Text Reading

For one of my last required posts, I had a text that I had to read and now I guess I talk about it! This was a very interesting article called “Architecturally Speaking Practices of Art, Architecture and the Everyday” we read the third chapter entitled “Getting lost and the localized mind”. The article addressed the idea that the act of getting lost is a very subjective thing and today in this society it is almost impossible to become really and truly lost. According to the text, there are various ways and degrees of becoming lost and then processed to define what it is to become lost. “Getting lost could mean being outside the limits, off track, cheated by the ambiguities of a place.” This can be a very uncomfortable thing for most people; they often stick to familiar places or make sure that they can identify their location on a sign or map. The article tells of how truly frightened people are of getting lost because it means they will then lack all the security and comfort that knowing how to get back to where they came from. One of the forms of getting lost is being forced to become oriented in a new environment when trying to live or navigate with our prior knowledge or friends. When doing this you are taken from an environment that you know and you have to learn how to get around, make friends and make many mistakes as you try to go about doing everyday things. This text relates directly to our situation here, we have had to learn an entirely different way of life, and make so many mistakes along the way to learn how to simply cope. Coping is almost all we could do, it seems that no matter how hard you try you will never truly fit in and be just like everyone else in this new culture. The question the text poses is, is it possible for a person who has moved into a new culture to ever really find one to belong to again? That question seems most relevant in my situation, I can always feel people’s eyes on me, they know that I am different from them and they judge me because I am a foreigner. It seems that I can’t get away from that stigma of the loud, ignorant American tourist.
This text was what we as a group based a lot of our ideas for our installation on, that feeling of being frustrated, uncomfortable and frightened in a new environment that is not that accepting of you. I sort of already addressed what the basic structure and idea behind the cube was, but not in great detail. We decided to share our feelings of being awkward and not feeling accepted by creating a structure that is awkward, in the way and not understood by those around it.