Pratt x Invisible Cities

CITIES AND MEMORIES 

When one steps on the ground of Pratt Institute, one immediately notices the various sculptures. In every direction you turn, every way you glance, every color you see - there is a such a monument. This monument represents something to the one who created it. Pratt Institute is a city occupied only by artists. When one travels to Pratt Institute, they may not be an artist at first, but soon they find themselves participating in this sculpture garden. 

Where each sculpture lies, not too long ago, a different sculpture existed. A different monument of a different memory of a different time. Nobody quite remembers what used to be there, what it meant, or where it went. When the change first takes place, people take note of it. However, soon, people begin occupying the new sculptures, and soon the old ones are forgotten. Pratt Institute is a city of constant change and renewal. To the artists of this "city", this is necessary change. 

Continuous renewal and erosion 

Rodden spaces

4/12 Invisible Cities x Walking in the City

Ann Chai

Prof Sacha Frey

Due April 14, 2014

How does Calvino's Invisible Cities relate to de Certeau's "Walking in the City"? Pick at least two cities to discuss and analyze (through close reading) in your answer. Feel free to talk about the Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo dialogues as needed.

“It is the mood of the beholder which gives the city of Zemrude its form,” the experience of this city is determined solely by one’s perspective on the city (66,Calvino). The two perspectives Calvino outlines are from someone who walks through the city “whistling”, and one who goes by “hanging your head”. The whistler will always be looking up, seeing windows and scenery as they go. The one hanging his or her head will always only see the ground, dirt, and gutters. Similarly, De Certeau describes two kinds of perspectives, or people, as well. There is the walker and the voyeur. The voyeur is someone looking from above, in de Certeau’s example, from on top of the World Trade Cener. From this perspective, the voyeur sees everything about the map of the city and its circulation. The walker is a wanderer who travels within this map, focused on the immediate streets and paths. The two different groups of people see the city completely differently, and Calvino asserts, “you cannot say that one aspect of the city is truer than the other” (66). There is no right or wrong in how to view the city, the two groups merely illustrate two perspectives.

The voyuer’s role works in parallel with the “whistlers” who are always looking up. These are the people who see the city from above because they are aware of the larger picture and the urban map. The walker’s role on the other hand is similar to the people in Zemrude who are always looking down. Although in the city of Zemrude there is a negative connotation in “looking at the gutters”, in relation to de Certeau it is simply another perspective. These are the people who wander through the streets and experience it directly as they pass through because they do not look further than what is right in front of them. De Certeau describes them as walkers “whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it” (93, de Certeau). Hence, the walkers or ones who walk with their head hanging cannot read this urban text they are outining, while the voyeurs or whislters are the ones who read their movement. Yet, de Certeau also suggests that “the act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language (97). Walking is what brings the city to life and reaffirms its purpose. Extending de Certeau’s metaphor, a walker would be someone who is illiterate yet fluent in speech, and a voyeur would be someone who is literate but mute.

In visualizing this urban text, Calvino’s city “Ersilia” offers insight into how a city can be mapped out. “In ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the house, white or black or gray or black-and-white accoding to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency” (76). When the city becomes obstructed with an overflow of these strings, the city abandons its location. They move as an entire city, taking away even the walls and leaving only the strings and supporting poles. When a traveler encounters Ersilia, first they pass by the multiple abandoned cities where nothing but the “footprints” of the connections that once existed still remains.

The job of walkers in de Certeau’s text is to create these connections, mapping out relationships and interactions in the city down below. They are creating a “labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain”, a “spiderweb of intricate relationships seeking a form”. What may seem like meaningless and chaotic strings actually once represented important relationships. Like the citizens of Erisilia, the walkers create these webs without realizing the spatial effects they create on the city. They as “as blind as that of lovers in each other’s arms,” they are more interested in marking out these relationships but do not fully realize the spatial text they are writing (93, de Certeau). 

4/7 Invisible Cities

As you read, consider the "ageographical" elements of space that are evoked in the book. What features of space does Calvino consider in the various cities Polo narrates? Pick at a city to focus on and consider the defining features of the city according to its description. What facets of urban space does it suggest are important? How do travel and movement function in this definition of space?

Consider the following questions as you read

1.      How would you characterize the structure of Calvino’s Invisible Cities?Does it seem to fit into your definition of a “novel”? Why or why not?   Describe its form and consider the way it develops our understanding of urban space.

Invisible Cities is composed of a series of concise short stories of individual cities. There is no particular chronological order that can  be applied to the sequencing of the cities. However, the only chronological parts are at the beginning and end of each section- where the Khan and Marco Polo converse. The way all of these stories of the city are scattered emphasizes how there is no order to places. Each place exists in its own time and at the same time, there is no chronological order that may be applied. 

