#I TYPED FRANCH AT FIRST. JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS

[soupspkmncorner]

think im going to restart pokemon x today or soon because i have an idea involving miss miku

[bigskydreaming]

Tbh, another part of why I’m so vehemently anti-RPF is like.....one of the first things any legit agent or manager asks an actor when they sign them is if they’re willing to do nude scenes and/or sex scenes. And when there’s an actor whose work you follow cuz you think they’re hot and you notice they’ve never been in any kind of sex scene or even a shirtless scene, that’s not like...by accident, most of the time. 

Because a lot of actors aren’t comfortable with nude scenes. And it doesn’t have nearly as much to do with prudishness or religious reasons or any of that stuff as you might assume. I mean, I have done nude scenes. In some pretty big size productions as in with a full crew. And lemme tell you....they are NOT fun. Or sexy. Or hot. Like, even a little bit, lol.

Cuz like, its never just you and another actor in a bedroom. It’s you and another actor naked or close to naked.....in the middle of like.....forty fully dressed crewmen holding cameras and lighting and sound equipment and acting like you’re not just...naked in front of them, even though you and everyone else are actually super aware that yup, you definitely are. 

And there’s a million lights on you and set lights are HOT, they make you sweat like crazy, and so when you’re doing a lot of takes and getting sweaty from the lights you constantly have people running up to you between takes and like....toweling you off in a completely unsexy way, lol, and reapplying makeup and the whole time they’re not even talking to you but to each other, like you’re not even there, b/c they’re not trying to be rude but they’re in a hurry, they have to do this fast so there’s not really time to strike up a conversation with you while they do it. But its TOO weird to just be doing it in silence so they usually solve that awkwardness by being in the middle of a convo as they run up to you and your scene partner and just keep continuing it before running back.

And the whole time you’ve got a cranky, stressed and taking it out on everyone director yelling at you to basically...be more sexy, lol, with you having to do take after take after take and not even look just as into it as you did the take before, but dig deep and look even MORE into it. Because you wouldn’t still be shooting if you’d already done it right, you’re obvsly ‘not being sexy right’. And gotta say, lol, nothing makes it easier to feel and thus act sexy than an asshole you’d never sleep with in a million years yelling about how he’s not feeling like he wants to fuck you yet or like you want to fuck him yet. And he’s the audience, he says, he’s the people in the seats of the movie theater watching you pretend-fuck on screen, and so if he doesn’t feel like you wanna fuck him, then how do you expect they’re gonna be able to put themselves in the fantasy and feel like you’re talking to them, like you wanna fuck them? Ick.

So I mean....there’s actually a lot of reasons for actors to not want to do nude scenes, both men and women. Or for them to do one and then never do one again. And that’s not even getting into the after part of things, like....the weirdness of spending several more weeks working closely with several dozen people who have all seen you naked, up close and personal. Or the weirdness of knowing who-knows-how-many ppl out in the general public then have seen it too, fantasized about you, with you having no idea who any of them are, if you’d be like...comfortable with them having that level of intimacy with you if you did know who they are...*shrugs* Because there’s not really an easy way around the fact that someone seeing you naked IS a form of intimacy in our society. You’re exposed. You’re....all out there for them to critique or have opinions on or form fantasies about, with no way to reciprocate. And that’s a very weird feeling. That crosses well over into uncomfortable when you factor in that there’s no way to opt out of being seen like that by people you KNOW you wouldn’t want to share that level of intimacy with if it was just you and them.

Like, there’s one closeted actor I knew years ago who grew up in a small conservative town, and early on in his career he did a lot of sex-type scenes, like he was one of those actors who is pretty much always in a state of undress on every show he’s on, early on in their career. And he used to say how he never thought twice about it, thought he was totally fine with it....until he went back to his hometown for the holidays for the first time in years, and had all these old classmates and neighbors both his age and older women too, like actual friends of his parents or people who’d known him since he was a kid....and they were fawning over him while he was there and giggling about those scenes and how racy they were and blah blah...but the point was, when he came back to LA after the holidays, he just couldn’t do scenes like that anymore. 

