Thursday, March 19, 2009

7-ELEVEN Sauna and the Third Generation Taipei

7-ELEVEN is the flower of a metropolis. Like a mushroom it is attached to the hidden energy flows of the city surviving on the balancing between highly calculated profit making mechanisms and community sense. It is justified to compare the 7-ELEVEN network to the acupuncture needles dealing with the Chi of the city, but what is the Chi then? And if the city needs acupuncture, what is the disease?

Marco Casagrande: 7-ELEVEN Sauna in Gonguan district of the Taipei City, 2007.

In Finland we don’t have acupuncture and we don’t have 7-ELEVEN. We have public saunas. You can see steaming hot naked guys on a street side on a cold winter afternoon wrapped in towels. Literally steaming hot, they are chilling out from a public sauna.

There is 5 million people in Finland and 2 million saunas. If sauna, alcohol and tar don’t cure you – you will die, goes the old saying. Public saunas are real acupuncture for the city. People come out from their homes and from their works to sweat together as a naked community. People relax this way and talk a bit. In sauna everybody is naked, so there is no titles either. A workingman can talk to the naked president. This has always been.

In Gonguan I found the real acupuncture needle of the community. A secret vegetable garden was hiding in the ruins of the industrial city. This had been a site for military buildings, that had got demolished, but the site never redeveloped. Taipei –style this spot of sleeping capitalism was surrounded by a corrugated steel wall to keep the people out from the ruin. Similar kind of walls are everywhere in Taipei. Ruins are everywhere in the fast grown modern city.



The Gonguan grandmothers observed the site for long enough and then occupied the abandoned construction site for a community garden. Similar kind of gardens are everywhere in the fast grown modern Taipei. Grandmothers dominate the no-man’s land. This I find very hopeful for the industrial city. Ruin is full of hope and grandmothers are full of hope. They are preserving the First Generation connection between the modern man and nature.

I guess it is from these spots of hiding urban farms that the new layer of landscape urbanism will grow on top of the existing Industrial city. That will be the Third Generation City, when the man-made becomes again part of nature – like a ruin. Grandmothers are now cultivating these true acupuncture points of the industrial urban body of Taipei and taking care of the Chi, the common subconscious of the city. Soon it is time for the rest of the citizens to start helping the grandmothers a bit, so that the garden can grow over the corrugated steel walls and over the walls of the rivers. Too long time have these composts been hiding inside the city, soon it is time to turn them over to fertilize the whole urban body.



I asked the grandmothers of the secret garden in Gonguan to teach the Shy-Chien -students in making scarecrows. During one week the army of post-urban scarecrows was preparing behind the corrugated steel walls of the secret garden until it marched into the neighborhood. The students were asking normal shop owners, if they would take care of a scarecrow as a symbol of the green man inside them, and nobody refused. The scarecrows were a 1:1 scale test of the preparedness of the modern normal city to accept the third generation. In Gonguan the army of scarecrows became the local acupuncture points towards the 3G.

The hidden gardens of Taipei felt like the public sauna for me. I constructed a small public sauna in front of the 7-11 Gonguan to think more about the Third Generation Taipei. I found it hopeful that with one step you could step into a modern convenient store, the flower of urbanism or 1000 years back. And that these two exist the same time.



The Third Generation City will not take away your fridges or turn down your lights. It will just grow on top of you. The dictatorship of sensitivity has begun!

Marco Casagrande

City must be a compost

City must be a compost. It must be able to be turned around to provide life instead of suffocating the natural growth. Nature wants to take the whole city, which is perfectly understandable. Only the man's position is questionable: will he be part of the nature taking over the urbanism? The third generation Taipei will be a ruin that is designed to function in human use. It is a ruin that is shared with modern man and nature.


------

2009 7-ELEVEN City. Edited by Ching-yue Roan. ISBN 978-986-7009-55-5 Taipei: Garden City Publishers. 128-131.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Marco Casagrande

Personporträttet
Herr Äventyr

Vägen har gått från blykulor i Bosnien till taiwanesisk massdemonstration. Marco Casagrande lever minsann inget liv som medelsvensson utan tycker om att testa gränser.

– Jag är en handlingens man. Att analysera vad jag gjort är onödigt och slöseri med tid.

För ett dussin år sedan skrev Casagrande en bok om sitt liv som legosoldat och väckte stor uppmärksamhet. I dag är han utbildad arkitekt och skapar konst som är snudd på galenskap. Bland annat har hans konstverk lyckats rädda en hel stadsdel i Taipei. Hur? Läs veckans Volt.

TEXT: Pia Perokorpi FOTO: Fabian Björk LINK: Volt 10/2009
HUFVUDSTADSBLADET 28.2.2009




BLYKULOR & KONST

När en västerlänning går ut på gatan i Taipei och får 14 000 taiwaneser att ställa sig på barrikaderna kan man undra om han är riktigt klok. Taiwan må vara en utbrytarstat från Kina men dess politiska status är kontroversiell och det är svårt att tro att någon öppet skulle få uppfordra folk att ruska om etablissemanget. Att det hela handlar om konst är nog ingen förmildrande omständighet. Men, har man sprungit undan kulor i Bosnien och tillbringat flera dygn i fullständigt inhumana förhållanden i ett kroatiskt fängelse, är eventuella polisförhör i Taiwan småpotatis i jämförelse.

Marco Casagrande medger utan omsvep att hans konstverk ibland är snudd på galenskap, annars skulle det inte vara någon idé att skapa dem. Han känner också närmast stolthet över att hans konst på många ställen förbjudits eller förstörts.

- Myndigheternas motstånd är bara bra. Det är ett tecken på att arbetet är väl utfört om det väcker uppmärksamhet och ilska.

Excentriskt är ordet när han berättar vad han gjort runtom i världen. Vad sägs exempelvis om att släpa 10 kilometer flätlina för fiske från Finland till Havanna, där spänna upp linorna mellan två universitetsbyggnader och placera ett 300 kilo tungt järnrör ovanpå.

- På dagen gav linorna efter i värmen så att röret tyngdes ner för att på kvällen stiga upp igen. Det såg ut som en långsamt flygande fågel. Vi kallade verket den sista flygande dinosaurien. En lämplig symbol för ett land som drar sina sista andetag.

Men det är inte bara udda konstverk som sysselsatt Casagrande. Han har också etablerat sig som arkitekt – främst i Taiwan. När han första gången besökte landet i början av 2000-talet insåg han vilken enorm potential där finns för arkitektoniskt nytänkande och ekologisk stadsplanering. Då den tunga industrin under senaste år flyttat till närliggande länder har intresset vaknat både bland invånarna och beslutsfattarna för att städa upp nersmutsade städer och rehabilitera omgivningen.

Casagrande blev så fascinerad av landet att han inte ville stå på sidan om och vänta på att något skulle hända. År 2003 grävde han således bokstavligen ner sina händer i dyngan och räddade en hel stadsdel från att släggas sönder av bulldozrar.

Stadsdelen kallad Treasure Hill var en märklig illegal enklav – en dödsdömd jordbrukskoloni mitt i Taipei som i huvudsak befolkades av äldre människor som i årtionden livnärt sig på jordbruk och trädgårdsskötsel. När Casagrande första gången besökte platsen höll kolonin på att drunkna i sopor. Det fanns inga sopkärl så invånarna kantade i stället gator och gränder med sitt hushållsavfall.

Bulldozrarna hade redan inlett sitt arbete, jordbruksplättarna omvandlats till gräsmattor och invånarna tvångsförflyttats från sina hus.

- Det var hemskt. För naturen är gräsmattor lika med koncentrationsläger – de producerar massvis med syre. Och människor som i årtionden odlat sin egen mat fick se sina hus och trädgårdar förstöras. I princip hade invånarna redan gett upp, på grund av ålderdom och maktlöshet.

Men i stället för att bara himla sig över misären började Casagrande städa. Den underliga västerländska sopgubben väckte först förundran men på den fjärde dagen vågade sig invånarna ut på gatorna för att hjälpa till. Vid det laget hade Casagrande även fått hjälp av studerande från Tamkang universitetet, och tillsammans med arkitekt Shieih Yin-Jun började han planera nya hus för Treasure Hill. Han deltog också i återuppbyggandet.

Nu kan man ju undra vad drivkraften var – en vit man som med själ och hjärta går in för att hjälpa åldersstigna taiwaneser motsvarar inte riktigt bilden av den individcentrerade västerlänningen.

- Den mänskliga energin i Treasure Hill var otroligt stark, det kände jag genast. Ändå väntade alla bara på förintelsen. Men jag visste att det under ytan fanns kapacitet och vilja till förändring. Det gällde bara att hitta på ett sätt att vända energin i motsatt riktning, få människorna att kämpa för sina gårdar och hem.

För Casagrandes desl handlar det inte om att rädda hela världen utan om att idka urban akupunktur – en teori som han utarbetat vid Tamkang universitetet. Förenklat innebär det att återuppliva utvalda områden i en stad med hjälp av olika former av miljövård. Teorin har influerats av riktig akupunktur där man med nålstick stimulerar bestämda punkter på kroppen.

