[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] constitute art IRL. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are those graphical, spatial, and medial forms that can still be found in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup]. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the self-reproducing [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_style_(architecture)"]International Style[/popup] that is called contemporary architecture, design, or art. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to those forms that not only represent the global cultural system, but also global capitalism (for example [popup url="http://www.babylon.com/definition/m%C3%BCteahhit/Turkish"]müteahhit[/popup]). They have not sacrificed [popup url="http://junkjet.net/junkjet6preview.html" width="750"]local[/popup] identity to modernity, they are still somehow specific. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the big player forms in attention, in appreciation, and in cultural reflection. They are not considered as intended or authored; they are not recognized at all – if ever, as [popup url="http://goo.gl/ug5qa"]trash[/popup] or [popup url="http://goo.gl/vArSr"]kitsch[/popup].

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftovers"]leftovers[/popup], marginal, often too-small-to-be-noticed forms and spaces that live their life below radar level. They are usually not product of any adequate profession – be that art, architecture, or design. They have been there for the ordinary and common life. They have been there for a business that has already lost the competition within global economy, but that carries on. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] do not comply with aesthetic or qualitative standards and fashions.

But they are valuable in at least three points, referring to the international global style. They contain the local, the romantic, and the glamorous. Insofar, they are able to create an organic public sphere, open for participation, business, and talk. Thus, they embody spaces, essential for political, social, economic and aesthetic negotiation.

The Glamorous > Istanbul > Cultivated Neon Signs

Istanbul has been described as [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoticism"]exotic[/popup] and [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism"]oriental[/popup]. These terms obviously originate in a Western perspective, in which Istanbul appears as the ‘Other’ of the old European city. Yet, there might be a better term to describe specific phenomena in Istanbul: [popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=rY8MT5UYS5AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA167&q&f=true#v=onepage&q&f=true" width="750"]glamour[/popup]. [popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=rY8MT5UYS5AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA167&q&f=true#v=onepage&q&f=true" width="750"]Glamour[/popup] stands for something irrational, ineffable, and enchanting. It is rather the uncontrolled situation than the image-perfect sleek scenery. It is not associated with success and superiority; that would confuse it with glossy or luxury. [popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=rY8MT5UYS5AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA167&q&f=true#v=onepage&q&f=true" width="750"]Glamour[/popup] is a more ambivalent, difficult, broken, and even critical form. [popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=rY8MT5UYS5AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA167&q&f=true#v=onepage&q&f=true" width="750"]Glamour[/popup] is not just beauty. It is rather an effect of imagination than a particular kind of style. It is inspiring in that it includes the risk of achieving something that is actually not achievable: the light works that refer to shops that are hardly there at all, too small, too barren. These lights promise outside, what there does not exist inside. Yet, they have these led signs that attract attention and mean modern business. They are hilarious and in that they show optimism and energy literally and metaphorically. They create a street show that is communicative [1] challenging [popup url="http://www.google.de/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=bosphorus+bridge+lights&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=H9w1UcXlB8jRtAbsl4EQ&biw=1581&bih=1069&sei=Idw1Ub-fJsHcswbi1IGACg"]communal high voltage decoration[/popup]. They promote the business while creating a special kind of symbolic architecture, using iconic signs, smileys, hearts, crowns, etc. They are popular culture producing an aesthetic without knowing. Still, they light the nights for local, mostly poor, neighborhoods, characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. It is these aspects that decide over death and life of great cities – adapting the title of the famous book by the American activist [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs"]Jane Jacobs[/popup] [2].

[1]
[popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=tRRcSXUFEoEC"]Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour: Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press 1972[/popup]
[2]
[popup url="http://books.google.de/books?id=cw_YaT_I_b8C"]Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House 1961[/popup]

[popup url="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202825181413411341311.0004d71c6e73b2404bbf5&msa=0&ll=41.009722,28.95222&spn=0.00216,0.003602&z=19&t=k&output=embed"]Internet Café and Call Shop, Sultan Internet House, Aksaray, Istanbul[/popup]
In Sultan Internet House it is possible to “smoke water pipe and check mails at the same time”. The surreal space is about 40 square meters and full with computers. They play loud arabesque music inside; smoking is allowed. The neon signs are produced by [popup url="http://www.animasyonluledtabela.net"] Animasyonlu Led Tabela[/popup] in Istanbul.

[popup url="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.teknokulis.com%2Ftopic.php%3Fid%3D1262"]Internet Café and Call Shop, 3D Internet, Aksaray, Istanbul[/popup]
Also called Cybercafe, this internet café is at the basement of an apartment building. It advertises 3D Internet with blinking LEDs. Below the typography, there is an image of 3D-Glasses that do not blink anymore. On a big poster in front of the entrance they write “3D Internet, for the first time in Istanbul”. Inside, there are about 20 computers connected with 3D-Glasses and headphones, separated with simple wooden boxes from each other, like [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/3dinternet-inside.jpg" height="375"]the open space office of Jacques Tati’s Playtime[/popup]. Inside this wooden boxes [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/polystation.jpg" height="375"]not PlayStation but PolyStation game consoles[/popup] are connected. The owner tells, “we have internet, yes, but if you want to see 3D, we have games and films.”

