Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:06 Welcome to failed architecture, breeze blocks, where editors share their thoughts on works in progress, urgent matters, and current happenings in architecture and spatial politics. My name is Michael Nicholas. In this episode, I'm joined by Mary and Ella Dupree LA and my fellow New York city-based failed architecture editor, Kevin Rogan to discuss the discourse that ensued online in response to an article titled on political temperament written by Yale architecture, professor Keller Easterling, as a part of the virtual book tour for her newest work medium design, which ultimately became a proxy for discussion about the way architecture theory and the discipline at large has engaged with politics last week after things subsided a bit Mary and Ella wrote an article and response called not everything is architecture, which I think did a really great job in clarifying where politics actually function within the practice of architecture. So very Noah, your article was formally a response to the Easterling article, but I think it was really about something, a little more wide reaching. Uh, do you have any insight as to why the conversation about the relationship between architecture and politics resonated as much as it did?
Speaker 1 00:01:08 You know, there is a way in which architects are sort of taught to engage with the world, which is primarily first and first and primarily through their work and through the discipline. And I think that there is a growing sense among, you know, people in design and architecture that that is just insufficient, but not exactly a sense about exactly why it's insufficient and like what the alternatives are. And so what I was trying to do in my piece was, I mean, I basically, I saw the like hubbub around Easterlings piece as an opera, as like an opening to talk about, okay, here's, there's a hunger for architects to engage with the moment. Here's like a way to think about it. That is not, um, just about how do we like architect our way out of a situation or into a situation. Um, and I think it was, you know, I think it was, I think it was resonant one because people hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the, to the article Easterlings piece to begin with.
Speaker 1 00:02:21 You know, it was like that one clip from, it was like making the rounds on Twitter. People were defending her or people were attacking her, et cetera, et cetera. So it was like hub of already. And so people were already paying attention. I knew that whatever I wrote, people were going to pay attention to because that's what they had been doing for however many hours, 72 hours. And I think, and I think, you know, it was also, it was also resonant because I think it, I didn't, I didn't try to do like a point by point, you know, re rebuttal of her argument. I tried to identify what I thought her argument was a symptom of and provide some alternatives,
Speaker 0 00:02:58 Not to do a point point rebuttal. Um, I do want to read a short clip from that article. Um, and maybe we can talk a little bit about like, uh, this type of writing, maybe what this means a little bit. So this is from Easterling. Taking a political stance, usually means taking a position on a left right spectrum that gauges allegiance to a political philosophy or political party. But what if political stances were also placed on a spectrum that gauge their temperament, the degree of violence, they induced a political stance, whether it's content or philosophy can result in authoritarian, concentrations of power, any political stance can exacerbate tense and competitive binaries. The content of these left-right philosophies perhaps tells us very little and maybe the entire left-right apparatus is a vestige of the modern enlightenment mind, a set of philosophies and habits cobbled together to replace the certainty of a God, but maintaining quest for ID. I didn't shuttle monotheism in a mannequin binary struggle between opposition. Sorry. It's like, it's tough to even get through this because it is kind of silly to,
Speaker 1 00:04:00 I mean, to say that like the content doesn't tell us much, I'm sorry, what,
Speaker 0 00:04:09 But I think there's something to be said here. It's like, what purpose does this kind of writing serve? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 I mean, like I said, I do think that like, there is like a pressure to engage with the political moment and, and, uh, like a dearth of, of intra disciplinary options to do that. And I think this is an attempt to say like, well, you know, it was to stake a position in the moment that is both, um, sort of edgy seeming, but also ultimately, you know, like status quo, I think, to say, to say that like the content of like left right is tells us nothing, I think is just completely a historical. I also just, I also think that just to talk about violence as though any instance of violence is equal to any other instance of violence is once more it historical. I was trying to remember earlier if she makes explicit reference to black lives matter or not. But I think, you know, even if she doesn't, I think that like that's sort of the sub the subtext and, and to equate, uh, an uprising and responds to the murder of a man by the police, which, which I, I say in, in the piece that I wrote, that's state sanctioned violence to equate an uprising against that.
Speaker 1 00:05:37 That is also in many ways, an uprising against centuries of violence committed against black people, specifically in this country, in the service of upholding capitalism to equate those two things. I think it's just completely has a historical. Um, I mean there's one side that has power to carry out violence. And that is like, that is in fact their mandate that is their job is to carry out violence. And then there's one side who's trying to save their goddamn lives. So again, so I think it's a historical and I think it's also, um, the obfuscation and the like, I mean, this is not even the most calm in fact, the clearest paragraph in the whole piece, because it doesn't enhance before, like the part about the bugs and like sugar
Speaker 2 00:06:20 And whatever the other won't be,
Speaker 1 00:06:22 Um, lumpy. Yeah. And I think, I think the obvious cation is like a purposeful, like, uh, it's a way to, to smuggle in a, uh, uh, politics, uh, philosophy that like tries to engage with politics tries to say like, you know, we can kind of look or act transgressive, but at the end of the day is about upholding the status quo through this parallel insistence that we should, we are actually just thinking about things in the wrong
Speaker 0 00:06:55 Kevin, you were the only one out of the three of us who's read medium design. Was this just a bad representation of her political philosophy? Is this something that's kind of explored further in the book?