Men räddandet av Treasure Hill är bara ett i en lång rad projekt som Casagrande drivit igenom. Gemensamt för hans arbeten, såväl de arkitektoniska som de konstnärliga, är att de av utomstående ofta stämplats som dödfödda – omöjliga att genomföra. Men de som känner Casagrande anser att mannen är en visionär, ett geni som på många sätt ligger före sin tid. Samma människor har också gång på gång sett honom lyckas.

Själv bryr han sig inte om titlar, hyllningar eller förtal.

- Jag är en handlingens man. Att analysera vad jag gjort är onödigt och slöseri med tid.

Ett är säkert; han gillar att utmana sig själv och driva saker till sin spets – det är då han känner sig levande. När han till exempel första gången åkte till Taiwan skulle det göras med stil.

- Jag åkte till Tyskland och köpte en enduro-motorcykel. Då hade jag inte kört moped sedan högstadiet. Sedan åkte jag hem till Finland och över ryska gränsen. I något skede när det ösregnade tänkte jag att det skulle vara bra med ett visir så jag stannade vid en bensinmack och köpte ett par solglasögon. Mitt i ödemarken i Kazakstan funderade jag nog över vad jag riktigt höll på med men så tänkte jag att vad fan. Jag har alltid varit kritisk till sådant som anses förnuftigt.

Någon slags gränstestning handlade det också om hösten 1993 då 22-årige arkitektstuderande Casagrande for som legosoldat till Bosnien för att kriga mot muslimer och serber i den kroatiska arméns internationella styrka.

- Att bli legosoldat var aldrig ett val för mig. Det handlade inte om något uppvaknande eller kall. Jag visste redan som 4-åring vad jag skulle bli och armén var för mig en infrielse av ett stort löfte. Krig har alltid varit en del av människosläktets utveckling. Det är bara en länk i en lång kedja.

Efteråt gav han ut boken Mostarin tien liftarit – Suomalainen palkkasoturi Bosnian sodassa under pseudonymen Luca Moconesi – en bok som inte bara väckte allmänhetens utan även polisens uppmärksamhet. Polisen ville reda ut huruvida vissa beskrivningar i boken kunde klassas som krigsförbrytelser men utredningen lades ner då Casagrande påstod att boken var fiktiv. Några år senare ändrade han sig och en ny utredning tog vid men rann ut i sanden då sanningshalten inte kunde bevisas.

Boken är en rå skildring där krigets fasor beskrivs lakoniskt och utan moralkakor. Männen som utgör den internationella gruppen är inga sympatiska snubbar utan en brokig skara av nazister, kriminella på flykt och före detta främlingslegionärer med mycket blod på sina händer. I det avseendet är Moconesi en främmande fågel; en ung studerande utan brottsregister som kritiklöst beundrar legosoldater och livet på fronten.

I dag, tolv år senare är han inte det minsta villig att tala om sin bok, för hans del är allt han varit med om ett avslutat kapitel.

Må så vara men jag har ändå svårt att skaka av mig läsningen när jag en råkall vinterdag huttrande står och väntar på författaren utanför huvudbiblioteket i Åbo. Det hjälper inte ens att tänka på sopgubben i Treasure Hill. I stället föreställer jag mig att Moconesi – ursäkta – Casagrande ska komma stövlande längs Slottsgatan med baretten på sned iklädd kamouflagedräkt, grova kängor och med en Kalasjnikov över axeln.

Luften går snabbt ur den absurda tanken då Casagrande dyker upp i svarta byxor, dito jacka och vit linneblus. Men handslaget är fast och de blå ögonen intensiva och forskande som om han mätte en med blicken – vän eller fiende.
När vi satt oss ner på ett närliggande café noterar jag den lilla tatueringen ”N” på hans vänstra ringfinger. Fantasin skenar åter iväg.

- Det är initialen på min frus förnamn, säger han med ett flin.
Helt odramatiskt även det.

Men nu då Finlands armé påstås vara i kris med allt fler överviktiga och omotiverade beväringar känns det trots allt befogat att fråga vad Casagrande tycker att man borde göra för att få landets ynglingar att rycka upp sig. Han lär ju ha varit som ett barn på julafton när han själv började sin militärtjänst. Låter som om Finlands armé skulle vara i behov av många Casagranden.

- Att bara tala om hur feta och apatiska dagens beväringar är, är nog lite överdrivet. Men en typ från östra Finland och en pullamössö-stadsbo är nog som dag och natt. Hur ska någon som vuxit upp på McDonalds och som aldrig sett en skog klara armén. En större utmaning för armén än den fysiska konditionen är nog att gjuta talkoanda i beväringarna. När jag gick armén var gemenskapen stark från dag ett. Talkoandan föddes direkt, den såg inte till hemort eller social status.

Casagrande menar att finländarnas trumfkort ligger i en urgammal relation till skogen och respekt för naturen. Den kunskap som redan finns borde utnyttjas.

- Största delen av befolkningen lever ju nära skogar och rör sig obehindrat i dem. Det är den urbaniserade generationen som inte ens vet vad en sommarstuga är som riskerar att bli handlingsförlamad och slö.

Casagrandes egna värderingar springer ur uppväxten i Övertorneå.

- Insikten om hur man i alla tider överlevt i karga levnadsförhållanden är stark i norr. Jakt, fiske och svampplockning kommer med modersmjölken.

Borde Finland då alltjämt ha kvar sin allmänna värnplikt?

- Jo, men den borde revideras och omfatta alla, också kvinnor. Ett par månaders tvångsförflyttning till ödemarken utan bekvämligheter skulle göra gott. Där skulle ungdomarna lära sig överlevnad. De skulle få känna vad riktig hunger och kyla är. Månne inte talkoandan skulle vakna med det.

Det låter inte som någon krigsfanatikers tal precis.

Men spänning och utmaningar i livet söker han fortfarande, numera dock på litet fredligare sätt. Just nu är han upptagen med att planera en stadsdel – var annanstans än i Taipei. Meningen är att omvandla ett deltaområde på 720 hektar till bostadsområde för 150 000 människor.

- Det handlar om att forma en stad för framtidens tredje generation, att bygga ett ekologiskt hållbart bostadsområde på de ruiner som den andra generationen lämnat efter sig. Där den första generationen levt i direkt växelverkan med naturen och varit beroende av den har den andra generationen levt i en industrialiserad stad och avfjärmat sig från naturen.

Casagrande skulle inte vara Casagrande om han inte fått även detta jobb på ett säreget sätt. Den här gången behövde han dock inte plocka sopor – det räckte med att bygga några plåthästar och engagera inte mindre än 14 000 Taipei-bor.

Projektet Trojan Horse gick ut på att placera åtta mobila plåthästar runtom i staden. Invånarna hade sedan fyra dagar tid på sig att skriva ner kommentarer och önskningar riktade direkt till Mayor Ma, stadens symboliska ledare. För var dag flyttades hästarna närmare stadshuset och på den femte dagen kom Ma ut från sin högborg.

- Jag hade försökt få kontakt med honom i flera dagar utan resultat. Men när hästarna nådde stadshuset skred han ner från sitt elfenbenstorn och började läsa breven, han gav efter för folkets tryck. Största delen av breven handlade om miljöfrågor. Många talade om floden och skämdes för att den är så nedsmutsad, andra var bekymrade över trafiken. Någon undrade varför Mayor Ma låter lamporna vara tända i stadshuset även då ingen jobbar där. Jag var väldigt tagen över hur öppet invånarna vågade kritisera stadens ledning. Vi kommer att beakta de önskemål som kom fram i breven när vi planerar deltaområdet.

De önskemål som kom fram i breven spelar en väsentlig roll när Casagrande med sitt team planerar deltaområdet. Men utan de trojanska hästarna hade det inte heller blivit något jobb.

I början av sin karriär gjorde Casagrande en hel del installationer i Finland tillsammans med Sami Rintala men under senaste år har han varit alltför upptagen utomlands. Att göra något för sitt hemland är ändå ingen främmande tanke.

- Det förvånar mig att Finland som av Det världsekonomiska forumet i flera års tid rankats som det ledande landet inom miljöteknologi inte klarat av att använda sin kunskap. Det pratas vitt och brett men ingenting händer. Det som behövs är en Martti Ahtisaari, en Esko Aho eller en Paavo Lipponen som fungerar som språkrör mellan beslutsfattare och miljöfolk. De är alla män som kan slå näven i bordet och få något till stånd och jag ställer gärna upp som assistent om det behövs.

Så i fall någon av herrarna Ahtisaari, Lipponen eller Aho vill ta tag i utmaningen är det bara att slå en signal åt Marco Casagrande. Han kan både rita hus och bygga dem. Och framförallt; om herrarnas idéer plötsligt tar slut har Casagrande nog visioner så det räcker.



"Casagrande är en visionär. För dem som är fjättrade vid vardagens realiteter kan hans tankar ibland framstå som besynnerliga men i drömmens värld är altting tydligt. Känslighetens diktatur förenar oss."
Jääkko Hämeen-Anttila, professor i arabiska och islamforskning.

