4. Diana Ibáñez López

Educator
London - UK

‘Ghost Reference’

Many aspects of literature are quite rigid. We have a lot of assumptions around how we read. We assume that we start at the beginning and must read until the end; that if a text is written and printed then it must be absorbed in a linear way. There is a lot of shame associated with ‘dipping in and out’. When teaching, I am constantly trying to work out people’s assumptions, to understand where they are going. This normally involves knocking things over, like cats in YouTube videos. You may try to steer them away from one reference, or point out that they are giving a certain resource too much respect.

Teaching is a fine balance between leading in a positive way, without telling students where to go. I think it can become quite easy to push your own ideas towards a student. With a course like MA Cities, where the premise of the course is that students bring their own interests and issues to the table, it becomes inherent that students look inwards, as a method to find their individual voice and position.

You are walking along with them, which means it can often be difficult not to direct, as much as you are sometimes asked to. It is harder to develop a process with students. As a student we often hope to move in a linear path towards a quick fix. However, with a process-led exploration thinking about new spatial practices, we have to question this. In the same way you can over-respect a book, or an author, you can easily over-respect a traditional way of working. This linear binary, of A-B, often stops us from investigating and dissecting traditional processes.

Definitely. Process is critical. All stages and elements are valid. If you stick to a known path, you often know the results, but a disruption, or questioning, such as ‘what is a new spatial practice?’ can lead to intersecting results.

We could probably list 100 spatial practices right now, but I don’t think that is the point. Again, it goes back to process; if you follow a trodden route, there is a particular frame, a particular job, a particular output you can find. Some of those are incredibly useful. But the idea of the new is that you take a bigger chunk of risk and in doing so, create a bigger chunk of possibility. The potential to change the way something is made. It isn’t solely about rewiring, but also about how we might, individually or collectively, start making longer term change. It could be a form of activism, or a challenge to the system, but it could also be about an original product. Take a block of housing, for example. You can change what it is and where it sits in the world by interrogating the people involved in the process, or the speed at which it is produced, or the medium in which it is formed. You are not always fully in control of that. At the start you don’t set out a programme for the exact amount of quantifiable change that you will make, but there is an intuitive introduction to other ways of working; breaking down elements that feel fixed.

Completely. I spent a significant portion of time working in commercial practice and it could often feel like an idea would have to fit within a certain category. There was a prescriptive nature to it; normally dictated by time and money. I think public consultation is a good example of this; the requirement that you have to have x number of boards, to be displayed for x amount of time. It is prescribed. I’m currently reading The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework edited by Francesco Garutti (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2021), in which Freek Persyn, co-founder of 51n4e, questions the traditional role of dialogue in the built environment. He highlights how in Dutch, dialogue is tegenspraak, which loosely translates as counter-speak. This is different to most practices in the UK, where they are trying to keep everyone happy, Persyn describes the aim of dialogue in their work to make everyone feel heard. To make sure people don’t feel shortchanged, but also to challenge them. It is interesting to think of this in relation to your point surrounding new spatial practices; how an idea can take shape...

It is an awkward transaction. In dialogue, not everyone is going to be happy. If everyone agrees it becomes a monologue, constantly asking voices to repeat with you - ritualistically that is incredibly strange. Terms like ‘everyone should have a say’, or that this ‘represents everyone’ are immensely loaded.

Two things I was thinking a lot about when working in engagement practice were that one, a community isn’t just a projection of you in the wider world. That sometimes feels obvious, but can easily sneak into the way in which these processes are designed. Secondly, that community is actually many communities, overlapping with a wide variety of temporalities. There are many conflicts and conflicts of interest. It is poignant to choose and define who you want to work with and why; to help define what the exchange is. It is important to question why you are involved.

What is the longer term process?
How are we defining you?
How do you define yourself?

This then brings you back to the question of the voice;

Who are you speaking for, or with, or alongside?
Is it a conversation, or a dialogue?
Is it actually a dialogue?
Is it a dialogue that participants want to be a part of?
Are they part of it on the same terms?

