As it is easy to regularly be consumed by digital practice and technique, I would like to (re)introduce one of hopefully many discussions on Tech v. Touch, that is, techniques that are specific to digital proliferation compared to those who employ the analog as a primary vehicle for exploration.
The goal then, is not to pit one against the other, but simply to bring to light how valuable each can be in informing the other; notably through craft, narrative and methodology.
In that spirit Clark Thenhaus of Endemic Architecture has used drawing and the narrative of “Alien Marlboro” as a means to explore the possibilities in the ad hoc nature of the vernacular coupled with the non-conformity of delinquency, best described by the artist himself.
Delinquency in the city exists as one of many unintended outcomes from cultural, political, and economic (trade) conventions and regulations. Gangs, slums, criminal acts, hackers, protests, union strikes, and corruption proliferate along culturally elastic boundaries between localized populations and national policies and rules. When removed from the city, delinquency exists not as ‘problem’ populations seen somehow as non-conforming, but rather as rogue and transient micro-cultures that freely linger and migrate along the margins of agraria. Latent in these margins… the residues of culture, politics, economies, and ecologies…at the interstice between agrarianism and urbanism authenticities in tectonics, trade, migration, and ecologies emerge and over generations evolve geo-conditional patterns embedded with the ability to reprogram, or recode, accepted norms and conventions through the direct, and perhaps unknowing, undermining of established and deterministic, lobbied, and hierarchical codes.
The typical notion of ‘Vernacular’ assumes an internalized set of rules based primarily on utility. Utility, however, we recognize as ambiguous and largely inconsequential with regard to tectonic evolution when seen not from a standpoint of norms and conventions. Likewise assuming the vernacular is built from internalized and concentrated rule sets (totalities) is to assume the vernacular, both tectonically and socially, is introverted and without ability to emerge new models across social boundaries through the direct transience of feral populations. Rather, the vernacular is much more an open source network of transient persons mobilizing resources and initiating new rules through notions of exteriority (assemblages) tailored to specific geographic conditions. This is to say, that rogue agrarian cultures are transient, populated with nomadic persons who move at varying rates, bringing with them “foreign” materials, tools, and techniques that are re-deployed and transmitted across various ecologies, which over time instantiate new rules and tectonic coding not through introverted and closed-loop cycles, but through open-source networks and transient evolutions to and within ordering systems. These evolutions may be a temporary occurrence within a permanent system, or conversely a permanent evolution within a temporary system…such as harvesting versus a barn raising.
It is this migration of both delinquency and vernacular where Alien Marlboro existed. Alien Marlboro left behind many drawings, most found buried, that foster a new agrarian tectonic. His Spindle Houses were built on stems equal to the width of the modern furrow to eliminate the disconnect between production and homestead (governmentally promoted). Other drawings, such as Carthage Kansas were built high into the sky to launch TNT into the atmosphere. Science of the day claimed that “Air Blasting” created and brought together clouds and increased rainfall for increased agrarian production. Alien Marlboro imagined a free zone of agrarian production, roamed by grazing harvesters operating not under direct governmental quotas and tracking, but as a collective of nomadic infrastructures integrated within the larger transportation networks.
http://www.endemicarchitecture.com
MS