Speaker 3 00:07:05 Um, I can not overstay how much this, uh, this peace and double negative unpolitical temperament actually pulls back from, from the Heights that the book goes to. So for, for example, and I don't know, see, I think Easterling may be doing herself a massive favor by keeping it short. Um, because in the book again, there's no explicit reference really to, well, it's very weird because there's no explicit reference to the political. And I think part of how she pulls that off is by constantly referring to the political, but it's in this very strange way, which is like, as you said, always in terms of like superbugs, uh, her favorite, favorite phrase is binaries and loops. So basically the political for her is strictly the ideological and S and not even really, it's very strange because that sort of Sandpoint gets rid of the actions of states and of institutional power in general, to the point where she can say that.
Speaker 3 00:08:13 I mean, and, and so by doing that, that violence, so you, you mentioned, and like, you know, bring to the fore does not exist because there's no actor to actually persecuted, like you can't have a, a class for, if there is nothing on one side. Um, and the funny thing is she removes the side that's in power. Um, and so, and then what that also does is it backs her into extremely funny and like just really fucking depressing, like sort of vignettes where she pretends, or she backdates medium design and claims that Rosa parks is a medium designer. Um, and so I, it, it's, it's unbelievably offensive. Um, and I, I really, I really can't overstate it or overstate to the degree, which it is. So I'm just going to read a really brief, quick thing, um, just a little tiny blurb. Um, so while it took just as much courage parks activated an undeclared urban disposition, and she shifted this potential in the space, geopolitical political matrix to break the loop without intensifying a dangerous binary. So in, in Easterling speak, what that means is basically the binary in question is centuries of racist state violence versus, um, a few hundred, few thousand, uh, local, um, civil rights, protesters and parks. His major contribution is to not actually respond to that preexisting violence because in the Easterling verse that violence does not exist. And that's just one example, um, just really quickly, the, some of the other good examples of medium designers are UN habitat. Um, people that make autonomous vehicles, um, stuff like that. So you really got to see it to believe
Speaker 2 00:10:24 It. So what I would like to know is
Speaker 1 00:10:28 Why is it worthwhile to develop this theory?
Speaker 3 00:10:34 Great question, because, and, and the sort of blind spot to power also has the very, very convenient thing of, she can say stuff like, oh, the designer has to be the parent and the room of the designer is the person playing pool. It's the person who's trying to train their dog, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, what is never addresses the fact that a designers don't actually occupy that place. If we expand these metaphors to a social level and B if they did, they'd have to be at the head of either states or massive global organizations like UN habitat, but the, the, it never, it just never comes up. And so, like, it's just a, it's a fable. It's like a it's like returns actually, funnily enough, to, she like talks shit on the enlightenment all the time, but she turned returns exactly to like the very sort of first ideals of the enlightenment and like calm to the French sociologists who say that we need like a society run by engineers just for her, it's a society run by medium to society, but she just she's too. She's too. Wishy-washy to just say it.
Speaker 1 00:11:48 Yeah. I mean, I w just Kevin, as you were talking, just now, what I started thinking about was like, I, and I say this in the piece too, that I don't think Easterling is fundamentally interested in understanding how the world works as much as he is. She's interested in a projection of some theory onto the world for what purpose, like I asked before, it is actually unclear to me what the purpose is. I would love to know from her what she thinks this work that she is doing is doing without that, without that knowledge, what I think happens is that architecture, the, the, the, the design of architecture is a projection is actually literally a projection and physically a projection and metaphorically, a projection. And then if you go to architecture school, um, I was trained as an architect. Um, that's how you learn to, to do things you learn.
Speaker 1 00:12:53 Um, you learn to, to project from a vision that you might have, and also you learn that, like, in order to get there, you can kind of take, you can borrow things. You can splice things together. You can collage, you can make references to all kinds of anything goes, you know, um, in, in that, um, in design school, um, and often, and actual design practice. Um, and then, so that mode of working, I think gets grafted onto, um, uh, an engagement with theory or with politics or with history. Um, but it just doesn't work because the facts of history are not, I mean, maybe Eastern would disagree with this, but I think the facts of history are not rearrangable. Um,
Speaker 3 00:13:42 Oh, funnily enough, if I may just really quick, she refers to historians as a discipline playing chess with their pet concepts. So she would actually say, um, I think precisely that history is essentially meaningless.
