JOSHUA COOPER: YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND: AI TO AI
// IMAGINE [ENTRANCE TO THE BLACK EXPERIENCE]
Imagine getting pulled over and searched by the police.
Imagine your heart racing and hands shaking.
Imagine having drugs planted in your car.
Imagine being falsely accused.
Imagine your body hitting the black and white paint.
Imagine having to look over your shoulder.
Imagine going to the wrong neighborhood.
Imagine feeling like an animal in a space or being followed by the store owner
Imagine being tolerated but not accepted.
Imagine having PTSD from the conditions you live in.
Imagine having your culture exploited.
Now, imagine a space without colorism and urban PTSD. Where space becomes a safe haven.
Imagine a space where there aren’t any cop cars riding up and down the block, or helicopter above the place you sleep.
A space where corruption is lost and the community controls the space. Where the old teach the young.
Imagine the feel of grandma’s hug and the alien crawling towards the tantalizing smell of collard greens.
Imagine protection from an oppressor by the alien.
Imagine a space that is maintained by the alien. Where they roam free and cleanse the mistakes made by industrialism.
Imagine a space that is overtaken by the nonhuman. Not by force, but by the natural death of the alienated.
Imagine a space that has been repurposed from the ruins of capitalism and discrimination.
YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, NOR CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT THE ALIENATED ARE GOING THROUGH. THIS SPACE IS NOT MEANT FOR YOUR EMPATHY OR YOUR GENTRIFICATION.
Imagine getting pulled over and searched by the police.
Imagine your heart racing and hands shaking.
Imagine having drugs planted in your car.
Imagine being falsely accused.
Imagine your body hitting the black and white paint.
Imagine having to look over your shoulder.
Imagine going to the wrong neighborhood.
Imagine feeling like an animal in a space or being followed by the store owner
Imagine being tolerated but not accepted.
Imagine having PTSD from the conditions you live in.
Imagine having your culture exploited.
Now, imagine a space without colorism and urban PTSD. Where space becomes a safe haven.
Imagine a space where there aren’t any cop cars riding up and down the block, or helicopter above the place you sleep.
A space where corruption is lost and the community controls the space. Where the old teach the young.
Imagine the feel of grandma’s hug and the alien crawling towards the tantalizing smell of collard greens.
Imagine protection from an oppressor by the alien.
Imagine a space that is maintained by the alien. Where they roam free and cleanse the mistakes made by industrialism.
Imagine a space that is overtaken by the nonhuman. Not by force, but by the natural death of the alienated.
Imagine a space that has been repurposed from the ruins of capitalism and discrimination.
YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, NOR CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT THE ALIENATED ARE GOING THROUGH. THIS SPACE IS NOT MEANT FOR YOUR EMPATHY OR YOUR GENTRIFICATION.
Artist Statement
// YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND...
Modern architecture prospered on the idea of innovation, minimalism, and functionalism while rejecting the alien. These spaces were created by white men producing a barrier between the privileged and the oppressed while removing the entities that were considered unclean and uncanny all in the interest of aesthetics.
If architecture is to address the wants, needs, and desires of the alien and the alienated that were once whitewashed in modern spaces, it must reintroduce the alien to create ecological systems and rebuild from the carcasses of modernism so as to confront oppression in architectural systems.
The Packard Plant sits in the heart of Detroit’s Eastside, between a major freeway and intersection. The plant thrived during the automotive boom; however, the automotive company went out of business in the early 50s. Since the 60s, the infrastructures that housed the automakers have been left abandoned with no plans of demolition or rehabilitation. The alien began invading both at the larger scale of the factories and at the individual scale of the house due to the desertion of the automotive industry and workers that survived from them. The building that was once a statue of modernism, industrialism, capitalism, and discrimination is now overtaken by the same entities that it’s trying to displace. The Packard plant, and the community that resides around it, is the effect of a dying economy and racial tension that rippled throughout the city.
To incorporate the alien onto the site, one must control their desires. Conjuring is the idea of the alienated calling upon the alien to appear. The alienated does this by creating attraction spots around the site and building in order for the alien to expose itself from the underground. In the smaller physical tests, the ritual of conjuring started with attracting the ants with sugar water to result in canals being built in the sand. This ideology of conjuring is derived from both ectoplasm photography that depicts an exorcism, or an evil spirit that is extracted from the body and also VEVE symbols, which represented the Astral forces descending to earth during African voodoo ceremonies. Just like ectoplasm and VeVe, the alien is being extracted and exposed from the cracks of the Packard building.