[popup url="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202825181413411341311.0004d71c6e73b2404bbf5&msa=0&ll=41.011532,28.953682&spn=0.00216,0.003602&z=19&t=k&output=embed"]Internet Café and Call Shop, Internet C@fe, Aksaray, Istanbul[/popup]
They say: “We don’t have Internet”. They offer orange juice, toast, coffee and black tee. [popup url="http://goo.gl/1FdJG"]Students with uniforms[/popup] are not welcome inside.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/internetclub-inside.jpg" height="375"]Internet Café and Call Shop, Internet Club, Aksaray, Istanbul[/popup]
Internet Club, actually is a 24 hours open game hall, with a huge range of games. They also check examination notes, or make reservations from hospitals for old people, who do not have internet at home and “print everything you want with a laser-printer”. On the shop window it is written in English: “Have Arabic Keyboard”. They offer Playstation 3, Digital TV, Cinema 3D, Call Shop as written at the entrance door. Everyone can become a member of the Internet Club.

[popup url="http://www.enderfoto.com"]Photography/Internet Shop, Ender Teleskop, Sirkeci, Istanbul[/popup]
In Ender Teleskop, [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Galileo_Donato.jpg" width="750"] the reconstruction of one of the first built telescopes by Galileo[/popup] is exhibited. On the shop window there are a lot of binoculars, telescopes. Inside, there is wireless internet and black tea for free, and a big table for laptops.

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] constitute art IRL. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are those graphical, spatial, and medial forms that can still be found in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup]. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the self-reproducing [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_style_(architecture)"]International Style[/popup] that is called contemporary architecture, design, or art. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to those forms that not only represent the global cultural system, but also global capitalism (for example [popup url="http://www.babylon.com/definition/m%C3%BCteahhit/Turkish"]müteahhit[/popup]). They have not sacrificed [popup url="http://junkjet.net/junkjet6preview.html" width="750"]local[/popup] identity to modernity, they are still somehow specific. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the big player forms in attention, in appreciation, and in cultural reflection. They are not considered as intended or authored; they are not recognized at all – if ever, as [popup url="http://goo.gl/ug5qa"]trash[/popup] or [popup url="http://goo.gl/vArSr"]kitsch[/popup].

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftovers"]leftovers[/popup], marginal, often too-small-to-be-noticed forms and spaces that live their life below radar level. They are usually not product of any adequate profession – be that art, architecture, or design. They have been there for the ordinary and common life. They have been there for a business that has already lost the competition within global economy, but that carries on. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] do not comply with aesthetic or qualitative standards and fashions.

But they are valuable in at least three points, referring to the international global style. They contain the local, the romantic, and the glamorous. Insofar, they are able to create an organic public sphere, open for participation, business, and talk. Thus, they embody spaces, essential for political, social, economic and aesthetic negotiation.

The Romantic > Istanbul > Adopted Landscapes

The tensions with globalized economy, with biological and technological reality are more than noticeable in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup], where the gap between the rich and the poor seems huge in every aspect of life. However, there are preserved local microcosms and habits that ignore these problems and that are arguably [popup url="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/ch03.htm"]romantic[/popup] in a productive way (not consumerist like in [popup url="http://www.viaportvenezia.com/flash/index_eng.html"]theme park-like housing projects[/popup]). Their forms combine functional with impractical elements, creating organisms that achieve somehow autonomous aesthetic statements. Of course, these statements are raw and barbaric from a perspective of high culture: they are collections of sunny beaches, palms, mountains, cows, and Porsches. But these statements do imply what [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectures_on_Aesthetics"]Hegel[/popup] observed for [popup url="http://goo.gl/49qjT"]romantic art and architecture[/popup]: they contain a principle of subjectivity, of particularity and individuality, not in the singular element, but within the overall sentiment and longing [1]. Nature, [popup url="http://goo.gl/vArSr"]kitsch[/popup] landscapes, palms and beaches exist for decorative and atmospheric reasons, not for product placement. Above all, there is something comfortable and relaxing within the most humble scenes that display pragmatism and pose at the same time.
Spaces are shared, where there is almost no room, hospitality is exhibited even to dirty street animals; there are clichés, dreams, fragments of better lives that also improve the actual existence – if only for a sense of [popup url="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/ch03.htm"]romantic[/popup] humor. People offer tea, Nescafe, bananas, and an Atatürk calendar to us.
[1]
[popup url="http://textea.phil-splitter.com/html/die_romantische_architektur.html"]Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik
1835-1838[/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/huangguoshuwaterfall.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/bakkal.jpg" width="500" height="375"]Grocery, Öz Karadeniz Market, Yıldıztabya, Istanbul[/popup]
The grocery, bakkal shop where you can buy everything, sells nutella and fake Nutella [popup url="http://goo.gl/glEKm"](Sarelle)[/popup] side by side. Everything is in perfect order. The shape of the food counter and the colors of the food matches the stream of the [popup url="http://goo.gl/tvAzK"]Huangguoshu Waterfall[/popup], framed at the rear wall. The owner thinks that this image goes very well with his shop – even though he doesn’t know where it was photographed.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/swissalps.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://goo.gl/QEtuf"]Meatball Restaurant (Köfteci), Untitled Restaurant, Akarsu, Istanbul[/popup]
At the entrance of the restaurant, selling grilled meatballs, there is a plastic poster of the [popup url="http://goo.gl/zGO0h"]Swiss Alps[/popup], a surreal collage of spring and winter of the same landscape, reminding Magritte’s Empire of Light. The blue/green poster is a big contrast to the red/pink restaurant-space. Its frame is printed, so that there is no need of a wooden frame. There are even cows. The tiny TV was showing a film with [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ry5COQsGEo" width="750"]Türkan Şoray[/popup], who made a lot of films thematizing: [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5R3tZZqNMk" width="750"]girl is poor, boy is rich: boy falls in love with girl.[/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/oludeniz.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/melih.jpg" height="375"]Barber, Melih Erkek Kuaförü, Karlıtepe, Istanbul[/popup]
The vibrant red and pink furniture of the very narrow corridoresque barber shop is complemented by the huge all-over wallpaper of a mediterranean beach; [popup url="http://goo.gl/PhT2M"]Ölüdeniz[/popup], reflected by the mirrors at the opposite side. Every mirror is showing a part of the beach. Beside the elegantly curved beach, [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/melih-inside.jpg" height="375"]there are 9 clocks (7 on the wall, 2 on the table), and 5 calendars[/popup], perhaps counting the minutes until – what? The humorous Barber tells that “he is a big fan of [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md-rzafAY34" width="750"]Orhan Gencebay[/popup]“, who is famous with his nostalgic and melancholic lyrics, for example, the song “Batsın Bu Dünya” meaning “This World Should Sink”. Gencebay being called the advocate of arabesque music denies this classification and calls his style independent turkish music: “[popup url="http://goo.gl/qapW0"]even sociologists misapply the term [/popup],” says Gencebay. He adds: “[popup url="http://goo.gl/qapW0"]I am talking about melancholy, fatalism and drama, my music has nothing to do with arabesque.[/popup]”

