*VOTE KERRY* FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH Words used in last night conversation: simulacrum, exothermic, logarithmic. GAHH! -crawls under rock-

Illustrator Transposition

I like glitchscapes. This is a full illustrator graphic for a competition site analysis made up of about ten individual pages. Line them up vertically, use the distribute tool, and here's what happens. Gorgeous!

The Election To Be

*VOTE KERRY*

FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH FUCK BUSH

Ubiquitous Product Obsession

I had a sick day today, but I think it has less to do with actually being ill than fatigue with a combination of allergy asthma.

I've been obsessed with the creation of ubiquitous product lately. Meaning, something that is useful for masses in their daily lives, extremely well designed and functional with exceptionally high aesthetic and material quality standards at a reasonable price, and will set me for life by 35 so I can do any kind of work I want to do instead of working for self-absorbed clients. I can work very very very hard up to the time this product is self-sustaining profit-wise and then work very very hard on the things I really love to work on without having to worry about keeping up a client base, keeping up a lifestyle. I need a good supply chain, reliable investors, and fabulous publicity. So what do I do with all that free time? Philanthropy, travel, giving it to the artists I believe in who need something more ... (and not the business men! To the artists directly!) Other kinds of investment, development ... who knows. Just a thought.

Ladytron

photo courtesy mara

Pointy-toed Black Stilletos and America

(I) I cycle through several pairs of shoes for work. Coincidentally, they are all pointy-toed black stilettos (boot, sling-back, mule, etc). Every morning as I walk to the hotel where I wait for my taxi (coincidentally a hotel that the firm designed), I can't help but feel like my shoes are a modern version of bound feet in 19th century China. Why bind my own feet? Aesthetics.

(II) So while I'm standing at the taxi queue, there are always different people every morning. Italian businessmen, German officials, Japanese wives, and of course, travelling Americans. These foreigners are usually escorted by a middle-aged Chinese local who speaks their language and assists them with getting around town. The other day, I was standing next to an American guy with his smaller Chinese guide. He was looking around at people walking past, in and out of the hotel, and exclaimed in English, "There are just too many beautiful women here. I don't know what I'm going to do ..." Gross. I wish I turned to him and told him to fuck off. Unfortunately, sometimes I feel the white man in China gets fetishized by Chinese women like the Asian woman is fetishized in the States. But, you don't have to be a particularly attractive white man to get some action. It's troublesome how many potbellied, suspenders-wearing, balding white men I see hand in hand with a pretty little local girl. America is exotic here. Women love that. (!!!)

(III) To help me get through the day, I bring out all the music I have on Winamp and random. Pizzicato 5 is keeping me company right now (thanks ben-chan). Music is my only friend at work. Just kidding.

(IV) National diaspora and Shanghai's welcoming arms brings a ton of really interesting foreigners to the city of Shanghai. The foreigner/expat population (that is, English-speaking population, including people from North America, Europe, Singapore, Korea, Japan, etc) is well-connected, generally well-educated, and is a sort of social subset with prestige in local eyes (of course this has just to do with global economics). Globalized and well-travelled. In juxtaposition, they are a grand spectrum of interests and ideologies. Coming to this city isn't like Chinese-American goes to China to rediscover "roots." (I've learned I have mere shreds of roots here). It's like Chinese-American goes to China to meet world. More than anything, it has brought forth my identity as a person with deeply ingrained 'American' values (as my German architect boss calls it: optimism and initiative). I'd rather not tie it to a national affiliation, but when you become a sort of 'multinational' or even, 'a-national' (without affiliation), you really start to look for what is it about the place you came from that makes you different. And indeed, values are deeply tied to location and place-specific education. Like, no one seems to be as gung-ho about hating on Bush and the war in Iraq as I am.

(V) Perhaps the reality is that I left the States partly because of the disillusionment I had with "the condition of America." Everyone says to me, don't think so much, it's not healthy. Distance has helped my troubled psyche. I am not confronted with the shame and loss of faith in US policy and corruption everyday. Wow. Some days I dont even think about it! (Though those days are rare). It's therapeutic being here, among people who don't even think about war and definitely not how fucked up 'the leadership' is. I had this thought that whether or not I will return to the US soon will be determined by the November election. (Have all you out there cared more about this election? If W is reelected, I swear that, globally, a new breed of chaos will ensue). That thought about the date of my return might be fact, but it might be fiction.

Not Greedy

More than anything else, I've learned how much having a job with purpose means to me. I would much more prefer working at a firm that has some sense of social obligation than one with desire to "push the envelope" in the design, or kiss ass to the greedy-ass developers, no matter how high profile. There is for sure a part of me that says design is arbitrary, like writing a novel. It's an aesthetic judgment that's not right for everyone, but architecture, as it has an ubiquitous physical presence, affects us functionally, making theory and all that ideological bullshit irrelevent to if someone has a clean house with sunlight and running water. If I worked for a star arch with no sense of such purpose, I will feel like another tool to stroke that person's own ego, spending all my days in mental masturbation -- a lovely time with no fruition. Ahem ... Rem Koolhaas -- I've been reading El Croquis 53+79 Koolhaas compilation. His aesthetic bothers me -- those creepy fantastical drawings of his from Delirious New York -- but his interviews are totally beautiful and nuts:

"We know better now how to engineer the creative processes and to create the right conditions, the right mixture between passion and contemplation ... you could even talk about the composition of the office as a 'design issue' a composition of national accents and complementarities.

