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ALICIA VELÁZQUEZ

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Stupid Structure

Alicia Velazquez October 16, 2015

Things happen. Without even noticing, you find yourself one day in the middle of a storm, or battlefield. 

Me these days, I'm having a weekly back and forth between two cities. And I came to realize that, what seemed to be a matter of organization, has deeper and more complex consequences that what you can fix using time management tools.

After a month of traveling between Zurich and Brussels, living in two places, working in two studios (and even a third one as I take my transition time as an atelier space), one thing resonated with me a few days ago. This phrase by John Cage, shown by my colleague Eric Guibert during his PhD in progress presentation:

"Structure without life is dead, but life without structure is unseen.
Pure life expresses itself within and through structure"

The moment I saw this quote, I captured it and put it on my iPad's desktop. It resonated and I knew I had to place it where I could face it - until making some sense of it. 

Then, a few days later, this started to hit me. The image of being in the middle of shaking water, with little control from my part - basically enough control so as not to drown. 

How can I learn how to hold balance when everything around and under is in motion? And, more importantly, how do I make a surfboard?

I grabbed texture to try make sense of this. And started to connect the dots, literally. Because when in doubt or in storm, the mundane, daily small routines may give a basic skeleton from which to navigate bigger complexity. Kind of the surf board to help us balance on wavy waters. 

I'd love to hear about your thoughts, reflections and experience:

  • What kind of structure do you hold on to when in the middle of shaky life moments? an how do you materialize your stupid structure?
In Textures Purpose, Video Tags material storytelling, design research, structure, textures, Texture Club
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