mind control, aka brainwashing, is generally achieved by: sleep deprivation, intense humiliation, and excessive repetition. according to the lifton model (aka- the cult checklist) brainwashing is achieved through limited relations with the outer world, planned spontaneity, confession, and an intense pushing to an unattainable perfection.
welcome to 317.
the 317 level is the first semester of grad school for those of us in the m.arch.3 program. (there aren't usually periods in between the letters of the program, but it's a simple way to explain the title pronunciation to you outsider people who wonder what the significance of march third is) anyway halfway through the semester, in a meeting with my studio critic, she finally outright stated the purpose of the semester... to "break you."
it's the first day of the rest of our lives. 37 first year march3s were given somewhere around 25 square feet of work and storage space (each) in the west wing of the second floor of givens hall. i had a studio desk! unfortunately, little did i know this was going to be not only my work space, but also my social space, and my living space for the next four months of my measly little existence.
it was almost three days into the program when i pulled my first all-nighter. now, if by all-nighter you think i went to bed at 5am and woke up at 8am... that's considered a full night's sleep in our world (3 hours = sleep cycle). no, an all-nighter is when you go home at 7am to move your car and shower, turn around and come right back to studio. ok, maybe there's 10 mins of some old-school saved by the bell is watched while you sit on your couch and scarf down a bowl of cereal before hopping on your bike and heading back to givens.
average number of all-nighters per week in 317 = 1.5. step one of the brainwashing has begun.
project one: relief
this only describes the three dimensional quality of the work and has nothing to do with the lightening of an oppressive force (quite the opposite...). ok, relief. fine. i did this similar exercise in my first year design studio in undergrad. but it was clay and not bristol. we made one and not umpteen! and we had weeks to work and not 44 hours!
i know umpteen can be seen by some as an exaggerated number where we probably just made like, nine or something. no. we made nine reliefs for that second day of studio! (why the eff did you think i pulled all-nighter numero uno!?). after refining whichever relief our studio critic chose for us out of our pile of mangled paper we were to make four of them. of course she chose the relief i had made with two heavily worked sheets of bristol, so i was making eight of them to be cast in resin. eight sheets of bristol, at like, over an hour a page to do! excessive repetition anyone?
then the resin... resin is one of those highly toxic solutions we get to mix and pour over our reliefs to suspend them in a solid only to be sawn apart and explored in section. cool idea, right? but this shit is sold by the pint and we each need gallons.
really we just needed a substance to dry clear and be solid enough for us to be able to cut on a band saw. time to get creative. so in one weekend, the studio of 12 had hit every art and craft shop in a 30 mile radius of givens buying all the casting resin, glycerine, and fake water (the kind you see at cheap restaurants where they put silk flowers in a vase and then add this fake water shit and it's supposed to look real... riiiight) that every store had in stock.
well that excursion took the entire weekend just to get the supplies and we were supposed to have these cast by monday!? impossible scenario #1. not only was there the time shock of trying to get all this done after the resin scavenger hunt, but then there was the sticker shock... each person shelled out between $200-600 on casting materials and vessels. yeah, that fake water shit's expensive when you need gallons of it.
ok, time crunch to mid-review number one. the scheduled date for our first mid-review was to be on a friday some time after the resin incident (i.e. our castings were supposed to be part of our project... but the actual timeline's a bit of a blur-- see rate of all-nighters). well on monday we get the announcement that one of our critics can't make it on friday he has an unexpected meeting in new orleans that day. i've worked in architecture for almost three years and i've seen how meetings get scheduled. one doesn't get an unexpected meeting on friday several states away! postpone the review? never! so now it's on wednesday. i love having 48 hours less to prepare. great.
now we crank harder than ever to get the minimum requirements ready for review on wednesday and wednesday afternoon, after another all-nighter, we're all informed that the review is now on friday because aforementioned "meeting" in n'ollans had been cancelled. yeah right, there was no meeting in the first place, they just wanted us to crank twice as hard to prepare for our first presentation. fuckers. this week's all-nighter tally-2.
