Michael Meredith

For the Absurd.

Are you reading this? You must be bored. If you're looking for
I-',..........~ ... , it might be a good idea to look elsewhere. Haven't
you heard of the Internet? There's everything you can think
of on the Internet, everything all the time. It's so fantastic I
can hardly bear it. Architecture seems so dull and primitive
in comparison. If you're still reading, I have to say I'm not
trying to be self-effacing or nihilistic. It just happened. To be
honest, nihilists are awful, always constructing arguments in
those dialectical structures only to negate them or to finally
find some other third condition - High vs. Low, Classicism
vs. Modernism, Hot vs. Cold, Easy vs. Difficult, Inside vs.
Outside, Abstraction vs. Realism, Up vs. Down, etc. You know
the setup. You know the punch line. But did you know that
those intolerably heroically tragic people are just a second
order of nihilism? Their predecessors were just as annoying
to bring to a cocktail party, critical of everything, scream
ing ----- when everyone else was saying ++++. Exhausting.
Eventually someone wanted to annihilate them. I don't blame
them. That's when the second order came along. Actually,
I've heard there'S also a third order of nihilists out there
who just decided it's all completely meaningless. They jabber
on about the inaccessibility of language, but I don't get it.
They think it's better to be quiet, to be nothing, to be static,
to be meaningless. They think at the core of everything is a
mathematically precise and rigorous vacuum. They believe
time stopped in Vienna at 6:32 pm, August 21, 1905. They're a
very clandestine group, and from what I've heard, they stay
indoors mostly. They're real misanthropes, quote-unquote
posthumanists; whatever you do, don't look them directly
in the eyes. But who knows, I wasn't there when any of this
happened, this is just what someone told me.
Trust me, I'm not negative. I don't want to be a nihilist.
Nihilists think everything is ending constantly, that every
thing is meaningless. They're intellectual valley girls that
are so post-whatever. They're easy to spot they avoid eye
contact and they typically dress in black. I'm sure you've
seen them before. They're lurking everywhere, especially in
schools. They prefer to talk in absolutes, in meta-dialects. It's
evangelical mumbo jumbo, if you ask me. You know what
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they say: misery loves company ... but whatever you do, please
don't get seduced by their self-proclaimed oh-so-complex
anxieties - "company" is okay, but the "misery" part isn't
great. Maybe I shouldn't be saying these things ... Listen, I
don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but really, I wish they
would just go away already. All I'm asking is for some kind of
awareness, just a little self-consciousness.
How did we get so far astray? When I started writing this
I was just trying to be utterly straightforward. I suppose a
part of me believes that writing anything about architecture
is ridiculous, a diversion from the concrete facts of building
- the weight, the materials, the performance, the propor
tions, the organization ... Another part of me believes that
our cultural fictions are at the core of this discipline. All we
are is a group of weirdos who share a common disorder. Well,
maybe theY're the same part of me. I'm not sure. Does anyone
understand why architects obsess and care about something
most people just ignore? Why do we follow the history of
inanimate objects? Why do we study them and their invis
ible geometries? Frankly, it's a pretty arcane profession and
it's downright scary at times. It's like being part of a Masonic
lodge - what are they doing in there? I'm just glad we don't
have to wear funny hats. Most other people walk by and live
in buildings, but don't think about them not like we do.
They have other things on their minds. They only seem to
care when it doesn't work or when they stub their toe on it
or if it isn't right or if it's too different, etc .... but otherwise
they don't think about the fact that all of this is constructed.
That we're all wandering around an endless artifice, a never
ending hall of mirrors. Someone made it up, someone else
believed in it, and then someone repeated it! Those of us who
care, we try to track the pieces in motion as best we can the
choices, the discussions, etc. But there are few of us and a lot
of pieces.
It's been said before, but Architecture is a narrative of
interesting buildings, the ones we remember and debate,
the ones we build stories around, the ones we dissect and
recycle. Architecture is not a discipline, it's a book club. It's
a book club where the illustrations are usually more impor
tant than the texts. Architecture is a sequestered jury. It's a
cultural bracket under intense pressure trying to produce
diamonds out of dirt. And if it could have any autonomy it
wouldn't be formal or technical, it would be social; but it's
all temporary, I suppose. I know we'll both forget this, but
in the meantime, it's comforting that we oddballs have each
other for a little while to discuss and project possibilities, to
8 Log 22
try to convince each other (and the others) to see the world
as it could be. Look how different, exciting, and liberating it could
be. This sounds right. This feels interesting, I can relate to this. I
can't stand that other stuff, the stuffthose otherpeople like. This is
better for these reasons, etc. ... In reality, though, I'm not sure
why anyone would be interested. Really, we should focus on
the facts of the world-at-Iarge, try to make things better. We
should probably be engineers. Anything else is absurd.
