“You are embued with tolerance …”

Abstract

This article tells the back story of a performance dedicated to bearing witness to a corner of a room in a 1990s’ New Zealand kitset home. The video meeting, you in detail performs a love poem that asks for forgiveness before demolishing the wall. The video tracks an interlude where the space of tolerance related to building construction meets open-mindedness, empathy and compassion. This performance inquired how maintaining respect for others extends to material processes and interactions. Underpinned by Jane Bennett’s new materialism philosophy, the article draws from poet Francis Ponge’s muse on the muteness of objects, architect Marco Frascari’s teachings and the scholarship of archaeologist Lucy Shoe Merritt.

Keywords:

• material
• construction detail
• performance
• specifications
• tolerance

Notes

Notes

1 The first few lines of the poem read in the video meeting, you in detail (2013), by Julieanna Preston. Available online: https://vimeo.com/278844210/

2 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Indianapolis, IN: Duke University Press, 2010).

3 Preston, meeting, you in detail.

4 Vitruvius, Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. H. M. Morgan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926).

5 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, ed. John Cava (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

6 Francis D. K. Ching and Cassandra Adams, Building Construction Illustrated (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008).

7 Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale Detail,” VIA 7: The Building of Architecture (1994): 23–37.

8 For example, Francis Ponge, Mute Objects of Expression (New York: Archipelago, 2008).

9 I have addressed this same topic in “Neutral, not so,” a book chapter that also prefaces a performance video; Julieanna Preston, Performing Matter: Interior Surface and Feminist Actions (Baunach, Germany: AADR Spurbuchverlag, 2014). Genevieve Baudoin expands upon tolerance related to the architectural detail, but not to tolerance from a social perspective; Genevieve Baudoin, “A Matter of Tolerance,” The Plan Journal (2016). Available online: http://www.theplanjournal.com/article/matter-tolerance/ (accessed November 12, 2018). Another source is Saul Fisher, “Philosophy of Architecture,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015). Available online: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/architecture/ (accessed November 12, 2018).

10 “Mauri: (noun) life principle, life force, vital essence, special nature, a material symbol of a life principle, source of emotions – the essential quality and vitality of a being or entity. Also used for a physical object, individual, ecosystem or social group in which this essence is located”; Māori Dictionary. Available online: http://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/3960 (accessed October 21, 2018).

11 Bruno Latour, “Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?,” ISIS: The History of Science Society, 98 (2007): 138–142.

12 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).

13 Greg Harmann, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (London: Penguin, 2018).

14 Bennett, Vibrant Matter.

15 David G. Plank, “Le Grand Recueil: Francis Ponge’s Optimistic Materialism,” Modern Language Quarterly, 26, no. 2 (1965): 302.

16 Francis Ponge and Violaine Huisman, “The Table,” World Literature Today, 80, no. 5 (2006): 52.

17 John Stout, “The Text as Object: Francis Pong’s Verbal Still Lifes,” Symposium, 47, no. 1 (1993): 53.

18 Ponge and Huisman, “The Table,” 52.

19 Robert Melançon, “My Creative Method,” Maisonnueve: Quarterly of Arts, Opinions and Ideas (2002). Available online: https://maisonneuve.org/article/2002/11/18/my-creative-method/ (accessed December 2, 2017).

20 Stout, “The Text as Object,” 50.

21 Plank, “Le Grand Recueil,” 304.

22 Stout, “Text as Object,” 52.

23 Plank, “Grand Recueil,” 308.

24 My recent publications include performances such as RPM Hums at the Performance Arcade, Wellington, New Zealand, 2018; murmur at the old Town Wall, Newcastle, UK, 2017; windwoundweatherwirewovenwoman at Matiu Island, New Zealand, at the Performing, Writing: A Symposium in Four Turns, 2017; WANING at Birling Gap, UK, hosted by Brighton University, ONCA Gallery and The National Trust, September 2016; and journal articles such as “four castings” in On Writing & Performance/Performance Research, 23, no. 1; “SPEAK matter SPEAK,” Studies in Material Thinking, 16 (How Matter Comes to Matter through Transversal Practice: Matter, Ecology and Relationality) (2017): 2–10; and “Reconciling Carboniferous Accretions: A Performative Script,” Architecture and Culture (Into the Hidden Abode: Architecture and Production), 3, no. 3 (2015): 281–296.

25 Ching and Adams, Building Construction Illustrated.

26 “Kitset homes” are a New Zealand name for modular residential house often designed with option packages for extra features or variation in stylistic conventions such as window types and interior finishes. Developer-driven kitset homes are pre-engineered and designed to lower construction material and building permit costs. For example, see https://www.trenzhomes.nz/.

27 Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, 2.

28 Ibid., 3–4.

29 Ibid., 23.

30 Edward Ford, Five Houses, Ten Details (New York: Princeton Architectural Press: 2009).

31 Ibid., 6–11.

32 Ingrid Edlund-Berry, “Architctural Theory and Practice: Vitruvian Principles and ‘Full-Scale Detail,’” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 50 (2005): 10.

33 For example, see Lucy Shoe Merritt. Profiles of Greek Mouldings, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).

34 Ibid., 10.

35 Ibid., 5.

36 Frascari, “Tell-the-Tale Detail,” 25.

37 Ibid., 24.

38 Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julieanna Preston

Julieanna Preston is an artist, writer and academic based in New Zealand. Her research probes the vitality and virtuality of materials and atmospheres through site-responsive live artworks coupled to a performance writing practice. www.julieannapreston.space