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/lakeabant.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/mustafa.jpg" height="375"]Barber, Kuaför Mustafa, Eyüp, Istanbul[/popup]
In the microscopic kitchen area of ‘Berber Faik’, the image functions as a virtual window into the Bolu Province, where he comes from. The teapot seems to get its water directly from the fresh water [popup url="http://goo.gl/I1Gcm"]lake Abant[/popup]. In a very democratic way, there are hung up fan posters of [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/mustafa-inside.jpg" height="375"]Galatasaray,[/popup] [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/mustafa-inside1.jpg" width="375"]Besiktaş and Fenerbahçe[/popup] footballers around the sinks.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/goldfish.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/faik.jpg" width="375"]Barber, Berber Faik, Eyüp, Istanbul[/popup]
There are not only two [popup url="http://goo.gl/xgVll"]goldfish[/popup] and a swordtail in the tiny shop, but also two canary birds and a cat, crunching brekkies. Documented by photographs, there is also a horse, a squirrel, and a lion. The barber is drinking tea with a friend in this living still life. He is really kind to everyone especially to [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/faik-inside.jpg" width="375"]his animals[/popup]. The fish recently got a new lighting in their aquarium.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/tahiti2.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]
[popup url="https://maps.google.de/maps/ms?msid=202825181413411341311.0004d71c6e73b2404bbf5&msa=0&ll=41.011341,28.951313&z=18&t=k&output=embed"]Greengrocer, Untitled Greengrocer (Manav), Aksaray, Istanbul[/popup]
The greengrocer does not leave decorative decisions to chance: [popup url="http://goo.gl/hGDSy"]the pink sunset over Tahiti[/popup] is placed above exotic fruits, like pineapples and coco nuts. Over it, there is a framed quote headlined with “Word of Advice” written by the 13th century Persian mystic and poet [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi"]Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی),[/popup] who said: “What you seek is seeking you.”

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/phantomisland.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/yavuz.jpg" width="375" height="500"]Barber, Yavuz Erkek Kuaförü, Dörtyol, Istanbul[/popup]
The space combines wood with pastel shades: the walls are pistachio, the chairs are lilac. It is a gentleman’s business that offers tea to a worker, who enters the room to limber up. The painting, one of the berber tells us, depicts a [popup url="http://goo.gl/3aYbI"]phantasy place[/popup]. “It is a dream landscape,” he says. An old tape of [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSt9FiIFVTU" width="750"]Müslüm Gürses[/popup] is laying on the table. He points at [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKNcbuf_LUA" width="750"]the tape:[/popup] “and this is the dream music, best to listen to on tape”. The other barber of the shop prefers [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKe3WeTJ9cI" width="750"]Bülent Ersoy[/popup], because her music is sad and happy at the same time. At the beginning of the singer’s career, [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpinRyUYwwY" width="750"]Bülent Ersoy[/popup], aka Diva or Abla (“Sister” in Turkish), wasn’t accepted as a transsexual musician; now she is a big star.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/romantic-big/konangyuan.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]
[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/as.jpg" width="500" height="375"]Barber, As Erkek Kuaförü, Moda, Istanbul[/popup]
The walls of the light green painted Barber shop are covered with 36 framed images of [popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/as-inside.jpg" width="500" height="375"]very romantic landscape sceneries.[/popup] The floor is painted in blue creating an underwater atmosphere together with the walls. Most of the hanging images are illustrating heavenly good weather with palm trees, sea, beach, mountains, sunset, wooden boat, … no geographic limitations. A poster of a small island called [popup url="http://goo.gl/KgB0W"]Koh Nang Yuan[/popup] at Koh Tao (in the Gulf of Thailand) is placed directly opposite the entrance; it is the biggest image in the shop.

