Madeline Gins Livres

"Poet, philosopher, architect and transdisciplinary artist, Madeline Gins (1941-2014) is well known for her collaborations with her husband, the artist Arakawa, on the experimental architectural project Reversible Destiny, via which they sought to arrest mortality by transforming the built environment. Yet, her own writings--in the form of poetry, essays, experimental prose, and philosophical inquiries--represent her most visionary and transformative work. Expansive and playful, Gin's vigorous and often ecstatic exploration of the physicality of language challenges us to sense more acutely the ways in which we can--and could--write and read. Like Gertrude Stein before her, Gins transfigures grammar and liberates words. Like her contemporaries in conceptual art, her writing is attuned to the energized, collaborative space between reader and page. She invites the reader into a field of infinite, ever-multiplying possibility. This revelatory anthology, edited and with an introduction by the writer and critic Lucy Ives brings never-before-published poems and essays together with a complete facsimile reproduction of Gins' 1969 masterpiece, WORD RAIN (or A Discursive Introduction to the Intimate Philosophical Investigations of G, R, E, T, A, G, A, R, B, O, It Says), along with substantial excerpts from her two later books What the President Will Say and Do!! (1984) and Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994). Long out of print or unpublished, Gins' poems and prose form a powerful corpus of experimental literature, one which is sure to upend existing narratives of American poetics at the close of the twentieth century."--Inside book cover

Artist-architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins demonstrate the interconnectedness of innovative architectural design, the poetic process and philosophical enquiry. Their book promotes a deliberate use of architecture and design in dealing with the blight of the human condition.

Arakawa und Madeline Gins treten an, Architektur völlig neu zu überdenken und dadurch der Menschheit zur Unsterblichkeit zu verhelfen. Ganz wörtlich wollen sie das menschliche Schicksal umkehren, indem die Architektur sich auf ihre Basis besinnt – die ursprüngliche Symbiose von Mensch und Biosphäre. Entstanden ist dabei kein ökologisches Manifest, sondern der Entwurf für ein vollkommen anderes Verständnis von Körper, Bewusstsein, Wahrnehmung und Umwelt. Todernst und spielerisch zugleich geht es um den „architektonischen Körper“, der immer schon unauflöslich verflochten ist mit Bauen und Umbaut-Werden. Kann man sich diese Verflochtenheit so zunutze machen, dass der Mensch unsterblich wird? Madeline Gins und Arakawa sagen Ja – seit 1990 setzen sie mit ihren Bauprojekten in den USA und Japan ihren Entwurf von der Zukunft der Menschheit um.