Because, like he said, he’d never really thought of himself as someone who made the fact that he was gay a big part of his identity, but it was just too unsettling for him after that. Being aware that the very same people who were a huge part of why he was in the closet, because of all the shit they’d said when he was growing up about how gross and disgusting gay people and gay sex are...here they were, totally okay with and INTO simulated sex scenes that didn’t have an ounce of the intimacy he had in his actual sexual encounters with other guys. 

He was like “they’d all call me disgusting and tell me I was going to Hell if they found out what I do with boyfriends in my own home, but what I do on camera, surrounded by dozens of total strangers with a woman I only just met at our audition a week ago and have seen maybe twice since, like....that works for them?” And it just skeeved him out too much. He stopped auditioning for roles like that cold turkey, and I don’t think he’s actually ever done a nude scene since. He couldn’t get over knowing that the older women from his church who’d be the first to gossip about how sinful he was for having a boyfriend were instead gossiping on facebook about how hot he looked in this bedroom scene or whatever.

Anyway. Didn’t mean to go off on this tangent and didn’t realize that last post would bring this up, lmao. And tbh, like, I don’t ENJOY doing nude scenes, but I’ve never been bothered to the point of turning down a paying job. Like, it skeeves me out sometimes, stuff like I mentioned in that last post, coming face to face (so to speak) with the knowledge that someone I deeply dislike on a personal level has seen me that way and enjoyed it, but for me its a level of discomfort where I’m like, yeah, not ideal, but I can live with it. But for a lot of actors, it is a dealbreaker. 

And I feel this is something a lot of RPF-er’s don’t consider....like, with a lot of these celebrities, the way you’re talking about them, fantasizing about them, writing stories or sharing pictures about them, especially ones where there aren’t a lot of actual sexualized content available already for you to springboard off of, where you have to like...photoshop heads onto other bodies or make fanart from scratch.....they didn’t say they were cool with it. They didn’t give even the kinda tacit permission that comes from accepting a role where they willingly expose their entire body and self for anyone and everyone to see and to say or think whatever they want as a result. Like, someone accepting a job that casts them as the fantasy hero in a romance where they sweep their lover off their feet and gaze longingly into each other’s eyes and all that stuff....but with their clothes on....Its not exactly the same thing as voluntarily sexualizing themselves top to bottom, playing the part of an actively sexual being onscreen for you to then take in and absorb and do whatever you want with what they chose to put out there.

And thing is....this is still a form of consent, we’re talking about here. No, I’m not saying its the same kind as in a single person-to-person physical interaction. Violating someone’s consent so to speak, in this particular context, I’m not saying its interchangeable with someone being told no by a person and not stopping. I’m just saying....its not nothing either. You’re still taking away another human being’s right to decide whether or not they want you to have the level of intimacy that’s innately tied up in the viewing of a person in their most vulnerable state. Their right to decide whether they want you not just picturing them as a sexual fantasy, and in what ways. 

Because like....that’s the other thing about consent. It needs to be given for each individual interaction. It’s not a one-time issued all access pass. An actor consenting to be a part of your sexual fantasies in the role and form of a character from a movie where they have sex with another consenting adult.....is not a blank check saying hey, I’m also totally fine with you using my face and likeness and even name in your fantasies where you put me opposite a minor, or a homophobe, or an abuser. 

Like, just speaking for myself, I may be okay with however anyone chooses to view or think or talk about me based on the nude roles I’ve taken or in the context of them, even if it does make me kinda uncomfortable. But I very much would not the fuck be okay with someone sexualizing me opposite someone like, idk, Jared Leto, let’s say, someone that I fucking hate and would never in a million YEARS consent to being vulnerable, let alone intimate with, in any way, shape or form. 

I mean, lol, if you’ve been following me for long at all, think about what you know about me as a person, just in terms of like things I’m obviously passionate about, things I talk a lot about etc. Now keeping in mind what you know of me and my personality just as a person who exists beyond any particular fantasy someone might have after seeing me in a role, picture me as an actor. Say I someday ended up in a role in a shared universe franchise like Marvel or DC, where Jared Leto also played a role in that franchise, even if it wasn’t in the same movie, if I never actually consented to be in a movie starring alongside Jared Leto. But by virtue of the big sprawling franchise we’re both in and thus tangentially linked, there’s enough basis for someone who finds him hot and who also finds me hot to go, okay, I wanna ship them together, I want to craft my own sexual fantasy starring them both together, and maybe even write it out, share it online.