1. The cities Marco Polo describes fall into eleven categories (e.g. “Cities and Memory,” “Cities and Desire”). How are these categories reflected in their descriptions? What connections can you make between cities that fall under the same category?
   As one can learn from the categories, there is always a dominating trait that governs the description of the city. Cities that fall under the same category are always related to this descriptive word, though they may be related in diffrent ways. For example, "CIties and Memory" can refer to a city that is always dwelling on its past, or a city that evokes new memories each and every day. 

•       A dialogue (between Polo and Kublai Khan) begins and ends each section. How do they function in the work? How do they frame and/or inform each section?
  
  The dialogue between the two characters pull the reader back to a chonrlogical logic to the flow of the story. Through describing various distinct and separate cities, the beginnings and end of each section sets a rythmn back into the novel. Furthermore, the insightful conversation between the two further illustrate the mythical and magical quality of the city stories.  

•                 Do the cities Polo describes have a temporal or spatial locus? How does this inform your reading of the cities?
  
  I think Polo's descriptions satisfy both temporal and spatial aspects. Although the stories seem abstract and conceptual, there is a grain of reality behind what could be metaphorical comparisons of the city's traits. At the same time, spatially, the descriptions of the city successfully carry out tours and or maps of the space. 

•    In his description of “Olivia,” one of the “Cities and Signs,” Polo says a city should never be “confused with the words that describe it” even though there may be a connection between the two (61). How would you interpret this statement, and how does this inform your reading?
  
  Polo is drawing a distinction between what the city really is, and how it can ever be described in plain language. A city consists of much more than a map, list, or items. Every city has its own life and atmopshere. This may be why Polo always describes the cities through concepts, and the cities are sorted into categories. Words inform what a city is, but can only attempt to come close to its true essence. 

•    Polo says, “[c]ities, like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspective deceitful, and everything conceals something else” (44).  How does this inform your understanding of cities, in general, and Polo’s concept of the city specifically?
  
  Polo is outlining the complexity of the characteristics of a city. A city houses a large group of people, and the "desires and fears" of these people are directly reflected in the city's apperance. People define a city. With all the interaction and overlap between people, there are several layers of meaning and "concealment" in each city. 

•     Calvino summarized Invisible Cities as a book that offers more questions than solutions. He also maintains, in his essay “Exactitude” that it is the book

in which I managed to say most . . . because I was able to concentrate all my reflections, experiments, and conjectures on a single symbol [the city]; and also because I built up a many faceted structure in which each brief text is close to the others in a series that does not imply logical sequence or a hierarchy, but a network in which one can follow multiple routes and draw multiple, ramified conclusions. (103)

What kinds of questions does the book raise for you and what networks of connections  and conclusions can you draw from its texts?

Networks of connections are particularly drawn through the categories of cities. I recall flipping back and forth between cities from the same category, trying to find out what the connection was between them. Calvino's style of writing here creates a web that connects all these spaces which overlap, intersect, connect etc. These connections further clarify definitions of specific categories. 

•         What connections can you make between any of the work we've looked at in class so far? Be specific.
  
  Calvino's writing relates to de Certeau's interpretation of spaces, as in de Certeau's 'walking in the city". De Certeau illustrates the difference between voyeurs and walkers, and how these two serve as the language and speech of a city. Simiarly, Calvino tells stories from both of these perspectives, outlining the language of each city.
  

4/2 De Certeau - Walking in the City

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).

            This illustrates the difference between the voyeur and walker de Certeau points out. A walker is someone down below, who can only focus on the immediate paths in front of them. The voyeur sees a whole and complete view of what the city is, how it is mapped out, and how it is functioning. All of a sudden there is a logic to how the city is set up by urban planners, architects, etc.

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.”

            De Certeau is emphasizing how important the work of urban planners and architects are. What they do, the concepts they develop, eventually become real buildings and real cities. The way a city is mapped out is integral to how each individual, or walker, navigates the city. Every daily path is therefore affected by these spatial practices.

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).

 They have qualitative characteristics and are singular units. They create and define spaces infinitely. In technical terms, one can trace how often a path is travelled, but these statistics do not include the qualitative act of passing by. De Certeau explains this as “window shopping” or “wandering”.

           

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 hiss 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 city is essentially a language that must be spoken to be fully appreciated and utilized. Walking brings the city to life, it reaffirms the city’s purpose. Without people walking and using the city as it was designed, the city has no purpose in its existence. A language can exist as only a written language, but if it is not a spoken language it is known as a “dead” language because it can’t really be used to its full potential.

