An A -
Z Pocket Property is not a natural piece of land, nor is
it a house nor is it a vehicle-and yet it functions as all
three of these. It is a portable and habitable property-a
special area on the earth's surface which has the potential
to create the sensations of security, stability and belonging.
As a public sculpture, a Pocket Property will function
both as a prototype for a livable habitat, and as an investigation
into the human need for private property. I am proposing
that during the summer of 1999 the A - Z Pocket Property
will be anchored in the Sound between Sweden and Denmark
in connection with the housing exhibition "H99." For a period
of time prior to the exhibition itself, I will live on my
Pocket Property as a sort of "test drive," and documentation
from this experience will be later edited into a video detailing
both the pros and cons of living on the A - Z Pocket Property.
If this initial prototype is successful, I am hoping that
it will lead to the eventual production of a community of
these estates which other people will likewise live on,
in conjunction with two upcoming Danish/Swedish housing
exhibitions: "Kulturbro 2000" and "BoOl ."
Although I am proposing this project to be realized far
from my own home, I feel that it has--to a home culture
in the California suburbs, I have become increasingly aware
of how land is "packaged" as a consumable product. The reasons
that we crave ownership of land parcels are interesting
since they seem to be based more on psychological needs
than on physical requirements: the needs for privacy, autonomy
and the need for control over an intimate universe. Historically,
of course, it was land, rather than money that gave people
power, status and identity, and some of these benefits still
seem to hold true--even if only symbolically. Although it
can be said that we are becoming an increasingly mobile
society, the fact that we are simultaneously becoming increasingly
private and isolated within our individual, personal realms
can not be overlooked. I have found life within the private
lot of the suburb to be strangely disconnected from civic
life, as neighbors tend to ignore each other in order to
support the collective fantasy that we each live on our
own private, secluded estate.
But the fantasy of my own Pocket Properties is both a little
more playful and more extreme than the idea of living on
a country estate. The habitat on a Pocket Property is actually
built "into" the land like a cave; in this case the land
is the home. This primitivist fantasy plays with the observation
that many attempts at advanced design actually try to regain
lost ideals. Like most progressive living environments,
my cave simultaneously looks forward and backwards. In this
case, backwards towards a simplified lifestyle free from
the pressures of constant consumption, and forward towards
a sophisticated and personalized environment, which is both
adaptable and mobile. As our world is increasingly opened
up by convenient and affordable travel and communication
breakthroughs, it is not surprising that the most human
reaction is to try to shrink it back down into manageable
proportionsƒ"to go live on a deserted island," so to speak.
In this case the ultimate luxury is not a limitless palette,
but a small, intimate universe in which to explore the parameters
of one's own personal options.
When trying to describe the divisions that are drawn up
to create "packaged" territories out of the earth's crust,
it is difficult to come up with exactly the right terminology.
The word "boundaries" seems inappropriate since in most
cases these are graphic divisions made on maps, rather than
real, physical barriers. These shapes and patterns, like
"cookie cutter" land, reflect many of the political and
social factors during the times in which they were determined.
The oldest and most natural divisions appear visually as
extremely irregular since they may follow some real, geographical
trait such as a mountain range or a river. Other borders
represent territory carved out through battle--pushed back
and forth until the identities of these countries have come
to a seemingly stable balance. I have become interested
in these resulting shapes of land, and how these shapes
themselves can come to function as icons or logos such as
the state of Texas, or the "boot"-shaped country of Italy.
The most modem divisions however are geometric, and while
they make perfect sense on the map, they have little relationship
to the actual geography of the land which they describe.
In 1785 the United States was divided up into a seemingly
infinite expandable grid system composed of one-square-mile
plots so that the land could be better sold off from a centralized
location. Since then each of these plots has been broken
down further and further into smaller grid sections. In
this process the land has become very abstracted. Like products
on a supermarket shelf, efforts have been made to create
regular and evenly proportioned lots. Neighborhoods are
more and more identified as supporting homogeneous groups,
such as ethnic, wealthy, and working class and they now
even support brand names such as Tuscany Hills and Sonata
Estates.
An A-Z Land Brand, such as the Pocket Properties are in
this same sense another consumable land product available
in infinite repetition just like cars off of an assembly
line. Although they are proposed as an island, they could
just as easily be seen as any other type of manufactured
territory-from the bed of a trailer to the flat surface
of a desk. On a formal level, I am interested in the human
reaction to horizontality itself, which inherently; seems
to call out to us to define it's regions, from place mate
to pillows to front lawns to parking spots. I believe that
it is our need to divide these surfaces that suggests a
deeper subconscious urge to defend a territory, and yet
I do not want to claim that this instinct is simple and
without a sense of inner conflict. I think that the metaphor
of the "deserted island" represents both our greatest fear
and our greatest fantasy and it is because of the complexity
and contradictions of our needs that I feel so compelled
to try to create a body of work that explores and addresses
these needs.
Rather than functioning as a commentator--I am proposing
to function as both researcher and guinea pig for my Pocket
Property project. I plan to both design and build this project
and then to live on it for an arranged period of time. I
would also like to suggest that it be made available for
others to live on as well. Although I'm not exactly sure
if it is legal, I must confess that it is my ultimate fantasy
to set the work adrift on the sea so that at the end of
our project it may become yet another part of the earth's
geography-my own private island floating around out there
somewhere in a very big ocean.
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