Interview at MARK #52

Ethel Baraona Pohl.

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Florian Heilmeyer Photo

César Reyes

‘There’s a different format for each need’ Ethel Baraona Pohl believes in learning by doing, collective criticism and books that never end.

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Ethel Baraona Pohl

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Ethel Baraona Pohl calls herself a ‘critic, blogger and curator’ yet seems to be even more than these three terms entail. Being immensely active in social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and running an independent publishing house, dpr-barcelona, together with César Reyes, she can be seen as a new kind of architecture mediator, a communicator who makes use of every device and channel available.

Her childhood was, quite literally, moving. Born in El Salvador, her family moved to Costa Rica when she was six years old, moved back to El Salvador when she was 12, and, when she had just started studying architecture, left again – this time for Guatemala, where she finished her studies before moving to Barcelona and finally settling down – for the time being.

One negative aspect about books is their weight, especially when you move house, and that’s something you’ve had to do a lot. Were books important to you when you were young?

ETHEL BARAONA POHL: Definitely. I grew up among books. This is something that I have to thank my parents for, as every birthday or important date I received a new book. My grandma also used to have the perfect book for me every time I visited her. Life in Costa Rica was peaceful and quiet, especially in comparison with El Salvador, where civil war was really intense. I was very young, but I remember happy things, too, like local bookshops that also provided library services, allowing children to read and exchange books.

Yet at age 12, you and your family moved back to El Salvador.

Yes, I lived there again until I turned 19.

Those were the most intense years of the civil war, but what I recall most are the very close ties I had with friends and family. Those ties were the shelter I needed to protect me from the armed environment we were living in. Maybe it was a typical reaction to war, mixed with the normal moods of a teenager, but I was not afraid. Sad but true, you really get used to seeing soldiers and guns in your everyday life.

Maybe it sounds strange, but I enjoyed those years. Looking back, I think they marked me in a profound way, and taught me to appreciate and take care of what is really important: friends, family and lots of simple things. And also, those years are basic and so important to my current perception of economics, politics and social issues – and to my position regarding such matters.

Why did you go for architecture then?

Actually, architecture was my second preference. I wanted to study journalism. During the many years of war, journalism via the mass media was the most exciting practice I was exposed to.

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But my parents thought it was too dangerous and didn’t support the idea. So I studied architecture, in which I found a perfect balance of my other interests: art and mathematics.

How do you rate the quality of the education you received in Guatemala?

When I arrived in Spain, I realized that my lack of knowledge was considerable – especially in architecture theory. I know that it has changed in the meantime, but back then the profession in Latin America was very much focused on building, construction and materials.

Did your affinity with books continue at university?

Yes, but we had to discover theory ourselves. In the early 1990s, it was really expensive to buy architecture books, which had to be imported

‘A critic today should be very careful in selecting his or her sources’ from Europe and the United States and were subject to customs duties. I enjoyed getting lost in the library and coming across books and magazines that were based not only on photos or drawings but on fresh ideas. I remember reading Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography, which had a great impact on me. It was the first architecture book I read that was not just about buildings.

When did you start writing about architecture?

After moving to Spain, I began writing for

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Ethel Baraona Pohl

a magazine called Constructiva, which no longer exists. Working for that magazine helped me to rediscover my passion for words, and I started contributing to other magazines as well. Then I coauthored a book with César Reyes and Argentinian architect Claudio Pirillo – Sustainable Architecture, published by Editorial Pencil in 2007 – and, realizing that we wanted to work in this field, César and I founded dpr-barcelona.

In an interview with Shumi Bose, you and César describe dpr-barcelona as the ‘happy by-product of frustration’ – what does that mean? What sort of frustration?

Well, we had originally intended to work as writers and researchers, not as publishers. Being naive, we simply worked on the topics we were interested in – those based on theory, politics, economics, social issues and the city. We quickly discovered that the publishing houses we approached were much more interested in making a profit than in sharing knowledge. Our frustration resulted from the many rejections we got for Piel•Skin, our first book. In the end we published it as a digital book, freely accessible online. The fantastic feedback we received encouraged us to keep working in the same way, and we still do. That’s why we call our enterprise a ‘happy by-product of frustration’.

I know you prefer to be called a ‘professional amateur’. Why is that?

A professional amateur is someone with a passion for work that some people might think of as ‘nonaccredited’ – someone with a firm commitment to certain ethical beliefs and references.

I came across this idea while working on the Spanish edition of Did Someone Say Participate?

by Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar. Because I have no formal training in how to run a publishing house, I identify strongly with the ‘professional amateur’ concept. But I am enthusiastic and highly committed to the idea of publishing.

Can you describe how dpr operates?

Our idea of an independent publishing house is based on networking, on learning by doing, and on sharing and distributing knowledge.

Every book and project we do is different. We love determining whether a new project will end up as a printed product, a multimedia project, a website, a digital essay – or something completely different. We work with a variety of people to respond to a diversity of needs. The way we work helps us to control budgets and to stay small enough to be an independent outfit.

How do you decide which medium or format is the right one for each project?