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, he says that “walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects etc., the trajectories it “speaks’” (99). Therefore walking is important in the experience of itself. Every step and sequence is different in each moment with each individual, therefore it can never be drawn out like a path. Walking in the city is a continuous movement.

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

                  The “long poem of walking” describes how once again, walking is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, walking is an art that carries many implications. It refers to the city in terms of its culture and individuals. De Certeau suggests that it is like a “peddler”, which carries something that is surprising and interesting.

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.

Asyndeton creates a “less”, while synecdoche can replace a “more” with a “less”.
synecdoche: a small part made to represent the whole
asyndeton: the omission of conjunctions
De Certeau's larger argument is that walking serves as the speech of a language. These two terms play a role in the way that walking creates fragments in time, and omits certain spaces, it can never be perfectly connected as a trail. At the same time, a small part of walking can implicate so much more because of its "wandering" aspect. 

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 literal . . . meaning” (105). Explain what he means by these statements.

                  Fifth avenue is named the fifth avenue because it is the fifth in the sequence of avenues in Manhattan. However, overtime the avenue develops and grows its own definition of the term “Fifth Avenue”. Now, when people say fifth avenue it implies many things such as a shopping area, or a significant part of New York City. It is not simply the fifth avenue in Manhattan, but Fifth Avenue. De Certeau is suggesting that the way we explore the geography and pass it on through experience and memory actually gives geography another layer of meaning to their names.

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?

            Each place contains infinite stories and pasts belonging to each individual that no other will ever be able to experience or understand. They exist in the space, but cannot be reached by anyone else.

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?       

            Childhood experience greatly affects the way we grow up to experience spaces. De Certeau says, “to practice space is thus to repeat the joyful and silent experience of childhood” where one is free to reinterpret what space is and how it works (110). It is how we are trained to “read” the city in our own way. This is how we create the new layer of poetic meaning above what the geography has been simply defined as. 

3/31 Style Wars

The title of the film itself, "Style Wars" accurately describes the juxtaposition of views on graffiti from both sides. The graffiti artists show such passion and purpose in what others view as destructive vandalism. For the graffiti artists, they are not out to destroy the city and subways, but as an interviewee said, "it's a matter of knowing I can do it, it's for me, and knowing we can read it". The art of 'bombing" is writing one name over and over again, essentially seeing how big you can make this name. By choosing the subways as their canvas, these graffitis are carried all over the city day and night repetitively. The graffiti thus is significant in the way they take the artist's name, and bring it to the eyes of many to be recognized. It serves as an occupation of space following the subway lines. One graffiti artist spoke of "bombing" at least one train on every line. 

The spatial occupation of the graffiti does not merely follow the trajectory of the subway itself, but because it is a visual tool, it links anybody who catches sight of the graffiti. Furthermore, the language of graffiti is only legible and beautiful in the eyes of another graffiti artist. Taking the graffiti throughout the city connects different artists, in a sense their "intertwined paths give their shape spaces. They weave places together" as suggested by De Certeau (97). The graffiti provides a connection between spaces. Instead of just a subway travelling on its course, the subway is transformed into a tool with the purpose to occupy and mark out space. 

3/16 Zittel x Foucault Essay

Controlled Convenience:

Docility of the body as a product of Andrea Zittel’s artworks originally created for convenience of the body

 

“What you own, owns you” (Andrea Zittel). Artist Andrea Zittel works at a very personal level to redesign the daily objects of life that are often taken for granted in the form they were originally designed. Inspired by her own specific needs, Zittel creates artworks that adhere to her lifestyle. However, ironically by creating work that perfectly adheres to individuals, it becomes a very limiting boundary that will only allow the specific person to perform the specific actions Zittel designed for. This specification relates to Foucault’s “Docile Bodies”, particularly through the way Zittel’s work actually utilizes several of the methods Michel Foucault suggests can control bodies and actions. Zittel’s works “Mobile Living Units” (1993-1994) and “Carpet Furniture” (1992-1993) demonstrate this ironic restriction where a tool for personalized convenience becomes a tool to create limited docile bodies.

 

Andrea Zittel is an artist who works in several mediums, scales, and locations. As mentioned, Zittel works at a very personal level, creating things to fit to her or her clients’ needs. Zittel’s works often consist of customized pieces, for example furniture, small living units, and so on. Due to the personalization of her works, Zittel’s projects are born out of the convenience for their users or occupants. In support, Michel Foucault’s writing in “Docile Bodies” centers around the concept of how discipline and punishment can be used to control people. Foucault observes how the most obedient bodies are achieved through various deliberate and external measures by an authority figure. For instance, Foucault argues that division and organization is an essential aspect to controlling individuals by breaking up communities. This gives each individual a personal place where they are separately assigned their tasks. Furthermore, Foucault describes how making a habit out of a task of an individual controls them as they are physically docile, and accustomed, to the action. Although not Zittel’s original intention, Zittel’s works act as an authority figure, or boundary, that controls its’ users actions.

