Lecture in the Shape of a Bridge Collapsing
to inaugurate the
by Matthew Goulish:
a contemplation of catastrophe for the Inauguration of the Institute of Failure
1. We begin
2. collapse
3. visibility
4. uncreativity
5. floodlands
6. delirium
7. transparency
8. machines
9. to believe
1. We begin
1.1. We begin as if to reshuffle the world, like a deck of cards whose original sequence has disappointed us.
1.2. We begin as if to form our thoughts in the shape of a bridge collapsing.
1.3. We begin with visibility.
1.4. We begin with uncreativity.
1.5. We begin caught in the floodlands of memory.
1.6. We rehearse our disasters in order to realize them, first to imagine the world, and then to make it.
1.7. We begin with transparency, to perceive the world in order to believe in it.
1.8. If machines could talk, what would they say?
1.9. The problem has changed.
2. collapse
2.1. On the morning of November 7, 1940, Kenneth Arkin, chairman of the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority, awoke to the noise of wind.
2.2. He drove to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at 7:30 A.M. where he read a 38 m.p.h. wind velocity on an anemometer at the midspan, and observed that the bridge was bouncing noticeably, but not exceptionally, and that the tie-down stays on the west side of the span were loose and whipping in a circular arc.
2.3. Shortly after 10:00 A.M. Arkin again checked the wind velocity and saw that it had increased to 42 m.p.h. and that the movement of the bridge deck had heightened dramatically; by his count the deck rose and fell at the center of the bridge 38 times per minute with a three foot amplitude.
2.4. Greatly concerned, Arkin halted traffic.
2.5. The up and down motion of the center span consisted of at least nine vertical undulations while the bridge also deflected laterally by as much as 2 feet.
all the words useless
2.6. Suddenly the bridge began twisting violently, and the nine-wave motion changed to a two-wave motion, while the deck near the
2.7. The amplitude of the twisting undulations from crest to valley reached 25 feet, and the bridge began to tear itself apart: suspenders flew, a section of the deck near the quarter point ripped away, the bridge rested a moment, then with a deafening roar, a 600 foot stretch tore away from the suspenders and fell into the water, the tops of the towers tilted 12 feet toward each shore, the side spans sagged, and as each section fell shock waves rippled along the remaining sections until what was left of the structure at last came to rest.
2.8. Relatively modest aerodynamic wind oscillations destroyed the Tacoma because of its weakness in torsion, a weakness which stemmed from two causes: cause #1) the shallowness of its stiffening girders; and cause #2) the narrowness of its roadway in relation to the span length – a ratio of 1:72, from which this part of this lecture takes its shape, echoing that impractical thinness in a form 1 sentence wide by 72 sentences long, or 9 sections of 8 sentences, section 2 of which now comes to an end with the following question: we understand the collapse of a bridge, but what is the collapse of a thought?
3. visibility
3.1. September: a million filing cabinets blew apart, and sheets of paper filled the streets, all the sheets covered with words, all the words useless.
3.2. We thought it was a movie, Independence Day, a sequel – the real as an appendage of the fantastic.
a small mammal with big ears
3.3. Visibility, the fabric of something we understand as reality, emerges through insistence: we watch, and we watch again, and we watch again again.
3.4. Commerce had been the inevitable, the extrusion of the fantastic upward, but the future is gaining on fantasy, and this is the trerritory where the overtaking occurs, as demonstrated by the following four examples.
3.5. Example #1) Through America’s toughest times, the Kit-Kat Klock has brightened our days for 70 years, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, Desert Storm, and several recessions – this battery-operated timepiece in the shape of a black-and-white cat with its tail as a pendulum, has been the source of enjoyment for families around the world for almost 60 years, with its Rolling Eyes, Wagging Tail and Infectious Smile – we thought you might be interested in a historical profile of the Kit-Kat Klock in light of recent events.
3.6. Example #2) McDonald’s delivers 14 trucks, each 45 feet long, full of Quarter Pounders and Chicken McNuggets, to the ruins, free of charge, and issues a press release: “McDonald’s is doing what we always do – we are helping our neighbors.”
3.7. Example #3) Within one month The Pentagon spends millions of dollars purchasing publications rights to all the most accurate civilian satellite photographs of the effects of US bombing in
3.8. Example #4) In the immediate aftermath, television networks cancel a number of programs deemed inappropriate – among these is one about an animated construction worker with talking machines: the BBC’s Bob the Builder, a cheerful Children’s show with songs.
4. uncreativity
4.1. “I am spending the 39th year of my life practicing uncreativity,” writes Kenneth Goldsmith as he embarks on his latest project: “On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day’s New York Times, word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page.”
4.2. “Imagine a book that is written with the intention not to be read.”
4.3. “I’m interested in quantifying and concretizing the vast amount of ‘nutritionless’ language; I’m also interested in the process itself being equally nutritionless.”