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] constitute art IRL. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are those graphical, spatial, and medial forms that can still be found in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup]. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the self-reproducing [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_style_(architecture)"]International Style[/popup] that is called contemporary architecture, design, or art. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to those forms that not only represent the global cultural system, but also global capitalism (for example [popup url="http://www.babylon.com/definition/m%C3%BCteahhit/Turkish"]müteahhit[/popup]). They have not sacrificed [popup url="http://junkjet.net/junkjet6preview.html" width="750"]local[/popup] identity to modernity, they are still somehow specific. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] contrast to the big player forms in attention, in appreciation, and in cultural reflection. They are not considered as intended or authored; they are not recognized at all – if ever, as [popup url="http://goo.gl/ug5qa"]trash[/popup] or [popup url="http://goo.gl/vArSr"]kitsch[/popup].

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] are [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftovers"]leftovers[/popup], marginal, often too-small-to-be-noticed forms and spaces that live their life below radar level. They are usually not product of any adequate profession – be that art, architecture, or design. They have been there for the ordinary and common life. They have been there for a business that has already lost the competition within global economy, but that carries on. [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree"]Non-Pedigrees[/popup] do not comply with aesthetic or qualitative standards and fashions.

But they are valuable in at least three points, referring to the international global style. They contain the local, the romantic, and the glamorous. Insofar, they are able to create an organic public sphere, open for participation, business, and talk. Thus, they embody spaces, essential for political, social, economic and aesthetic negotiation.

The Local > Istanbul > Domesticated Atatürks

Obviously, [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup] is being rebuilt in terms of modern, [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_style_(architecture)"]International Style[/popup] – architecture, design, and art are being leveled according to global standards. Yet, there are [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftovers"]leftovers[/popup] in the ordinary everyday life, most interesting for their anti-form, their intention, and contextuality. They include more than a lot of professional works, although or because they are not representative, but do embody a sense of place; a sense of place imagining the city as collective, dense structure with elements that are open and responsive to their context; a sense of place that may be “the underworld of ‘low’ culture”, to quote the architectural theorist [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Rowe"]Colin Rowe[/popup] [1]. Still, this sense of place produces collage forms that, for Rowe, are able to accommodate more than a limited clientele. Instead of endorsing a private and atomized society, these forms combine the naïve vision of an ideal (political) world with the management of the existing or not existing (money). These forms are “sufficiently two-faced,” combining statements and spontaneous [popup url="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randomness/109256105759371"]randomness[/popup], individual and collective history. Of course, these forms may be politically debatable, economically irrelevant, and too small to be part of urban studies, but they show a deliriously sustaining [popup url="http://junkjet.net/junkjet6preview.html" width="750"]local[/popup] culture that has to face globalization and internationalization.

It is not so much the delirious images of Turkey’s national hero [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] that generate this kind of local culture. It is rather their context, how [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] has to sit through everyday life, how he is appropriated in that he has to share spaces with documents, family portraits, and timepieces; how the [popup url="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Atatürk/289998611042786"]Turkish superego[/popup] is domesticated as if he was a family member; how he is sometimes but a leftover and sometimes becomes a political statement.

[1]
[popup url="http://goo.gl/qr3Nm" width="750"]Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter: Collage City, Birkhäuser 1984[/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/metzger.jpg" height="750"][/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/furkanet.jpg" width="375" height="500"]
Butcher (Wholesale and Retail), Furkan Et Toptan & Parakende, Karlıtepe, Istanbul[/popup]

In the butcher shop covered with big prints of meat, especially red meat, there is only one exception: the poster with [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]. The meat posters are draped with green vegetables like parsley or green pepper; [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] is draped with green plants. The meat posters have black wooden frames with a thin gold edge; the same frame is used for [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]. The meat is dark red with white veins; the Turkish flag behind is also dark red with a white moon and star.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/husar.jpg" height="750"][/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/tavuk.jpg" width="500" height="375"]
Restaurant, Untitled Restaurant, Sarıgöl, Istanbul[/popup]

Half a bread chicken döner restaurant sells nothing else than half a bread chicken döner for 1.5 TL (0.63 €, 0,83 $). There exists nothing than chicken döner, a small television, tables, chairs and an [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] poster. Probably, before the Döner shop bought the new and bigger TV, the aparatus was placed in the opening next to [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]. These ‘holes’ have been commonly made for TVs. Now, it provides a view into the kitchen.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/reiter.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/destina.jpg" width="375" height="500"]
Flowershop, Destina Çiçek Evi, Gaziosmanpaşa, Istanbul[/popup]

The flower shop sells real and plastic flowers, and houses a framed [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] poster: he is sitting on his horse, the background shows a dramatic atmosphere – similar to the two photos of the owner’s sons hanging above [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]. The florist says: “those, who do not like him, would avoid the name ‘[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]‘ and just call him Mustafa Kemal or even just ‘He’.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/stoffe.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/bursapazari.jpg" width="500" height="375"]
Fabric Shop, Bursa Pazarı Tekstil, Eminönü, Istanbul[/popup]

