react admin on 12 May ’08
ANY magazine is a great read! I have the copy on Tafuri (yes.. the only issue I own). Show u next time
Janita on 12 May ’08
Far from Equilibrium is a great read too. you should pick up one! Have you met Kwinter?
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JoeChi on TU DELFT ARCHITECTURE FACULTY DESTROYED BY FIRE / BRAND BIJ BOUWKUNDE TU DELFT
This must have been horrible to witness. I really hope all concerned had appropriate <a >landlord and tenant insurance</a>.
nk on ANOTHER FIRE!
OH NO!! I was there for a performance once.. It was a wonderful concert venue, and indeed an architectural gem.
Janita Han on Pecha Kucha Beijing, 18 May 2008
hey ngai keong
good idea join pecha kucha and talk about re:act!
SANFORD KWINTER @ BERLAGE for FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM BOOK LAUNCH
Janita Han on Sat, May 10, 2008
left to right: Salomon Frausto, Sanford Kwinter, Peter Trummer
my signed copy of Far from Equilibrium
Sanford Kwinter was in Berlage to launch his book, Far from Equilibrium, that was 20 years in the making. Looking every bit the mad scientist that he was, Kwinter captivated with his sincerity and self-deprecating attitude. If you’ve ever tried to read his book Architectures of Time, you will realise that everything you’ve thought was deep and complex writing was really only surface treatment.
The book, written within a 20 year time frame, where much of the essays which were published in the ANY magazine in the 90’s, was produced as a reminder that today’s culture was a production of the past, whether a past that had happened or not- radical an-amnesia, he calls it. In the 1990’s, he put together all possible arguments of why one should throw the computer out of the window, at a time when the computers was just beginning to appear on the desktop. To him, his writings were merely “exercises in humour..exercising one’s duty in public with levity” , not so much as moral scoldings. The idea of having fun is encapsulated in the book introduction as such: “It is hoped that the present book will serve as an example of what Michel Foucault once described as a decisively missing aspect of much 1960s militantism: the insight that agitation was never meant not to be fun.”
I crept up to him in the cafeteria and asked for him to sign the book. He was nice to initiate some conversation. Despite my belief that I could make small talk with anyone, the fact that Kwinter listened to everything I said made it a tad intimidating, yet surprisingly refreshing.
I pored over his book and was pleasantly surprised at various fun things in it- change in font size, secret essays hidden within flaps. Good buy. I will have fun reading it.