You have touched on one small portion of your career to date, but it has been extremely diverse. This includes MVRDV’s global think-tank ‘The Why Factory’, an editor at Phaidon Press, as well as curation and commissioning at Create London. The outset of your education followed a more traditional route through architecture, I believe. What was pivotal in this movement away from a more conventional method of practising architecture? Was there any literature, or perhaps language, that was particularly important in shaping this path?

I mostly enjoyed my time in architecture. When I was working at OMA in Rotterdam I spent long hours in the office. I stopped listening to music and instead began listening to word radio. Whilst drawing, I needed words. There was a dialogue between the two. At university I had spent a lot of time reading, so I guess I missed that part of my practice. I was also largely working in a different language. I found myself in an ambiguous position, between language and the city.

Whilst studying for my masters at the Royal College of Art, I became disenfranchised by the teaching and took refuge in the library. Flicking through books, without looking for anything in particular, I landed on Homi Bhabha and his postcolonial readings of space and the other. The weight of the words and the sense of drawing the edges of a practice, or a society, felt poignant. It made me question what it means to be fully immersed in a system, but also what it means to step outside of that; to recognise yourself from a peripheral position. It struck a chord. Soon after, I went into publishing, working at Phaidon. Here, I worked on 20th-Century World Architecture: The Phaidon Atlas (Phaidon, 2012), alongside Zofia Trafas, Richard Anderson and TERRAinteralia, where I was tasked with finding information on certain buildings that was not so readily available, largely in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Latin America. It was brilliant. I was digging to try and find migratory stories of one-off architects from the 20th century. I have consistently found myself working amongst these edge conditions; be it within an archive, or working on housing sites considered unbuildable. I find this ‘impossible’ condition fascinating.

How did you work with the readings of Homi Bhabha when you were at university? It seemed to have quite a significant impact in terms of the work you went on to do at Phaidon? A famous western publisher investigating places that had largely been othered.

I think it was unlinked, but rather that I was interested in those territories. They sat in parallel, although as part of an unresolved relationship. At that point I was trying to work out what I was interested in, to place myself between language and architecture. Publishing seemed like a logical first step, although it definitely wasn’t the answer.

After working at Phaidon, I did another masters, this time within a literary faculty in Germany, on postcolonial linguistics and literature. Here I was introduced to far more radical texts, most of which I have forgotten. Although I can clearly remember the images and the questions posed, and perhaps most importantly, the path they led me on. I began to disrupt the way that you were expected to write about literature, investigating space, three dimensionality and material culture. Not just as text, but as a geography. A lot of the issues I was thinking about spatially, I found I could resolve through literature.

Where do words and space fit together?

The intention was to return to a fairly normal trajectory as an architect, but once I began to understand the discipline in that context, I felt I could push the spatial edges of literature further, using my experience as an architect. In terms of MA Cities, this period led me to think transnationally about polysemy and polyphony; to think about time beyond the binary. It wasn’t the literature that I borrowed from that course, but a way of thinking and speaking.

It feels like the MA Cities course responds to this, with its position as a part-time course, sitting in the periphery of a full-time job. Could you explain a bit more about why you set the course up?

MA Cities was not about serving a fixed grading system. Instead, the intention was for the course to invite students to test out things they did not already know; that could be a practice, or a process. Fundamentally, the main premise is for students to ask their own questions. These are infinitely more valid to their practice, rather than a course based on a predetermined set of questions. Whilst working on the MArch course at CSM, I asked the entire MA course a really annoying question at the beginning of their project,

Why is your project important?

Students would often give answers such as ‘because it’s social housing’, or ‘because it’s in a marginalised area’. They would get frustrated with my probing but what I was really asking was,

Why is it interesting to you?

