Writes John Berger:
One does not look through writing onto reality -- as through a clean or dirty window-pane. Words are never transparent. They create their own space, the space of experience, not that of existence...Clarity, in my view, is the gift of the way space, created by words in a given text, is arranged. The task of arranging this space is not unlike that of furnishing and arranging a home. The aim is similar: to accommodate with ease what belongs there and to welcome those who enter. There are hospitable and inhospitable writings. Hospitality and clarity go together.
This quote comes from the clear, concise, and poetic Introduction to Kim Dovey's book Framing Places: Mediating power in built form. I started this book today and can already tell that it is going to be a wonderful reference for future thinking. Rather than take place and our built environments for granted, Dovey communicates their impact in the creation of power within society from the local to the global, from theoretical chapters to concrete examples on Hitler and the North American suburb.
I find myself turning to third grade again, wanting to suddenly construct, as I mentioned to an old friend, three-dimensional diaramas of certain texts I have been reading, just to visualize and experience the space that authors like Cirilo Villaverde or José María Arguedas create with their language. How does the syntax of their sentences and the density or fluidity of their prose reflect the interiors of the houses they are describing and vice versa, if such houses are based on a certain reality. And better yet, what if you had to create a diarama of your own current conception of space? Your own home sweet home? It would be so effective to understand Sab's predicament as a slave if we could just see him, right before our eyes, standing in the doorway, waiting for permission to enter into the Archive.
Back to the book....the sky is blue. This is very true.
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