Rolls of cloth fill up the downstairs drapery shop. There is one pillar that gives space to an [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] portrait. About ten vendors, all male, are working in the huge shop and there are almost only female shoppers. One of the vendors shouts loud, pointing to his friend: “he is the grandson of [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup], you should also take his photo”. The other one says: “we are all grandsons of him”.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/schneider.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/yakup.jpg" width="500" height="375"]
Shirt-Tailor, Gömlekçi Yakup, Eyüp, Istanbul[/popup]

[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] sits in one of his chicest outfits on the wall of the tailor in Eyüp region, known as the religious region in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup] with the sacred mosque there. The tailor is just producing shirts for men. He complains about clients complaining: “Take this down. We don’t need him.” There are other images on the walls: a poster with Arabic text, and an image of the [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca"]Mecca[/popup] with people dressed in white.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/koefte.jpg" width="750" height="500"] [/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/sohretkoftecisi.jpg" width="500" height="375"]
Restaurant, Şöhret Köftecisi Since 1959, Sirkeci, Istanbul[/popup]

The owner of the restaurant (a grill house claiming to be famous with meatballs) is proud of his [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] ‘artwork’, “it is unique, nobody in the city has the same one,” he says. “I am happy that [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] is looking at me, while I am working. It is a coincidence that he looks right, placed in the middle of the wall,” he adds. The copper 2d-sculpture is the only decorative object hanging; all other elements are functional, pale in the one-space restaurant.

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/local-big/evil.jpg" height="750"] [/popup]

[popup url="http://www.m-a-u-s-e-r.net/non-pedigrees/outside/baris.jpg" width="375" height="500"]
Barber (Hairdresser for men), Baris Erkek Kuaförü, Dörtyol, Istanbul[/popup]

In the small barber shop there are certificates, posters of sport cars, a lot of mirrors and a framed photocopied painting of [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] at the wall. The old hairdresser is sitting with his friend discussing the change in [popup url="http://goo.gl/NvaU1"]Istanbul[/popup]: “Everything has changed, and everything will change even more.” They worry about the current changes, especially the urban transformation and renewal projects ([popup url="http://goo.gl/whpwn"]kentsel dönüşüm[/popup]), “these are just superficial shows of the government, nothing fundamental as the modern changes of [popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup]” they maintain. The owner adds, “[popup url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk"]Atatürk[/popup] is the person he likes the most in his life, just behind God.” In the melancholic barber shop, they listen to the most [popup url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tcLsJOiPYg" width="750"]melancholic music of Zeki Müren[/popup].

Here in Miami, Art Basel and related fairs are now far-past, full-swing. Art has been shown. Parties have been thrown. Many flights have departed, and tents will now come down. For now and a little longer we are all hung-over on Art, Basel and our drugs of choice. Mine is graphic design.

A few weeks ago—largely overnight—a sea of printed banners popped up all over Miami. Their function was to announce the many, many art and design fairs that are now over. To my eye, they evoke giant bank notes pined-up as visual currency.

I offer readings of these cultural currencies from the perspective of a newly minted Miamian. Walker editors: shudder away. At at the very least I am a graphic designer who (newly) resides here. My humble critique focuses on the relative value of art and design as communicated by the formal character of the various banners. There are a number of graphic design materials that serve as kinds of cultural currency during basel, VIP Passes, brochures, pamphlets and books among others, but I’m most interested in the wider public consumption of the banners.

As an insider/outsider, I am particularly struck by the similarities and differences of graphic design approaches across fairs. Together they tell a story of art, design, and commerce. They tell a story of convention, taste and tradition.

I present a sampling of cases of a wider field of banners as bank notes. Enjoy as I take them and you up into the air of graphic-design-critique, tongue firmly-in-cheek:

Art | Basel Miami Beach Banner

Art Basel

The main fair banner that is most known. It’s a blend of “edgy” and “safe” design decisions. “Edgy” choices: right/top alignment of the headline, fluorescent salmon, are balanced with “safe” choices: a marine blue flood, minimal punctuation, and the largest sponsor logo of the banners in my survey.  It asserts value through name value and visual consistency.

It also asserts value through juxtaposition. Art | Basel, Miami Beach is North America’s largest art fair, but it is named after a city in Europe. There is a sense of displacement and globalness by seeing the name of a very tropical city nestled nect to to the name of a very temperate city. The blue and salmon express this well. Heinz Hoffman’s Block typeset by the brilliant Swiss team of Müller + Hess are in sync with this fair of dualities. It’s Swiss sans serif—all business—but with rough hewn edges—all party. Pretty on point. But it is UBS’ logo, a bank, that puts the commodity nature of our current art “market” front and center. No date or location information needed. Yes, they are ballers like that.

For those who want to go deeper see Rob Giampietro’s excellent essay on the Basel identity in the context of other Art identities inspired by the current masters of low-high-brow Dexter Sinister.

Basel Elevation: 260 m (853 ft), Miami Elevation: 6 ft (2 m). High marks for execution.

Design Miami Banner

Pardon my cruddy photo.

This is one of the few more high-profile fairs to use a photo in the design of the banner (Jewelery Fair, and Miami on the River do as well). Design Miami is the official design satellite of Art Basel and their marketing materials cross-reference each other. However, the currency of the banner has its own distinct visual language.

