Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 22:13:14 -0500
From: "eric c. puryear" <puryeaec-AT-cinternet.net>
Subject: Re: MB: Niobean Tears.


Lucio,


I found your post rich with potential threads for discussion.  The
question of dust and disaster may be one and the same on one front, but
considered by their differences, they become signposts for radically
juxtaposed critical elements.  Put simply, dust signals repose or
in-action, and the disaster (I think here of a burning building) a call
to an arrest of projects and the stimulation of the body and eye by
spectacle.  Both dust and disaster spell the end of useful
production...


A concern that I have about the question of dust is that it may blur
into an image of a picturesque ruin--which I believe happens in Paul
Virlio's photographs (although the Heidegger quote before the preface
is relative to the aftereffect of the disaster: "<italic>When the
combat ceases that which is does not disappear but the world turns
away</italic>").  


Your list of dusty architects (and theorists) and artists reinforces
the need to decide dust or the disaster--where Eisenman's "non-finito"
burns with the sunspot of trace, Libeskind's machines turn to ash in an
unexplained fire in the attic (before they could gather dust) of the
Geneva Museum of Contemporary Art [re; Jeffry Kipnis, "Though to my
Knowledge a writ has yet to be issued, nevertheless, the case is
becoming well known" in <italic>Restructuring Architectural
Theory</italic>.], and Tafuri's history as a "project of crisis."  To
your list, I would add Rauschenberg's "White Paintings," which he calls
"landing strips" for dust, light, and shadow, Robert Smithson and
Gordon Matta-Clark's architecures of abuse ("Partially Buried Woodshed
and "Splitting"), Bernard Tschumi's Advertisements ("To really
appreciate architecture you may even need to commit a murder") and Coop
Himmelblau's architecture that burns.


As the question unfolds one begins to see disaster at the end of dust
and dust at the end of disaster...





<italic><color><param>FFFF,0000,0000</param>fire in its advance will
catch all things by surprise and judge them</color></italic>

Fragment 72, Heraclitus


eric



p.s what page is this reference from--I'm re-reading it as you read
this, thanks to your push, but I'm also imaptient...

>the spark is (also) like pure rat.(cf., _The Impossible_)