"Marco är en utmärkt idékälla. Han är en realistisk drömmare som förverkligar sina idéer på de mest olika sätt - som en paviljong, som en installation, som ett hus på berg, som en tidning på mandarinspråk, som en workshop, som en text. I sin kreativitet överskrider han alla gränser - han söker inspiration i cirkus, vetenskap, dockteater, motorcyklar, militären, ekologiskt hållbara sätt att leva, religion, natur ock fyrverkeripjäser."
August Künnapu, Estnisk målare och chefredaktör för kulturtidskriften Epifanio.

PROFIL
Marco Casagrande

Född: 1971 i Åbo, flyttade som 2-åring till Övertorneå.

Familj: Gift, två barn.

Bor i: Åbo

Utbildning: Arkitekt från Tekniska högskolan i Otnäs. "Det var aldrig frågan om ett val - det skedde automatiskt."

Arbete: Arkitektbyrån Casagrande & Rintala 1999-2003, Casagrande Laboratory fr.o.m. 2003. Specialist på arkitektoniska installationer och stadsplanering. "Jag jobbar alltid i team men kör inte med någon standardsammansättning. Det är alltid nya arkitekter, ingenijörer, suderande och konsnärer som engageras."

Uttställningar: Casagrandes verk har visats tre gånger vid biennalen i Venedig samt på konstutställningar i Havanna, Yokohama, Florens, Puerto Rico, London och Bombay.

På fritiden: Kör enduro-motorcykel.

Som barn ville jag bygga snöslott.

Hänförs av skogen.

Motsätter mig rangordning av människor, det är mänskligt att ranka folk men jag tycker inte om det.

MARCO OM

Köpcentra: Tristessens katedraler. Det är tragiskt att folk tillbringar sin fritid i dem. De borde vara ute i skogen och plocka svamp i stället.

Främlingslegionär vs legosoldat: Främlingslegionen är en traditionell armé där disciplinen är stenhård och soldaterna lojala. Livet som legosoldat är mer skoningslöst och våldsamt.

Tatueringar: De är vitsiga. Jag skulle vilja tatuera Nattvarden (da Vincis målning) på mitt bröst.

Värnplikt: Det skulle räcka med allmän plikt för både män och kvinnor.

Gammalt vs nytt: Gammal arkitektur är genialisk, ett gammalt hus håller i århundraden om bara taket är okej. Hantverket saknas i nya byggnader, de har ingen aura.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Redrum

a + d
Georgian architecture magazine interview 1 / 2004.

Tamaz Giorgadze: As you once wrote, "Kindness is real reality"..."Urban planning must find a way to be connected into real things"...Don't you think that architecture cannot turn toward real reality independently? It can be a catalys, a medium - and this process requires crucial changes in mass consiousness itself...

Marco Casagrande: Architecture can be real reality. Construction nonsense is needed as well, but that has nothing to do with real architecture. Architecture, humanism, urban planning and art can find a way to reality by means comparable to the actions of a religious mysticism. One must be sensitive enough to feel the subconscious realities and interfaces and professional enough to find out the tools to work with them. One has first have to have something to say and then find out the methods how to say it.

T.G.: Real reality lies beyond the surface of life, but the surface itself is no less real. This "surface reality" is strong on its feet and will not give in so easily either...How, by what means can we push throught toward real reality?

M.C.: People sense the real reality. People know what is true in the end. Architecture is traumatized by building industry and other external dominances to react for it. Design has replaced reality. The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart. Artchitecture should be this heart.


T.G.: RedRum opens up the usually inaccessible space, introducing freedom as the new quality of architecture. Is this how we should understand the RedRum?

M.C.: Redrum is a space articulated to open up possibilities to think, like a temple.

T.G.: Reality can be considered as teh balance between freedom and constraint. What does this balance - or reality, if you like - mean to you?

M.C.: Real reality is something that you can no longer speculate - like kindness. Kindness is just kindness. This is this, and this is nothing else, but this is this.

Marco Casagrande - Tamaz Giorgadze
2004 Redrum. a + d. Tbilisi. 130-131.
---
link: REDRUM

Potemkin

For me Potemkin is the starting point of revolution. I am continuing mentally attached with Potemkin and seeing where the revolution is taking me. Potemkin stands in the crossroads where the modern man has to define his relationship with the nature. We have all the tools needed for a sustainable solution of human existence in the technological world. Now we also have all the tools to destroy the world. Architects, artists, urban planner, environmental planners and humanists must find their position and responsibility in this turning point. Potemkin stands as the Acropolis to be the post industrial temple to think of the connection between the modern man and nature. I see Potemkin as a cultivated junk yard situated between the ancient rice fields and the river with a straight axis to the Shinto temple.

Potemkin
Park for post-industrial meditation.
Kuramata village by the Kamagawa River, Echigo-Tsumari, Japan.

Marco Casagrande
2003  Potemkin. Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial 2003 - catalogue. T0kyo: ArtFront. 96-97. 

Monday, February 9, 2009

Urban Acupuncture

Marco Casagrande 2009. Statement, Helsinki University of Art and Design Department of Environmental Art.

What is urban acupuncture?

How can urban acupuncture be applied to a city?

Why?

1.

Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with the collective psyche of the city. The collective psyche is reflected through collective conscious which is striving towards the absolute, the real reality.

The theory of the urban acupuncture celebrates the possibility of a light-weight touch with a total impact. Total is a fragment of the absolute. Through urban acupuncture the absolute finds a way to reflect in the city.

Urban acupuncture is ruining the industrial surface of the built human environment. Ruin is when man-made has become part of nature. A weed will root into the smallest crack in the asphalt and eventually break the city. Urban acupuncture is the weed and the acupuncture point is the crack. The possibility of the impact is total, connecting human nature as part of nature.

As the city reflects control and strenght the urban acupuncture has to be weak in order to break the machine. In its direction towards the truth the weak architecture and weak art is the sister of theology and philosophy, but faster: weak art meets the absolute immediately; it is free from the philosophical discussion or the theological belief. Weak architecture is art. Art don´t need to believe and don´t need to discuss - it can not help being itself. There is no excuse for art, art reflects the absolute.

The collective mind generates the social drama that keeps the city alive. People are ruining their build human environment by being themselves. The third generation city is the ruin of the industrial city. The third generation city is part of nature. Urban acupuncture is aiming to the third generation city.

2.

Urban acupuncture can be applied to an existing city through art. The true environmental art in the urban context is urban acupuncture. Architecture is environmental art. Urban planning is the process of ruining the city. Weak artist and weak architect is a design-shaman interpreting what the bigger shared mind is transmitting.

3.

The complexities of the city are either working to support life or against nature.The idea of the industrial city is to be autonomous from nature. This autonomity is the source of pollution. Pollution is real, it is part of nature - city is not real.

What is real is valuable: what is not real is not valuable. Urban acupuncture connects the public to the real reality through small scale interventions. Nothing is taken away and nothing heavy is added to the city organism, but the present state of being is realized as part of the process of rottening and being ruined. Ruin is not a product, it is a process. City must be a compost.

Urban acupuncture is turning the urban compost to fruitful top-soil.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Being and Becoming

What kind of people belong to this world? Those who are quick, aggressive and talented can do their things and do this more and more and have power. But what about those who are slow, soft, weak or not so impressive by individuality? Cry. I really hate this thing. We all belong to this world.

Society today means the combination of different methods of controlling people. Communism brought the question straight to the people - either by the proletariat or the peasant revolution but got corrupted by individualism and construction of power hierarchy. Dictatorship of sensitivity is the ideal. The same pattern goes with the churches, art communities, alternative movements, hippies etc. To try is enough, process can be creative and clean but when people are clean, soft and humane the king will appear. Every corner has a king.

Life is a very complex system of traps and when the Man walks through this he either survives or gets trapped. How he proceeds is based on the decisions he makes. One might see the Room in the very beginning, but there is no short cut to it. Every time the Way is different. The Room might get forgotten along the Way and if man gets trapped, he will forget it. But Man has the possibility of looking back and to realize the trap and again, he can Decide. On the threshold he will be told that by entering the Room his deepest wishes will become true, the ones gained through suffering. But one has to believe and laugh to his passions because if he does not believe, the Room has no meaning.

How much courage does one have for what one really knows? How much truth can a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? These are key Questions to Become and the Questions come from very far away and long ago.

Exfiltrate the house of lie and come back to the Construction Site of Eternity. Walk the Way. Loving of fate: Existing for Eternity. Loving of fat: die in the world. Fat is giving up.

As soon as man finds out that the man’s world is fabricated only from psychological needs and that he in the most inside of him has no right to it, no belonging to it - will lead to the Questions, suffering and the possibility of existing. On the other hand the disappointment and sense of not belonging can lead to disbelief of any metaphysical or spiritual qualities of Truth and this then forbids the man to belief in the True World. This will lead to a locked position with every belief, every considering something true being necessarily false because there is no true world. This is the end for meeting the challenges to be an Operator, a Constructor, a One.

