10 October
Just after our second ARCH561 seminar and it was a really interesting hour and a half. Unfortunately I missed last weeks lecture with Adam Cowley-Evans, however, I met him last Wednesday to have a quick chat about what he had gone through and I got the reading/study list off of him. Both texts where quite hard and heavy reading, but I managed to get through and take a lot from them. I also watched a film on the subject and surprisingly began to link the topics of the pieces into other texts and real life scenarios I could think of.
Just a quick unrelated thing, the girl to my right in the library has one book in front of her while she creeps on some other girl called Vicky, and the book is called, "How to Think Like a Programmer"...really? thinking like a programmer...unless a programmer is some form of capitalist ninja force to suppress the population of the matrix then I think that is a slightly sad state of affairs. Oh great, and now she's eating a snickers with her mouth wide open and breathing heavily....looks like the effort of opening the wrapper really took its toll...I bet she's one of the types of people who eats that half eaten jelly bean which drops to an area of the floor that tends to gather the most hair and dust...just pick the crap of it and if you get a hair in your mouth, use it as floss...anywho...and I just say a blind guy...in the library...I suppose we have a braille section.
Back to the seminar, although Henri Lefebvre's theories on place and space have really never taken a priority in my studies, it was very interesting. Adam had a few starting points for conversation, but after the first one, we didn’t need and prompting, the guys became entangled in intellectual in-depth debates on the topics. There are three guys who are the prominent voices in the discussions, all of whom are intelligent guys, but I wouldn't class myself as one of those three. It may look like I have little opinion or ideas on the matters, but its the expressing them that gets me...I like to keep my ideas to myself, which is an extremely bad attribute, I think about the topic in debate, listen to others, and then make my own private judgement..this judgement tends to stay private, probably because I don't want to sound stupid...
The areas of Space and Place, and identity/ownership of the city are the main themes in Adams seminars and texts. As requested I read (I use the verb read, but thats not what I mean, I looked over the words and tried to comprehend the meanings and ideas the words present) small extracts of Henri Lefebvre and Michel De Certeau's Spatial Stories, these were tough intellectual texts in which ideas are portrayed through the use of metaphors, narratives and all other sorts of confusing english. I took quite a bit from the texts, but not as much as I did from the seminars.
Place is quite a significant theme in my research and will help form ideas and arguments in my thesis, however space has very little. It was good for me to see this abstract post-modern relationship of the two in relation to one another. I'm not going to attempt to highlight all of the things and theories I took from the past week or two, but some interesting arguments and questions have come up for me. Do we, as inhabitants of the city, have a right to the city? It is agreed that we should, but in the modern day 'real world', do we? Through sub-cultures, movements such as graffiti, and protests such as the current 'Occupy Wall Street' do we take and exercise our right to the city? There's a group that go by the name of space hijackers, who I think everyone should look up, they are awesome and I'd love to one day become part of something similar...I know Rob is interested in them too, maybe we could form a Plymouth branch..
Another group, or more like two guys and a girl, who are absolutely genius, are the 'everything is ok' guys (thats what I'm calling them) who go to areas which are debatably public/private and places of business like canary wharf and run the risk of breaching the peace by standing quietly with signs which read "everything is ok" or wielding megaphones and blaring witty comments.
One thing I do find funny though, I found this out after an hour of what was debatably procrastination disguised as research, or maybe thats just what research in a field such as this is, just plain procrastination (just an aside, I saw an app called 'procrastinator' in the app store on my mac the other day...as if you need an app for it....). But a common sight among riots and groups, particularly in the current Occupy Wall Street protests and the group 'Anonymous' who have had a few well published stunts over the past two years, including protest at scientology's headquarters in East Grinstead, is the presence of the Guy Fawkes mask from Alan Moore's graphic novel. It is of course through the medium of the massive multi million dollar movie, V for Vendetta, the mask has claimed its fame and connotations... Sales of the mask are three times higher then any other mask on the market, particularly through its association with anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-corperate anarchy...HOWEVER, with ever sale of the mask, the global corporation Time Warner, father company of Warner Brothers which owns all copyrights to the movie V for Vendetta, makes a considerable cut of the price...They are paying their money earned by working for whatever multinational, back into the pocket of an organization which is among the top five richest corporations in America........
I am a massive fan of the movie, and the mask though to be honest...
Another 'movement' come from the Occupy Wall Street of the present time are things like Occupy George...A graphic design firm in America who have started to print facts onto dollar bills. There is a law in America which makes in illegal to render any currency so that it cannot circulate, hence burning a dollar bill, or drawing on one is a punishable offense...but check these guys out, really cool designs, and pretty much breaking the law...but their disclaimer reads;
"LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The intent behind Occupy George is not to render any money unfit to be reissued, and in fact the hope is that all stamped money will circulate as much as possible, passing knowledge to all those who come across the bills."
I feel I may have exhausted my input for today, but I hope that this is the style of product they want for submission...and I hope whoever in the MARE522 module will correct this has a sense of humor...
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