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About MuMaGi
What you are about to read contains no references, it is not academic text, but it contains statements that are not isolated thoughts,
I am not in academia, I am part of the alternative intellectual circuit, those who break the rules of academia in order to progress human knowledge, unfettered by the conventions of presentation and conformity that academia imposes. In line with this academic references Stanford Winter, Michael Foucault and others can be found to tally with the things I am saying here, a full list of links will be published here and if the reader took the time to delve into these links s/he will see the my thinking is not isolated and my conclusions or calls to action have verifiable basis. I love learning, hate examinations, like most people, hence I am self educating. Caught in a web of capital exchange, values and desires we are all beings living in a world full of labels and categories that we fix ourselves to or fixate on. Labels and categories that we had no understanding of before we were born. Not many of us have the chance to sit around and think about this, most of us are caught up in the game of chasing exams, getting that dream job. Well I was lucky, I had a lot of time on my hands when I was young, a lot of time on my own to think. And so I though to try to escape this wheel that most of us are trapped in. Of course I cannot escape the society I am in and the general accepted labels that are used. So let me give an example I loved music, I loved what we commonly call classical music, I loved jazz, rock, pop all sorts of music, i hate seeing these words, they make me feel sick, hey seem ancient I hate having to mention them stye are not real, only as vehicles by which musound has reached people sears. I also loved art, philosophy. So I began writing music, and writing philosophy. What style was my music, it was just MY music, the music I heard from all the influences I loved. But people ask you to choose you must choose a category. For a while I chose jazz, but soon enough I found limitations of this label, there were things I wanted to do that I could do from a classical angle but not from a jazz angle. For example classical music contains a wide dynamic range, it contains orchestrations for orchestra, violins, large stretches f sun without any percussive rhyme. Jazz is charactierzed generally by percussive syncopated rhythms. You see whatever category you choose you have to play by its rules. I didn't want to play by any rules but the rule of nature. Nature was my first love. And in nature anything is possible, within natural law. Natural law ( the laws of physics etc) cannot be circumvented by man made law. But try in nature you do have species, what species am I well I am a MuMAGi, of course sam not! this is a game it is a game of words, I am not any word, i am a being. its just to escape commonly held notions i create this word and try to define it thus. The irony is that without rules without commonly he'd notions, words, idioms how do we communicate, is the proposition that we all define ourselves? do well all creat words for ourselves? do we all define our own life purpose and occupation? can this change ver the course of our lifetime or do we modify th meaning of our original word? Now what have I been doing, is it music, art, or philosophy? Creating words creating my own definitions of reality, well I have ever heard of such an occupation, I have never seen a job advertised in the newspaper - we are seeking someone to create words, categories, definitions of life and systems of thought, we want this person to explore these definitions in languages beyond the written or upon word, we want the candidate to explore these words in music, sound art, and architecture, internet and dance, you must ravel and associate yourselves with people that take you ou of your comfort zone so that you challenge your own beifs and customs within reason etc etc..... No I have never seen such an advert. Well so it is clearly not a musician although laying music and mastering an instrument may be at of it, it is clearly nt an architect although studying architecture may come into it, actually only in my caseate those two things true. We could very well achieve this by studying all sorts of subjects. Anyway I did study architere and what I found is that I hit the same wall I hit when I was doing music, I found my self in a self referential culture with people arguing about what architecture is, only this time we even had an organisation set up to place who could and could not use the term architect to describe themselves. Archi means chief, as in arch bishop, arch rival etc. etc means technician or craftsman or builder. That all it is, actually in real literal term and architect is who ever is regarded as the chief builder in and particular situation. As you can see this is getting into semantics. Other than arguing too much about what an architect is one thing I noticed about architects is they should have a general knowledge. It is a common misconception that all they do is draw, design and produce models. Actually much of an architects work is creating social connections, organising people, scheduling works, organise time, researching materials and techniques. I have habit of creating linguistic interventions Music I call musound and architecture i call ar/t/khitecture. It is more than rebelliousness. you see when you create words you create new paradigms. It's a bit like when you learn a foreign language, if you translate tree to arbor, you know the whole concept changes. even though a tree in english is a tree and an arbor in Spanish is yes still a tree, changing the word changes our perception and understanding of what a tree is. perhaps this was not a good example I am sure you can think of others. Well let me demonstrate with ar/t/hitecture, you see because I have now created this word, i can give i a distinct meaning. it contains all the elects of architecture but with an intervention a slice through it and a capital T inserted, this created al sorts of semantic possibilities, and there fore physical possibilities when we think about it. I have lived a luxurious life, I have given myself plenty of time to think. all humans want to think, all humans want to create, I have just been trying to escape from the wheel of samsara, ok its nit really the wheel of samsara it is another kind of wheel that we all get trapped in, the wheel that takes away our free tie and traps us into desiring things that ensue our energy as we chase them. This wheel prevents us from taking the time to ponder our existence, we get sucked into the game of chasing grades in school, winning ball games, competing over who has the largest house or the most successful children. the wheel of attachment. 