REVIEW: Alan Prohm – Recent Writing on A+G


Screen Shot 2015-01-16 at 6.49.51 PMOVER(RE)VIEW of RECENT WRITING

The procedure of proceeding is predicated on a known or unknown momentum for going forward.

The Proceeding Procedure, a 4-day event in June of 2014, gathering and activating in the spirit of Arakawa and Gins, was predicated on the nowness of a current movement, a range of artists/scholars/scientists actively asking A+G questions along new trajectories.

This review is a simple run-down of some evidence of the thinking going on, over the last year or two, from the pages of The Funambulist, Artforum, Harriet and Inflexions.


Leopold Lambert – In this piece on from a recent visit to Japan, publisher and former office architect at the Reversible Destiny Foundation, Leopold Lambert teases out the political dimensions inherent in designing an architecture agnostic as to what a body is.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 12.52.59 PMLeopold Lambert – Funambulist … Recent thoughts on visiting A+G sites (Mitaka Lofts, Site of Reversible Destiny):

Momoyo Homma –  Accomplished director of the Japan office of the Reversible Destiny Foundation, Momoyo Homma, in this interview with Leopold Lambert, gives a rich introduction to the Mitaka Lofts and interesting background on Arakawa and Gins’ visionary long-term projects in Japan.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.06.03 PMMomoyo Homma – Interviewed by Leopold Lambert Oct. 31 2014, Mitaka Lofts, Japan

Alan Prohm – friend of the Reversible Destiny Foundation, Alan Prohm teases out the promise of A+G’s landing site theory as phenomenology with a vaster grasp, bodywide philosophy, biotopological art-science and practice. A+G always said they needed everyone else to help think it. So, let’s.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 12.54.46 PMAlan Prohm – Landing Site Theory in Funambulist no.53

Erin Manning –  Senselab director, friend and partner-in-publishing to Madeline Gins, Erin Manning reads Rae Kawakubo’s Comme des Garcons clothing as procedural architecting in A+G’s sense. (It was for CDG that Madeline/RDF built their final project, the Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator.)

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 12.55.23 PMErin Manning – Funambulist Papers 51 – Dress Becomes Body


Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 12.53.37 PMLeopold Lambert – Funambulist Pamphlets vol. 8. – Arakawa + Madeline Gins


– “‘All Men Are Sisters’: A Joy Named Madeline Gins” (January 10, 2014)
– “Reversible Destiny Loft in Action: A Tentative Report from a Resident, Shingo Tsuji” (April 19, 2013)
– “Architecture of the Conatus: Tentative Constructing Towards a Holding in Place” (April 10, 2013)
– “Domesticity in the Reversible Destiny‘s Architectural Terrains” (October 19, 2012)
– “A Conversation Between Two Puzzled Creatures: Interview with Madeline Gins (part A)” (November 8, 2011)
– “A Conversation Between Two Puzzled Creatures: Interview with Madeline Gins (part B)” (November 9, 2011)
– “Architectures of Joy: A Spinozist Reading of Parent/Virilio and Arakawa/Gins’s Architectures” (December 8, 2010)
– “Special Archival Podcast: How Not to Die with Madeline Gins” (February 2014


Jondi Keane – In this obituary in Artforum 04.02.2014, Jondie Keane emphasized the wide range of thinkers from many different fields who were drawn to get involved with the special brilliance of Madeline Gins and Arakawa and their Reversible Destiny project.

Screen Shot 2015-01-16 at 3.40.04 AMJondi Keane – Madeline Gins (1941-2014)


George Quasha – poet, publisher and tai chi practitioner, George Quasha places Madeline and Arakawa as an event in the recent tradition of American experimental poetics. Quasha proposes A+G’s work as an example of principle poetics, more than conceptual poetics, in that it activates.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 1.50.30 PMGeorge Quasha – Seeing From Between: Toward a Poetics of Interloping – 2014

Charles Bernstein – poet, critic, educator, Charles Bernstein gathers thoughts from several sources to re-attribute Madeline Gins and Arakawa to an American tradition of experimental poetics, even as he argues they reset the terms of poetics fundamentally and for the duration.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.20.04 PMCharles Bernstein – On Just the Station of Gins & Arakawa – 2014


Emerging scholars and established authors explore the historical, performative and ethical aspects of Arakawa and Gins’ work and, each from their unique personal, academic or practical experiences, discuss how Arakawa and Gins may guide us to live life on new terms.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 1.16.23 PMINFLEXIONS No. 6 – A Special Issue on Arakawa and Gins – 2010