Now....knowing me even just on a ‘i follow this person on a social media platform’ level....do you think I’d be remotely comfortable with that? Sure, I’ll probably never find out, you could say, assuming you convince yourself I don’t know how to use google or never google myself or SHOULD never google myself, because....idg that logic tbh but whatever. But you still know. Isn’t it even just a little bit skeevy, building a sexy fantasy around two people when you know or are even just a little sure one of them would not the fuck consent to that?

Like, there’s no law against that, obviously. No one’s gonna come banging on your door and say you can’t do that, that you have Harmed Me in some material way and I’m gonna sue or press charges. But just purely from the standpoint of acknowledging that you may not know me at all, but you know that I exist somewhere on this planet as a living, breathing, thinking entity with my own agency and likes and dislikes....shouldn’t what I want or feel matter? Especially if I do happen to feel very strongly about this, to the point where I’ve taken actionable steps to NOT consent to be in any situation with someone like that where it could remotely be construed as sexual, or even like he’s someone who I could tolerate being around, like his very existence doesn’t gross me out given some of the stuff he’s done. Making deliberate, conscious choices to not take roles opposite him, stuff like that.

Now sure, you don’t know if this is the case, have no way of knowing this about any random actor, that they feel this way or would or would not have this or that opinion about the scenario you’re placing them in, if it were brought to their attention, if you had the opportunity to ask them face to face ‘hey would you be okay with this?’

But that’s the point. You don’t know. But at least maybe focus on actors in their ROLES that they chose to play, where they showed up to work and said okay, here I am to my job pretending to be this character who isn’t me, to bring them to life and make them real for audiences, make them someone they can imagine, or yes, fantasize about. Instead of just assuming for yourself that hey anything and everything is fair game because they took their shirt off in a show once and they’re an actor anyway so what does it matter, this is what they get paid for....

Well. No. Its not what we get paid for. We get paid for the job we sign up to do. That we CHOOSE to do. An actor gets paid to be fodder for sexual fantasies based around their role as a sexy spy in a thriller, maybe, but that’s not and really shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable with acting like they’re getting paid to be fodder for sexual fantasies with anyone and everything in every possible kinky scenario, consent not required, no age limit, anything goes.

I’m not saying its wrong to have sexual fantasies about an actor who’s lodged in your brain in a sexual context because yeah, they’ve done sex scenes before. I’m just saying....there’s a lot of angles that a lot of people don’t put any thought into at all before just doing whatever they want, and all these very important conversations about consent and sexual agency and all that.....they don’t stop being necessary just because they’ve crossed into territory where you don’t want to have these particular conversations, where there’s a status quo you’re comfortable with even if you think a status quo in another area of society needs to be challenged.

Anyway.

Oops, I thought I was done but I kept going. Why am I like this. Okay, now I’m done. Anyway. Just thoughts I have and thus shared, do with them as you will.

[3dsrendercom]

Lisbon's MAAT museum premieres documentary about SO-IL's temporary work with VDF

In this exclusive movie premiere screened as part of VDF's collaboration with MAAT, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of SO-IL explain 12 temporary architecture projects that feature in an exhibition at the Lisbon museum. Made by Corinne van der Borch and Tom Piper, the video explores each project through movie footage, models and renderings plus interviews with SO-IL co-founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. It also features interviews with the Brookly-based architects' clients and collaborators.

The video features interviews with SO-IL co-founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu The projects were due to feature in an exhibition called Currents – Temporary Architectures by SO-IL, which was scheduled to open at Lisbon's Museum of Architecture, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) on 27 March. However, both exhibition and SO-IL's temporary Beeline installation remain shuttered until further notice due to coronavirus, so MAAT executive director Beatrice Leanza has instead teamed up with VDF for a virtual launch. SO-IL's collaboration with MAAT was created with the support of Portuguese cultural organisation Artworks. Currents exhibition features 12 temporary projects Poledance, the first project featured in the movie, was an outdoor interactive environment constructed at MoMA PS1 in New York City in 2010. The video features an interview with Barry Bergdoll, was Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design, MoMA from 2007 to 2013. Blueprint, the second project, involved shrink wrapping the facade of New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2015. Eva Franch i Gilabert, director of Storefront from 2010 to 2018, explains the commission.