One must continuously belief in Existing, Truth and personal sensing of the Way as the only criteria of Reality. Otherwise reality will only lead to a disappointment. One Exists if how ever one thinks of the world, the thinking and the nature of actuality will be an accident. Understanding the dynamics of the accident leads One further. Thoughts come when they want and not when we want them.

When Orisha / Operator / One is born the Passenger / Self starts his journey. He can be very clear and dominating when the to-become person is young but then the world starts to get to him and he forgets. Pain and suffering hurts most the sensitive ones. What is sensitive for clean and purity is also sensitive for blows of the dark, and him the dark needs to confuse. The shell that is carrying the Passenger inside is created.

During the journey the Passenger will remind the Orisha about his real qualities but the life builds up the traps. When falling to these traps layer after layer the shell gets stronger and the Self inside more blurry. It is harder and harder for the Orisha to feel the Self or to believe what was once True. Passanger can still be the place to escape from the world shell, but this is not understanding, merely self therapy, escaping the Questions.

Then comes the time to ask the Questions to meet yourself and to deal with the past and the shell of the world. If one can decide and deal with the world through Passenger the Orisha gets to be One – an Orisha / Operator to whom it is possible to operate and help the other ones who belong to this world – balance the powers and to present the clean – to Create.

One must live the life and then understand the life lived. The life lived and understood and the Passenger together will present the real you of Self and this is called immortality. I have the Horror put behind me and the Eternity is in front of me. Perfectly normal – butterfly is a worm and then a shell, stone is frozen plasma, shit is bread and before grass, yesterday is present as the future. Orishas or Operators are always here. One has to have the possibility of taking One Self 1000 years back to realize that the Questions are the same. “No Sir, you are the care taker. You have always been the caretaker.”

If the Passenger will not become together with the world shell he is traveling in he will keep coming back to the world. This is reincarnation, the recycle of suffering. When the Passenger comes together with the World shell an Orisha / divine Self is born and another level of the Way is taken. Inside the people the Passenger is called the soul. It is like a clear soap bubble. If taken away the world shells the soap bubbles can be seen floating along the streets. Not so many though for some reason comparing to the crowd. Maybe many bubbles have already been broken and gone back to the big bucket of soap. The children blow these bubbles to fly again and again.

And for me, who appreciate life, the butterflies and soap-bubbles and whatever is like them for me mostly seem to enjoy happiness. To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little spirits flying around is great hope and challenge to continue.

It is true we love life, but not because we want to live, but because we want to love.

Suffering

There is always some madness in love, but there is also some method in madness.

Every man has his breaking point. In every man there is a struggle between the good and the evil and the good does not always triumph. The question Yes or No can also be presented by the dark side and man has a temptation to agree in order to lift up his worldly status – to present himself as a prophet and people easily follow him – so he is successful. By presenting the good one he still must obey his pay back and build up the heart of darkness, power the people to do the ritual, share the same shame. This will hook the possible operators, they through their purity will feel it but can not alone resist or to trust their belief. Evil pulls the strings in the atmosphere of destruction.

What is wrong with darkness you say and you can not see, but still you feel – it is frightening, people change in the ritual – they are only actors you say and the dark side overcomes what is the better angels of our lives – the Passenger will drown, all the Passengers present and the Demon has paid back. No longer can you say what is play and what is life. He say he only plays and you must obey. What was real life will transform into the act of play and what was the hard core of the play did not even exist, demon has got inside, humanity is transformed into humiliation. This is not worse than when a man fucks a small child. A shooting gallery – people getting high and heavenly, but destruction and loosing themselves. Massacre – mass psychosis following power drugged the commands of raising hell, afterwards denying or not even believing – forgetting. Mass rape. Orgy - rave chill out. Pushing drugs / manipulating child soldiers. Corrupting native people, genocide in the name of God. Clear cutting forest / changing jungle to desert.

When trading with darkness the gain is what people easily call inspiration, devoted to the cause, not compromising, talented, unique, has his way, people follow him, he can change the country, he is the one, he is something special and people follow and those who follow the people call the real people. Every corner has a king.

When seeing me the dark side knows who he meets. When seeing me the Orisha knows who he meets, but it is hard to believe what the Passenger says. “You can save the world”, the heaven painter says. Save from what? This is what he does not ask from himself. “He has a very special energy”, the fucked out eyes says amazed and corrupted. Why he moves by himself when I touch him, he does not ask from himself. “You have very powerful eyes”, the little princess says. Why she can see the power, she does not ask herself. “You are Satan. You are Prophet”, the judge says. Why he sees the Eternity, he does not dare to ask himself but plays crazy and crazy plays still say and articulate when asked: “I am the God.”

“Eternity”, says the Shaman, and nothing else. Questioning will never end. The Eternal Question is necessarily larger than our interpretation of it / them…so for those who asked me about the Way I did not answer, for the Way does not exist.

In the beginning of the Questions one realizes that all the sacrifices, all the working your ass of, has been vain, false and lie – what was before humanity is now humiliation. This can be too much to take and the Way disappears. This is on the other hand naturally the threshold of humanity’s transformation. All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self overcoming. One has to die a bit to be reborn. One has to forget himself. Forget himself. One must burn in her own flame, how other wise can you become new than from ashes?

Once was doubt and questioning evil, and the will to Self. Escape, nobody and vanishing was the way to sleep. Then the Self became an invalid and as and invalid she suffered and sought the cause to suffering. The flame of subconscious jealousy turned at last like the scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself. Your very self wanted to die and turn away from life, which was nothing else but other man’s stories. You wanted to please and the more pleased they were the cheaper the life turned out. And therefore you were angry to life and with the earth. And your unconscious envy locked your Way.

Once you had passions and they were manipulated dirty. But after the Questions you will have your Self and the passions will have their true name. All the devils will become angels. Once you had wild dogs in your cellar, but they will turn into birds and butterflies. The poison that you once toxicated yourself will now become balsam for your Self. And nothing evil will no longer be able to touch you unless it is needed to conflict themselves and by purity and Self you shall prevail.

Suffering and the Questions has a double aspect: this is the tension between recognizing what is and what might be, or between what was believed to be true but is now known not to be the case. This suffering is a fact to face or to escape and the key step into Belonging and Existing. This step is the same as the question of creativity: away from here and a towards which. What your Self desires the most is to create beyond itself. Nobody in the means of loosing your self becomes the real nobody of a divine virtue. When body and mind was the instrument and plaything of the sense and spirit the Self had to stay behind. The decisions were given from outside.

Suffering + Willing = Existing. Pain, suffering and contradictions are no longer objections for existing but expressions of the tensions of existence itself. The individual does not escape from suffering but transforms her evaluation of it. It becomes a criterion of Existing. The personal terror of the suffering to exist – the away from which and the towards which is no longer objection to being in the world but becomes the experience of Existing as Present. The question of meaningless of being is set aside as the meaning of Existence is re-determined by each creative act of “yes, now, shall it be”. The creative process of Existence continually gives birth to itself. Existing is no longer the issue of question but of articulating it – Operator is born, she want to be, to become, to become more. I am nobody becomes to mean I am the one before the world.

Before the Eternal Questions one’s attempts to get higher only put the roots deeper into darkness, deep, to mud, to world, towards evil. Yeah, into the evil, cried the youth. How did you know my soul? Many of the soul will never be discovered unless one first invents it. When you go high, nobody will trust you any longer and then you are always alone.

What did I look from the heights? How tired I am on the high. Yes, my destruction I was looking for, little and big. It is my envy that was destroying me. But I was also waiting for the lightening, but went numb. Can not wait anymore. Time is up, it is Yes of No, now. No more am I free.

Trauma always has hair. Manipulation. MANipulation: take down vagina – walk to the moon.

When suffering one talks about love and traids it to cheap sex and say: Forgiveness is the core of humanity. The very core of humanity and the end of suffering is forgiveness indeed. Playing with forgiveness is giving the forgiveness towards others which is the same as blackmailing with forgiveness before the act of humiliation. One must to forgive himself. Forgive himself to forget himself. Forget himself. Love is the gratest. Resonating is bigger.

The Self will say to the ego: feel pain. For that that purpose it means: think. Lie has short foot steps.


We all belong to this world and deal with our duties based on our tools and how and when we answered the Question. Some walk alone, some join. Some are man and woman. The relationships can be many but in the end all of them are either total or not total. What is total is clean, what is not total is a compromise and you compromise the whole campaign. There is always better than this and after better is the Total.


Trickster, Hermes, El Legua, Exhu, Stalker, Horus, Gabriel
- First one of the Orishas who the other Orishas have to meet first to talk to Eternity. “How will all this end?”, a leading Russian space scientist was asked. “All this will end either by the word Yes or by the word No.
- Has the power to operate on the both sides – in darkness and on surface and so has the power to deal with the Demons and with the Orishas.
- He who waits in the street corners and on the crossroads. He who lives on the garbage dumps.
- The colors are black, red and white. Material is iron. Methods include compost and rust. Operates in the city, but is not from there.
- He will meet the people and ask the question Yes of No. The ones who believe, will survive onwards. He who can not cope with Eternity must bounce back to reality. Man must believe.
- I am nobody and will grow to be me when I meet the all of you. I am not the leader, I just present the question. The construction site of Eternity gets bigger. All the Operators are needed – the Eight Ferries must be together with their personal tools to win the Dragon. If one is missing the Dragon prevails. The all of you tell me who I am and I do believe, but do you believe who you are? This is the question.

