'The sensible, concrete surface of architecture and the abstract surface of perception, waving with intensive affective matter, on which architectural body-events nonsensuously register, are two facets of the same topological figure. They are in as intimate an embrace as the two sides of a Möbius strip.' Massumi
For Part I
click here
Words from Halbe Kuipers:
urban surfing and winding?
The playful experimentation with urban surfacing made me wonder what it is it to play with the wind? Or, what is it even to feel the wind, an element that is truly too ungraspable yet so present that it is almost strange to think it as a thing in the first place. I was reminded of certain sports that thrive on the wind, but as with many sports they really set out to conquer this element, to master it and mobilize it in the most efficient and strongest ways. For sure there already we see a lot of the forces, but they might not be so much in play. So again, what is it to play with the wind? A bit like kiting but then perhaps with a body that is itself kiting also? Maybe there is in this play a sort of mode of existence of winding in that there is a relational play with the element of wind going on. Let me entertain this propostion a bit.
I was reminded of a beautiful passage from Gilles Deleuze in his class on Spinoza (well actually I was working with it last week, so reminded seems a bit superfluous to say; in any case, I can use some of what I wrote with it earlier).
Personne ne peut nier que savoir nager, c'est une conquête d'existence, c'est fondamental, vous comprenez: moi je conquiers un élément ; ça ne va pas de soi de conquérir un élément. Je sais nager, je sais voler. Formidable. Qu'est ce que ça veut dire? C'est tout simple: ne pas savoir nager c'est être à la merci de la rencontre avec la vague. Alors, vous avez l'ensemble infini des molécules d'eau qui composent la vague ; ça compose une vague et je dis: c'est une vague parce que, ces corps les plus simples que j'appelle "molécules", en fait ce n'est pas les plus simples, il faudra aller encore plus loin que les molécules d'eau. Les molécules d'eau appartiennent déjà à un corps, le corps aquatique, le corps de l'océan, etc... ou le corps de l'étang, le corps de tel étang. C'est quoi la connaissance du premier genre ? C'est: aller, je me lance, j'y vais, je suis dans le premier genre de connaissance: je me lance, je barbote comme on dit.
While it is much in the context of indeed a conquest (conquest of existence though!) and a sort of mastering of a practice, nevertheless there are some interesting things in here in regards to this play with an element. The following is what I wrote with this example.
The first steps of the existential conquest of learning to swim, according to Deleuze, is this groping experimentation in regards to a water and a wave. I use the indefinite singular here, precisely because both are entirely specific in their instances: the water constitutes a body, that is a specific water (a sea, a lake, a river, a pond, etc.), as much as every single wave also constitutes a body (nothing but a wave, and as there are no other names here thus we can get a sense of the essential quality of a wave). Between these two, and in relation to our own body, there is then the creation of a new body that learns to swim. But this comes only later. First, Deleuze says, it is a practice of dabbling and paddling, the sort of movements that comes without any know how (you could call it animalistic, like a dog, but they are frankly far more attuned to their instinct and just swim, albeit paddling indeed). At this stage there is only me and the wave, entirely “extrinsic” as Deleuze says. The wave wins from us and we cry out “ha maman, la vague m'a battu !” Or as Deleuze specifies, ““Les parties qui m'appartiennent à moi sont secouées, elles reçoivent un effet de choc, des parties qui appartiennent à la vague. Alors tantôt je rigole et tantôt je pleurniche, suivant que la vague me fait rire ou m'assomme, je suis dans les affects passion.” Only after this stage we move into a practice of learning to swim by interpreting the signs of a water and a wave, and thus we are mastering the relation between the different bodies. Then I know how to swim:
[…] je sais nager; ça ne veut pas dire forcément que j'ai une connaissance mathématique ou physique, scientifique, du mouvement de la vague, ça veut dire que j'ai un savoir faire, un savoir faire étonnant, c’est-à-dire que j'ai une espèce de sens du rythme, la rythmicité. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire, le rythme ça veut dire que: mes rapports caractéristiques je sais les composer directement avec les rapports de la vague. ça ne se passe plus entre la vague et moi, c’est-à-dire que ça ne se passe plus entre les parties extensives, les parties mouillées de la vague et les parties de mon corps ; ça se passe entre les rapports. Les rapports qui composent la vague, les rapports qui composent mon corps, et mon habileté lorsque je sais nager, à présenter mon corps sous des rapports qui se composent directement avec le rapport de la vague. Je plonge au bon moment, je ressors au bon moment. J'évite la vague qui approche, ou, au contraire je m'en sers, etc... Tout cet art de la composition des rapports.
