of knowledge, is not at all its capacity to keep the future alive, even in imagination. On the contrary, its deepest vocation is over and over again to demonstrate and to dramatize our incapacity to imagine the future (...) the imagination of otherness and radical difference; to succeed by failure (...) a contemplation of our own absolute limits." (p. 288/289)

The creative product of the utopian SF writer is thus seen as a disclosure of present reality, which may or may not be intentionally done. The limits of this cultural production which we must still see within a capitalist relation remain bound to "the systemic, cultural and ideological closure of which we are all in one way or another prisoners." (p. 289) But within this realm, the SF novel has the possibility, as any other product does, to participate in the current affairs of the world, affecting it and becoming effective as a political horizon of hope beyond "the nightmare of History".

In the end, through the example of the novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers, we find progress to be one of the "the most archaic longings of the human race", a call to happiness in a technological era, the impossible Utopia, or, what amounts to be the same, the impossible Dystopia.

* in Archaeologies of the Future, The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Verso, 2005

02 - MANY POSSIBLE SONGLINES

How many SONGLINES regarding the idea of Progress could there be in the route we've chosen across the country? For now we are thinking of progress as something that comes back with a vengeance.

1. One SONGLINE could be the original people's thrust to improve life. Dating back from the first settlers moving to the west until their virtual comeback in the form of dust related to modern agricultural practices as seen in the Dust Bowl.

2. Another, more suited for architects, could be to follow the path of the sky-scraper. From it's development in NY and Chicago to the dissemination across the country and finally to it's destruction back in NY by airplanes.

3. Yet another, this one with no coming or going, could be to trace the major catastrophes in NY, Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, New Mexico, San Francisco, throughout their recent history. This would build a map of events in time with no chronological sequence.

4. Or the trail of the atomic bomb Manhattan project which had several locations, many of which, along the SONGLINE path.

5. ...

All these relate to progress as something that is always on the way of turning against us. But they also make proof of the ingenious ways to overcome setbacks.

So, progress as an acceptance of fragility instead of an affirmation of power.

01 - PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE