ARCHITECTURE OF INFORMALITY
Prof
Ivan Kucina
DIA,
Dessau, January
2016
student
Bojana Bjelic
PLEASURE
- (n.) A feeling of happiness or enjoyment /'she smiled with pleasure'/
- (n.) What the will dictates or prefers as gratifying or satisfying, hence, will, choice, wish, purpose.
- (n.) The gratification of the senses or of the mind; agreeable sensations or emotions; the excitement, relish, or happiness produced by the expectation or the enjoyment of something delightful, or satisfying (not necessarily good)
- (n.) Amusement; sport; diversion; self-indulgence; frivolous or dissipating enjoyment; hence, sensual gratification;- opposed to labor, service, duty, self-denial, etc. 1
...what
is the pleasure of acting informal?
During
the last semester, a colleague from the class posted a question that
triggered my attention: 'What if we ask chair what does it want to
be', what would the chair say? What does the chair actually want to
be? And what do we want it to be? Is a chair only to be sit on?
It
interested me, because every day when I go out of the building where
we study, to drink my coffee and have this little daily routine
during the break, that i consider pleasing, I don't find any chairs. I
don't even look for chairs, i don't think about them. Without much
thinking, I sit on the doorsteps . Because i want to sit and put the
coffee down while i roll a cigarette. These concrete doorsteps became
part of my daily routine.
Soon
people join me, and sit next to me and we talk. On the doorsteps. But
this doorsteps are not made to be sit on, or for people to drink
coffee on. They are made to allow the entrance to the building – to
step to the doors? I finish my coffee and go back
inside. Right after the entrance there is another couple of steps
taking me down towards the lecture hall. When I think about it, I
also used to sit there sometimes...
In
the Plato's dialogue Philebus, which is focused on pleasure,
he suggests that pleasure is not one thing, but rather there are
different kinds of pleasures, from the pleasure that contributes to
survival, to the pleasure that guides our choices, to the
true pleasure found in pure mathematics.
Another
central figure from ancient philosophy, Epicurus, however, rejects
the idea that there are many kinds of pleasure, and advances the view
that the many pleasures we feel differ only in degree or
intensity and so can always be ranked relative to one
another.
On
Aristotle's view, pleasure is an aspect of activities we
undertake, namely, what an activity gains when there is a fit
between the capacity being
activated, for example, sitting, and what it is activated in relation
to, say, chair: we take pleasure in sitting on the chair because
there is a good fit between our capacity for sitting and that chair.
Our pleasures, then, will be as varied as are our capacities.
But
what is a pleasure of acting informal?
There
are certain intangible boundaries we are given in language,
behaviour, movement, space etc
They
are rules, purposes, bans, regulations etc.. If i want to sit and
drink coffee, there is a chair to sit on and there is a table to place
coffee on while sitting on the chair. But i sit on the concrete
doorsteps, and put my coffee on that same concrete surface, and smoke
a cigarette which i know is not good for my health but I think it
brings me certain pleasure.
'In
feeling the pleasure in eating the chocolate cake, we represent the
cake as good; in feeling pleasure in reading the novel, we represent
that activity as good. So we might think of pleasure as similar to
other sensory experiences. Just as our sense of vision represents
shapes and colors, and our sense of hearing represents sounds, so
does our ability to sense pleasure represent particular things as
good for us. When we eat too much cake or become over-engrossed in a
novel, we are misrepresenting what is good for us in some way. In
these cases by exaggerating the degree to which we feel pleasure in
something that is just bad for us: if natural gas were imbued with
the smell of roses instead of the smell of sulfur, we could imagine
feeling pleasure even while inhaling the dangerous substance.' 2
...so
I sit on the doorsteps, and people join me and we sit on the
doorsteps, disturb its utilitarian function. But no one told me not
to sit on the doorsteps. There is no rule, and no one is actually
complaining. They are large doorsteps, there is few of us sitting
there so we don't actually disturb their function, since people can
still go inside. No one ever complained that we are misusing the
doorstep's function.
After
sitting on that doorsteps so many times, i really like that place.
Right there, on the other side, is a tree, behind the net fence. I
was sitting there during the spring with friends, day after day, and
one of those spring days we noticed this tree, it was blooming. We
were speaking about the tree. What a lovely tree, what a lovely place
to sit on and watch this tree while having some discussions after
the lecture. One of those days we were also having organised barbecue
on the parking in front of a student dorm, right next to that tree.
We
enjoyed those moments. It was a pleasure to sit on that staircase and
notice that tree blooming and speak about it. It was a pleasure also
having that barbecue on the parking lot.