Speaker 0 00:13:59 So I guess like one motif that reoccurs among this type of work, and especially in Easterling, based on what Kevin you've said about medium design, and this article is a general skepticism towards, or even an outright dismissal of movement politics. And like the practice of architecture is like typically conceived as a solitary task, as you said, like it rewards the novelty of projects often over their social value. So is architecture theory, architecture practice incompatible with movement politics, or kind of collective action? Or is there a possibility of like actually engaging in politics in a meaningful way?
Speaker 1 00:14:35 There is a role that theorists of anything I think have to play in the world. Um, and to my mind that the, the role is to, is to clarify the stakes of any given situation. And I think what, when we, when we are talking about architecture, I think what is, what gets sort of tricky for a lot of people who are like really mired in the discipline is that this, the stakes that you are sort of taught to understand as like an architect are almost exclusively surrounding your own ability to practice in the world. And to, like I was saying earlier, like project into the world. And I think that runs directly counter to the larger, I think, stakes that exist like historical stakes that exist any time. People like rise up against a particular system. And I think right now we're seeing a lot of chafing against capitalism.
Speaker 1 00:15:55 And I think this, the stakes there require, which are, you know, collective liberation require an acceptance on the part of people who have to sell their labor to survive. That that is indeed what the defining characteristic of their lives. And that is indeed where their power lies. And that again, runs directly counter to like what people are taught to sort of think and believe as architects, which is like the defining characteristic of my life is that I'm an architect. And the thing that gives me power is that I can make things in the world and that is how I affect change. And those two things are completely incompatible with each other. And I think that we need to eradicate, we need to eradicate the sense that like, the way that architects make change in the world is like by making buildings or, you know, in the case of Easterling and others, by thinking about how buildings or architecture or design, like work in the world and then talking about it.
Speaker 1 00:16:59 And I think, you know, the project that I'm invested in is a project in which, um, architects and other workers, all workers recognize that their power lies and, and withholding their labor and organizing in order to be able to carry that out, that withholding of labor, um, as a source of power, there is plenty to be. Um, I think there's plenty to be won in terms of like, w I guess, you know, winning architects to this particular way of thinking about themselves. I think, you know, uh, organization like the architecture lobby has been doing that now for years, and, you know, fairly successfully as,
Speaker 3 00:17:37 As far as your sort of wider critique about, you know, the way an architect approaches the world. I think you're also 100% correct. I know and think this is actually Easterlings big problem, too, where she can describe things as happening automatically, or describe things as evening out and, you know, sort of an ecology or whatever, and ecology for architects, the creation of an architectural object, no matter how small, no matter whether it's a stupid fucking park bench requires production requires labor that does not enter into the architect's consideration in less, it fucks up and fails. So if lead times are too long, then the architect cares about labor, but if there aren't, then they don't give a shit and they can't be made to either there and within that, there's already a hierarchy where the architect implicitly views themselves above anyone who actually builds anything that Springs from there, their demagogic brain. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:18:41 I think the other thing too, is that, well, a couple of things, I think often architects confuse historically historically, but then also like in sort of in retrospect, architects confused like proximity to power with power and also ignorance. I mean, architecture is like takes a huge amount of capital to pull off. So already we're talking about, um, uh, uh, uh, discipline in a, in a, in an act or an intervention in the world or whatever that, um, you know, unless you are somehow independently wealthy and, but even then like, is, is inherently and necessarily bound up with, um, like, like bound up with, and like survival to like existing power structures in the worlds. Um, and, and just making a building very, I feel like a few years ago there was this whole thing about like pro program and, um, you know, and I, I just, I don't think that that is of course, like making a community center.
Speaker 1 00:19:56 That's fantastic. Yes. We should have beautiful community centers. Love it. Is that how we're going to change like the rampant, injustice and inequity in our world? Absolutely not. The only way we're going to change that is through class struggle, which I say in the piece. But my favorite thing that I wrote in the piece is that Eastern island can get away with not making sense because who cares and who cares. Like, that's how I feel about like, when, when, so it's like, is there a role for architects and designers? Absolutely. As workers, yes. A hundred percent. Um, is there a role for them and like rethinking our current political paradigm, like, you know, through architecture theory? No. You know what I want architect, architecture, theorists, or designers to is to like, make me excited and make me like, dream about the world that we could have if we were like on alienated, if like capitalism didn't exist. And if the buildings that went up in the world were actually like for human need and for beauty and not for the profit of develop.
