Pings and Hups

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Abstract

Etymologically unattested yet artistically long praised, there is a profound relation between life and light; next to both, the almost self-evident (and scientifically undisputed) relation between light and flow, lux and flux. Would it be correct then to understand life as an issue of perception and manipulation of flows? Surprisingly, this is a question that can only be answered by addressing death. As any lensmaker would claim (and philosophy has always had an affinity with this profession), perception is not a synthesis but an ascesis: it does not connect, it disconnects; or, better said, in order to connect, it needs to disconnect. However, following the radical empiricist dictum, one should never speak of perception alone; ever since William James, perception equals action. In other words, perception is not something that happens to us, it is something we do.5 Strange as it may seem therefore, to live one needs to practice death. This book will examine how styling life means styling death and how architecture (in the broadest possible sense) is involved in this continuous process of stylisation. To do so, architecture and perception, duration and individuation, will all converge in practising how one can die without dying in order to enunciate a life.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationArchitectures of Life and Death
Subtitle of host publicationThe Eco-Aesthetics of the Built Environment
EditorsStavros Kousoulas, Andrej Radman
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherRowman & Littlefield
Chapter1
Pages3-19
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-5381-4753-5
ISBN (Print)978-1-5381-4752-8
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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