Architecture's self-serious tragedy has been written and
rewritten ad nauseam. I'd prefer something else, something
I can relate to. You know what I mean. I guess what I've
been trying to say, if it wasn't clear already, is that someone
should really write a manifesto, a manifesto for the absurd.
It's probably the most earnest thing to write. At this moment
we don't need a manifesto for the competent or the sustain
able. Those have already been written and theY're so com
pletely boring and so totally obvious. This yet-to-be-written
manifesto should be called "Absurd Realism," so that people
would know that it's not simply solipsistic ironic winking
but that it's actually engaged in the world. It is not against
Realism or Humanism. It's not against Abstraction or
Formal Logic or Positivism. It's not art for art's sake, and
it's not about heteronomy of life, of urbanism, of function.
It's for both and neither. "Absurd Realism" would be ex
treme in its parallel, multiple ontologies. The more I think
of it though, the more I realize I can't write it, I wouldn't
know how to begin.
Maybe you could write it? "Absurd Realism!" - I could
help you with it. My advice would be to keep it simple, like a
Beckett play.
Well, I suppose I should confess - I actually wrote this
manifesto already. It was great, incredibly original and utterly
searing. Unfortunately this was before auto-recovery ... suffice
it to say it was a devastating loss. Years and years of my best
writing erased with one inadvertent push of a button. DELETE.
I really don't have it in me to start over, it would just be a pale
copy of the original. You understand. I did manage to find an
old bibliography and a partial list of footnotes from an earlier
draft. Maybe you can start with that.
WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorno, Theodor. "Trying to Understand Endgame." Notes to
Literature. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. New York: Columbia Uni
versity Press, 1991. 241-76.
9 Log 22
Allen, Stan. "From Fields to Emergent Particle Systems that
Begin to Coalesce toward Malformed Objects, then to Objects
and Finally to Fields Again." Points and Lines: Diagrams and
Projects for the Ciry. New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1999.90-137.
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame 2: The Rematch. 1964.
Bois, Yve-AIain, Rosalind Krauss, et al. Appendix 'With Every
Illustration ofthe Formless That Became Form and an Institution
alized Technique As Soon As We published This Book. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2007.
Cage,John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown: Wes
leyan University Press, 1961.
Cohen, Preston Scott. Private Arguments rIIith Anxious and Un
rulY Geometries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Critchley, Simon. On Humour. London: Routledge, 2002.
Eisenman, Peter. Notes on Conceptual Architecture: The Revised
2010 (~lternate History" Edition In Which Illustrations ofLeWitt
andJudd Have Been Replaced rIIith Serra and Smithson. New
York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2011.
Eisenman, Peter. Post-Post-Formalism and Post-Post-Post
Functionalism, 4th edition, with new post-introduction. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Fried, Herbert Simon. Ludrllig Wittgenstein's PreviouslY Un
published Knock-KnockJokes and philosophical Pick-Up Lines.
Pocket ed. London: Vintage, 1989.
Freud, Sigmund.Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.
New York: W.W. Norton &: Company, 1990.
Herzog,Jacques. A Pictures'!"e ofFlatulence. Vienna: Springer
Vienna Architecture, 200....
Johnson. Philip. "The Gentleman's Index of Stylish, Mean
ingle.., and Happy Buildings." Writings. London: Oxford
University Pre.., 1979.
Joyce, William. ed. Tb, Anxiev Caused f?y Reading the Anxiery of
Injl",nC't: A R,.J,r. London: Oxford University Press, 1997.
10 Log 22
Kipnis, Jeffrey. "The Importance of the Insignificant." Log 4,
Winter 2005.
Koolhaas, Rem.Junkspace Recycled. New York: Taschen, 2010.
Lavin, Sylvia. Sparkles: Architecture's EphemeraliV. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2012.
Martin, Reinhold. More Postmodern Than You. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2009.
Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1974.
