Can You See It?

What is your definition of a boundary? A wall? An door? A roof? Is it always something you can't pass through? Andrea Zittel, an American sculptor, installation artist, and Social Practice artist, blurs the boundaries between the the physical and the mental. Her project The Homestead Unit is a room that resembles a small cabinet. However there is more to it than its face value. This was built to be a private space creating a boundary; although an unconventional one. Zittel created this living space as James Trainor stated in his article "Don't Fence Me In", bureaucratically invisible. Although invisible boundaries cannot be seen, they are still boundaries, a limitation nonetheless.
The Homestead Unit is not a typical outdoor cabinet or indoor bedroom. Zittel fabricated it with the purpose for it to be transportable. These units were created to be easily disassembled, packed into a pick up truck moved and put back together at a different site in four hours. It sounds very much like a tent you would take with you on a camping trip. She has created many other mobile homes such as the Yard Yacht: Work Station (2001) and the Wagon Station(2003-ongoing), which are more aerodynamic than the Homestead Unit but just like the Homestead Unit, has the bare minimum space. As De Certeau believes, space is a practice of place. In the case of the portable living space Zittel creates, she in a sense has created a space, a very limited one, within a set of boundaries, the given place. De Certeau futher states that there are a few things needs for space to exist. Only when you take into consideration of a few factors can you create space. He states such things as vectorsof direction, velocties, and time variables which lead to the creation of space. So how does this relate to Andrea Zittel's Homestead Unit? She has created a space defined by a factors that can be defined as boundaries yet, it is also not a closed space. In this case, the majority of the front and left facade of the structure is contructed of glass walls. Walls define the boundaries of a building but is it the same sort of boundary when the boundary itself is invisible?
Foucault talks about the prejudices  of created for humans by humans throug the manipulation of the body and in turn the manipulation of space. He believes " The individual body becomes and element that may be placed, moved, articulated on others." Further stating that the actions of an individual can be controlled through disciplinary actions. This discipline he talks about is the model way to act, think, and feel for the individual. They are ideals that have become accepted as true. But what are these set disciplines? Zittel breaks the discipline of a living space. The Homestead Unit was built with many unique aspects. First,it was built to be able to disassembled moved and reassembled with ease. Second, it was built just under the dimensions that would require building permits. Third, half its walls consist of mostly glass panels. She has broken the accepted fact that homes need to be set in place. Space is created within the mind. Therefore it can be set anywhere as long as you think it. She has changed the perceived reality of needing a lot of space to live comfortably. And lastly she has broken through the barrier of what a boundaru is with the openess she creates through the use of glass walls. With just one cabinet space she created, Zittel challenges all the ideals of a living space we accept without a second thought. Like Foucault believes a discipline is created over a period of time and everything we believe at present day is the result of years of manipulation of the individual which resulted in the manipulation of space
Walls create a reference point for the surrounding to relate to. Just like De Certeau said, "A space exists when one takes into consideration of vectors of direction, velocties, and time variables." (Spatial Stories 117). Zittel's Homestead Unit can be thought of as the point everything else refers back to. Architecture is generally a larger scale of art and serves this purpose of space nicely. This can relate back to another of De Certeau's ideals; tours and maps. A tour can be broken down to be a description and a map is the definition. A tour is a personal one on one description of a space while a map becomes the broad bare minimum needed to define a space.
Looking back at Foucault, it is clear he believes the individual is created from the mass. An "individual" can only exist through the creation of a massive group. Like how the individual is the micro of the mass, space is the subcategory of place. Place is the same as the mass, meaning all place can be understood as one thing; a commonality For both instances, the micro is only observable with the aid of the macro. In Foucault's view, the individual can only be fabricated if there is a larger group; the mass. Invisible spaces are very similar to the individual within the mass. You can only have an invisible space or a so called implied space if there is larger form to be referenced to. Zittel says "What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom, but rather living in a set of limitations that we have created and prescribed for ourselves."  She has created that with a sense of freedom from her mobile homes. The Homestead Unit made with the goal of mobility leads to the creation of the individual space within the massive place anywhere it is placed. Not everyone sees things the same way. Space is finite object, but invisible spaces (implied spaces) are formed from a certain view of a certain perspective. Like beauty, space is in the eye of the beholder.

“Walking in the City” De Certeau Questions

1.    What doe de Certeau mean when he says, when a person sees Manhattan from the 110^h floor of the world trade center, “his elevation transforms him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world [. . .] into a text. [. . .] It allows him to read it; to be a solar eye” (92).

            De Derteau says when a person is viewing everything from a place that high, he or she is not effected by certain norms. Because of how a person is isolated at this height, it is possible to see what they usually would not perceive at ground level.

2.    De Certeau states that “urban life increasingly permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic project excluded” (95) and “spatial practices in fact secretly structure the determining social conditions of social life” (96). Explain these statements and discuss how they relate to the title of this section-- “From Concepts to Practices.”

            Urban life has changed the way people live, making their daily lives a lot more convenient. Because communication with others is so easily accessible in urban areas, information, ideas, and opinions travel around rather quickly. This allows the ease of change and with the ease of sharing, the intangible can transform into reality.

3.    What is “the Chorus of idle footsteps” and why can’t “they be counted” (97)? Refer to the notion of “tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation” in your answer (97).

            The Chorus of idle footsteps refers to the people walking past each other in the city without a second thought of how these people are. Tactile apprehension is the sense that something unpleasant may happen and that’s how people are when they interact with strangers of see people for the first time. As there are accepted norms, there are accepted actions. That’s what kinesthetic appropriation is and people behave a certain way when placed in a new environment.

4.    De Certeau maintains that walking creates “one of these ‘real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city” (97).  What does this mean and how does it relate to his assertion that, “The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language” (97)? What is he trying to establish by saying this?

            The walking is a metaphor for how the people themselves set and create a system. The city is the space that allows the people to act out their ideas and thoughts.  He believes that anyone can spread their thoughts to the mass in a city/urban environment.

5.    Why can’t walking be “reduced to [a] graphic trail” such as you would see on a map or urban plan, according to de Certeau (99)?

            According to De Certeau, walking is not just a simple forward movement. There are many aspects that come into play such as “alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded. the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("de­ontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional).”

6.    What does de Certeau mean by “the long poem of Walking”  (101).

            Walking is like the thought process. There are a lot of trial and erros changes and flips. This can be seen as somewhat poetic.

7.    De Certeau defines two “pedestrian figures” through which “rhetoric of walking” (100) is created: synecdoche and asyndeton. He notes that synecdoche “expands a spatial element in order to make it play the role of a ‘more’” (101). On the other hand, asyndeton, “by elision, creates a ‘less” opens gaps in the spatial continuum, and retains only selected parts” (101).  Explore and explain these terms and relate them to de Certeau’s larger argument.

8.    De Certeau argues that the proper nouns which mark a city (naming streets, buildings, monuments) once were “arranged in constellations that heirarchize and semantically order the surface of the city . . .” (104) . However, even though these words eventually lose their original value, “their ability to signify outlives its first definition” (104) and they function to articulate “a second, poetic geography  on top of the geography of the lteral . . . meaning” (105). Explain what he means by these statements

9.    Explain de Certeau’s statement that “places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, [. . .] encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body: ‘I feel good here’” (108). How does this fit into the larger argument about the “habitability” of the city?

10. Explain the following quote, which occurs in the final paragraph of the essay: “the childhood experience that determines spatial practices later develops its effects, proliferates, floods private and public spaces, undoes their readable surfaces, and creates within the planned city a “metaphorical” or mobile city” (110). How does this statement fit into the argument as a whole?