No Help for That | Jackie Clark

“The intelligent part of man being eminently if not chiefly displayed in the structure of his work, his affectionate part is to be displayed in its decoration.”
-John Ruskin

I’m reading this really neat book right now called Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson published by  Clear Cut Press.

Here’s an excerpt from the manifesto:

“Soft Architecture will reverse the wrongheaded story of structural deepness. The institution is all doors but no entrances. The work of the SA paradoxically recompiles the metaphysics of surface, performing an horizontal research which greets shreds of fibre, pigment flakes, the bleaching of light, proofs of lint, ink, spore, liquid, and pixilation, the strange, frail, leaky cloths and sketchings and gestures which we are. The work of the SA, simultaneously strong and weak, makes new descriptions on the warp of former events. By descriptions, we mean moistly critical dreams, morphological thefts, authentic registers of pleasant customs, accidents posing as intentions. SA makes up face-practices.

“What if there is no ‘space,’ only a permanent, slow-motion mystic takeover, an implausibly careening awning? Nothing is utopian. Everything wants to be. Soft Architects face the reaching middle.”

What a mouthful. An amazing, amazing mouthful.