'We
find some colors more pleasant than others; as anyone who has spent
some time with paint chips can attest, there is difference in the
'feel' of a warm shade of a white and a stark, clinical white. What
is happening in these sorts of cases? Are we having two sensations –
one of color, and another of pleasure – or just one sensation? It
certainly seems as if pleasure is not a separate sensation – one of
color. We can't look at certain colors without feeling a pleasure,
nor can we feel the pleasure detached from the color. Perhaps, then,
pleasure is not so much a sensation as a manner of perceiving.' 2
I
guess who ever designed the entrance to that building, or that
parking lot next to the student dorm in Bauhausstrasse, didn't predict
them as places for someone's pleasure. This pleasure was found in
misuse of these spaces. At that time we were very aware that a
parking space is not allowed to barbecue on, and that there were
places in the city where it is allowed to barbecue.
Still
we barbecued there, because it was close to everybody, we had music
coming from the dorm and fridges to cool the beers, it was close to
school, so also we could go back to our studios to work if we didn't
like the barbecue. And actually there was not more that few cars on
that quite big parking lot.
And
no one ever complained.
'Pleasure
can and does mislead us. I take a bit of chocolate cake, savouring
the flavour, the texture, the wave of warmth the cocoa brings, and so
I take another bite aiming to sustain the feeling of pleasure, and
then another bite aiming to sustain the feeling of pleasure, and then
another, and then I've overindulged. You become engrossed in a novel,
turning page after page after page, enjoying the world unfolding in
the book as time passes without notice, but then you find you've
neglected to mark papers, make dinner, walk the dog. In these sorts
of cases we want to say that pleasure led us astray, but how? Did the
pleasure capture us, so that we could do or think of nothing else?
This doesn't seem quite right: in eating the cake, I was focused on
the texture and the taste as much as the pleasure I felt. In reading
a novel, you were thinking of the characters and the narrative, as
well as taking pleasure in the story. We feel pleasure along with
other experiences we might be having. But still, there is something
about pleasure that can gain control of us, and so explain our being
misguided.' 2
But
what if other people from the town all of a sudden found pleasure in
making barbecue on the same parking lot or sitting on the same
doorsteps, watching the same tree. Soon probably, no one would be
able to enter the building and people would complain. Or after so
many barbecues the dorm would constantly smell like coal and burned
meet which would disturb the utilitarian function of this building.
Students will not be able to study from the noise or smell, they
would complain and citizens of the town would loose their place for
pleasure. I maybe wouldn't consider the staircase pleasing any more
because they would loose the character of misused staircase. Than
this would become their function and soon all the seats would be
occupied.
They
would have to seek for another one. But it would be interesting if
everyone wanted to barbecue there. Maybe they would fight for this
parking to become a new barbecue area, win, and students would have
to find a new dorm.
'We
are all familiar with the story in which Adam succumbs to the
temptation of pleasure, and eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil. Eve is presented as a kind of seductress, enticing
Adam to indulge in this pleasure, as has been strictly forbidden by
God. This is not Malebranche's story; indeed Eve barely makes an
appearance. Malebranche tells the story thus: in the Garden of Eden,
Adam felt pleasure all the time, to immediately inform him about what
was good for him. With this information coming in directly, he could
be directed fully towards God. However, instead of continuing to feel
pleasure, in doing so. That is, rather than simply sensing the apple
as a vehicle of nourishment. Adam's pleasure transformed as he began
to focus on the apple, as an object, with properties to be
discovered. For Malebranche, original sin is just noticing things
around us in such a way that we are moved to find out more about
them, to pursue knowledge. Noticing things in this way involves a
particular sort of pleasure, but this sort of pleasure is quite
special. It is not simply one manner of perceiving things among many.
It is the manner of perceiving things as things. Pleasure is in the
awareness of the world around us.' 2
Even
though situation like this would never happen, and not everybody
would want to sit on that same doorsteps, this story was used just as
a metaphor. In reality that little space of the doorsteps stay
special only for few of us, who misused it or maybe recognized it's
value. It was there, no chairs were around and we discovered that
there was a good fit between our 'capacity for sitting' and
those doorsteps. And maybe felt a little pleasure in the awareness of
the doorsteps being able to host this function that they weren't
designed for, and that no one told us could be suitable for, but was
somehow offered by its shape, proportions and position in the moment
when we needed a place to sit and put coffee down. And the pleasure
here is maybe found in the idea that we somehow asked the chair what
it wants to be and it said doorsteps.
1
– various meanings of the word 'pleasure' found on google
2
– from the text 'What is pleasure', by Lisa Shapiro, Professor of
Philosophy at Simon Fraser University, Canada.
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