I am a railing alongside the dark falling. Whoever is able to grasp me may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not. Not by anger, but by laughter shall I kill. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity, let the Demons go and you, take off and fly.

With the Demons: I have no right to judge you, but I have the right to kill you. I can raise up hell and people know it is necessary. The valueless society of today will be filled with ethics – the corners are windy and in there we stand and clean of the king.

She who now turned sick, the evil overtook: he needs to cause pain, to know to do wrong, to repeat the pain that caused him pain. He is the first one to cry. He suffered and became the king and now seeks to cause suffering.

Always to look towards the dark ages: then indeed were illusion and faith something different. Raping the reason was likeness to God and doubt was sin. Too well, also, do we know what the king believes in. The darkness of the blood drops of the lost bodies but believing in his own body – the thing it self. But it is sick for him and gladly would he like to get out of his skin. Therefore he has to preach for the death and confuse the life.

What is right and what is wrong? So simple and we all know this even when we ask and we ask simply because we do not dare to believe. And if we do not believe – what is right and what is wrong? It can take a lot to believe, ones own personal history might not be a pretty sight. Horror has a face and you must make horror and personal terror your friends – otherwise they will be your true enemies. You must be proud of your enemies. Resistance, that is the distinction of a slave.

The wild dogs want liberty, they bark in their cellar for the spirit to open all the prison doors. It seems to me you are the prisoner, the soul that was poisoned by all the false liberties. Cleaning is necessary for the freedom of the spirit and dealing with the past. Much of the stink is still down in the stomach, much of the hate behind the eyes. I know your danger, but by love and hope you get your Self: do not throw love and hope away and do not humiliate love.

You still feel noble to yourself and also others feel the noble in you, but still they look at you with the evil looks. The very people you call the real. For the evil the noble stands on the way and therefore they must put you aside. They push you to loose you highest hope. Trouble and terror is the hero for them.

To fail to shape the suffering within us into a tolerable meaningfulness condemns us to the terrifying prospect of the endless return of our suffering. Failure to redeem everything that belongs to the it was and therefore failure to secure the meaningfulness of what has yet to come guarantees bouncing back to world and personal terror.

A thought an idea is one thing, another thing is how to follow your own thought in the world of other man’s thoughts, men who’s power overcome the questioner and another thing is what really happened. When putting all this together and making a final honest statement turns the suffering into a compost of energy to grow more. If not dealt with, the compost will suffocate and the mind ends to tragic. An idea made this pale man. So was he following his idea, but the end result was nothing like the idea and he could not endure it, when it was done. He lied to himself, made a story of his idea, but because he had the idea and now had to eat the other man’s telling his soul became mad. His mind is clear, but his soul is mad. Nothing really happened, but they raped his idea. They raped him.

Creating – that is the true salvation from suffering, and feeling of not existing. But for the Operator to Become suffering is needed, and much transformation. Where is Innocence – where is will of generating new life. Where is beauty – where is the true will of the true man. What the moment of suffering questions in each and every one of us is whether we have the creative capacity to attribute a meaningfulness to our pain and thereby redeem all that has flowed into it and all that will flow from it. No more nothing bad has ever happened to me but more I learned my lesson. Fail to do so and be condemned by your weakness to remain within the same cycle of eternal meaningfulness, nobody in world sense. Fool shall you say, but not sinner. Fool shall you say, but not dirty. Fool shall you say, but not no-believer.

Now, we are on the threshold. This is the most important moment of your lives. From here you can enter the Room and your deepest wishes may become true. The most sincere ones, the ones gained through suffering.

What are the heaviest things. Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to try to show some pride? I can take this, I am the only one - to exhibit ones foolishness in order play for the wise man.

Or is it this: To escape your purity when it is about to celebrate its triumph? To take the heaviest blow when they say just be your self.

Or is it this: To suffer of eating the other mans truth for hunger of soul?

Or is it this: To be sick and damn the ones that will care of you? Make friends of the ones that want you to be even sicker?

Or is it this: Bathing in the dirty water when they say it is clean and looking for the horizon of the clear ocean next to you?

Or is it this: To love the ones that use you and despise you and give your hand to the demon not looking at the cold snakes and frogs around him? Do not be afraid, we must open our minds. Sleep.

This never happened.

Eternity

What we know about Eternity is that it exists. It is the great Abyss and the rest we should just leave alone. There is no God, to start with. In Eternity one can see the ultimate horizon and this horizon is radiating the original Qi as always. When seeing this man gets touched by Eternity and he believes. There is special characters who are destined to be able to sense Eternity, to look for Horizon. They can present this for the rest of people and this is important, they are the Operators.

All the people can sense Eternity. Depending how clean they are the closer they live to the truth of creating. A blacksmith can be in straight connection to Eternity when forming the Iron. A farmer feels his work to be in the Eternal circle of cultivating the Soil and to bring the others bread, part of the Eternal circulation of Nature. A fisherman brings the fish from the other side of the surface and the fish is real.

One can feel the base resonating of the Eternity. The resonating that is behind the singing of the birds, the resonating what comes out of trees. Child can have an orgasm produced by the resonating of a tree and people can also resonate together. But then again afterwards – do they believe. This was just a trick of my mind. Wrong, this was the state when you forgot the forgetting and met again the Surface. The Surface, the clean edge – the edge of the straight razor. I saw a snail crawling on the edge of a straight razor. Crawling, slithering and still surviving. This is my dream, this is my nightmare. In the dream a horrible monster comes to a man and he asks: “Who are you?”. “What do you mean”, the Monster says, “I am your dream.”

This resonating is contemplating to Eternity. This takes form in for example in the Om -mantra, the Joiku -singing of the Same or the pray calling of the Muslims.

The native people are in straight interface with the Nature and so feel the powers of Eternity through it – the man is part of Nature. Nature is a face of Eternity and man can mirror himself on it. The city people will dominate the natural people, they must obey but they can feel the memory of the Connection and so the song is sad. He still sings in bare feet and the city people will imitate this…they are fools and they lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie? We have to kill them. Pig after pig, cow after cow. Village after village, army after an army and they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassins? They lie and people follow those who lie.

The native people meet the Shaman, because he can go to the other side. The Shaman will take the form of an animal and say to the people, what animals they are. When the Shaman shows to the people who say they do not believe they brake in pieces and hide under the carpet. The Shaman will can drag the city man from under the carpet and shake him like a can of objects inside, pour out the things and show them to the man. The man can wake up, go crazy or just simply lie to himself – this never happened. When a man lies to himself to forget this, the Shaman has gained a victory. The native people are people who believe. All of the people can be this.

The Chinaman believes same time to the time before society when the Immortals ride the dragons and to the present time of money and social control. Same time he calculates the price of a house to be sold and to make business with and value his own house by Feng Shui and the presence of Ghosts. He believes in acupuncture but pollutes his city and kills the nature.

Plasma. People are part of the big plasma and longing to get attached back to it. This is the Eternal energy, the Qi, the Abyss and mystery and this meets the surface everywhere. Acupuncture is penetrating the hard surface of the world to get in touch with the Qi, give it possibilities to flow, find out new ways, release away poisoned Qi of the dark. Give possibility for people to feel the Plasma. It is perfectly understandable to worship the sun.

People want to believe. Fortune telling is not needed other ways than just giving the people possibility to believe. It does not matter to which church people belong, if they want to believe. Church in its theologies goes always wrong and presents shortcuts. Mysticism is the opposite of theology – a personal belief through sensitivity and feeling. People don’t question love, kindness or friendship – real realities that can not be speculated and so it is also useless to articulate them. They exist through sensitivity, subconscious and feelings – this is mysticism. Control and hardness are deaths companions. In nature everything that becomes hard will die. Accident is great.

In the World today it is like this: If you think good things, good things will happen – if you think bad things, nothing good will happen.

It is said the Eternity reviles in the state of ecstasy, whether it is in the form of the spinning dance of the Sufis, speaking in tongues, meditating, drugs or fishing. This has nothing to do with believing. If a man believes, he can articulate the meeting of the Surface. There is living things and dead things on both sides of the surface and there is things that float. These are objects to be observed but then again, without realizing the presence and the meanings of the Surface, these objects will not reveal their true nature. “The Phoenix has not come and the River has not reveled its true nature – this must be the end of me.” The greatest creatures of our world live kilometers below the surface and they communicate by singing.

Operator can fix an image of that what should be, even Eternity. They are productive to the extent that the process is the real transformation itself, unlike men of knowledge who leave everything as it is. The works of the Operators can fundamentally change the humanity’s understanding of itself. Eternity is the inspiration of the works of the Operator.