The video explains 12 of SO-IL's temporary architecture projects including Into the Hedge Next comes Pollination in Chengdu, China, 2011, followed by Transhistoria, a project for New York's Guggenheim Museum that took place at Jackson Heights in Queens, NYC in 2012. David van der Leer, director of the architecture and urban studies programme at the Guggenheim Museum from 2008 to 2013, explains the project. Video features interviews with curators and clients Matthew Slotover, co-founder of art fair Frieze, explains SO-IL's design of the snaking tent built for Frieze New York in 2012 and 2013, while Mark Lee, curator of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, talks about the Passage installation created for the biennale. Lee also discusses L'Air Pour L'Air, SO-IL's performance piece for the 2017 edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The final three projects featured are Tricolonnade in Shenzhen, China in 2011, the Breathe installation for MINI Living in Milan in 2017, and Into the Hedge, a 2019 installation at Eero Saarinen's 1957 Miller House in Columbus, Indiana. Anne Surak, artistic director at Exhibit Columbus, discusses this last project. Below is the transcript of the video: Florian Idenburg: The idea of time obviously is really important. And designing time into the project is really important as well, because it doesn't mean that the project is done at the date it opens. There's no necessarily beginning or end. Jing Liu: All architecture is temporary. It should remain and it would always remain open-ended. That is something we always try to remind ourselves in the design process.

The studio's Poledance installation is explained in the video. Photo is by Iwan Baan Mark Lee: I always think SO-IL's work had that type of aura, this invisible envelope that projects out and sometimes this envelope was not that invisible. You know, like in the Korean gallery , like in the temporary installations, it's always an aura. I'm very interested in this part of the aura of their work. Florian Idenburg: Why we are working on temporary projects is that it allows us to very quickly respond also to new ideas and things we're curious about. Architecture can be a very slow profession. And sometimes, you know, the thoughts that you had at the beginning, you know, when the project is realized, you're already somewhere else with your thinking. The nice thing of the temporary works is, you know, very quickly, you can be sort of in dialogue with the contemporary world. Poledance, New York, USA, 2010 Florian Idenburg: After the financial crisis, the economy collapsed, the environment collapsed. And so for us, it was really interesting to think of the idea of modernity through this system of the structural grid, in a way when it is weak, when it can always collapse, and one in which the visitor or the audience or the user is actually responsible for its stability. Barry Bergdoll: We got a gridded field of unstable rods connected to a net above as though somebody had decomposed a volleyball net from a beach in Queens. It was almost a renewal in our faith in the program. Everyone was flabbergasted this was something that we hadn't seen yet, in the 10 year history of the competition. Jing Liu: The American champions of pole dancing has called us and said, they want to do a performance in the space. It was the perfect collaboration, the space that was performative and the people occupying it was performative. Florian Idenburg: That idea of a design process in which we are open to collaborations and partners and input from outside: that was, I think, one of the most formative, you know, aspects of that project. Barry Bergdoll: Those themes in Poledance have found their way into designs for museums that are proposed and built around the world. So there's a very direct relationship between the experimental temporary installation and an emerging design practice establishing the themes of what they think are important in architecture. Blueprint, New York, USA, 2015 Eva Franch i Gilabert: What SO-IL did with Florian and Jin did was to transform this space into, into almost like a pause, to make us reflect and think about issues of shape and form, but also security and insecurity, issues of permeability and access. Florian Idenburg: We really love the idea of the Storefront being open. So we thought, how can we keep the Storefront open in the middle of the winter? We thought, what if we winterize the storefront? Eva Franch i Gilabert: It was shrinkwrap for boats. Jing Liu: Typically, when you shrink-wrap and the object that's inactive, it becomes this very static thing that's just sitting there. But then when you shrink-wrap a building where people are in there and then there is the conversations happening and the lights are spinning out of it, then it's a completely different reading of that object.

