Broken Fences Almanac 006


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roken Fences Almanac_006
07-11-2023

BROKEN FENCES ALMANAC_006

WANING CRECENT MOON
JULY, 11, 2023



The face of West Rock after a cool rain in April.

I haven't written you, the generous signer-uppers for this newsletter, since October. I apologize, if anything to myself, for I really hoped this might be a regular practice, one oriented towards fostering consistent connection in what feels like an increasingly fragmented world.

Fragmented, at least, for me. I recently, on a late night research spiral, came across the Wikipedia entry on Schizotypal Personality Disorder. (Is there a word for hypochondria but specifically for psychological conditions? Just googled: Phrenophobia?). Alongside the characteristic difficulty maintaining close social ties (hmm…), the entry listed another telltale symptom of SPD as  “the preoccupation with seeing themselves and/or the world as strange/ odd.” But the world is strange, I thought. Not that I think I have a personality disorder per se, (or, not this one, at least) but my feelings of recognition with the obsession with strangeness did give me pause. Is it possible that our current milieu of social media, texting, the infinite scroll (what we might collectively call “internet brain”), the 9 hours a day I spend in a hermetically sealed, air-conditioned office, the absurd quantity of cars, of consumer goods, of trash, is strange, yes, but not quite as strange or unbearable as I experience it? One has to wonder what mental distortions one is peering out of.

“No!” I think, “It is equally strange as it is terrible.” (Convince me it’s not, please?)

Thus: It’s Not All Bad. This has been a sort of mantra I’ve been saying to myself lately. My negative thinking has gotten to a place where even a hike in the woods won’t bring me peace— all I can see are the various invasives covering the forest floor, hear the drone of the highway nearby, remember that this is all second growth, a weed patch, really, in comparison to the ecosystem richness of the Chestnut old growth forests prior to the European invasion of North America. A tiny weed patch where the remaining fireflies, songbirds, and deer must cling, the only oasis in the fecund mat of human development that stretches from here, in D.C., without a break all the way to Hartford, Ct. But a handful of wineberries, glowing like little lanterns (the Italian for raspberry, not coincidentally, is lampone) in the sunlight: It’s not all bad.  


Quality Moss in Woodbridge, CT



RECOMMENDED ENCOUNTER: FAR-LOOKING


Last month I was on a walk in New Haven (before graduation and my move to D.C, to name the least of my recent life-altering experiences). Something caught my eye, some flash of movement. It was not close at hand but far up the street, at least at the end of the block. I didn’t clock whatever it was, but I found myself scanning the deep center of the picture plane that is what my eyes see, and became aware of this sensation in real time. With this came a sort of epiphany. It may sound stupidly obvious, but I felt I was seeing this spatial dimension for the first time. Far sight. For the rest of my walk, I focused my attention on the far distance— the block, one which I’d walked countless times over and which, if I am being honest, had become fairly banal and tiresome, was born anew.

About a week after this moment of clarity, I went for an eye exam. Before going, I went on a research spiral around how optometrists work, and how often they might wrongly prescribe someone’s corrective vision— I’ve been taken aback by their casual and happy-go-lucky demeanor on past visits. (I wonder how many times "Optometrist" and "Happy-Go-Lucky" have shared a sentence). Over-prescription is quite common, actually. Worse, it encourages our eyes, those of us who are myopic, to further extend, in order to meet the sharpness of the image projected onto our retina, resulting in something ominously termed, and I might be misremembering it here, “Ocular Creep.”

At the actual exam, I got confirmation of this by the doc. She was asking the age-old question “Which is better, 1…or 2?” To which I replied the requisite answer: I couldn’t tell. She opted for the lower dose, citing the same concerns of over-prescription.

Day to day, I now realize how CLOSE I am looking all the time. The computer screen. The phone screen. The desk in front of me, the people walking in the opposite direction on the street, the facades of buildings I pass. My attention is claimed by a sphere of 20 or so feet around my head. Probably closer to 3 feet.  All of us office-bound, vision-conscious workers are familiar with the “20-20-20 rule”. But what about beyond 20 feet, or beyond even the “far looking” I’ve been doing in the city? How rarely I gaze at truly FAR vistas, at the stars. Is this a great shrinking of our environment? As our “information” increases exponentially and into smaller and smaller “bits”, becoming further and further abstracted, does our physical body follow suit? An abstract human body, shaped by not physical environment but evanescent information...

This physiological change, the lengthening of our eyeballs, feels connected to others driven by “modern life”: our increasing overbites, our crowded teeth, our shrinking jaws. Our collapsing nasal cavities, our habitual and deathly mouth-breathing. I’ve been an obsessive nose-breather for months now, yet I still revert to the mouth if I am not careful. Again, information: breathing through our mouths must be tied to all our talking, no?

To come to an end of my rambling: I recommend you try far-looking and looking long in your daily life, if not to challenge our increasing “close” sphere, then for the increased range of poetry and aesthetics one can experience in experientially tired spaces: to find new joys in old places.



BROKEN FENCE: ROBIDA COLLECTIVE




Illustration by Vanilla Chi for Mold Magazine


If Robida Collective sounds familiar, its because I mentioned them in my last newsletter. Since then, I sat down with them over Zoom for an interview for a piece on their practice for Mold, which I procrastinated on finishing for, I kid you not, 6 months. It is now, finally, published, so I am including it below, follow the jump to Mold for the rest :)

INHABITING THE MARGINS WITH ROBIDA COLLECTIVE:
THE YOUNG DESIGNERS BUILDING COMMUNITY IN A RURAL VILLAGE ON THE SLOVENE-ITALIAN BORDER

In the mountains of the Natisone River Valley, nearly on the border between Slovenia and Italy, lies the small village of Topolò. That’s its Italian name, anyway. In Slovene the village is called Topolove. To Robida Collective, a group of primarily young academics and architects who call the village home, the two names matter. As one member, Dora Ciccone explains, “Topolò is very related to the Slovenian border community, which is a minority in Italy, so we have a special care for culture, for languages.” Most of the group met in Slovene-speaking Ljubljana, two hours by car from Topolò, but now live together, some full time, others for parts of the year, in the village in this bilingual region of Italy. The identity and space of borderlands being so central to their practice, it is no surprise then that their annual publication, Robida Magazine, features pieces in English, Italian, and Slovene, among others (so far, the magazine counts 9 languages published across their 8 issues, with a 9th issue, titled Soil, on the way).


From this annual magazine, to hosting a “Summer School” of collective learning with lecturers and participants from across Europe, to their internet radio station, Robida Collective is exploring, challenging, and remaking the relationship between the small, isolated, rural village they call home and the rest of the world. This connection—between the rural and the global—has long been a preoccupation of my work and is why I sat down with Robida Collective last month to ask them how they understand their village in relation to the urban and the rural, the global and the local, and what relevancy places like Topolò might have for the future.

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SEEKING ADVICE: WATER WORKS, A DOCUMENTARY

Finally, just an ever so brief update here that I'm the recipient of a generous travel award, which I plan to use to make a short, experimental format documentary on water infrastructure, water use, and future water scarcity in the U.S., tentatively called WATER WORKS. More to come soon, but if you see any interesting water stories, news tid bits, etc. I'd be so grateful if you sent 'em my way!

I made this video project, developed as a panoramic immersive video installation (hence the weird long format), to question how we might experience the ghost of an ecosystem, specifically the Lago Di Texcoco under present-day Mexico City. It's not great, but was foundational to my current thinking on water relationships in cities and water scarcity and how it relates to design.

Screenshot from “Ghost Lake” (2023) the short “film” I made in architecture school last semester.