dogs (especially my dear friend HyperBeam), i’m a humble adjunct “English” professor teaching three different classes at two different universities this semester (the most i’ve taught in one semester up to this point), who is two chapters into his dissertation, and one step away from being overwhelmed with my workload right now--i come in here and comment when I can, and as much as I’d like to really unpack that quote, the time’s generally not there...but i have a bit of time right now, so...
...first, i like where Dan is headed, which is where i gestured with that last idea above, but first, again:
“I call architecture frozen music”
to me, this is about the very nature, use, importance of architecture and the built environment in human lives--and i think despite how right Goethe gets it here, he could not possibly have foreseen how absolutely skateboarders and skateboarding confirm this perspective of our built environment.
music is not something one generally passively engages and experiences, but is meant to evoke physical (dancing, skanking, crying, etc.) and emotional responses (aggression, sadness, elation, etc.)...in this sense, neither is architecture, and in our own way as skaters, we prove this with how we engage and redefine architecture and the spaces it creates--and part of my point, was that Mark Suciu is especially creative and visionary with regards to not only architectural structures and objects, but the interstitial spaces that connect them (or that Suciu’s skating establishes connections between, because dude sees lines where others don’t)...
...like the other perspective i provided above, “human situations” are what most important/useful architecture should be designed in response to, not idealized spaces meant to be merely passively observed, consumed, and/or passed through--street skating is an example of this in ways and degrees that architects don’t even foresee, right? like when Edmund Bacon (at 92 years-old) skated through Love Park (with some assistance of course) as protest against the bans trying to get arrested and everything--I forget the exact quote, but he basically said at one point that the ways skaters use/redefine/engage his architecture and the spaces it creates is the best compliment his planning and work has received...
...and to me--to get back to that poor, vulnerable Goethe quote--the way we do this, is not by treating his architecture like static objects and structure, but by treating it like music...or something like that...