 

            Zittel’s work “Mobile Living Units” was inspired by her own experience of having to move from a large house in California to a small and cramped up apartment in New York. Zittel began considering the effect of one’s spatial boundaries in their daily activities. Furthermore, she had taken for granted a large living space, but was now confined to a much smaller space. Yet still, the much smaller space functions to adhere to all her needs. Thus Zittel created the “Mobile Living Units”, a project of minimum space but maximum utility. “The units typically provide a bed, closet and storage space, table and cooking area, all of which collapse into one self-contained unit on wheels for easy transport, like a pop-up camping trailer. One can’t help but notice that, in Zittel’s search for functionality, streamlined simplicity and efficiency, comfort often seems to be sacrificed” (Cash, 128). Simple functionality is the main purpose of these living units. The living units do not even have building rules to conform to; they are created only to consider its occupants’ needs. This is suggestive of how these living units are in fact very liberating and free of rules. However, still they have the effect of limiting their occupant according to the boundaries of its functionality.

 

            Zittel’s living units serve as methods for controlling bodies as Foucault suggests, through the use of enclosure, separation, and utility.  The living units create an enclosed and separated space for its specific inhabitants. “Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself,”(Foucault, 74) the living units serve as a closed space regardless of where it is because of its mobile nature. In theory, the living unit could be set up anywhere and regardless of what was happening outside, the inhabitant inside could continue their daily routines normally. Furthermore, in these small compartments, “each individual has his own place; and each place is individual” (Foucault, 75). This characteristic of the living units isolates the inhabitant and confines them to the boundary of the unit. This “individual place” becomes the limitations to the inhabitant. Hence, the body is docile to the unit. Zittel did not begin the project to control one’s body, but rather for one’s convenience in a small space. However, the units actually serve to discipline one’s body. Foucault states, “a disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture” (Foucault, 82). This statement links back to Zittel’s original intent- to create a space that was efficient in its functions for specific individuals.

 

Another piece by Zittel titled “Carpet Furniture” done in 1992-1993 also serves to confine the body to space. However, unlike the “Mobile Living Units” where the space within the unit was clearly the boundary, “Carpet Furniture” controls the body through two dimensional means. We are accustomed to the sight of common furniture such as bed and chairs, and we can easily recognize the two dimensional outlines of these objects. Zittel takes the top view of furniture and creates carpets of different compositions. “Striking carpets with geometric forms that indicate aerial views of a “bed”, “chair” or “table,” allows floorbound users to change a room’s function simply by switching the rug. Like the emperor’s new clothes or a children’s game of house, the virtual furniture takes a leap of faith, essentially bringing order to the air in a room” (Cash, 128). In this piece, the spatial quality of the room is instantaneously changed by the carpet placed on the floor. The carpet which is the confining boundary is actually set by our own habitual attributions of object to function.

 

In reality, there is a room of open three dimensional space, but mentally it is limited by the two dimensional patterns. This project brings out how our bodies are in fact already controlled and docile to certain things. Like Foucault’s example of a soldier’s posture, some actions become a habit, “the machine required can be constructed; posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning silently into the automatism of habit” (Foucault, 75). It is our habit to recognize a bed as a place to lie down, a chair as a place to sit and so on. We are trained to recognize these objects, to such an extent that even two dimensional representations can activate these habits. While just changing a flat carpet in an empty room, really there are boundaries and limitations being set up in the room because of our habitual attributions of functions.

 

Although Zittel’s “Carpet Furniture” seem to restrict the body because of human habit to recognize outlines, the counterargument is that this form of restriction is in fact liberating through its limitations. Zittel’s list of “These Things I Know For Sure” addresses the conflict between liberation and limitation. Number 10 states that “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”. Zittel suggests that although in Foucault’s terms her work may be restrictive, creating docile bodies, this restriction is actually positive as the individual does not feel that they are being restricted. Zittel further reiterates this point in number 11, “Things that we think are liberating can ultimately become restrictive, and things that we initially think are controlling can sometimes give us a sense of comfort and security”. Not only is restriction comforting, but in fact the empty room with a meaningless carpet is actually unsettling.