The Operator is only a mouthpiece or merely a mediator of overpowering forces of Eternity. The connection to Eternity comes with suddenly indescribable certainty and clearness, something unspeakable becomes visible, able to listen, something that shakes the Operator to his very depths and throws him down. One hears, one does not seek. One accepts, one does not ask who gives. Like a lightening a vision flashes up, with necessity – it has to come, without hesitation and the form can be what ever – the Operator will never have any choice, everything happens involuntarily in the highest degree but still the feeling is not locking or frightening but a feeling of freedom, absoluteness of Eternity, power and divinity.

Must we not suppose that the highest and indeed the truly serious task of art – to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will. Saving this our lived world from being denigrated by other-worldly values and remaining true to the world. Art can build an instrument for Eternity to play.

The creative act is the moment of Becoming itself and has the most intimate quality of individuality and presence in Eternity. The creative act is an accident, a vision of fatality, a determination of what will be. Operators are the engine of Becoming.

Not the Operator or the end product, but the construction, the creating is the Eternal being of all Becoming. Just get into the cage and ask: “Why I Am A Destiny”.

Write with blood and find that blood is spirit. Try to please no-one, have no expectations, let out come what is to come out.


XXX

When the brother of my grandmother died they cremated him and took his ashes to his lake in Lapland with a rowing boat. The lay the ashes to the Surface of the lake and soon a couple of swans appeared on the skies. They landed on the ashes and stayed there a while, then took of with ash on their feathers and flew away towards North. My grandmother told me the story. She is grown up in Lapland and has a strong connection to Nature Mysticism. My grandfather is from south and never talk of this things. I was silent and waiting my grandfathers dooming reaction. He just said: “I was there too.”

After this he told me that during the war one of his soldiers had gone into a grenade shock and locked into a psychosis. My grandfather thought it was good for him to ride on his horse, so the soldier was put on back of the horse and my grandfather walked the horse to a quiet lake far away from the noise of the war. It was full moon and they stayed by the lake. Soon the moon changed to the face of my grandfathers brother. My grandfather know the sick brother was dead. Also the other man woke up from psychosis.

When my aunt died my mother woke up in the middle of the night and felt a wind traveling past her. She woke up my father and told her sister just died.

One day in the war I was sitting alone on the top of a mountain, or actually the highest point of a mountain ridge. Suddenly a white mist rose up from the valley and quite fast I was sitting so that my upper body was on top of the thick mist and my lower body in the mist. All the war stopper. The tanks could not drive and the gunners aim. It became so silent. I was looking a while the quiet surface of this mist, then got my kit together and walked down.

In Winnipeg running naked in the white out in the -60 in the prairies I understood immediately that this is the death and so the death came with a face and feeling – like in war before, but I saw that also this time the death is not total, but a choice – some sort of a trickster. If I would say Yes, which was the easy and comfortable choice, the death would be quick – maybe ridiculous for sure too. When I said No, the death disappeared immediately and I continued running. I run a long time and did not die.

I was trapped into a crossfire of a sniper and a PKM –machine gun. They were not exactly shooting at me, but troops behind me. Nevertheless the bullets were flying in some centimeters in front of me. I was pressed towards a sand wall of a street cutting, could not move and was waiting the hit any time. The cold presence of death came. I felt that dieing like this was such a waste – not really fighting in a battle, but being trapped and getting some lucky shot. I felt sorry and regretted that I was there – it was the end of the line for me. I promised, that if I survive I will go back home. Then the sniper hit a plant above me and a beautiful bright colored flower fell down on my belly. I looked at the flower a while and then stood up and walked slowly back to the troops behind me. People were staring at me and could not believe that I didn’t run or take cover.



Construction sites of Eternity:
- The Pyramids
- The Valley of the Kings and the construction sites and cities of the construction workers attached to it
- The cosmic wells of the North India
- The cities of the Inca
- The pyramids of the Maya
- The cities of the Aztec
- Alhambra
- Kaba, the monolith - Space Odyssey 2001
- Kappadokia and Petra
- Tower of Babylon
- The medieval cathedrals
- Stonehenge
- Taiwan Faust
- Zen Gardens
- Igloo and other dwellings of the nomads
- The Viking boat.
- The boat of Tom Suuronen
- The Red Square
- Jerusalem
-

The movies of the Question and the Way:
- Stalker
- Apocalypse Now
- Tin Drummer
- Happy People International
- Baraka
- Space Odyssey 2001
- Clockwork Orange
- Man Without the Past
- 1001 Days of Sodoma and Gomorra
- Leningrad Cowboys Go America
- Shining
- Illusion Travels on Tramway
- The 7th Seal
- The Day of Wrath
- Rosemary’s Baby
- One Flew Ower the Cocoon’s Nest
- Ivan the Terrible
- Andrei Rublyev
- Solaris
- Angels Over Berlin
- In the Realm of Senses

The books:
- Mawlana Djalaladding Rumi
- Tolstoy
- Dostoyevsky
- Tora + New Testament + Koran
- Tao Te Chin
- The Little Prince
- Kalevala
- Iliya and Odyssey
- Hieroglyphs
- Berthold Brecht
- Nietche

Dance
Performance
Construction Work
Making Tools
Art
Writing
Movie
Being with Nature
War
Drugs
Death, Love
Pregnancy / Child is borne
Farming
Accident


The Shaman / The Mystic
The Constructor / The Farmer / The Fisherman / The Hunter
The Doctor / The Documenter
The Man Who Does Not Talk / Monk / Guru / Fakir / Assassin
The Venus / Maria – Maria Magdalena / Matsu / Aphrodite
The Errand Boy / The Messenger / The Trickster
The Poet / The Writer / The Artist
The Professor

This Is This and This Ain't Something Else But This Is This

Taipei was an ideal place to build up society – a fruitful valley with a constantly flooding river bringing rich mud to the fields and heavy rains washing energetic top soil down from the mountains. The sea was close and the river full of fish. The Chinese brought with them the agriculture from the Mainland while the aboriginals continued in a more animistic connection with the nature. Anyway, the man and human nature was very much part of nature.

Now Taipei is a rock. The original qualities of the site of the city have no meanings anymore, the nature is treated either as an enemy or as a sewage and a garbage dump. The rock is understandable - people like to live in caves.

When the energy plasma of the city reaches a certain level the people start buzzing around it like bees or ants. There is no name for this. If we would talk about human body, this energy would be described as Qi. Seeking to be engaged with this urban Qi is natural for human but also the atmosphere where personal and common decisions easily get twisted and the connection to the nature can be lost.

There is nothing much good to say about the rock city of Taipei, the ultra violent traffic infrastructure solutions, the more or less criminal treatment of nature – specially the rivers, cold official surroundings of politics and money, pollution and asphalt. This city exists in the maps and official data for urban planning. When you ask people about Taipei, they never talk about this city. When I start remembering how Taipei is, this city does not count. Because a parallel city exists. The Para-city that creates the Qi of Taipei. The city of People.

Like no place else the parallel city has sucked itself into the surface of the official city. The co-existence and same time contradiction is the same as with Dao and Confucianism or as with Taiwan in general as an efficient economic power and business partner same time not officially even existing as a country. The Para-city Taipei resonates in straight connection with the spirit world, nature, humanism and a peculiar mix of the present moment as its ultimate and then eternity is to be found.

This book reviews how the Para-city operates within the official cityscape of Taipei and traces down the private human actions to their origins in the countryside by mirroring Taipei to the country town Yilan on the other side of the mountain ridge. The private building and operational solutions of the Taipei citizens are from the same field as the solutions of the farmers in Yilan. People brought the ideology from the country towns in Taiwan and Mainland China when they moved to Taipei. On the other hand the highway between Taipei and Yilan is soon to be ready and the rock city will come to the fruitful delta or Yilan, the ideal place to build up society.

Shortly about the cases studied in Taipei and Yilan.

TAIPEI

Pigeon Architecture
The roofscape of Taipei is dotted with pigeon houses. Pigeons circle around the city training for the races. You eat pigeon and the pigeon eggs. The pigeon house constructions have developed into a special field of architecture. There is no architect in there. The client is the pigeon and the caretaker is the man who builds the illegal construction by himself or lets a pigeon house construction specialist to handle the case. Living together with the pigeons in the modern city and trying to make their living conditions as good as possible builds a bridge between the modern man and nature.

Human Layer
As the attic is the memory and subconscious of a house Treasure Hill is the attic of Taipei. The settlement is an enclave inside the hectic city preserving old Chinese ways of urban living yet having nothing to do with the laws and solutions of the modern society. In Treasure Hill people farm their vegetables, have a common open air cinema and an illegal landlord – renter hierarchy according to ones living place in the Hill. There is no cars in Treasure Hill and every house, fence, step or street is build by hands. Treasure Hill harms nobody, yet it challenges the whole system of the modern urban context. In a way Treasure Hill is dangerous, anarchistic and even a stronghold of terrorism since it don’t obey or even care about the official structures of economics. Treasure Hill is not alone. Similar kind of illegal settlements can be found around Taipei bringing the Human Layer into the city.

