Notes on pre:fab: Episode 3 - Life After Style
MAY 2024
A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: For thousands of years style functioned as a ‘proof of work’. The clothes we wore and things we had provided a trustless verification mechanism that proved we were who we said we were without the need to really say anything at all. Trustless networks depend on the identity of authenticity and verification. Technological and political developments since 1750 created a world of extreme material abundance and cultural diversity that broke this equivalence. Separated from verification, authenticity is moralised as an aesthetic proposition and becomes a style. Decoupled from context and supply chain, authenticity as style is commodified and becomes meaningless—a reference with no referent. Any distinction between the market and life disappears.
Keywords: crypto; clothing; technology; branding; authenticity; late capitalism
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Notes on pre:fab: Episode 2 - Wave Equations
MAY 2024
Notes on pre:fab: A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: Where once the domain of our expressive potential, our personhood, was a loosely defined function of where we were raised, who raised us, and what we looked like, today we have infinite selves. New forms of promiscuity and precariousness demand new forms of connection, collaboration and meaning making; new mixtures of technology and culture that are beyond the reach of existing institutions designed for another era. How do we gather now?
Keywords: pepeha; promiscuity; precariousness; connection; collaboration
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Notes on pre:fab: Episode 1 - R0<1
MAY 2024
A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: Architecture has become a service industry to the supply chain. The hyper-local emerges as the only practical alternative. Consequently, alternative practice is atomized into isolated operations, often just one or two people, working on seemingly unique issues. Isolation and unscalable outcomes lead to burnout. With limited resources and little potential for greater influence, the debt borrowed from our future selves becomes so large that the fleeting achievements of the present can no longer meet our interest payments. Welcome to the logic of the Creative Production Service Economy.
Keywords: alternative practice; competition; subjugation; exhaustion; futility
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Questions For Your Architect - A Tony Watkins Collection
MAY 2024
pre:fab out-Fielder, architect, activist, friend and inspiration Tony Watkins has contributed a collection writings on climate, density, responsibility and regulation from 2022 for publication under the pre:fab label
Falling in love with the climate crisis
"The climate crisis is interesting precisely because it has almost nothing to do with
climate."
"Density is the problem not the solution"
16 Questions To Ask Your Architect
"Does my architect have any problem with anyone building themselves a house?"