Hands have no tears to flow,

In the short story “Allal,” Paul Bowles describes how a young man is roused from sleep, feeling a light weight on his chest. It is a coiled-up, red-gold snake which, lying on his body, rises and falls to the rhythm of his breathing and whose eyes are looking at him as if he were the one looking at himself. Several breaths later it is actually the case then: The young man’s consciousness has glided into the snake; he rises and falls within it, still to the rhythm of his previous own breath, and looks back at his deserted body. Ten years earlier, around 1968, a photo can be dated that shows the half-kneeling Charles Eames in a close-up with his face hidden by a medium format camera, not as if he were taking pictures, but as if he were scanning, measuring or analyzing the young man, sleeping with open eyes, lying in front of him.

Both scenes, “Allal” and the kneeling architect, have a hypnotizing character. Both are magical, both suggest a moment of transition. And both can be used as evidence. The architect does not examine buildings anymore, but rather sleeping people. In “Allal,” identity and consciousness, like heat in a heat exchanger, glide from one subject onto another. Can the same apply to architecture? Can – or must – the rulebook of the architecture of buildings be “swapped” to bodies? Could these absorb the functions of buildings? And is the construction site then no longer the building, but the body itself? And how will our building component warehouse develop?

Oxygenating Unit for Extracorporeal Circulation Devices, Patent No. 2.702.035 Pub. Date: Feb. 15, 1955; Mechanical Heart, Patent No. 2.917.751 Pub. Date: Dec. 22, 1959; Soft Shell Mushroom Shaped Heart, Patent No. 3.641.591 Pub. Date: Feb. 15, 1972; Artificial Arm and Hand Assembly, Patent No. 4.685.928 Pub. Date: Aug. 11, 1987; Head Sensor Positioning Network, Patent No. 5.291.888 Pub. Date: Mar. 8, 1994; Methods and Systems for Processing of Brain Signals, Patent No. 2004/0097861A1 Pub. Date: May 20, 2004; Neural Interface System with embedded ID, Patent No. 2005/0267597 A1 Pub. Date: Dec.1, 2005; Optically-connected implants and related systems and methods of use, Patent No. 7.280.870 B2 Pub. Date: Oct. 9, 2007; Monitoring and Representing Complex Signals, Patent No. 7.254.500 B2 Pub. Date: Aug. 7, 2007; Inkjet Printing of Tissues and Cells, Patent. No. 2009/102484 A2 Pub. Date: Aug. 20, 2008; Neural Stimulation and Optical Monitoring Systems and Methods, Patent No. 7.729.773 B2 Pub. Date: Jun. 1, 2010; Flexible and Scalable Sensor Arrays for Recording and Modulating Physiologic Activity, Patent No. 2011/0054583 A1 Pub. Date: Mar. 3, 2011; [Printing of life tissue onto living organisms], Delivery System, Patent No. 2011/085225 A1 Pub. Date: July 14, 2011; Integrated Tank Filter for a Medical Therapeutic Device, Patent No. 2011/0245644 A1 Pub. Date: Oct. 6, 2011; Repositionable Endoluminal Support Structure and its Applications, Patent No. 2011/0245918 A1Pub. Date: Oct. 6, 2011; Devices, Systems, and Methods for Reshaping a Heart Valve Annulus, Patent No. 2011/0251684 A1 Pub. Date: Oct. 13, 2011; Novel
Gene Disruptions, Compositions and Methods Relating Thereto, Patent No. 2011/0252485 A1 Pub. Date: Oct. 13, 2011; Powered Ankle-Foot Device, Patent No. 2011/0257764 A1 Pub. Date: Oct. 20, 2011; Multiple Electrode Lead and a System for Deep Electrical Neurostimulation including such a Lead, Patent No. 2011/0257764 A1 Pub. Date: Oct. 20, 2011; Transventricular Implant Tools and Devices, Patent No. 2011/0271967 A1Pub. Date: Nov. 10, 2011; ... etc.

¹ taken from COUNTERBLAST by Marshall McLuhan (1954 edition), based on the Dylan Thomas poem “The Hand That Signed the Paper.”

TWA, 2012