In this world we live in, we can only trust our instincts, our hearts, and our queens. When we are born, no one told us how hard life would actually be for us. The generation before paved the way and broke barriers for us to have a more comfortable experience; however, the world feels like it hasn’t pushed forward, and we are stuck under constant scorn and surveillance. They watch us 24/7, like a guard watching an inmate. We’re institutionalized to think this is normal to live in fear, go where we’re told, and to understand why they do it.
We try to build our own spaces of concealment, but they still find a way to gentrify and appropriate the only areas we have. We slaved to get a seat at the table, taking the bare minimum to create, while also forming a culture where we can thrive, but it seems that it all goes to waste due to the oppressor. The oppressor then steals and capitalizes on the success of the space. The horrifying part of this situation is that we work like machines in order to provide for the family, but society turns the other way. They don’t see us picking the dead homies up from the ground, the tears in our queen’s eyes when we get added to the pile or the constant ridicule from the oppressor. So, when the time comes when we are exposed and create our own table in our skins with crowns on our heads, don’t try to understand the struggle because you will never understand how we got to this point of excellence.
Modern architecture prospered on the idea of innovation, minimalism, and functionalism while rejecting the alien. These spaces were created by white men producing a barrier between the privileged and the oppressed while removing the entities that were considered unclean and uncanny all in the interest of aesthetics.
If architecture is to address the wants, needs, and desires of the alien and the alienated that were once whitewashed in modern spaces, it must reintroduce the alien to create ecological systems and rebuild from the carcasses of modernism so as to confront oppression in architectural systems.
The Packard Plant sits in the heart of Detroit’s Eastside, between a major freeway and intersection. The plant thrived during the automotive boom; however, the automotive company went out of business in the early 50s. Since the 60s, the infrastructures that housed the automakers have been left abandoned with no plans of demolition or rehabilitation. The alien began invading both at the larger scale of the factories and at the individual scale of the house due to the desertion of the automotive industry and workers that survived from them. The building that was once a statue of modernism, industrialism, capitalism, and discrimination is now overtaken by the same entities that it’s trying to displace. The Packard plant, and the community that resides around it, is the effect of a dying economy and racial tension that rippled throughout the city.
To incorporate the alien onto the site, one must control their desires. Conjuring is the idea of the alienated calling upon the alien to appear. The alienated does this by creating attraction spots around the site and building in order for the alien to expose itself from the underground. In the smaller physical tests, the ritual of conjuring started with attracting the ants with sugar water to result in canals being built in the sand. This ideology of conjuring is derived from both ectoplasm photography that depicts an exorcism, or an evil spirit that is extracted from the body and also VEVE symbols, which represented the Astral forces descending to earth during African voodoo ceremonies. Just like ectoplasm and VeVe, the alien is being extracted and exposed from the cracks of the Packard building.
In this world we live in, we can only trust our instincts, our hearts, and our queens. When we are born, no one told us how hard life would actually be for us. The generation before paved the way and broke barriers for us to have a more comfortable experience; however, the world feels like it hasn’t pushed forward, and we are stuck under constant scorn and surveillance. They watch us 24/7, like a guard watching an inmate. We’re institutionalized to think this is normal to live in fear, go where we’re told, and to understand why they do it.
We try to build our own spaces of concealment, but they still find a way to gentrify and appropriate the only areas we have. We slaved to get a seat at the table, taking the bare minimum to create, while also forming a culture where we can thrive, but it seems that it all goes to waste due to the oppressor. The oppressor then steals and capitalizes on the success of the space. The horrifying part of this situation is that we work like machines in order to provide for the family, but society turns the other way. They don’t see us picking the dead homies up from the ground, the tears in our queen’s eyes when we get added to the pile or the constant ridicule from the oppressor. So, when the time comes when we are exposed and create our own table in our skins with crowns on our heads, don’t try to understand the struggle because you will never understand how we got to this point of excellence.
//YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND. [VM-001]
YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND PRESENTATION