Design Miami asserts its value through the familiar language of (product) design material culture in one of its most recognizable forms: a silhouetted lounge chair of modernist lineage. The chair is presented on a stark white ground with artful drop shadows. A diagonal black slash echoes the form of the chair’s legs and arm supports also slices the composition and the right side of the word mark “Design Miami.”

The slash does a nice reference to the displacement effect of Basel and Miami Beach. It also is sympathetic to the forms of the chair. Juxtaposition of “safe” and “edgy” (see Basel and Pulse) return in a centered, humanist (see NADA) san-serif that is set upper and lower case.

What at first reads as Helvetica is actually a now familiar Laurence Brunner’s 21st-century redux called Akkurat. It’s the softer side of modernism and looks handsome with a slash.

Miami Projects Banner

On the spectrum between graphic design signifiers of “safe” and “edgy” (I’m starting to question these terms themselves and where they come from.) Miami projects asserts it’s value by swinging towards “edgy” most strongly of the banners surveyed. Rather than “conventional” vertical or horizontal (the banners tall and skinny format actually lend to the convention of book spines where type is usually on its side) the fair name is wildly askew. Well as wildly as allowable for “safe” reading. The headline is also 1/2 positive and 1/2 knocked out or negative.

Support of black and red-orange wedges suggest a lineage to early 20th Century Russian Constructivist graphic design that has been reinterpreted through the graphic design style cycle far too many times as a set of signs that point to rebellion, upheaval and “up and coming” art and design. The date is present and next largest in the hierarchy  with the location, and the WWW url in place (see Pulse).

What at first seems edgy is actually quiet safe.

NADA, Miami Beach Banner

In an approach that I will call “there, but not there,” NADA asserts its value, by aspiring to be valueless. The banner is mostly white material, with black, outlined san-serif Type, and tiny “mouse type” below with only the month, name of location, and cross street information. See comments about 2×4‘s “Blank” Urban tree project on Speak Up a few years back.

The typeface from my speeding car seems to be Gill Sans, but set in regular or light weight says that value is not about typeface choice, or images, or even color. Its about being a humanist sans serif all in black, artfully  not there. Nada currency is a well positioned nothing.

To use a Fellaism: One hand, formally it’s a love. On the other hand, formally it “seems to mean”  like so much ironic typography trying to be without irony.

Pulse Miami Banner

Pulse

Visually one of the loudest banners. The very large condensed, sans serif cropped to the edges of the banners paired with with loud colors pushes to the “edgy” pole. It asserts value in the “impoliteness” of it’s typography. It says to me, that this is a fair of youthful energy. The words Pulse and Miami are turned on 180 degrees of each other to further impart dynamism to the composition.

The lack of letter-spacing in the all-caps type of the venue name, address, makes my inner fussy typographer squirm (see Scope below). The need to include a URL and a “WWW” that preceded it come across as a plea in internet-speak to project a youthful, connected fair. Those that are fluid in internet know that no url is needed in this context, especially with the almost anachronistic WWW attached. Just google it.

I often saw the Pulse banner hung as pairs like in the above photo. Perhaps an ad buy strategy to make it stand out more? Though louder than much of the other currency, I question the fidelity of the formal message.

Scope Pavilion Banner

Rather than a large typeset name, the fair is represented by a large and ambiguous typographic mark that evokes both a letter “S” turned on it’s side, and the mathematical symbol for infinity. In other applications it is also a neo-ligature of the lowercase “c” and “o” in scope. Really ingenuous. It uses mystery and intrigue to assert value.

The supporting typography is justified, with inconsistent word spacing in the middle line. The typographer in me cringes at the combination of carefulness and carelessness. To paraphrase my friend, Matt Monk: The banner creates”?” in my head, followed by “!” followed by a “?.” When maybe a better sequence might be to evoke a”?” followed only by “!”

It says they don’t care so much for the details of typographic tradition, or they don’t care that they don’t care.

What does that say about me? “S” for Silas anyone?

Untitled Art Banner

A new fair on the scene. I was drawn in to its more nuanced use of typographic contrast and hierarchy. Less bold and flash than Basel, but more there to hold on visually than NADA. It’s still image free, which says “contemporary art,” but a deep color flood of an unusual color.

It  seemed to be a plain or ultra light cut Andrea Tinnes’ Switch, but after cross referencing the specimen, I realize it to be a formally more restrained copy-cat. I was saddened by this. But why?  Why was I trying to attribute certain moves to type designers in the way that I would certain visual langages or styles to artists? Why end with such a rant?

Perhaps because I know how much work it takes to come up with a distinct typographic concept, and then how hard it is to execute harmoniously. But then I got to thinking what crooked room am I sitting in that makes me feel that this unicase treatment is less worthy than Andrea? (Disclosure: I’ve interviewed Andrea and consider her a hero). Was there not a unicase drawn by Bayer in 1925 of the Bauhaus, redrawn by Matthew Carter in 1991, made popular by Abbot Miller, and Ellen Lupton, and Mike Mills? Tschichold had his unicase. Bradbury Thompson his.

I say these things not to drop names. I am not a graphic design snob. I am a graphic design aficionado. I post this critique not to bash or rip, but to illuminate and to try to understand the rhizomatic connectedness of our current graphic design landscape. I am interested in celebrating our history, and our current moment in a very exciting time of exchange between commerce, art, and design.