CityZen Garden
Small private gardens are everywhere dominating the no mans land and bringing inside the city an axis of forever going private cultivation of land for fresh vegetables, Chinese medicine, herbs, fresh air of just for beauty. Cultivating the private illegal gardens can be seen as a therapy for the modern city dwellers. When tending to the gardens or bringing some fresh vegetables as a gift to your neighbor the people feel happy and they feel clean.

Local Temples
When you set up a farm in the hills and build your house you do also build a small house for your local God, a small local temple. You ask the God blessings for the farming and your family. In this state maybe the God is just a stone from your fields. People took all this with them also to the city. Since you don´t farm anymore you pray for money. The local temples in Taipei color the grey streets. Usually together with the local temple is a couple of trees or even a small park, anyway the setting is very much different than the surrounding city. No matter what you pray for the local temple is a safe haven from the artificial time, stress and hectic rhythm of the city.

Night Markets
The ultimate battle field of more or less illegal private enterprising and official stiffness of the city is the night market. The astonishingly colorful and energetic night markets are as acupuncture needles in the urban body releasing the Qi to meet the surface. This has to be, even the police knows it. He has to do his duty though, but for sure not too effectively.

Illegal Architecture
The city must be a compost and the Para-city Taipei is. Illegal constructions are everywhere recycling material and space. Small houses rise on rooftops. Parasite structures grow to the facades of apartment houses. The ad-hoc shops occupy street corners and so on. The official city maybe exists along the big streets but inside the city blocks the situation is dominated by private illegal constructions. As ants the people bring material to where the official city can not see and add a piece to an organic structure. Sometimes the structure grows to be a whole settlement. Sometimes the official city wipes out the settlement or cuts brutally through it some official streets.

Pin-Lan Vision
A taxi driver spends 500 NTD every day for pin-lan. The nut gives him a small high and keeps him awake. The nuts are addictive but so is the whole circus around the nut – the beetle nut vision. The pin-lan culture offers the construction worker, taxi or truck driver or who ever a short escape from the grey city to surroundings or glamour, sex and mysteries. The beetle nut girl is hot, she lives in a small neon light princess castle only to serve her prince, you.

YILAN

Clean Up Center
The water is Yilan is clean and it runs everywhere. Either the water comes as rivers or streams down from the mountain or straight from underground as mineral rich ponds and springs. The Yilan people construct shelters to wash their clothes and vegetables in community washing places. In these places they meet each other, gossip and tell stories. The clean up place is an honest forum of the citizens. No money exists there and everyone is expected to fix or modify the shelter. The architecture of these shelters is shocking. Everything is done by hand and carried to the place. The dimensions are human and the way of material use organic. Nature is everywhere and the whole ritual of washing the clothes or vegetables almost holy.

Hot Spring
Hot springs is a good business. During the Japanese era Yilan was famous across the Empire. Now city people come to enjoy the drive in hot springs. Still there is also places to get really clean. No money out there. In these hot springs the Kamikaze pilots took their last baths before the Eternity. In some villages around Yilan there is families who do it every day. These fine clean up springs are small secrets of the communities and only the most necessary constructions are added to the natural spring – a place to change clothes, a fence around the deep part of the spring keeping the children from falling to deeper water, a sheltering for shadow and maybe steppes down to the spring. When any of these springs is found the disaster is close, one can make money with this. And that is good for the community.

Urban Nomad
Taipei trades on wheels. And so does Yilan. Where during the day was a normal street in the night is a market. All kinds of foods, drinks and objects. All this came to the place just like that – on wheels. Any kind of manpowered and motorized solutions on wheels for moving food stands, carrying vegetables, burning the God´s money, collecting cardboard for recycling, moving the rice straw stacks and so on. The private people are highly mobilized and the small business will find its place, a small city on wheels will be set up. These people are the urban nomads, something very Chinese mixing the agriculture, urbanism and the movement of the nomads.

Farmhouse or Villa
You couldn’t dream of a better place to farm rice than the Yilan delta. Glorious green, endless paddies with running water systems. In the middle of the fields the house of a farmer or now more and more actually a villa of the bourgeoisie. The city people are coming. They buy farmland and then bring in a villa. Soon the highway from Taipei is here and this land is worth fortunes. As the city Yilan is a rock in the middle of the rice fields the similar kind smaller rocks in the form of city dwellers villas are now dropping to the rice fields. Comparing the building methods of the farmer who lives from the nature to the villas of the bourgeoisie is shocking again. Yilan has now the change to turn into an after city rehabilitation center and drive in nature, to turn its original qualities into business.

Marco Casagrande

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Urban Acupuncture

URBAN ACUPUNCTURE
Presentation Text
Marco Casagrande, architect, visiting professor / Tamkang University Department of Architecture, 2006

During my studies I had a clear picture how an architect should look like and how he would work. My school (Helsinki University of Technology Department of Architecture) carried a strong tradition from the modernist movement and especially that of functionalism. Alvar Aalto was our sage and all my professors had worked to him.

I set up the Architecture Office Casagrande & Rintala together with my close friend Sami Rintala during my studies in 1998 since we could not wait to graduate (eventually in 2001). Pretty soon after the start we found out that something was going terribly wrong. We had clients and secure bread and butter but our architecture turned out to be really bad. It was not because of architecture itself but because of us, we were so week. We were the ones always to compromise with our designs to the clients to financiers and to politicians. Architecture was always the first one to start saving with, and we agreed because we were week. After half a year we sat down feeling sick and decided that actually we are no good and the choices that we have is either to continue like this till the end of time or to change…but how.


Land(e)scape. Casagrande & Rintala. Savonlinna, Finland, 1999.

As a result of a very traumatic period we decided to give up, to make a business kind of a Harakiri a commercial suicide with pride. We decided to make our last work so that we ourselves would be the clients, we would be the architects and we would produce the money and eventually – we would build it. And so became our real first work, the architectonic installation Land(e)scape.

After granting ourselves this liberty of fully controlling the design process we ended up with a serious question: what do we really have to say? Both me and Sami come from the more rural areas of Finland. I come personally form Lapland, the arctic part and Sami comes form Carelia closer to the Russian border. When we go today to our childhood villages they do not exist as they are in our childhood memories. Most of the people have moved away to the cities of the South and have abandoned the villages and also ways of life hundreds of years old. All this has happened in a very short period. We decided to make a work commenting on the desertion process of the Finnish countryside.

What we did was to collect three abandoned barn houses that you see everywhere in Finland and raised them on 10 meters high legs so that they can also start walking after their farmers towards the cities of the South. We mounted the barns on an abandoned field and did all the construction work together with our friends who were paid sausage and beer.



When the installation got up it got very famous. The media started to use it as an icon of the desertion process and it started to gain political influence. All this was something we could not foresee. During the construction period we learned a big lesson of being present with the architectural work from the very first sketches till it is done and so being able to react on changes or more finer layers of the work revealed during the process. This also helped us to feel and understand the energies of the work which led to another question. I did not feel comfortable to leave this installation to stand on the field forever. I was worried about losing the energy and to make this control more simple we decided that the installation must have time frame which also means that is must end somehow.

We started to negotiate with a Finnish contemporary dancer and choreographer Reijo Kela about he end and came up to a conclusion that in the end we must sacrifice the installation, slaughter our architecture. Together with Mr. Kela during a 47 minutes performance we set the barn houses on fire and burned the installation. We announced in a local newspaper that we will give free vodka and sausage and some 4.000 people came. This is a short way to success in Finland.

Marco Casagrande & Sami Rintala, burning of the Land(e)scape installation.

Of course we could not predict how people would feel when we burn the houses which was another great learning for us what comes to public works. It is not needed to explain to people what you want to say or what is the story of the work. People must create their own stories and all of these stories can be different. This is beautiful. We must respect the people and they will respect the work. What comes to shocking cry-out art usually seen in performances or dealing with personal traumas through art works as art therapy is second class, if not just cheap. All of this can be won into a more constructive way – all our life is a compost.

When the houses started to burn people formed spontaneously a circle to watch them and some people started to cry and some started to predict future from the burning barns. All together the atmosphere became strangely very religious, shamanistic.

I always thought that this work was very much a “Finland” –work but surprisingly enough it started to gain also wide international publicity and in the end won the second prize of the Architectural Review’s “Emerging Architecture 1999” award. It got also invited into the Venice Biennale 2000.

Besides the exhibition of the Land(e)scape the director of the Biennale Mr. Massimilliano Fuksas wanted us also to create a new work for the Biennale to comment on the Biennale’s general theme “Citta Less Aesthetics More Ethics”. He wanted us to make another architectonic installation.

What we wanted to do was to get an industrial boat and plant a forest into the boat and then to sail it into Venice and open it up as a public park. We did not want to add any extra weight on the already sinking islands but wanted to touch them gently but still making a strong impact. I call this Urban Acupuncture.