Afterwards, students would be much more open to expressing their personal view, where before they felt this answer wasn’t valid. Actually, it is completely valid. Just because it is seemingly ambiguous, or poorly theorised, a form of attachment, or commitment to a certain place, is vital. The thinking behind this is to broaden how you can work, to broaden students’ growth, without fixing the way in which that growth takes place. The course is an invitation to explore a variety of scales, from the individual voice to the global network, through language, multimedia and live projects. An architecture, or urbanism degree, but through the lens of an art school.

We are currently preparing for a 24-hour radio show, ‘ZERO. Numeracy Narratives for Urban Resilience‘ as part of spatialradio.live, alongside Narrative Environments, Ain Shams University in Cairo and the Egyptian Youth Forum, focusing on numeracy. We are inviting number theorists, climate activists and others to provide their perspective; to go beyond the historical and the poetic, and to look at how we first engaged with numbers.

How did they shape the way in which we thought?

We are particularly interested in 0; a number taken from the Arab world. The western 0 is seen as a void, whereas the Arabic 0 is seen as a dense, infinite point, with the ability to go into the negative. In a world of climate breakdown, it is interesting to think about this in relation to energy targets. The radio show is not going to fix the problem but we see it challenging the binary between art and science; to help develop a conversation between the two. We need to understand that it isn’t just about feelings, but nor is it just about facts.

How are both being used, abused and applied?
What might a conversation across, or beyond disciplines be, where we interrogate the material of what we make?

We have been bombarded with numbers for years surrounding the climate crisis and it is clear they are not working. To try and find a balance between art and science feels critical to this. There has to be a balance in the way the story is told; a positive manifestation of how we deal with the crisis.

I think it is important that we begin to have conversations beyond those we are used to, whether it is within our own work, or across disciplines.

Can we be comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time?

In relation to the climate crisis, numbers float; they have an ungraspability. Often they are rounded up and pigeon-holed to suit a narrative.

This idea of discomfort is very interesting. Not one political party, or one country, is going to solve the fundamental issues we face. Without question, the solutions to climate change sit across systems and political factions, a series of uncomfortable conversations are required. But we also have to start thinking about discomfort on a personal level. Daniel Barber in Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton University Press, 2020) talks about how we have all become too accustomed to sitting in complete comfort. It could be 5 degrees outside, but we would still expect to be able to sit in a t-shirt inside an office. That cannot continue! Obviously our buildings need to perform better, but people are also going to have to alter their required degree of comfort.

As humans we adapt very quickly. I lived on a boat for a period and became so accustomed to waking up in four degrees that my office felt far too hot. My body adjusted rapidly.

Is there anything about discomfort in reading that you have thought about?

This could be the expected trajectory of reading, whether it is the linearity of a single book, or the respect we pay to certain books, canonical texts...

I can find theoretical texts somewhat uncomfortable; texts that can be hard to engage with, yet offer profound commentary on what it means to live in the world. Texts, that for me, feel like they should be the most accessible texts - to help people question what it means to live, to be in a city, to interact as a public. These texts should be critical to the masses, yet often, feel as if they are purposefully written to exclude, rather than include.

I think this type of writing came about partly through habit, but also from writing in a closed space. All texts were written in a similar manner, formed from a closed dialogue. As some canonical texts are referenced and re-referenced, we witness a tree-like pattern of assumptions around how basic and critical they are to the profession; as a book read by the masses. Yet, at their time of writing they would have been held in fairly closed conversation. Even if we don’t read them, canonical texts take up a vast amount of space. We’ll either reference them knowingly, or not, but we assume that we should know them. This takes up thinking-space which doesn’t necessarily leave space for other ideas.

In the mid-20th century, Walter Benjamin did a series of radio plays for children. He questioned how he could translate these ideas, that he felt were important to share, to a wider audience. At the time, this would have been quite controversial. Famously, Benjamin’s first PhD Viva was turned down as it was considered too dense. His evolution into children’s radio portrays his internal dialogue around how words should be put together and presented. This is evident in The Arcades Project (Harvard University Press, 2002), where he is unsure whether to pursue a linear path. I think there would have been some fairly painful conversations around what is understandable and whether this is based on his superior intellect, or, because he became so entangled in a specific way of writing.

