James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Writing
  • Ingress: Black Rock City
  • 2017
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • Ingress: Black Rock City
Fig 1. Cover of DUE #47; design by Simone C. Niquille

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognised that thing as the sign of another thing. All is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

The cold of the night is concealed by the heat of the day to come. (The sun, after all, is only a mountain away.) Your journey has passed concrete dunes and asphalt creeks and arrived into an arena of powdered dust, grey in the dark and white in the light. This ground soars and swarms and, moving through clouds, the eye sees little bar coral-red blinkers dancing in a cavalcade ten lanes wide. A pall of dust has been draped over the playa and, in the cabin of the truck, your window is ajar.

Hours pass and little moves – progress is escorted by a restive thrill. Your ninth Strike has been struck and caliginous smoke, slurred by a carmine glow, curls and wanes toward a pitch-black sky. With every toke a dose of dust and, as the cigarette tapers pitchers are passed between strangers and lanes as freely as words. Will Call—the first gateway—flares on the brink of the horizon. Out, in; chip and PIN.

The cavalcade thickens to twenty lanes and the purl of tired engines gives way to a deep, foggy bass. Here—in passage between the Default World and the imagined—the tension swells. On infinite ground and in cosmic darkness, sentinels appear from a chain of conic arks. At the outermost fringe of Black Rock City the traveller observes a liturgy – a bell is sounded for every Virgin: “Welcome home!” (The playa will provide.)

Once through, the darkness magnifies – darker still than it seemed before. As lanes dissolve the dust intensifies and, oriented toward a horizon of wide, low bright lights, you move across what can be discerned from a tangle of thin, turbid tracks. Crimson dust streams the stern as you pick up speed across the flatlands. Journey’s end must, by now, be in sight? Pinching your lashes you breath a little heavier and clear your throat.

The truck meanders with the tracks and, at the final gateway, they fork into three. Approaching the farthest edge of the city proper, you turn left at six o’clock – the lights are brighter now and, as your eyes adjust, the clarity of night collapses into an entirely new order. What you see coalesces with what you cannot; beat by beat your face is sheathed in colour and then a dusky void. Skirting the city’s concave edge you spiral inward.

At nine, you turn right. (The outline of the Esplanade frames the Man.) All about is fleeced in dust and the sky above is paler; you see stars tripping over crepuscular waves. Cocooned by structures tall and small, the scene stands oddly still. Like Mars, or the Moon, fabric appears fossilised – the atmosphere is altered. With each hesitation you squint for the signs. Fire, Eulogy, Dance – Ceremony.

The traveler roams all around and has nothing but doubts: he is unable to distinguish the features of the city, the features he keeps distinct in his mind also mingle. He infers this: if existence in all its moments is all of itself, [this] is the place of indivisible experience. But why, then does the city exist? —Italo Calvino

Read at source.
First published in DUE. © James Taylor-Foster (2019).