Indeed, an art of composing relations, a highly complex art of interpreting movements and intensities and in doing so the creation of a new body and a new subject: a swimmer swimming. It is the interpretation of movements and intensities in that in seeing the wave there is nothing of representation or signification going on in the moment of seeing and acting; what we see of a wave, of its topology, are merely qualitative in its curvatures, breaking points, emergent folds, etc. As such we can speak of only movements and intensities: a whole physics of a wave in its qualitative nature. Mastering here is nothing but this art in between the different bodies, fully relational. The dynamic distance I spoke of above is here such that it comes into play precisely in the learning to interpret the signs of a water and a wave, even when this is not done consciously or with the strictness of a scientific method, it is nevertheless very rigorous. What is most interesting, however, is that Deleuze will remark that even after this stage of intuition wherein we find the middle of a (swimmer’s) body, a water, and a wave, there is yet another stage. At this third stage it is not only the interpretation and the know how of swimming that is at play, but also evaluating in how to swim in every act. These evaluations are even before the act, before we plunge into a wave. As such what we attain is a concept of a wave. At this stage, and that we can relate back to Nietzsche’s conception, there is a true mastering insofar as a new body has been produced together with a new subjectivity in relation to the wave and the water. But as much as this example is interesting in regards to the composing, it also carries a certain drive of mastery insofar as that it seems to only tend to having to learn to actually swim for oneself. Is it not a completion of sorts that contracts into the self? The mastering could still be held of the subject, even when we speak of the production of a new subjectivity: is that not just plain knowledge of how to do that is put into practice? Is this new subjectivity not just the same subject but with new knowledge, the plain old developmental idea of learning? Here it is interesting to remember Franz Kafka’s swimming champion who doesn’t know how to swim: something else might in play other than mastery as completion and know how as fulfillment (xx).
The whole thing on mastery aside, what I find interesting with this example of learning to swim is precisely the encounter with an element. Through Spinoza, Deleuze beautifully describes how there is a certain interpretation of movement and intensities going on: indeed, with a wave you don’t recognize its form and then go like, ‘oh I need to dive a bit to the right’ The interpretation and evaluation and act all go together, instantly. A body, a wave, a water. Well, this is of course much how we can see an encounter with the wind. Granted, with the urban surfing there is another material in play, a material crafted precisely to intensify these relations. You pick up these large ‘kites’ or textiles and you face the wind. It’ll start pushing and pulling, trying to constantly lift you up or at the very least blow you away. The wind is an incredible strong element you immediately know as your body enters this mode of winding. As much as it’ll make you lift up, it also brings you down precisely in surrendering to the forces of this element. In short, all the qualities of this element, from picking up to lifting off, from blowing away to sucking you in: sheer movements and intensities that can only be felt as contrasts.
There was another thing that struck me with this play. I have a good friend and she’s fascinated by the waves, or perhaps I should say as above, by ‘a wave’ insofar as she’s fascinated by its singularity in movement and intensities. She has a way of speaking with a wave as alive, as multiplicituous in that she will speak of ‘wavicles’. This is not just the physics and its particles, but the full aliveness, the ‘multitude’ of a wave. It is, at least for her, a whole people that is always moving. And as it moves you, you become one of that people. This resonates with what I wrote above through Deleuze on attaining or distilling a concept with a wave. Now with a gust of wind (why is there no word for the oneness of a wind already!?) there is something similar at play but it seems even more complex precisely insofar as a wind is even more intangible than a wave. It is practically formless. To commence with a play like that of urban surfacing is then precisely to dive into the currents of sheer complexity. It is a pure physics, but as we are playing, or as I said winding, there is nevertheless a concept of a wind in play also. What I am getting at is that with the attaining of such a concept, a wave, or a wind, is that there is inevitably a sort of minor socialization in play also. If there is the drawing out of such a concept, then it also means there is a people with that concept. This makes me think that while of course you do this play with multiple human bodies and these bodies obviously also come together with a sort of interaction, it is however already itself entirely multiplicituous and thus with a certain multitude: its just that when these different bodies come together, the human bodies, it is maybe more visible. What I mean to say is that this play, its experimentation, is I guess shot through with sociality, but this is the sort of sociality that is perhaps in the first place more-than human.
Ste-Hélène Island 2 (Park Jean Drapeau)
August 12 2021
Winds SO/SOS 25-30 km/h, gusts 35-40 km/h
Cloudy 35C
(with HB, Cadu, Andrew Rabyniuk, Halbe Kuipers and Florencia Sosa Rey / students in Humanities and Fine Arts)
Mies van der Rhoe (arch.) / Westmount Square
August 14 2021
Winds O/ONO 25-30 km/h, gusts 45 km/h
Sunny 28C
(with HB)
'Designing architecture is an act of generating vortexes in the currents of air, light, wind and sound; it is not constructing a dam against the flow nor resigning itself to the current.' Toyo Ito
IBM 2.2 (practice interrupted by security guard)
August 26 2021
Winds O 30 km/h, gusts 40 km/h
Sunny 32C
(with HB and Pascale Bernadin)
Mies van der Rhoe / Westmount Square 1.2 (practice interrupted by security guard)
August 26 2021
Winds O 30 km/h, gusts 40 km/h
Sunny 32C
(with HB and Pascale Bernadin / art model)