 

Zittel’s work is in some way ironic because although born for a means of convenience and simplicity, they really serve as constrictions to the body. Zittel once said, “I want to create a world and live in it completely”. This statement shines throughout her work, where she builds things to fulfill the needs of her world, yet building a specific world confines one to the very specific things it was built for, creating a docile body in Foucault’s terms.

 

 

 

Citations

Foucault, Michel. "Docile Bodies." Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 75-95. Print.

Cash, Stephanie. "A-Z And Everything In Between." Art in America Apr. 2006: 124-131. Print.

3/10 Controlled Convenience

Ann Chai

Lit and Crit/ Prof Sacha Frey

Controlled Convenience

“What you own, owns you” (Andrea Zittel). Artist Andrea Zittel works at a very personal level to redesign the daily objects of life that are often taken for granted in the form they were originally designed. Inspired by her own specific needs, Zittel creates artworks that adhere to her lifestyle. However, ironically by creating work that perfectly adheres to individuals, it becomes a very limiting boundary that will only allow the specific person to perform the specific actions Zittel designed for. This specification relates to Foucault’s “Docile Bodies”, particularly through the way Zittel’s work actually utilizes several of the methods Michel Foucault suggests can control bodies and actions. Zittel’s works “Mobile Living Units” (1993-1994) and “Carpet Furniture” (1992-1993) demonstrate this ironic restriction where a tool for personalized convenience becomes a tool to create limited docile bodies.

            Zittel’s work “Mobile Living Units” was inspired by her own experience of having to move from a large house in California to a small and cramped up apartment in New York. Zittel began considering the effect of one’s living spatial boundaries on their daily activities. Furthermore, she had taken for granted a large living space, but was now confined to a much smaller space. Yet still, the much smaller space functions to adhere to all her needs. Thus Zittel created the “Mobile Living Units”, a project of minimum space but maximum utility. “The units typically provide a bed, closet and storage space, table and cooking area, all of which collapse into one self-contained unit on wheels for easy transport, like a pop-up camping trailer. One can’t help but notice that, in Zittel’s search for functionality, streamlined simplicity and efficiency, comfort often seems to be sacrificed” (Stephanie Cash, 128). Functionality is the main purpose of these living units.

            Zittel’s living units serve as methods for controlling bodies as Foucault suggests, through the use of enclosure, separation, and utility.  The living units create an enclosed and separated space for its specific inhabitants. “Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself,”(74) the living units serve as a closed space regardless of where it is because of its mobile nature. In theory, the living unit could be set up anywhere and regardless of what was happening outside, the inhabitant inside could continue their daily routines normally. Furthermore, in these small compartments, “each individual has his own place; and each place is individual” (75). This characteristic of the living units isolates the inhabitant and confines them to the boundary of the unit. This “individual place” becomes the limitations to the inhabitant. Hence, the body is docile to the unit. Zittel did not begin the project to control one’s body, but rather for one’s convenience in a small space. However, the units actually serve to discipline one’s body. Foucault states, “a disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture” (82). This statement links back to Zittel’s original intent- to create a space that was efficient in its functions for specific individuals.

Another piece by Zittel titled “Carpet Furniture” done in 1992-1993 also serves to confine the body to space. However, unlike the “Mobile Living Units” where the space within the unit was clearly the boundary, “Carpet Furniture” controls the body through two dimensional means. We are accustomed to the sight of common furniture such as bed and chairs, and we can easily recognize the two dimensional outlines of these objects. Zittel takes the top view of furniture and creates carpets of different compositions. “Striking carpets with geometric forms that indicate aerial views of a “bed”, “chair” or “table,” allows floorbound users to change a room’s function simply by switching the rug. Like the emperor’s new clothes or a children’s game of house, the virtual furniture takes a leap of faith, essentially bringing order to the air in a room” (Cash, 128). In this piece, the confining boundary is set by our own habitual attributions of object to function.

In reality, there is a room of open three dimensional space, but mentally it is limited by the two dimensional patterns. This project brings out how our bodies are in fact already controlled and docile to certain things. Like Foucault’s example of a soldier’s posture, some actions become a habit, “the machine required can be constructed; posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning silently into the automatism of habit” (75). It is our habit to recognize a bed as a place to lie down, a chair as a place to sit and so on. We are trained to recognize these objects, to such an extent that even two dimensional representations can activate these habits. While just changing a flat carpet in an empty room, really there are boundaries and limitations being set up in the room because of our habitual attributions of functions.

Zittel’s work is in some way ironic because although born for a means of convenience and simplicity, they really serve as constrictions to the body. Zittel once said, “I want to create a world and live in it completely”. This statement shines throughout her work, where she builds things to fulfill the needs of her world, yet building a specific world confines one to the very specific things it was built for, creating a docile body in Foucault’s terms.