I am interested in the discourse of taste, and tradition. But all this is lost without context. Meredith Davis clearly says it is the people, the places and systems along with the things themselves. To paraphrase another colleague, Nikki Juen isn’t design in general, and graphic design in particular about relationships?

What do these banner / bank notes say about the relationships we have to graphic design, art, commerce and other human beings? We can spend the next year contemplating and ruminating.

For Craig Buckley’s fall workshop “Publication, Politics, and Print: Episodes from the Twentieth Century” each first and second-year student of the Yale Graphic Design MFA presented one or more publications from the special collections of either the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library or the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library.

I picked the catalogue of two exhibitions curated by the late Harald Szeemann, “Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form” (1969) and “documenta 5: Questioning Reality – Image Worlds Today” (1972). A lot has been written about both exhibitions, and by more competent people[1] but when researching I found very little on the accompanying catalogues.

To quote from the introductory text of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 1996 Artforum interview “Mind Over Matter”:

“…Harald Szeemann has defined himself as an Ausstellungsmacher, a maker of exhibitions. There is more at stake in adopting such a designation than semantics. Szeemann is more conjurer than curator—simultaneously archivist, conservator, art handler, press officer, accountant, and above all, accomplice of the artists.”

WABF (to keep it short), is often cited as the first show to bring together post-Minimalist and Conceptual artists from both the US and Western Europe in a European institution. In Szeemann’s words: “(…) The participating artists were in no way object-makers; (…) the forms of each work, the choices of materials and form were extensions of the artist’s gesture; (…) so the meaning of this art lies in the fact that an entire generation of artists has undertaken to give ‘form’ to the ‘nature of art and artists’ in terms of a natural process[2].

When browsing the WABF catalogue for the first time, I found in it not only a collection of traces of Szeemann’s working methods translated to rich design/editorial decisions but also a moment of great intensity and freedom, when artists could either produce a work or just imagine it, as Lawrence Weiner once said.

There are, so far, three versions of this catalogue. The first was meant for the Kunsthalle Bern show in 1969, where Harald Szeemann was the director, the second for the ICA showing (modified and supplemented by Charles Harrison) and the third was a facsimile edition in 2006 published on the occasion of the exhibition “Villa Jelmini – The Complex of Respect”. All the design comments below refer to the Kunsthalle Bern version, unless noted otherwise.

The book “Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology”[3], a research project developed by the 16^th Session of the International Curatorial Training Program of Le Magasin–Grenoble (published in 2007 by JRP|Ringier and elegantly designed by Corinne Zellweger) displays a number of pictures of Szeemann’s own archives/offices/workspaces over time. In each picture you see lots of bookshelves, binders, boxes, rolodexes and many other cataloging devices. Szeemann’s deep interest in the archive is the first key to reading both WABF and documenta 5’s catalogues.

WABF’s catalogue cover is one first and bold design gesture. When Szeemann, who designed and directed the catalogue himself, chooses to use his own handwriting to announce the title of the exhibition (presenting it in all the languages of the Swiss cantons as well as English), he determines the tone for the rest of the catalogue and, considering the funding situation [4], suggests that the show belongs to him rather than to Kunsthalle Bern’s programme.  The full exhibition title appears a second time on the cover page where it is set in Univers (of course).

After the presentation and curatorial statement texts in the beginning (set in Univers as well), there is a pink-paper spread with the front and back of one of Szeemann’s famous A4 (folded down to A7, probably to fit his pocket/wallet) phone lists[5] occupying one page each, right before the actual catalogue starts. This image gives us a huge clue on how personal the decisions involved in this catalogue were.

The first page of each artist set is placed always on the right-hand side to align with the index, here a phonebook-style set of dividers in alphabetical order distributed throughout the volume. With Szeemanns’ love of the archive in mind, it is not by coincidence that the WABF book is bound with single-sheets 2-hole punched, put together with metal paper fasteners. It almost seems like the curator himself manually put each WABF catalogue together.

The basic layout structure gives each artist a name, a face and biographical information, akin to a card in Szeemann’s personal files.  And because the show grew out of a number of workshops with the artists, the same gesture of giving room for each artist’s voice to modify Szeemann’s previously defined structure affects that basic layout allowing many transformations ranging between instructions on how a particular artist wants to be featured in the catalogue to instructions on how to build the exclusive work of art for the show.

—

documenta 5: Questioning Reality – Image Worlds Today” could be viewed as the most significant and most conceptually complex exhibition of the first years of Szeemann’s career. It was conceived as a vast collection of visual things from our visual world –“a concentrated version of life in the form of exhibition”. Szeemann adopted an encyclopedic approach, deciding to show objects that did not belong to the realm of art, creating a mixture of ordinary objects and fetish items that belonged to popular, political, or kitsch culture, as well as to religious art and outsider art.

My claim is that the documenta 5 catalogue editorial strategy is analogous to that of WABF, elevated to monumental scale. documenta’s catalogue design history so far was tied to the Bauhaus tradition through the practices of Arnold Bode (architect, designer and founder of documenta) and Prof. Karl-Oskar Blase, (who designed the identities for the 1968, 1977 and 1987 editions) but Szeemann seemed to believe that the universalist/geometric approach did not best represent his intentions, even considering the encyclopedic approach aforementioned.