This is one of the reasons we inhabit voice noting, sound recording and recital at MA Cities, to sublimate the author’s work, be it through transcription or projection. It helps to shift their words and is a great form of editing. It can be quite uncomfortable, as there is a basic sense of work being imperfect, or incomplete, but that shame is quickly wiped away. It helps to develop conversations that would have taken far longer to engage with otherwise.

I can imagine the impact of having your own work read back to you helps bring a lot of clarity on its development. It is incredibly difficult to critique your own work when you have been looking at it for a significant period of time, but this process allows you to get an outsider’s view, to hear your ideas presented back to you.

Do you set reading lists for MA Cities? If so, what are they?

The reading lists are quite extensive, although we try to promote audio books in response to the course being remote. There are also a number of podcasts and films for students to explore. We ask students to make work in response to a practitioner’s work before they enter the classroom. This produces punctual responses, helping to form an immediate exchange, over a typical introduction. It sets a more experimental tone, allowing you to share unedited work and see how it all fits together. There is room for error, or a certain amount of dissonance; a variety of voices. Again, we are trying to break the process down, returning to the same question:

What are you really interested in?

This is why you can read and reread a book; why you see it through different eyes each time you complete it. Or how you can dip into a dense, canonical, slightly unreadable book, and from only one page take away an idea, your idea. Literature in this sense can act as a mirror, or a weave, through which to interpret your own ideas.

On my way here I was thinking about linguistics and a paper I read a long time ago but have never managed to retrieve. I think it is a text by Umberto Eco, discussing open and closed texts. Eco highlights that a ‘closed’ text tells you what it is about, instructing the manner in which you read it, dictating the manner of your journey. But some ‘open’ texts leave space for what Eco calls ‘inferential walks’, whereby you are granted permission to become a little distracted. This frames the text against the following question:

How does it relate to your own life?

When, or if, you carry on reading, the text has become richer for incorporating your voice, as well as the authors. Your experience is validated, adding to the text in a way that the author never could have. An alternate trajectory.

This idea of a ‘ghost reference’ is fascinating. In many ways, it doesn’t really matter that the text has been lost. It has led you to enquire and develop ideas. The exact argument in the source document has been personalised.

No, but I was worried that you might need to know [laughs]. People often talk about books with such certainty, but I don’t think we really need to know. Not until it comes to writing a paper. Even then, I find that process positive as it begins a conversation between your idea of the reference and the original. Sometimes you end up scrapping the source and taking your idea elsewhere. When breaking from the canon, I find this process to be incredibly beautiful. Not just referencing the thing that you thought you were referencing, but pushing your ideas to the next conversation.

There was a quote from Peter Eisenman, I think, which I read a number of years ago that always stuck with me and perhaps was influential in the formation of this platform. He was discussing how he couldn’t borrow a book from the library. He has to own it, because he will read and re-read the book, each time marking up quotes and interesting passages in a different coloured pen. It doesn’t really matter at this point finding the actual quote, but it did begin this process of thinking about books in a different way, questioning how other people use them, why they are important...

I think it is more generous to share the idea you got from the book and where you can, point to the book if it feels relevant. There is a certain amount of freedom when you can’t remember the source. I love highlighting things in my eBooks, knowing they will be hard to find again. I like to put a dot next to a passage as I don’t want to mess up the readability of the text. It could be a sequence of words, or a particular beauty in the text arrangement, or an idea. When I go back I don’t necessarily know what the marking was for, but I will often try to excavate why I underlined it. I think there is something powerful in doing that work and then misplacing it, or losing it. The process of notation helps to cement the idea in that moment. For me, it isn’t necessarily about having an irrefutable bank of knowledge that you can unload when someone asks you something. I like the idea of losing, or not owning, or deleting. There is an odd freedom in saying, ‘I don’t know exactly, but I know there is something good.’