95% of people are trapped in this wheel, none of us is entirely free form t not even the dalai lama is freemen's for physical attachment, he has a nation to protect, Tibet, hie is embroiled in the physical politics of this world. Well if you want total freedom. is pups you must die but none f us really knows what happens after death and if we are truly liberated from this word or not, is it worth the risk, and anyway you may be free but you would not be alive and experiencing all that life has to offer. BACK TO THINKING We humans unfortunately don't get much time on our own to truly speculate and think. This is also good, if we think too much we can go crazy. ......... Ar/T/khitecture: I live in a small space a cabin. It is just big enough for one person really. No television. From here I can speculate. So everything is about awards, gaining a first... this is the social reality we live in, people don't have time to get to know each other, what each other thinks no we just want to know what award do you have, then we want to listen. I am the opposite, I listen to this with award only because that is what is presented to me. What i really want to is to find the jewel in the person who does not have any award. Unfortunately the society we live in does not have time for thins and it is considered that I have wasted my time. The art of social climbing dictated that you choose your company according to wha award they have, did they work for a top tier FTSE 100 company? Did they go to Harvard? what car are they driving? This is the ecosystem in which we reside. No one wants to surround themselves with losers. It is a game. So for me its all about bring things back to what is natural, and for me these labels bring us away from what is natural. Mozart was not a classical musician, he did not even know what classical music was, he was just a musician of his day, later on we came with these terms to label people. The words we use today we take for granted. No if w listen to BBC radio there there are several programs on JAZZ... but what is jazz? well its another concept we made up and have reinforced one rthe years, this has pushed many creative musicians out of the way in flavory of those who are deemed legitimate jazz musicians. You see for a long time you had to either be a jazz musician or a classical musician or a rock musician, you could not just be musician who created music with whatever influences, materials were ended for the particular moment. NO you had to fit label why? because for many reasons, business number one revolved around catchy brands, people like to know what they arguing to get, people generally do not like uncertain ground. When your average person switches on the radio or buys a ticket to a concert a part of them wants to be surprised but another part of them want to know more or less the kind of thing they are going to see No one like being shocked. Shock is surprise but in a negative way, surprise we like when it is something we like. So in a stable society where law and ORDER are primary concerns, not thinking, not speculating, well we want our creativity ordered and somewhat predictable. Perhaps in no other field is this more the case than in the field of architecture, some would argue. Although others would differ. IN the red corner: some would say architecture is MORE liberal than music, because architects us adapts to changing economic realities, technological changes in order to survive. In the Blue corner: Lets face it, it is not the architects fault that your average man or woman has a fixed idea of what a house looks like. They want the pitched roof, the fence around the garden and a porch. Is that the architects fault no? it is the culture. The planning departments of suburbia are resistant to change because the suit environment reflects cultural values. If all of a sudden al the houses in hampshire had minarets on the top, many people would feel that the country as changing not just architectural but culturally in ways that they would find unacceptable. indeed wars can break out over such disputes. So at what point is it the role of the architect to influence culture so that we can get things built that break free from norms. For example the traditional family home is oriented around the traditional nuclear family. Mom and dads master bedroom, and two or three rooms for the kids. This is the cultural accepted and preferred format. It is the mark of success and acceptability. Families generally are not that way actually we have large numbers of single parent families, children growing up with foster parents or adopted parents, children growing ip in foster care homes..... Architecture is not reflecting this, it is indeed reinforcing outdated our unnatural kinship structure that cause so many of us agony and pain trying to conform to. The architect could propose alternatives but how would we get them accepted? it would mean changing the entire culture. artists can propose anything, because what and artist proposes could be 3000 yers in the past or the future and never get built in reality. and ar/t/khitect is a combination. s/he does not need to worry about the RIBA or the ARB. s/he is here to make propositions. the good thing about being an ar/t/khitect is that you are also a composer. You can compose music and you can write poetry. As a matter of fact you can do what ever it takes to get your point across or to explore the ideas you have. you see by slicing architecture and inserting the T we are liberating ourselves from the straight jacket of architecture as we have come to know it, but not as it has always been ( architecture is thousands of years older than the RIBA or the ARB)..... indeed architecture, (the design and construction of out built environment , is older than architecture, the word architecture is maybe a few hundred years old, whereas the practice of constructing life support environments for ourselves is tens of thousands of years old. So we do not have a separate word for composer, artist musician or writer, from the perspective of MuMaGi culture you are simply an ar/t/khitect practising ar/t/khitecture and musound!! Try as I may escape from the limits of existing language, I cannot escape the capital flows that surround me, the y way these cows mix with sexual desire and status aspiration, the reactionary forces, the groupings, the control of=ver knowledge networks and instutions that these flows of capital exert. So detaching myself entirely from web I have tried, i live in cave for two years, i ate the food thrown away by supermarkets, but still I was not escaping anything, it is all consuming this mesh of capital enveloping all aspects of life on earth. The neurosis, the anxiety that accompanies this existence is inescapable, or at least it is only momentarily. The more we escape the more we impoverish ourselves the more we conform and play the game to win the game the more entrenched we become. In life we can make our own, game and we can define what constitutes winning or losing, don't get me wrong, even if you do this you will find you win and lose even within a game of your own making. we don't make our own rules, we don't make our own game, to win it every time, thins is not the point, the point is to play, and to put our energies towards something more worthwhile to us. After all we only have one life. With this concept of ar/t/khitecture I invite you to the world of being a ar/t/khitect, the world of designing, composing, organising all aspects of life support structures, entire life as a work of total art. DM |