4.4. “I’ve long been an advocate of extreme process in writing – recording every move my body has made in one day, recording every word I spoke over the course of a week, recording every sound I heard ending in ‘r’ for almost four years,” – this last project produced No. 111.2.7.93 – 10.20.96, a 606 page long sentence collecting and alphabetizing sounds, words, phrases, or sentences, ending in the linguistic schwah, into chapters organized by syllable count, of which the following is an excerpt from Chapter 7.
4.5. a small mammal with big ears, a sorry state of affairs, a stranger in yukatta, a way to spot a liar, accommodation collar, acquire other ideas, actress/model/whatever, adaptive gonkulator, add some sliced paranoia, Addicted to your partner?, addition to your chancre, ah Satan sees Natasha, Ahhh. So that's what tears are for!, Ain't that right my bald brothers?, Akira Kurosawa, all and all is all we are, all apes are sprayed with water, all inspected have no fear, all is fair in love and war, all my bras have underwires, all previously acquired, All right! I'll cook you dinner!, Alois Schicklgruber, Am I my brother's keeper?, ambush fickle-ass finger, amor vincit omnia, amusement parks are a bore, an awed whisper reached my ears:, an endless sense of wonder, an eternal amoeba, an evening to remember
4.6. Two summers ago, as we walked through lower Manhattan, I thought, Kenneth walks the way he writes; not waiting for a crosswalk or checking for oncoming traffic, but simply following his trajectory, across sidewalk or street, navigating public terrain according to the dictates of his own system, confident that cars, if there are any, will stop, which they do, a confidence born of accepting the world as he finds it, without hesitation, the way he accepted me as a friend.
from this emerges something I understand as reality
4.7. Now for three weeks I wonder if Kenneth has survived, until I receive an email: “I had a crash and lost all my email addresses . . . Too big, too complicated, too much to talk about here . . .”
4.8. But in those days of doubt, I thought of him: his presence more ear than voice, his mode one of collection and assessment without judgment, his world a field of singularities, irreducible, his credo a simple question: what if all language is poetry? – and I wondered, with a creative life of such perfect transparency, what kind of ghost would he have made?
5. floodlands
5.1. What does sorrow signify?
a building without a roof
5.2. They have raised enormous structures, they have achieved precision in certain rational constructs, and I have loved this to some degree.
5.3. But if I begin precisely with this, the possibility, absolute, of my nonexistence, who then are they, my father and mother? what did they want? is this question absurd, or is it a channel for death to move in?
5.4. That is the way it is when everything is dangerous.
5.5. Caught in the floodlands of memory, in the delirium where desire originates, we believe in our own existence.
5.6. We observe birds engaged in flight, observe ants engaged in reconstruction.
5.7. From these observations emerges something we understand as reality,
convincing us of the peacefulness of the dead.
5.8. Change again; we do not change again.
6. delirium
6.1. In 1904 Coney Island’s Dreamland amusement park opens with 17 public exhibitions including #14: Fighting the Flames – a 250 foot long, 100 foot deep building without a roof within which a square of a city has been built, showing houses, streets, and a hotel, and where four thousand firemen inhabit, permanently, this metropolitan “set”, recruits from the fire departments of this and nearby cities who wait in the wings of the synthetic block with four engines and hose wagons, an extension ladder truck, a water tower, an ambulance and a battalion chief’s wagon.
6.2. An alarm rings; the men leap from their beds and slide down the brass poles; the hotel is on fire with people inside it, flames on the first floor cutting off their escape; more people throng the square, shouting and gesticulating; the engines arrive, then the water tower, hose wagons, extension ladder truck, the battalion chief, and the ambulance, which runs over a man.
6.3. The fire and smoke drive the inmates up until they reach the top floor when an explosion is heard and the roof of the building falls in – yet the hysterical guests are saved, the fire put out, the audience satisfied, and the city block prepared for its next performance.
6.4. The choreographed spectacle says the city is this: an astronomical increase in the potential for disaster, narrowly exceeded by an equally astronomical ability to avert it.
6.5. In May, 1911, the lighting system that decorates the façade of Dreamland’s exhibition #8: End of the World, short circuits, and sparks start a real fire, fanned by a strong sea wind.
6.6. Only weeks before, a superior fire-fighting apparatus has been installed, with new water mains added to the hydrants, but somehow the ducts have not been connected to the
6.7. The firefighters of Fighting the Flames are the first to desert their dormitories and the confines of Dreamland, and only the midget firefighters of exhibition #4: Lilliputia – confronted with the real thing after 2,500 false alarms – put up a real fight, saving a small piece of their city – the fire station.
hear the waves strike the shore
6.8. In three hours Dreamland burns to the ground.
7. transparency
7.1. Can we see people at work? hear the waves strike the shore? observe the course of a family argument? see what a truck is carrying or how the sewage drains away? touch what is for sale or see when the parking lot is full? watch the transfers of money and messages?