It forms a dialogue. An internal one that took place in the past, but one that can then be externalised and developed. Without the original document the idea evolves.

Do you use this idea of ‘inferential walking’ within your own practice? Does it influence your own reading patterns?

That paper gave me permission not to read books all the way through. I am conscious that this pressure to read something all the way through can block people from reading certain texts, or to worry that they are not taking themselves seriously. The idea of inferential walking allows you to dispel this invented shame around reading. So, with academic books, I definitely dip in and out. If I hear about a book from someone else, I will try and read a chapter. I am all too happy to add a book to my list and hope that I read it.

In terms of what is useful and what is not, I have been reading a number of books that aren’t necessarily on my reading list and defined as ‘useful’ to academic discourse. A lot of fiction. But I know that this helps me think about space, or about how to use language, in a different way; an inferential, open way. This summer, I have been reading Ali Smith’s, Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer) (Penguin Random House, 2021), which is absolutely fantastic.The books are set in space, as most books are, but foreground voices and ways of seeing the world which are incredibly difficult to write about. In many ways, Smith’s books are discussing the same ideas as the theory books I am reading. There is a dialogue to this process; the fiction explorations are about finding language that helps me think about how theoretical elements are working in practice; elements such as decolonialism, or polyphony. I really enjoy looking for these ideas within fiction.

It feels like this idea is related to the intersection of the radio show and the relationship between science and poetics, numbers and feeling, that you were discussing earlier. The theory books relate to the scientific, whilst the fiction is about feeling; an outlet for the voice. It is then critical how these elements weave together. It feels like this idea is significant to your multi-disciplinary practice.

I find fiction helps you breathe. Popular fiction books have a freedom of style that we can all learn from, especially academia.

This brings me on to the book I wanted to talk about. A massively popular children’s book in Germany, Momo (Thienemann Verlag, 1973) by Michael Ende, the author who also wrote The Neverending Story (Puffin Books, 1993). Momo is a book written in the 1970s in Germany and translated beautifully into Spanish, but appallingly into English. I grew up with this book, as would many other children across Germany and Spain. The English version made it feel cheap, repetitive and uninspiring. It lost the poetry that made the ideas leap off the page. Years later I came across a German PhD student at Harvard who felt the same and had published his own translation.

In brief, it is the story of a young, homeless girl living in an amphitheatre in the suburbs of a typical city in Europe, residing in what we would call an under-served neighbourhood. She is incredibly vulnerable. It talks about the role of play, her imagination and her ability to listen, but ultimately her part in helping to form community. The story conjures ‘thieves of time’; grey, banker-types that convince everyone time is precious and that they shouldn’t be wasting it on community and play. It is a beautiful narrative on the capitalist system that we find ourselves in and how it frays the edges of our social fabric.

I read it as a child, but have returned to it more and more, interested in the young girl as a figure on the edge. It describes the city beautifully, and captures amazing moments of material culture. The young girl has two distinct friends; one, an old street sweeper of very few words; the other, a young hustler, a man of many, who traps tourists with invented stories. The street sweeper is so concerned with words mattering that he often takes a whole day to say something, albeit words that are incredibly valuable. After a day spent sweeping the city wall, he returns and tells Momo how he recognised them both, in stones within the wall. Completely left field. It is not empathy and it is not feeling, but a reading of material culture. As a child I was amazed with this idea. How something so strange could be said, yet feel so real and recognisable.

How is it that we can think through material?

It is intrinsically material and city based; about the translation between the built, or the reinterpreted, and the Roman wall.

Can we reinterpret materials in ways that really matter to us?

Whenever I return to this book, it is passages like this that feel like they give me permission to think around the edge; to think about materials; to think about truth.

All photography by Tim Lucas unless otherwise stated.

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4. Diana Ibáñez López

Educator
London - UK

Index

Shop Instagram

4. Diana Ibáñez López

Educator London - UK

Index

Educator
London - UK