Ranciere,Jacques. "The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Out
comes: Emplotments of Autonomy and Heteronomy." Nerll
Left Revierll14, March-April 2002. tn-51.
Ross, Alex. "Searching for Silence." The Nerll Yorker, 4 Octo
ber 2010. 52-61.
Rossi, AIdo. "Still-life Urbanism: The City is Dead, Long Live
the City!" Oppositions, 1983.
Stiriing,James F. Fruit Salad, Modernirm, Classici.rm, Oversized
Bundt Cak.es and LimeJello: Disembodied Urbanirm, Melted Objects,
Soft Spaces andMissing Corners. London: Thames &: Hudson, 1977.
Sample, Hilary M. and Michael Meredith. The User's Guide to
Becoming Robert and Denise, Alison and Peter, Charles and Ray,
Liz and Ric and Every Other Architecture Couple You Can Think
Of. New York: Actar, 2010.
Schmitt, Louise. Schoenberg, Dodecaphorv and the Inherent Com
e4.J of Technique. London: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Somol, Robert. Huh + WOrII = WhoafLondon: AA Publications, 2004.
Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction In Architecture, Ab
breviated CliffsNotes Edition. New York: CliffsNotes, 1993.
Wallace, David Foster. "Laughing with Kafka." Harper's
Magazine Quly 1998): 23-27.
Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy ofAndy Warhol: From A to Band
Back. Again. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
11 Log 22
RECOVERED FOOTNOTES TO "ABSURD REALISM"
1. Ibid. Actually, this may not be the case.
2. Tragedy, after all, being the dominant narrative of "Avant
Garde" Architecture!
3. The final at the end of that incredibly thoughtful
sentence on the meaning of architecture seems out of place.
Its meaning has been debated for years by various esteemed
scholars, including K. Francis Klarknip, Rosalie Cracken, and
M.P. Taftuti. Personally, it made me feel a little uneasy. You
usually don't see a " " hanging out there at the end of a
statement like that. Possibly it's there for effect, to leave things
unresolved, to make it "funny" - not laugh-out-Ioud funny,
but weird funny, or maybe even absurd. Why is that important?
Who knows. But it has been generally acknowledged that that
sort of absurdity produces humor through a nihilistic approach
toward nihilism, utilizing non sequiturs, misplaced elements,
awkward relationships, and incongruity. Even with all of the
mishaps, it doesn't devolve into an absolute atomization of the
elements, a complete erasure, an infinite fragmentation, or a
tragic totalizing alienation. may be the conclusion of
what architecture means, but it isn't a sad ____'
4. [Note to self: Look up the metrics of the situation, in
done for me lately?") Absurdist architecture is diffuse and
sert into methodological formula, surf Internet, and canvas
relational. It is made up of incomplete and unresolved bits
friends to see what they think of it all.]
and fragments, but "Collage" (C: Roew) is not its product.
S. R. "Not The Body" Ventur begins to hint at this paradox in
Complexity and Confusion in .Architecture (1966),26-27, where
the meaning and the making of a work of art are suggested
to be two sides of the same coin, sharing the same space, but
with different views. In expanding his argument to archi
tectural practice, Ventur proposed that orthodoxy toward
the medium of architecture was more impediment than
opportunity, especially if one assumed the so-called "Ultra
clear" communication to be the penultimate goal of cul
tural production. In "No Need to Tie the Dollar to the Gold
Standard" (see Brochure Architecture 11), Ventur continued to
frame medium in terms of currency. That piece ended with his
now-legendary statement, "Does anyone really care about the
material composition of cash other than counterfeiters?"
6. Simply: there is a preference for relative complex confusion
over absolute darity, although that preference can produce an
absolute clarity. More work needs to be done on this.
Log 22
11
7. If your primary residency is established on a foreign vessel,
you can be declared legally dead but the government can't
levy an estate tax until your body is repatriated. Your untaxed
assets are transferable by power of attorney as long as you/
your body remains in international waters, and of course
you'll have to be buried at sea. Seriously, theY've got whole
cruise lines based on this. It's a pretty big deal.
8. In a little known postscript to the White/Gray debate, the
"Splinters," led by K. Frampton, responded to the rising criti
cism of What i.r an .Architect'.r Medium? by pleading, "Tecton
ics and Materials are all we have left, can we as a profession
please not shoot ourselves in the foot?" (see "Frampton
Comes Alive"), to which "The Academy" replied, "No, thank
you." (See the essay "No, Thank You" in Oppo.ritionalitie.r VII).