7.2. Some of these processes are important, some interesting, some trivial, others abhorrent, but they all convey a “sense of life” in any city, and are the direct perceptual basis for deeper meanings, since functions presented immediately to our senses help us to understand the world.
7.3. A transparent approach, one that attempts “uncreativity”, openness, one that attempts to reveal as visible and perceptual, rather than to conceal and obscure, the steps of the process, inevitably absorbs the audience, the critic, the pedestrian – any who would make meaning – as an active participant, because transparency cannot function without an observer.
A tree uprooted
7.4. The achitect Tadao Ando tells the story of growing up in the underground level of a housing project in
7.5. One day a remodel demolished the middle portion of the upper floor, temporarily removing a central strip of the Ando family’s ceiling.
7.6. Into what had always been a shadowy dwelling, there flooded a brilliant shaft of daylight.
7.7. “What has happened to my home?” he thinks, as he sits mesmerized by this new material that shifts and intensifies with the passing hours of the day, “Is this beauty, and is it my friend, and is it possible without destruction?”
7.8. Like all transfixed children, he is staring at his future.
8. machines
8.1. By morning the rain had stopped and the clouds had rolled away, but a lot of damage had been done in the night – and Bob was the first person to hear about it.
8.2. A tree uprooted, blocking the road, telegraph poles down, pipes burst and fences broken.
8.3. He hurried out to the yard.
8.4. “Hey, that was some storm last night,” rumbled Roley; “It was,” Bob agreed, “and it caused a lot of damage – we’re needed right away”
the bridge rested a moment
8.5. Everyone was tired when they got back to the yard: “Get a good night’s sleep,” Bob told his machines, “We’ve got more repairwork to do tomorrow.”
8.6. “What a day it’s been,” yawned Wendy, “You should go and put your feet up by the fire, Bob.”
8.7. “I will, Wendy, goodnight, goodnight all!” Bob called.
8.8. “Good night, Bob,” murmured the tired machines.
9. to believe
9.1. We study failure for the precision of its revelation – the exact manner of the collapse of the bridge allows us to see its design, the mathematics of its construction and stress, renders the wind itself visible, and renders visible the aggregate of factors at
9.2. Failure produces transparency.
9.3. Preserve these words for a day of fear: an external field exists, one of singularities, irreducible, wherein no two deaths are alike.
9.4. Left to itself, in a world of obscurity, the mind has the capacity to move from one idea to another, but it does so at random, in a delirium that runs throughout the universe, creating monstrous giants and dragons of fire.
9.5. For the concept of error we substitute a concept of delirium, according to which there are beliefs that are not false, but illegitimate – illegitimate exercises of faculties, illegitimate functioning of reasons
9.6. We are not threatened by error, rather and much worse, we bathe in delirium.
9.7. The problem has changed.
9.8. It may be that our most difficult task has become to perceive this world, this life, and to believe in it.
Sources
2. collapse
Matthys Levi and Mario Salvadori. (1992). Why Buildings Fall Down – How Structures Fail, pages 112-113.
3. visibility
3.3. Rem Koolhaas. (1994) Delirious New York, page 87.
3.4. Rem Koolhaas. Delirious
3.5., 3.6. Oliver Burkeman. “Tragic Times, but …” The Guardian, October 1, 2001.
3.7. Duncan Campbell. “US buys up all satellite war images,” The Guardian, October 17, 2001.
1. The Guardian, September 30, 2001.
4. uncreativity
4.1.-4.4. Kenneth Goldsmith. (2001). “Uncreativity” Artist’s webpage. Courtesy of
4.5. Kenneth Goldsmith. (1997) No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96, chapter 7, page 80. Great
4.7. Kenneth Goldsmith. (2001) Correspondence with the author.
5. floodlands
5.1, 5.2. Arkadii Dragomoschenko. (1994)
5.3. Arkadii Dragomoschenko.
5.4. Gertrude Stein. (1945). Wars I Have Seen, page 121.
5.5. Arkadii Dragomoschenko.
5.6. Arkadii Dragomoschenko.
5.7. Arkadii Dragomoschenko.
5.8. Gertrude Stein.
6. delirium
Rem Koolhaas. Delirious
7. transparency
7.1.-7.3. Kevin Lynch.
7.4.-7.8. Merrill Goozner. “Having a Heart – Pritzger winner to use funds to help orphans” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1995.
8. machines
Diane Redmond. (1999). Bob the Builder – Scoop Saves the Day, pages 2-5, 31.
9. to believe
9.4. - 9.6. Gilles Deleuze. (2001). Pure Immanence – Essays on A Life. (A. Boyman, Trans.), pages 41-43.
9.7., 9.8. Gilles Deleuze. Pure Immanence – Essays on A Life. (A. Boyman, Trans.), page 18.
No comments:
Post a Comment