In line with McLuhan’s famous statement – ‘the medium is the message’ – we believe the work of an editor has evolved from editing content only to editing both the content and the medium. We have more tools than ever before, and an essential part of our work is about understanding the qualities and characteristics of each format and defining how to present and distribute content – keeping in mind size, theme, audience, et cetera.

Can you give us an example?

One of my favourites is Data Thanatology, which we published two years ago on a floppy disk.

In it, we reflected on the ephemerality of formats used during the past 15 years, a topic that’s linked to the rise of new technologies but also to economics and [planned] obsolescence. We challenged contributors to send us a file – audio, image or text – smaller than 130 KB, so that all ten files would fit on a disk that holds 1.33 MB. The user becomes an active participant, too, when faced with the challenge of finding an old computer that reads floppy disks.

You’ve experimented with open source books written collectively on the internet.

What has been your experience? Do you believe in the intelligence of the swarm?

Indeed! We deeply believe in swarm intelligence and in new ways of researching and exchanging knowledge. The main issue with open platforms is authorship, which has undergone fundamental changes caused by creative commons licences on the web. We see collective publishing experiments as part of live research, which is connected to other people doing similar things with new media, authorship, replication and the like. It’s a kind of contemporary mass experiment related to the ideas in The Library of Babel, a book

by Borges, and Toute la mémoire du monde, a short film by Alain Resnais. Think of it as a book that never ends, which is alive and can change from one moment to the next.

Today, when nearly everyone can access information from so many sources, has the critic become less important or perhaps even more relevant?

The main challenge for a critic who wants to stay relevant lies in the way he or she selects, reads and discusses information. In the past, the critic was someone who worked alone, reflecting on architecture and producing strong statements.

This kind of solitude doesn’t exist any more. If you’re a critic today, you should be very careful in selecting your sources – such as the people you follow on Twitter – to avoid getting lost among posts about food or cats. At the same time, you should be open to discussing your statements

using new channels. As Mimi Zeiger pointed out, the biggest change we have witnessed in this field is the creation of a new form of criticism generated by flows of information and the use of social networks – she calls it ‘collective criticism’.

Working as a critic today involves all sorts of platforms for debate, including lectures, workshops, video conferences and curatorial practices

‘In order to be an architect, I have to avoid calling myself an architect’ – all of which are linked to what a critic does. Our task is basically sharing useful information to help others understand the practice and to pose questions that function as a catalyst for debate, discussion and critical thinking.

Do you think that ‘collective criticism’ means the future of publishing will shift more and more to the online and digital world?

I think the future of books is a complex set of layers that are interconnected but not contradictory to one another. In this era of ‘big data’, we need to go back to the essence of the term ‘publishing’, which means ‘the act of making things public’. The various formats we have available are not antagonistic – they are dynamic processes that can interact or not interact, depending on their own needs. Nowadays you can make a strong statement or post a manifesto in a tweet, store data in DNA and experiment with algorithmic publications. But sometimes you just want to relax and read an old poetry book that allows you to discover another world. There’s a different format for each need, and this is the future of publishing.

What does the printed original mean to you then?

Now that we’ve discussed the use of different formats in a rational way, I want to add an irrational thought: I love to smell books. It is the first thing I do every time I buy a book or even open the pages of a book in a shop or library. I simply can’t help myself. I love technology and digital publications, but I am still profoundly in love with the feel and smell of printed books.

Both César and you trained as architects, yet you call yourself a ‘critic, blogger and curator’. Are you not an architect as well?

Can you imagine yourself returning to the practice?

I do love the practice, but I find it incredibly frustrating that so many architects believe architecture is only about building. When I consider current views on architecture, I see two basic problems. The first is the notion that you are an architect only if you work in the building industry or in a traditional architecture studio. To us, archi-

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tecture is so much more than that. We’re doing architecture every time we publish a book, curate an exhibition or share a post on our blog, because we’re helping to construct a wider perception of what architecture is and how it affects its playing field.

And the second problem?

That’s the issue of accreditation. Over the past 20 years, academia has changed from a place for learning and sharing knowledge into a big business with a clear economic objective. So what does it mean nowadays to say ‘I am an architect’? Do you mean you’ve paid a lot of money to get a good job designing and constructing buildings? To me, the role of the architect is expanding and adapting to new times, new technologies and new ways of working. On the dpr-barcelona website, I use terms to describe myself that seem to explain more accurately what we do. ‘Critic, blogger and curator’ are clearly established positions within the expanded field of architecture. The word ‘architect’ basically includes those three, even though I don’t call myself an architect. If I were to do that, I’d receive little more than proposals and commissions for buildings. My situation is rather paradoxical: in order to be an architect as I think of ‘an architect’, I have to avoid calling myself an architect.

Books that are important to Ethel Baraona Pohl George Orwell, Why I Write, Penguin Books, London, 2004 (essay first published 1946) The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2008 Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2012 Chantal Mouffe, On the Political, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2005 Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza, Verso Books, London, 2012 Lebbeus Woods, Pamphlet Architecture 15: War and Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1993 Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City: Archizoom Associati, Editions HYX, Orléans, 2006 (first published 1969) Craig Buckley and Jean-Louis Violeau (eds.), Utopie: Texts and Projects, 1967-1978, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2011 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, 1991 Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Verso Books, London, 2005

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