>Nobody probably understood the idea that the stone facades of ancient
>societies were obsessions with time, as labor in stone. Building this
>imaginary temple to Labor, isn't about the deification of labor, but
>about the dialectic between all the elements of its creation, the land
>formation, the eco-systems, the materials of construction, the found
>design from the interlacing of imaginary labor with material labor, a
>dialectic conducted in real time.
>
>A traditional Zen rock garden is a expression of it, say Ryoan-ji in
>the Kyoto Imperial Palaces, from the Muromachi period. That is, these
>gardens arise from these conceptions and their interplay with the
>materials that form them. Whether this is the traditional Japanese
>conception of what these gardens are, I don't know. What I can give,
>is how I interpreted them and learned from them.
>
>For Doug. Is this organistic clap trap? Yes. Although such claptrap
>with some nuance, it can be made to take in a considerable quantity of
>the world's cultural traditions. But take a look at Isamu Noguchi's
>work and imagine making it, try to resuscitate the forms through their
>historical antecedents and associations, like the gardens of Kyoto. A
>NOT very good example is the Sunken Garden for the Chase Manhattan
>Bank Plaza. Its only real virtue (if its still there, cleaned and
>functioning) is you can go see it. This in a certain critical sense is
>a good example of how monuments to Capital presume over the deep or
>long historical traditions that arise from Labor. Of course only
>bankers can afford to buy these things. But see, I am not interested
>in buying them or possessing them in that sense at all. I am
>interested in making them.
I wouldn't go so far as to call your opinion an "organicist claptrap," but it does unpleasantly remind me of John Ruskin of whom I am not fond. If you like arts & crafts, would you be so kind as to move at least into the direction of William Morris? Morris's writings are still afflicted with producerism (much of the reflections of which I omitted from the essay "Useful Work versus Useless Toil" copied below) as well as an ideology of "manliness"; still and all, Morris makes essentially correct points below:
***** William Morris
Useful Work versus Useless Toil
The above title may strike some of my readers as strange. It is assumed by most people nowadays that all work is useful, and by most well-to-do people that all work is desirable. Most people, well-to-do or not, believe that, even when a man is doing work which appears to be useless, he is earning his livelihood by it -- he is "employed," as the phrase goes; and most of those who are well-to-do cheer on the happy worker with congratulations and praises, if he is only "industrious" enough and deprives himself of all pleasure and holidays in the scared cause of labour. In short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself -- a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.
Let us grant, first, that the race of man must either labour or perish. Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis; we must win it by toil of some sort of degree. Let us see, then, if she does not give us some compensation for this compulsion to labour, since certainly in other matters she takes care to make the acts necessary to the continuance of life in the individual and the race not only endurable, but even pleasurable.
You may be sure that she does so, that it is of the nature of man, when he is not diseased, to take pleasure in his work under certain conditions. And, yet, we must say in the teeth of the hypocritical praise of all labour, whatsoever it may be, of which I have made mention, that there is some labour which is so far from being a blessing that it is a curse; that it would be better for the community and for the worker if the latter were to fold his hands and refuse to work, and either die or let us pack him off to the workhouse or prison -- which you will.
Here, you see, are two kinds of work -- one good, the other bad; one not far removed from a blessing, a lightening of life; the other a mere curse, a burden to life.
What is the difference between them, then? This: one has hope in it, the other has not. It is manly to do the one kind of work, and manly also to refuse to do the other.
What is the nature of the hope which, when it is present in work, makes it worth doing?
It is threefold, I think -- hope of rest, hope of product, hope of pleasure in the work itself; and hope of these also in some abundance and of good quality; rest enough and good enough to be worth having; product worth having by one who is neither a fool nor an ascetic; pleasure enough for all for us to be conscious of it while we are at work; not a mere habit, the loss of which we shall feel as a fidgety man feels the loss of the bit of string he fidgets with.
I have put the hope of rest first because it is the simplest and most natural part of our hope. Whatever pleasure there is in some work, there is certainly some pain in all work, the beast-like pain of stirring up our slumbering energies to action, the beast-like dread of change when things are pretty well with us; and the compensation for this animal pain is animal rest. We must feel while we are working that the time will come when we shall not have to work. Also the rest, when it comes, must be long enough to allow us to enjoy it; it must be longer than is merely necessary for us to recover the strength we have expended in working, and it must be animal rest also in this, that it must not be disturbed by anxiety, else we shall not be able to enjoy it. If we have this amount and kind of rest we shall, so far, be no worse off than the beasts.
As to the hope of product, I have said that Nature compels us to work for that. It remains for us to look to it that we do really produce something, and not nothing, or at least nothing that we want or are allowed to use. If we look to this and use our wills we shall, so far, be better than machines.
The hope of pleasure in the work itself: how strange that hope must seem to some of my readers -- to most of them! Yet I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their energies, and that even beasts rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as a part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.
Thus worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill.
All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves' work -- mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil....
...And yet if there be any work which cannot be made other than repulsive, either by the shortness of its duration or the intermittency of its recurrence, or by the sense of special and peculiar usefulness (and therefore honour) in the mind of the man who performs it freely -- if there be any work which cannot be but a torment to the worker, what then? Well, then, let us see if the heavens will fall on us if we leave it undone, for it were better that they should. The produce of such work cannot be worth the price of it.
[The entire essay is found at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/tmp/useful.htm>.] *****
workers of the world, unite, & take it easy,
Yoshie