Prof. Karl-Oskar Blase is found under the Grafik und Design section of the exhibition credit list, and it is understood that Prof. Blase is in charge of the complex system involved in an exhibition of documenta’s scale. Still, under the Katalog/Gestaltung section, Szeemann’s name is found one more time.

The personal inflection of WABF’s cover design finds its analog in the d5 catalogue. Departing from the geometric designs of the previous four editions, Szeemann used Ed Ruscha’s drawing of the number five made of small ants. This emblematic image was also used for the poster. Ruscha’s design thus defined the public image of documenta 5. Also, Szeemann’s decision of having Ruscha’s work instead of/as a “logo” suggests the almighty geometry-based approach had its limitations, while still being very helpful in the organizational realm.

The catalogue object is a red, industrial binder, and the print run is 20,000 copies. The pages are again two-hole punched but this time the dividers are not in alphabetical but numeric order, organizing the 25 nucleus of the exhibition in 757 pages.

The artist cards are still there, but now the categories to which they belong matters more than an in-context description of their attitudes, or the focus on the personal. The phenomenon represented at documenta 5 was a certain crisis of the art market.  The presence of non-art objects calls into question the relationship between image and imagery and, by extension, the various levels of reality within a work — a task highly dependant on the visitor’s knowledge or willingness to differentiate how the same work exists  in and out of the exhibition space.

The loop between an imagetic cover/public visual image and the rigid grid that organizes and frames a complex set of elements seems to actively participate in that discussion.  The final section of the catalogue, dedicated exclusively for the supporters’ (real) advertisements is now a rich set of images; time and history have shifted its function.

*thanks a lot to Paulina Pobocha and Linda Veiby for the kind notes.

What would do you some good is an establishing shot or an articulation of the circumstances. Circumstances can’t be ignored, but they might happily de-intellectualize the approach. Any design, from weaponry to cobblin’ (not sure why, but it seems right to omit the terminal “g” here.) is a provisional response to particular and irreproducible circumstances. Our circumstances, in their barest psycho-skeletal detail, were to design and program a website for Yale Union (YU), an institution that hasn’t been around since the Pleistocene epoch or anything. Things are un-smelted here. Our arms are sausagey, our knuckles-drag, and we are trying to adjust ourselves to change, shifting our frame, looking for a position that doesn’t shoot pains down the backs of our thighs. Design plays its part; decisions depend not on their immutability but on their adaptability to all this change.

The attempt was low-altitude. We wanted to take in some ‘real life’ in the design, which is to say, we wanted to take up the real concerns of our institution. So, we made a website that was responsive, like responsive in the superficial it-adapts-to-the-size-of-the-device-way, but also responsive in the sense that the site—a very chopped and screwed Wordpress—can respond in real time to additional content and editorial changes. With the internet, everything too is un-smelted. Nothing ends. So you can make something and then change it and then undo that change and then change it again. We wanted to make that pliability a loud fact. We wanted to build something forgiving, you know, something that allowed us to think and make at the same time.

What else should we say? Should we say, “Well, the site follows the old modernist notion that anything is possible, the postmodernist notion that everything is exhausted, the post-postmodernist notion that since everything is exhausted, everything is permitted.” Bushwa. Not untrue. But a total stucco job. It’s always tempting to put this kind of response before stimulus, to sit back, make finger-steeples and retire into elaborate theoretical justifications for your work, but if we treat our work too ponderously we might negate the very qualities that give it oxygen.

Higher intelligence and special consultation arrived in the third act when Stuart Bailey, a close friend and kind of avuncular figure, invited us to speak to his class at Otis College of Art and Design. Even now, we aren’t all that inclined or enabled to counter the students’ insightful criticism and questions:

1. The pressure of language is perhaps too constant.
2. The site is afraid to let itself go. Better said, perhaps it pays too much respect to formal requirements.
3. (1+2). At worst it behaves like a kid in a tuxedo, at best, it behaves like a kid in a tuxedo.
4. By nature, humans organize information hierarchically, so the absence of a hierarchy naturally makes a statement. Is that statement worth the number of readers that will defect?

Still, the nightmare is involution. The nightmare is that the site produces communication signals, but does not in fact communicate. Have you ever been to a party and someone is just talking at you, like really chewing your face off, and you don’t actually need to be there for the conversation to carry forward? And like, yeah, wow, we don’t want the reader to think it’s a great idea, but palpably an idea. We have a thing about ‘ideas’.

—A.Flint Jamison, S. Ponik, R. Snowden for Yale Union (YU)

www.yaleunion.org

Signage on the east wall at The Hollywood Burger Bar, 4211 Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Portland, OR 97213. One example of how in the course of this design we went a decent distance in a circle, to arrive not far from where we started, but considerably more informed. So much for being sui-generis, first to the apple, the original progenitor. I mean, dig how deeply sunk in our subconscious this place is. Clearly our copulation is simulated. Fraudulent. Deeply imitative of the Burger Bar!

Yale Union (YU) home page

Khoi Vinh’s talk is now available online.

Watch it:

Aaron Draplin’s enthusiastic 76 minutes of tall tales are now online at the Walker Channel, and you can check it out here.