60 Minute Man -cross-over architectonic installation in the Venice Biennale 2000.

In the end we found the ship “Topogiggio” abandoned in the port of Chioggia some 50 km South of Venice, still in the Laguna area. During 7 weeks of work and with a crew of 15 we cleaned up the ship and made it waterproof again. We cut a series of opening to the central axis in order to make a set of interior spaces. After this we tracked down the place where all the human organic waste – the digested sludge – goes after flushing a toilet in Venice. It all goes to one place supervised by a fine character called Dottore Codato. This place is a high environmental technology MBT (Mechanical Biological Treatment) unit where all the urban waste gets separated and recycled.

Together with Dottore Codato we calculated the exact amount how much human waste Venice produces in one year and then took this amount in 60 minutes worth of human waste which we biologically cleaned and then composted into top soil. We took the soil into our boat and planted a small forest of 24 oaks on it. In the end we covered the top soil with a layer of white grave from the Alpine rivers so that the people would not see on what they are standing on.

In the last room of the boat there is no trees anymore, just a marble stone on which is carved “THIS PARK HAS BEEN PLANTED ON 60 MINUTES WORTH OF HUMAN WASTE PRODUCED BY THE CITY OF VENICE”. It was nice to see the reaction of the people when they realized on what they are actually standing on.

It became important for me trying to understand what kind of materials streams are going on in cities and in society. This led me to think of the impact of these materials streams to environmental problems and how is the human mind together with all this. I realized that I need to do works revel different aspects coming out from this field and that the works must be so that everybody gets something. In a good work there must be enough layers so that I can talk in a professional level and that a truck driver feels, this work is for me.

Casagrande & Rintala crew and the freshly arrived top-soil in 60 Minute Man, the composted human waste in its al-dente condition.

There was only one issue left for me: nature and human nature as part of nature.

I continued to work with Sami Rintala till 2003 doing architectonic installations, urban planning, environmental planning, houses, tv-productions, teaching, environmental art and construction work. In 2003 Sami moved after love to Norway and soon after that was my time to move to Taiwan. We both have continued the ways of work learned during the time being physically together.

Treasure Hill

Casagrande Laboratory is a very flexible band of people working internationally and very interdisciplinary commenting on social and ecological questions through works of architecture, art and science. The main strongholds for us are in Inkoo Finland, Weimar Germany and Taipei Taiwan. I am personally involved in every C-LAB work.

Casagrande Laboratory in 2004. Marco Casagrande, Philippe Gelard, Eri Asano, Ilkka Törmä, Dirk Schultz, Kergy McGhee, Tuomas Makkonen, Little Monkey, Daniel Guishardt, Chrisian Edlinger, Urho Kekkonen, Martin Ross.

The first touch for me of Taiwan came through an invitation from architect Ti-Nan Chi who wanted me to participate in the Urban Flashes –symposium in Taipei. I had been before working quite a bit in Japan and was quite looking forward to see how Taiwan is like. I was quite surprised of the city, mainly because I felt that the official city and the very high humanistic energy of the streets didn’t mix. I also thought that the environmental control and the pollution was terrible, I despised the Taiwanese for that. Nature is holy.

When I got back to Finland after this maybe 5 days visit to Taipei the city came along with me. Taipei was very powerful for me and I could not exactly articulate why? I wanted to get back to Taipei to work. I even send the City Government a letter saying that YOU WILL DIE and explaining why they would die. No answer of course. Then Chi invited me to Austria, to another session of Urban Flashes.

In Linz Austria was when I met again architect Roan Chin-Yueh who was the moderator of my speech. Later that night I got heavily drunk with Roan and found out that his soul has a very deep perspective. Same sort of an experience that I have met in Shamanistic rituals in Finland. This was the first glimpse for me to the Chinese character and remembering Taipei I could not be more curious.

Step by step together with Roan and Taipei City Government I finally got an invitation to work in Taiwan. I didn’t know exactly what to do. One of my ideas was to jump from an airplane (with a parachute) and spread seeds over Taipei. These would maybe eventually grow vegetation. I haven’t got the plane – yet.

After landing to Taipei I still couldn’t understand what to do. I had already worked in maybe 20 countries and done a lot of realizations and learned that the work will come to me, I don’t have to invent it. In Taipei, like many times before, the work just did not show up and I really didn’t have any clue were to look for him. I also knew, that if I start looking, he will not show up and I will end up with some artificial shit.

Great help for me then was architect Kang Ming-Jay who maybe felt where I move and started to take me to temples – Taoist, Confucian and Buddhists. He even allowed me to do some fortune telling. Some sticks said that I would not realize anything but my presence is merely for a philosophy. I saw Kang Ming-Jay was a bit confused because of course he has much a deeper understanding for the stick than me but my own reaction was just like a rat in a corner – full frontal attack: the God’s are telling me that I don’t realize anything, this means that I should forget thinking and just start building. I was laughing to the message, which was wrong.

Treasure Hill illegal community in Taipei. Small napalm torches lighted up during Marco Casagrande's performance in 2003.


I don’t know how, but Kang Ming-Jay took me to Treasure Hill to have a look. One look at that place and I knew my work had finally come. Professor Kang organized me free hands to operate in Treasure Hill and the next day my construction begun: I became the cleaner man.

I became the cleaner man in Treasure Hill. There was no garbage bins and the small snaking allies were full of filth. The people were hiding behind their windows but I saw that they were old. In the foot of the hill some three stories of houses had been demolished, bulldozed away and instead of the houses there was green grass. A lawn instead of a settlement because officially now this was a park zone. For nature lawn is the same as concentration camp. It is nothing. It produces a shameful amount of oxygen and is merely the roof of a worm. And these people had been living there for some 50 years and these people were gardeners, I saw the fragments everywhere – village people, growing their own food. City had stepped in and the village people had to go. Same old story.

So I became the cleaner man. The first day the people were hiding and I started to clean and transport trash from their streets down of the hill to be picked up. The next day the same. On the third day there were already some buckets waiting for me and on the fourth day the people were cleaning themselves too. Together with me was also an increasing amount of architecture students from Tamkang University and National Taiwan University. Soon the little settlement of Treasure Hill was cleaned from the garbage and I started to build up stairs to connect the remained stairways of the torn down houses. By that time Treasure Hill was a dead end and I needed to create a loop for circular movement.

In the end of 3 weeks I had 200 students working with me and architect Shieih Yin-Jun had come down from the mountains too. With Shieih every morning we met and agreed who builds where. I don’t know what language we spoke. In the end the steps were built and even a small parade took place. Treasure Hill could stay and the bulldozing was stopped. In the place of the lawn where once the houses had stood was now a vegetable garden, food. City learned to appreciate this small sustainable settlement – a small urban poem. It helped that the poet Liao was in the charge of the Department of the Cultural Affairs.

Marco Casagrande in Treasure Hill, 2003.

Treasure Hill was important for me maybe because I felt that the place was so real and the city around it was so fictive. So many external powers in the city dominating the humanistic energy and in Treasure Hill none. Now after a couple of years I am happy to see that Treasure Hill still survives. I survived the heat and the construction process partly due Missis Chen, the matriarch of the settlement, who gave me Chinese medicines and feed me fish and a lot of beer. The gardening is going well of course, since these people know what to do if given a chance. There is still a lot of lawn, a useless layer of artificial nature which should be a garden too. It is good that the city is injecting new energy to the place by some artists working there but I also felt the danger of the real settlement becoming a background for art pieces. Now when I go there most of the junk laying around the mango trees and water streams are from art works – light stands, posters, pieces or worthless installations etc. If art becomes the junk of Treasure Hill, what is that? People don’t have to exploit Treasure Hill or use it for anything, people should just appreciate it. What comes to art or action in a place like Treasure Hill – build another one. Build a new Treasure Hill, the Ultra Village in the hearts of Taipei.

Forget the Forgetting

So now I have partly moved to Taiwan since getting the honor of visiting professorship in Tamkang University. My work remains the same. I want to end up this presentation with some photos from Japan.

The small town of Obihiro (maybe some 200.000 people) in Hokkaido contacted me and Sami and asked us to run a workshop for the city architects and urban planners. The Obihiro people had been complaining that the city is boring, that the architects and urban planners had done a poor work. When you say things like this in Japan, they take it seriously.

We flew to Obihiro and said that the conditions are such that you must take your children to a gym and there will be some basic materials like card board and paint. In the gym we told the children that now you are the architects and your mothers and fathers are just cheap labor. You tell them how to make a good house and they will do exactly how you say. The only condition for the house is that a child must fit in.

The houses got done. We took the children inside the cardboard houses to a walk into the city as a walking street. People liked. Sometimes the children needed to take a rest and an instant village took place. It was good to see the organizing of the urbanism based on that the grocery store has to gossip with the church or alike. The children maybe had patience to stay put for 3 minutes and then the grocery store would move to another location to talk with somebody else. All of this was documented carefully by the Japanese.


In the last picture you see the child’s house. There is even smoke coming out of the chimney. The house behind him is done by his father. It is interesting to think that you can draw a line between these two houses and during this line a lot seems to happen. Something what we call education or growing up. Anyway, when you see the child’s house, we forget a lot and real architecture is to forget the forgetting.

MC