It almost becomes the creation of an artificial condition of unconsciousness. I believe in uncertainty. In order to be really convinced of something you need a profound dislike for almost everything else, so that it's crucial in certain projects to explore your phobias in order to reinforce your convictions....

In a way, it is an engineered schizophrenic structure. To some extent, we have always insisted on a critique of the myth of the professionalism of the architect. And of course this has created us many problems, because at the same time I have been insistent in acquiring this professionalism, at least in my own terms; ... so at the same time I have a secret life of making projects credible in their own terms, or on my own terms, and simultaneously believable, or unbelievable, as the case may be in terms of detail and material culture ..." (18)

(If only the detail of the building matches his rhetoric!)

I've considered going into development. I think there is enormous opportunity to develop things the right way globally -- the NOT greedy way (ridiculously high FAR's, imposing designs). I'm talking about formulating something with people who are unable to organize themselves. Assist and petition for them to get the resources they need, create a more comfortable environment by their standards, with a reasonable budget, and generate some income so they can sustain and possibly grow. I am talking about low income hypergrowth areas, and renovation of unoccupied industrial zones. Maybe take a page out of Europe's book (not so much the blatant and ugly gentrification we see in the States). Anyway, just a thought.

Sensory Overload and the Urban Trends I Witness

I paced the streets today looking for a tiny cowboy boot shop that I keep passing but don't have the guts to enter. Do I really need to buy cowboy boots? No. I have a nice pair of Castaners (Made in Spain) at home. But, I am dying for new shoes, and have been casually looking for a nice pair since two weeks ago. Instead I got two wool scarves, black houndstooth and grey, from Shanghai Story.

Haven't been updating, because I've had this information and sensory overload every single day since being here. It's like my mind has been to near rupture, and if I attempt to release just a little, it's going to break the entire dam that is my skull. Not to overdramatize or anything (>_o), but if I were to really express every major theme of the narrative/metanarrative that is my life in Shanghai thus far, my writing would be more troubled and convoluted than a mini Tolstoy, although still not as fragmented. Yep, filled with intrigue, sex, drugs, art, architecture, and characters that flit in and out, and an overall melancholy and disdain for life. Just kidding. Only partially. More like a very different lifestyle entirely. Hyper self awareness, maybe. Half in and half out, everywhere I go. I don't think I'd want to live my life this way for too long. Maybe it's hanging out with all these people with their own firms / with foremost interest in developing their careers. I really like them, but I am 21 for God's sake!

I've really lived one place my adult life, and mentally, only half there. Half in and half out.

Being here clarifies certain trends going on in GLOBAL URBANIZATION in general:

-Chaos in a fury of what the Westerner-bred like to call "the Gold-Rush Mentality" (short-term profit without any long term thought at ALL--nil--an enthusiasm and readiness with cheap labor to rebuild and destroy and rebuild and destroy etc etc), and citizens with a feeling that progress is happening.

-Total domination of the urban fabric by developers, not by people and communities.

-Did you see the Shanghai features in Time and Vogue lately? Where is all this publicity coming from? On the global scene, Shanghai is an awkward teenager with strange clothes, becoming too cool for school.

-I've been working on a 250 sq km planned community with mixed middle income townhouses, highrises (12-24 storeys), duplexes, and commercial, with a disgustingly high FAR. I am designing facades and working on residential towers. It's exhausting in all respects.

-What are architectural trends? I've so much more understand the relevance of the local to architectural design and have never seen such disregard for tradition and lack of interest in traces of memory, the preservation of memory.

-Being a foreigner here makes me feel both totally fancy elite and totally guilty. But being a Chinese-American makes me double-aligned, double-tongued, double-historied, and always ... inside and outside, misinterpreted, privy (but not completely) to cultural secrets from both sides.

-Where am I going with this design degree, and what do I want to do a masters in, and what kind of architecture do I want to practice. Where do I need to go, what do I need to do (where do I need to work, who do I need to know, how much money to do I need to make to make things happen). How much power do I want to have in the future, and should I be aggressive in pursuing it. Does having power matter to me, and how much, and for whom. How hard am I willing to work for what.

-"Grey" areas.

-I need to find a place and stay there.

More later. Gonna get something to drink!

It's Comfortable

Ah, the perks of the well-connected lifestyle.

I dunno, I'm starting to see just how damn comfortable corporations are to work for. Money. Who cares about the systems-of-exploitation-upon-which-they-rest, when, as one of the highest educated employees, you can get a shitload of perks such as huge bonuses, housing packages, drivers, industry insider networks, lots and lots of expensed entertainment, etc etc etc. Maybe it's just the circles I happen to be a part of, but why does it seem like everyone is so money hungry! (I guess this is typical anywhere). Everyone, work in a multinational for a few years in the States and head over here! Take advantage of our incredible global inequality! Here, you can live like you can never dream of living in the States! The average income for Chinese is 2000 RMB. A lower income for a foreigner is 24,000 RMB.

Yes, I feel okay saying this because I have a mediocre income. (My apologies for being so cynical, I guess I am part of the whole scene, too ... 150 RMB magaritas!) Since I'm not in a position that is directly aiding the welfare of the underprivileged, I suppose ranting like this is just mental garbage.

Koi in Wuhan.

eating in Wuhan (Central China) with San Shu, Xi Xi, Xiao Xiao, and Da Ma.