it's friday now and our presenting cherries are all individually popped in front of a room full of our peers and a panel of three professors. we'll just refer to them as "the ho," "derelicte," and my critic "la porteña." la porteña, in true proteña fashion spoke with a bit of a lisp which would manifest itself in highly mimicked phrases such as "thith ith a dithath-ter" and "you need to have a thith-tem." both of which were heavily sprinkled into the mix of comments (primarily negative) directed at each student as we stood in front of the entire 317 class, sleep deprived and nervous trying to speak some archibabble about our first project. the review itself wasn't that bad, but as we broke down into our respective studios for more verbal chastising we were promptly told how shitily each of us were doing (also in front of our peers). thanks, puta. that embarrassment, as well as knowing we let her down, put together with exhaustion led to the first studio tears of the semester. i had to find myself a quiet corner of campus to wallow and to add injury to insult received four mosquito bites in the span of a five-minute phone conversation pep-talk.
the remainder of 317 was comprised three more projects and of some combination of similar events. at the end of each review we'd have a studio "chat" about how we all did in each review coupled with a survey of how many hours did you sleep the night before. let the confession begin. sleep was the enemy. this mentality led us to work right up until the moment where our shit is pinned up to the wall for examination and usually public ridicule.
after the longest four months of my life, it was time for final review. review week was spent in a similar fashion to the rest of the semester, only intensified. this was my moment to prove that i've learned something with the countless hours spent slaving away at models and drawings and drawings and models. the final three day crunch came around and p (my studio neighbor) and i turned to each other in disgust. we had been in the same clothes for over 50 hours.
dirty and exhausted i opted to skip that last drawing and go home to put on a cute outfit for review. my project was shit anyway, i at least wanted to feel nice presenting it. luckily i was one of the first to present, get the fucker over with. all semester we were lectured to keep our presentations as terse as possible to give the critic time to critique you. the ho had one of his former colleagues from an east cost school fly in to sit on our review with some other faculty members. this was supposed to be our special treat.
by the time i presented my capacity for verbal communication had been severely diminished from exhaustion, starvation, and pure lack of will. the critic comes and sits in front of my work. she's joined by a member of our faculty who had been on my reviews before and another who would later become my next studio proff. we were paused for a brief coffee break and conversation started up about footwear. this is one of my strengths in life. i stood in my pair of brown tweed stacked heels (i always wear heels when i present, it's my own personal stage) as the two women on my review complimented me and smiled. i was elated for about two seconds until i shifted my gaze from admiring my own footwear to see the smile on the visiting critic's face. something was wrong. oh no, don't stare.
the way the final reviews had been laid out the room had one long wall and three walls that could fold out creating a higher surface area to volume ratio for expanded pin-up space. the resulting space were these narrow segregated corridors prohibiting too many people from watching the other reviews and thus reviewers. which is why when the visiting critic smiled at me i noticed her missing tooth for the first time. not being from appalachia, missing teeth are a bit rare in my world and tend to catch my eye. my sleep deprivation prohibited any hint of a poker face as i quickly averted my eyes in shock. oh yeah, smooth move. but seriously, you're a professor at a reputable institution in a field where you're judged on presentation both of your work and of yourself. and since modern cosmetic dentistry is pretty far advanced in this country, please fix the gaping hole in your face. or simply, never smile. thanks.
all are finally back from coffee refills and are ready for me to begin my presentation. all i could think of while trying not to look at the missing tooth and to stop talking as soon as possible. let the work speak for itself, right? time paused as i blurted out some incoherent archibabble about the installation i had designed.
after weeks of effort and money and time and energy, the first thing out of the clampett's mouth-- "that's it?"
i zoned out after that. don't remember a thing. i may have fallen asleep while standing there or simply blocked out the verbal blows to my project that i really didn't care about anymore. all i cared about was it being over.
my presentation was second to last before lunch started. zoned-out and dressed-up andrea, the zombie, made her way upstairs to studio where a magic bean bag chair appeared next to my friend's desk. i was just going to sit down for a minute. by the time i came-to reviews for the day were over. woops. but so was my semester. an anti-climactic ending to a roller-coaster semester. and all i could think about was... that's it?
somehow i made it on a plane back to nj for three weeks of no studio. then it would start up all over again.
tbc.
"Inspired by the newly created department of Academic Sustainability at Pratt Institute, this exhibition in two parts will document both theoretical and creative approaches to the design of urban streets by invited guests Amy Guggenheim, artist, writer and professor, Pratt Institute; Mitchell Joachim, architect, designer and co-founder Terreform One; and Leon Reid IV, street artist, teacher, and Pratt alumnus, as well as document the process of a local realized project."