Though some Splinters stayed to fight, many retreated into
the hills of Switzerland and parts of Canada.
9. ["Total Clarity!" section expand or remove entirely.]
10. In retrospect, Ventur's call for contradiction and ambi
guity in architectural production laid the groundwork for
Absurd Realism's demand for an architecture that is "post
medium" (Po' Me). (See R. Krauss, "The Grid - What's it
"Both-And," "Either-Or," "Simple-Complex" - all dualisms
are to be stricken from the record as being too lazy to indulge.
Reductive thinking is the enemy of the Absurd, though it's
worth pointing out that reductive thinking is of the utmost
absurdity (see T. Pard).
11. Frankly, I couldn't be more serious, I just don't understand
how you could deal with this without a sense of humor.
12. "A joke, when successful, induces a sense of the familiar
de familiarized ..." (Simon Critchley, On Humour, 29).
13. The former was based upon the Greek mathematician
Hippapus, who was known to laugh while working through
his calculations of the Golden Ratio. In a paraphrased copy
of the speech given by David Foster Wallace titled "Laugh
ing with Kafka," later published as an essay, he discusses the
humor and absurdity of Kafka's work. According to the piece,
Kafka is funny (but not ROFL funny) precisely because of the
13 Log 22
 removed from the work, that which is connotative or
implied. of course, timing is everything.
14. H. Murakami later expanded on this theme in his 2002
novel, Kafk.a on the Shore, which, had it been set in Tangier in
the 1970s, may have put the somber insurance clerk looking
for his parents' lost cat on a collision course with a vacation
ing Beckett. This alternate ending, in fact, is said to be the in
spiration for one of 1. Calvino's unfinished manuscripts titled
HEstranged Quarks," where Kafka was played by a proton and
Beckett an electron.
15. Reductio ad absurdum: a proposition is disproven by fol
lowing its implications to their logically absurd end. Alterna
tively: a proposition is proven through self-contradiction.
16. As one follows the signage, the experience of the memorial
is embodied in the fruitless search for the monument itself.
17. Ontological relativism must accept the devastatingly real
ist implications of its own truth claim. Absurd Realism, on
the other hand, is open to the momentary action of multiple
interpretations - even (especially!) the interpretation that
says it is the only absolute interpretation and that all the other
interpretations are baloney.
18. Most notably, Magical Realism in literature and post
surrealist economics.
19. Absurd Realism produces a space in which the search for
meaning in something both vague and concrete is highly
encouraged, unlike a search for one's keys, which is concrete
and vaguely frustrating, or the search for Hthe Other," which
is vague and concretely frustrating. Neither promoted nor
forbidden, frustration is a common side-effect of both games
and reality.
20. This argument has been put forward by S. Lavin in
Spark./es & co.
21. i.e., No stable grid, no absolute datum. Language itself is
in continual transformation and renegotiation through its
use, misuse, and need for our strange construction of on
tological relevance. In any event, the "familiar" here is not
necessarily a general familiar to everyone, but remains in the
court of the respective audience, producing a polyphony of
14 Log 22
legible illegibilities. Absurd Realism operates with a disciplin
ary "familiar" within our own sequestered group.
22. This is a reference both to D.F. Wallace and to one ofJ-P.
Sartre's later essays, "I Know You Are, But What Am H"
which states that "hell" is not merely comprised of "other
people," but more specifically next-door neighbors and family
members. In contrast, WaUace reminds us that both humor
and meaning are not something to "get," and neither is the
"self." They are about the search. Without this basic under
standing, what Wallace calls the "laugh traK," it becomes im
possible to appreciate Kafka's knock-knock jokes, as it is only
through a contingent situation of the Self that the subject can
challenge the void: Hwho's there?"
23. Unlike Dasame, a belief that it has all been done before,
Heideregel's Thro'Wness opens up the space between ironic
know-it-all-ness and nai"ve know-nothingness. It engages
without expectation, celebrating wit, intuition and playful
ness, engagement and informality. It is a way of working that
avoids tasteful composition and the construction of absolute
ideals.
24. ( ) Both ( ) Neither
MICHAEL MEREDITH IS A PARTNER
IN THE AACHITECTURE PRACTICE
MOS AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL
OF ARCHITECTURE. HE IS THE GUEST
EDITOR OF LOG 22.
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