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James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • ✶ WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, London2022
  • ✶ Mira Bergh × Josefin Zachrisson: Utomhusverket2022
  • ✶ The Limits of Our World: LARP and Design2022
  • ✶ Solicited: Proposals2021
  • ✶ Studio Ossidiana: Utomhusverket2021
  • WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, Stockholm2020
  • Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron + Brunnsparken2019
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture2019
  • The Craft of Swedish Videogame Design2019
  • Petra Gipp and Mikael Olsson; Sigurd Lewerentz – Freestanding2018
  • Space Popular: Value in the Virtual2018
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • ASMR, An Exhibition Trailer2022
  • Watch & Chill 2.0: Streaming Senses2022
  • ASMRology2021
  • Plug-in Poesi2020
  • Interdependence: Stockholm and pandemia2020
  • Future Architecture Rooms2020
  • SOFT GOSSIP2020
  • Mukbang Veneziano2020
  • Körper2019
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Boxen at ArkDes2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
III.Publications
  • ✶ softspot2021
  • Living on Water2017
  • Elemental Living2016
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
IV.Speaking
  • ✶ Scaffold #612022
  • Salons, The New Architecture School2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: A Bed2022
  • OAT Academy, Curating Architecture2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: An Island2021
  • A Future for Exhibitions2021
  • Future Architecture CEx2020 Focus Talks2020
  • Modevisningar är den flyktigaste formen av arkitektur2018
  • Exhibition Models2017
V.Writing
  • Wang & Söderström: Royal Chambers2023
  • Studio Ossidiana on the Sentimental Scale of the City2022
  • A Strange Sort of Weight2021
  • What’s Mine Is Theirs: an interview with Max Lamb2020
  • ✶ Screen Glow Sedation2020
  • No Time to Stand and Stare2020
  • On Norra Tornen2020
  • ✶ Don’t Fear a Snowflake2020
  • In Riga, A Conference On Architecture and Migration2019
  • On Practical Futurology2019
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto2019
  • Making Believe with Charlap Hyman & Herrero2019
  • ✶ To Speak As If In Capital Letters2019
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2018
  • ✶ Virgil Abloh, Editor in Brief2018
  • A Weak Monument2018
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Villa Edstrand2018
  • On the Cruising Pavilion2018
  • A Diary of Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Show2018
  • ✶ The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.2018
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • ✶ On Liquid Modernity2017
  • ✶ #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
Writing
  • Ingress: Black Rock City 2017
  • for DUE (Architectural Association)
Back
Fig 1. Cover of DUE #47; design by Simone C. Niquille

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognised that thing as the sign of another thing. All is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

The cold of the night is concealed by the heat of the day to come. (The sun, after all, is only a mountain away.) Your journey has passed concrete dunes and asphalt creeks and arrived into an arena of powdered dust, grey in the dark and white in the light. This ground soars and swarms and, moving through clouds, the eye sees little bar coral-red blinkers dancing in a cavalcade ten lanes wide. A pall of dust has been draped over the playa and, in the cabin of the truck, your window is ajar.

Hours pass and little moves – progress is escorted by a restive thrill. Your ninth Strike has been struck and caliginous smoke, slurred by a carmine glow, curls and wanes toward a pitch-black sky. With every toke a dose of dust and, as the cigarette tapers pitchers are passed between strangers and lanes as freely as words. Will Call—the first gateway—flares on the brink of the horizon. Out, in; chip and PIN.

The cavalcade thickens to twenty lanes and the purl of tired engines gives way to a deep, foggy bass. Here—in passage between the Default World and the imagined—the tension swells. On infinite ground and in cosmic darkness, sentinels appear from a chain of conic arks. At the outermost fringe of Black Rock City the traveller observes a liturgy – a bell is sounded for every Virgin: “Welcome home!” (The playa will provide.)

Once through, the darkness magnifies – darker still than it seemed before. As lanes dissolve the dust intensifies and, oriented toward a horizon of wide, low bright lights, you move across what can be discerned from a tangle of thin, turbid tracks. Crimson dust streams the stern as you pick up speed across the flatlands. Journey’s end must, by now, be in sight? Pinching your lashes you breath a little heavier and clear your throat.

The truck meanders with the tracks and, at the final gateway, they fork into three. Approaching the farthest edge of the city proper, you turn left at six o’clock – the lights are brighter now and, as your eyes adjust, the clarity of night collapses into an entirely new order. What you see coalesces with what you cannot; beat by beat your face is sheathed in colour and then a dusky void. Skirting the city’s concave edge you spiral inward.

At nine, you turn right. (The outline of the Esplanade frames the Man.) All about is fleeced in dust and the sky above is paler; you see stars tripping over crepuscular waves. Cocooned by structures tall and small, the scene stands oddly still. Like Mars, or the Moon, fabric appears fossilised – the atmosphere is altered. With each hesitation you squint for the signs. Fire, Eulogy, Dance – Ceremony.

The traveler roams all around and has nothing but doubts: he is unable to distinguish the features of the city, the features he keeps distinct in his mind also mingle. He infers this: if existence in all its moments is all of itself, [this] is the place of indivisible experience. But why, then does the city exist? —Italo Calvino

Read at source.
First published in DUE. © James Taylor-Foster (2019).
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