House for
Conversations

In April 2020, early into our first Covid lockdown, David (Gersten) began a series of weekly Zoom chats with members of the ALN community that included family, friends, friends of friends.  Under the wide umbrella, of “the pause moment” participants would gather virtually to share their experiences, suspended as we all were from our normal day to day activities. It was a healing experience — intimate, esoteric, and diverse.  Any given meeting was part bull session, prayer meeting, meditation, rant, riff, communal kvetch.  Coincidentally, I had begun Zoom recording improvisational acting sessions with a group of actors and non-actors for a film/serial about a boundary crossing therapist, his patients, and their shared sense of emotional and existential crisis, an unspecified dread. There was no script and no direction. I only asked the actors to come up with a name for their character and a reason (question or concern)  for a one on one consultation with...

Arts Letters & Numbers is pleased to announce “SunShip: Thesis at Arts Letters & Numbers”, a six-week immersive virtual studio program led by David Gersten and Homa Shojaie. The Studio program is being held as part of “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible,” Arts Letters & Numbers’ exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. SunShip: The Arc That Makes the Flood Possible Tens of centuries ago, trees of enormous scale were cut, trimmed, skinned of their bark, and bound together using a particularly robust fibrous rope for the construction of rafts that anticipated the crossing of the great raging seas. Although strong, this rope was not often used near the sea; salt broke down its fiber, sea salt ate away its strength. The trees were bound in such a way that the rolling motion of the sea dug the rope into the soft wood of the...

archi-poetry makes room for poetry and architecture to meet archi-poetry throws them together, an embrace - in question archi-poetry precedes us - we awake in its wake — “_ifesto” (2018) In response to difficult questions, this event offers collaborative experiments aimed at renewing the architecture, theatre and poetry of the world.  “What is poetry? The very soul of adventure… which creates a situation.”— Louis Sullivan  The root of poetry (poiesis in Greek) simply means “making” — human making of almost anything: shoes, boats, buildings, characters in a play. Poiesis also names the art of poetry: spoken, written or sung. Understanding poetry as human making, makes the poetry of architecture easier to comprehend, but risks obscuring poetry’s meaningful, musical, and magical complexity. “It’s not just building… it’s building worlds.” — John Hejduk Architectural imagination suspends disbelief in the shared dream that human situations can embody and inspire poetic experience. Every act toward this goal can be...

Andria Langi & a crew of Global Storytellers      In the beginning there were stories. Around the world, many cultures have creation stories that include episodes of annihilation and beginning again, striving to recreate the world anew. Floods figure prominently as forces of renewal in such stories. Given our present era of catastrophic global warming and rising sea levels, it is both timely and illuminating to reconsider the diversity of flood myths, the precarity of our shared world, and our collective responsibility to imagine better futures. These stories compel us to ask: What forces are destroying our present world? What agencies can remake it? What resources will be preserved, and how? The mythopoetic work of Bah suggests that language and stories are among the most valuable cultural cargo to survive the ravages of time, and, if preserved, may also buoy our sinking global vessel. Commonly known also as air bah, Bah is Indonesian for ‘flood’ in...

Arts Letters & Numbers is pleased to announce “SunShip: Thesis at Arts Letters & Numbers”, a six-week immersive virtual studio program led by David Gersten and Homa Shojaie. The Studio program is being held as part of “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible,” Arts Letters & Numbers’ exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. SunShip: The Arc That Makes the Flood Possible Tens of centuries ago, trees of enormous scale were cut, trimmed, skinned of their bark, and bound together using a particularly robust fibrous rope for the construction of rafts that anticipated the crossing of the great raging seas. Although strong, this rope was not often used near the sea; salt broke down its fiber, sea salt ate away its strength. The trees were bound in such a way that the rolling motion of the sea dug the rope into the soft wood of the...