Protocol of Urban Use for Motorcycle Riders
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The Law regulates traffic, allows to cross or not to cross the street, lets you drive your car, go to the cinema, enter the zoo, or stay in the comfort of your home. It allows you to turn the TV on, connect to the internet or read a newspaper. Even the simplest acts are controlled to some extent by some legal agreement, limitation or ban, be at a public or a private space. A visit to the loo, the Holy Grail of private spaces, is even regulated by legal matters of access to water, building regulations in relation to the materiality and disposition of the pipes, the legal property of the sewers and the rules for residue dispossal, the disposition of the bathroom relative to the rest of the house relative to its location and which goods you have access to in case of emergenct or the tyoe of paint and other bulding materials used. And, going further into an even more intimate level: the way in which one goes to the restroom or if one can allow themselves a few more minutes or must hurry for a relative or coworker that’s waiting, all of this depends on a complete set of rules which caracterizes society, culture and individuality. A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Welcome to the lawscape
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As I prepared to start the week , one thought started to creep in my mind: Fashion (n): 1) : the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time How can we, in the face of ecological disaster, still enforce this mode of life with everchanging codes, constantly actualizing our persona? However, after that Juxtaposition lecture, I thought: Fashion (verb): 1 : to give shape or form to : to make, construct, or create (something) usually with careful attention or by the use of imagination and ingenuity
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The project which caught most my attention was the one entitled ‘Using one’s feet has become an option of last resort’. As the artist was presenting the context in which her work was created, I started to develop a great liking of her process, one in which she was seeming to use the space she occupies not as a mere support of her self-expression, but also as a platform for other’s situation, One great quality of her pieces, it seemed to me, was their ability to feel like a collection of thoughts, situations and voices translated into a series of objects. She further embodied this ideas in her reply to the artist students asking her about the mitigation of her artistic priorities in collective works: she spoke candidly and with great naturality about developing her ideas in a collaborative environement, and as a situated practice.
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Tra My Nguyen’s work evoqued some thoughts. I noted this simple diagram upon reflection:
Objects + Aesthetics Shape of Space Function + Use + Lawscape
In seeing how she had pointed to the rules, both written and immaterial, and their shaping of the public space through the example of the ‘Street Ninjas’, Bernard Tschumi’s work came to mind: ‘‘Look at it this way: The game of architecture is an intricate play with rules that you may break or accept. These rules, like so many knots that cannot be untied, have the erotic significance of bondage: The more numerous and sophisticated the restraints, the greater the pleasure.’’ Very purposefully, Nguyen shows this idea of the lawscape and the apparatus it deploys, whose expressions become quite subtle when they deal with less formalized power structures and rules, such as gender and/or racism. Her rigid dresses which force the body into certain positions are to me a callback of this ideas of ‘ropes and ru8les’.
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I think the strategies that Nguyen creates to comment and change the paradigm of her choice has a degree of sofistication which is in my opinion crucial to tackle complex and intricate subjects and power structures. Two seemingly opposing forces occur simultaneously: as she intervenes the human body, she forces ir to shape itself through the garment to adopt a certain form; and when she modifies the object, the motorcycle, it attains a level of emancipation from its pre-established aesthetics and signifiers. This is what drew me to create the aforementioned diagram: protocols and rules are shaping our landscape, certainly, but the inanimate objects and their attributes are also creating bounds. Tra My Nguyen acts on both those levels. From the architectural perspective, perhaps we can relate this idea of the object as part of the normative apparatus in linking it with the view of the city as an archipielago of ideological labs (Pier Vittorio Aureli). As such, perhaps motorbikes are one island in the archipielago, perhaps their presence and aesthetics have an ethical output, and their presence in the public sphere might shape not only the life of those inhabiting the city but of the city itself. This is most dangerous, as it seems that motorbiking is a ‘Man’s, Man’s, Man’s world’: created for and by men, and supported, paraphrasing Nguyen, on the backs of migrant women and their labor. The instruction manual warns us : hazardous substances cause environemental damage.
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The greatest influence any single element of the XXth century might have had is indeed the automobile, and the motorbike might follow a similar path. Looking at the process Nguyen fcreates in striving for emancipation, I feel I learned to reinterpret and disrupt complex protocols, as well as the objects that support them and the aesthetics they hold. I must also mention how I appreciated her sincerity and the intimacy with which she spoke of the creative (or not so creative) processes that she undertakes, and I was impacted by her crude depiction of practice and the apparent absence of creativity in certain moments. It is also important to reconcile with reality.
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Sources: Aprilia Tuono V4 owner’s manual, accessed at https://www. manualslib.com/download/1133300/Aprilia-Tuono-V4.html Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas Spatial Justice Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere Routledge (2015) Tschumi, Bernard Advertisement for Architecture (1977) Aureli, Pier Vittorio The possibility of an absolute architecture MIT press (2011)
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