[-empyre-] Artists Against Oligarchy?

[nick knouf]

marc herbst wrote:
> Perhaps practices seemingly framed by precarious arrangements are a  
> way through to a counter class composition.
> Agreed though in that embracing of the precarious position puts the  
> onus on the precarious to not just be a neo-liberal subject.
> 
> As per your race/class comments... here in LA many of these  practices  
> are best exemplified by immigrant community survival patterns. Look a  
> little deeper

Oh, most definitely.  Same in Ithaca, same elsewhere in the world.  What
I did not want to do, however, is to talk about those issues, patterns,
strategies in a way that would not do justice to them, as if I were just
throwing them out there in a form of pastiche.  There is definitely much
for those of us in the North to learn from the practices of those in the
South (where "North" and "South" are not just geographic markers but
also refer to specific parts of our own localities, be they immigrant
populations or different race/class/gender/ethnicity), but we have to do
so without romanticizing the practices.  One of the things that
infuriates me to no end is to see and hear some (only some) architects
like Koolhaas playing up the "improvisatory" architecture in places like
Lagos and heralding it as the future of architecture in the
North---completely ignoring the real suffering that leads to (and is
embedded within) such practices.  I think it is a fine line that we have
to walk when we re-appropriate (or, perhaps recuperate) these practices
 outside of their local context...

nick