what does it mean to enter into someone's space which, let's say, is in the process of being painted, or organized, and to have that person apologize to you? as if that would be something to be apologetic about in the first place. what is it to consider the messiness and the unfinished state of a place something to excuse, to tolerate, to squint one's eyes and pass by barely flinching?
the assumed normal state of things being a finished state -- or not even finished, just a specifically curated state. post studs. post drywall. post joint compound. point paint. the finality and the cleanliness of a space having taken hold. that is the moment of presentation.
I am thinking about salads - a salad as essentially a collection of 'unfinished' things, or at least objects that have not touched fire, or that it is at its most direct a collection or an assemblage that happens to merge together into a whole. at no point does one's critique of a salad extend into a finishedness ("I'm sorry that this thing wasn't seared in a pan with some olive oil") but rather a celebration of directness. or: the object speaks, there is no transformation or production process engaged here, no act of 'cooking' but just mostly the direct appearance of (ostensibly) labor-limited objects here. a bell pepper, kind of chopped. some greens, roughly washed and thrown in a bowl. some cheese, jabbed at and crumbled with a fork. olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sprinkled over in eyeballed amounts, the tilt of the bottle, level of liquid sloshing briefly. that is it.
why not space? space as salad. why is the careful curation of objects and places such an emphasized point? is it because the aesthetic qualities of 'finished' space can be strong, can hold a kind of power, and so a pursuit of this 'finish' is of an aesthetic one, not one of decorum or propriety? the lesser of two evils would be such - that the continuity of the smooth white wall is a desired visual attribute that drives this 'finishedness' rather than the proper finitude of being-done. being-right.
biting into a space-salad would be the process of experiencing every element in continuous succession. !-#-@-$-%, and a kind of persistence-of-sensation overlaying them on top of each other. spaces beholden in a continual gradient. some overall dressing that is the pretense of continuity. the elements of a building presented as they are - drywall, studs, screws, tools, dust, roughness, sweat, leftover scraps, contractor bags. and more importantly to step into that space without apology or withdrawal but a full on appreciation of discrete elements that would assemble together into a whole, but only through the process of experience.
--
more to talk. but:
why is it that, within 3d/2d space, drawing a box is one of the easiest things ever -- yet making a box, a perfectly rectilinear planar surface, is immensely difficult?
or better question -- how is it that the logic of representation and drawing dominates architectural design processes, but the logic of material manipulation dominates construction processes? how are these two things reconciled, if at all?
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why is it that some people have time to do things, and other people have their time cut short, so suddenly and nonsensically? why is it that you work in an office twenty floors up, and she works in a office over there, and she works at a studio space, and he works in a restaurant, and we all do these different things, spend the same time, are paid so differently, and have such different valuations of our own lives imposed onto us?
the punch of a singular event slices through these sections of time and effort and evaluation, reminds me that all I have is time, so little time, just time.