to Coen, to Paula

Confirm once more there's a lot of material to work with. I'll just take the drafts of the letters you'd send me as a starting point. (We might post the drafts, the corrections and the final letter on the blog) In the letter addressed to Paula you attempted to quickly and in general terms describe our approach to Rietveld: "How one can make, transform and live in and with space" and very much connected with your interest in the Schroeder house: "how one can delineate a self-initiated space to work in through working with it". However my corrections -"His far reaching influence and how his ideals are being transformed/altered in the present day context... or... how different social, economical, psychological conditions influence perception of his designs."- aren't really clear either. This and the remark about claiming Rietveld as a space of personal design opposed to "the transpiring effect of Modernist mass production ethic where any particularity is reduced to simple and repeatable forms that we can all have access to" pushed my thinking about Rietveld a step further. Some time ago you told me that it was about time for you to make an aesthetic object that the beholder of it desires. This is exactly how I see our interest develop in the direction of Rietveld's designs; it has very much to do with a kind of instant statisfaction, partly due to it's recognizability and openness. As you said our interest in him is seductive. But the real quality we or at least many others like to claim is the specific 'aura' (the attitude of Rietveld, the ideal to change society) of these objects, emerged in their perception, gained through their history. This is also a lost (absent) quality, something that cannot be retrieved again, because society has changed tremendously. He is also an interesting figure to me because he worked form the early 20's till the 60's both very important decades, where from two major economical shifts, new attitudes within art and design towards society evolved. (1. I don't like to speak in these general terms, this is just to offer another point of view on the whole matter) (2. I have the idea that Rietveld in the 60's, bu now a celebrated architect, built a few cultural institutions) To get back to the proposal; how to work with/treat these pieces of Rietveld furniture owned by Coen and Paula? Articulating the personal experiences related to these objects, claiming Rietveld as a space for personal design, is completely in line with the present mode of value creation. This is actually quite strong statement/potential, in the setting of the museum, where we will choreograph our own space with his pieces. The Rietveld furnitures do not deny any of the viewer expectations, even more it advances these expectations, it makes them even more desirable. This is why I think the drawers or doors of Coen's bureau should remain closed and have only the literal surface to project on. Then it doesn't give anything away of it's content (the bureau's interiority, let's say). Then it does become an 'open' surface. It becomes an open surface because we choose to project on it, which highlights the surface as a surface. Then, I also understand what we could call a kind of aggressive attention (twist) to the content (the story) If I would think of an 'open surface' as such, it would be a non-specific, functional support. The kind that I felt was missing in the Piet Zwart exhibition. Hope you can still follow me here. It does help that Coen's bureau is not painted, I really hope it doesn't have any kind of finishing at all, just plain wood.

Objectification

Just thinking a little more about the objectification of our subject allowing us to become detached viewers, and that also the subject becomes the object to apprehend...

This is from the book I'm reading now

"If anything, the every day function between people and things, reminds writers both of the literary potential of objects and the material limits of subjects...Contemporary inquiry on the subject/object dialectic then to theroize subjects and to historisize objects. I have elected to follow the lead of the writers themselves [Keller,Dickinson, Freud and Proust], treating objects as viable philosophical subjects and subjects as tenable material objects" pg 16.

"Still the question remains , what connects the interior furniture of houses to the interior furniture of minds?"

From 'A Sense of an Interior- Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them', Diana Fuss, 2004

This above text also reminded me of an engraving I saw once when St Francis of Assisi (the engraving was 16th Century I think) and he is at a table with animals, like he is conversing with them...well obviously, but it's a really lovely image.

Is how we could describe the provider/user relation, the public/private relation in the project?