Readings at the Sanctuary of Hope are bi-weekly workshops held to develop any project with a textual basis. The transfiguration of the written word into the oral is the primary movement.
Readers are encouraged to approach their work with a willingness to develop the text they are working with beyond the page and into the social order. Those reading are booked in advance; if interested please contact the directors.
All Readings are free and open to the public.
Against Architecture is a four-week introductory course on a contemporary and practical discipline of emancipation in the spirit of revolt. Each class will undergo specific changes of environment and degrees of participation.
Saturday May 2nd 7-9pm (Sanctuary of Hope)
Saturday May 9th 7-9pm (Tompkins Square Park)
Saturday May 16th 7-9pm (decided by the class)
Saturday May 23rd/24th (overnight camping upstate)
Registration for the course is $20
For more information on Against Architecture, please contact Lech Szporer via email: lechlives@gmail.com
“Architecture represents a religion that it brings alive, a political power that it manifests, an event that it commemorates, etc. Architecture, before any other qualifications, is identical to the space of representation; it always represents something other than itself from the moment that it becomes distinguished from mere building.” Denis Hollier
In the opening passage to The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, Albert Camus points out that, when we say no, we are really saying yes; we are saying yes to ourselves and what we believe in, by saying no to something we will not stand for. These moments in our lives, however obvious or obscured, are paramount to the development of our being independent because they define us and establish our understanding of personal freedom.
Architecture is the activity of designing a system. Systems are abstractions of reality and their structures have behaviors. This course will examine the behaviors of architecture by reconsidering the intentions of structures and how these representations have shaped almost every aspect of our daily lives, from our language to our personal judgment, and from urban planning to social movement. The point of fixation will be the point of confrontation.
Truth is, rarely are the decisions we tend to make our own decisions. The experience of an identity is a phenomenon of architecture itself. Listening to a lamp post, the ticking of a walk sign, can be a form of revolt, of confrontation with the object; by paying it particular attention, you distinguish it, expose its utility and function, ultimately its purpose.
This course aims to strengthen one’s conviction in confronting psycho-geographical demarcations that are coercive in their attempts to normalize and de-individualize each and every one of us, by reckoning with the taboo of alternative communication. Architecture is apt for play and play is powerful.
We will expound upon Hijikata Tatsumi’s innovative theories in creating the anti-dance practice known as Butoh (the suspension of decision making), which began in the mid 1950s as a response to WWII and the student riots that followed in Japan; and what this means in relation to Antonin Artaud’s screaming body, the implications of Gordon Matta-Clark’s an-architecture, and Georges Bataille’s Visions of Excess.
There will be three weekly homework assignments and reading material. Homework assignments are intended to further your comprehension of the objective of the class. Digital photographic documentation is required of each assignment.