For its Blueprint project SO-IL wrapped white plastic around New York's Storefront gallery. Photo is by Iwan Baan Florian Idenburg: This idea of agitating the audience and sort of rubbing up to the public sphere, also here to the public rubbed back because the next day the whole thing was sprayed over by graffiti. Eva Franch i Gilabert: "Vandalized" would be a term that some people would use. "Occupied" could be another word. "Animated". "Enacted". And what I think is very interesting about their work is that the forms and even the shapes that they actually produce are not always immediately legible. They produce a moment of uncanniness: you don't know exactly what it is. And I think it is in that moment of non-recognition in which there is kind of latent potency, of actually things becoming something else. It is in the making of otherness that I think we can identify and produce new spaces of action. So from a very specific space, that is the one of aesthetics, I think, as architects, they're able to produce spaces that also make us think and reflect about what the city can be, and what architecture can be. Pollination, Chengdu, China, 2011 Jing Liu: Chengdu at that moment, was the fastest-growing urban site in China, and our installation was an attempt to address some of the consequences of a very fast-growing, urbanizing environment. Florian Idenburg: And Chengdu is known as the Garden City. Jing Liu: The famous Garden City that's been paved by concrete. We've invited the visitors to rent the bicycle and each bicycle will have seed bombs. This actually allowed many of the seed bombs to go into sites that are forbidden to the general public. Florian Idenburg: After they dropped these bombs, they could geotag them and write a little note and it would show up on a map.

SO-IL designed the temporary home for the 2012 Frieze Art Fair in New York Jing Liu: It was important that the garden was forming in the imagination through this digital mirroring of the action itself. We are always interested in dematerializing and understanding time as a material to work with in our architecture. Florian Idenburg: Specifically with this project. It's more about sort of the way in which you organize people in the city and have them participate in an experience. So how to create a way to escape the city while being in the city. We thought through storytelling we could create this isolation and we could sort of, you know, take you out of the loudness of the city into this other space. Jing Liu: Every immigrant that comes with also the memory of the spaces they grew up in, the space that they passed through getting here, and that they also perceive of space in different ways. Transhistoria, New York, USA, 2012 Florian Idenburg: Jackson Heights is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York, I forgot... 120... Jing Liu: 173 languages spoken. Florian Idenburg: So that's where also the title of Transhistoria comes from. It's like this idea of going through a transitionary moment in one's life and finding home. David van der Leer: You would believe listening to these very intimate stories on these wonderful installations designed by SO-IL sitting in these very random spaces in Jackson Heights: somebody's apartment, a front yard for a church. And the experience of going through that as a visitor, I think must have been rather amazing. Florian Idenburg: It was a very emotional project. And it was only there for two, I think, weekends or three weekends, and then it was gone. Jing Liu: It was a really interesting and important platform for us to explore this concept of the space not only in what you can see, but also the invisible space. Frieze Art Fair, New York City, USA, 2012 Jing Liu: How do we make a forgotten space in Manhattan to come into the public imagination with something that's very mundane and very ordinary? Matthew Slotover: They asked us: can the tent curve? And, initially, we said no, this is what it is. And they said, well, let's ask the contractor. So we asked the contractor and they said: well, we could do that. So we have a tent that curves. It means you don't see the whole length at once, which makes it much less intimidating to visit. Looking straight forward, you don't see just the corridor, you see art. There are points where it curves and your eyeline hits an artwork. So it's a great end-of-corridor kind of moment, to see a picture. Jing Liu: It is possible to create something extraordinary out of something that's incredibly ordinary. And that's the most enjoyable part of architectural design for us. Matthew Slotover: It must be one of the lowest costs per square metre of anything that they've done because it's 20,000 square meters at a very small budget and it's only on for five days. So it's probably the shortest period and the largest thing. Passage, Chicago, USA, 2015 Mark Lee: The space that's always used for transition, no one will even pay attention to that space, they did this big cathedral-like structure that makes people want to stay and ponder. And for them to do that installation and ingratiate it and slow people down as they walked through, make them aware, you know, of what was not there. And even for people that have been working there for decades. You know, just to stop and understand. I think that this is what architecture does best. Florian Idenburg: We hoped that people passing over this ramp actually started to really become aware of their own body and moving through space; just contemplate that bodily movement.

SO-IL created Passage at the Chicago Biennial headquarters Mark Lee: Where the passage was meant to be temporary, the fastening of the materials was quite easy. But the staging, you know, putting up the scaffolding in mid air was not easy. So, as a result, the dismantling of a project would be incredibly expensive. You know, it's almost like building the structure itself. So by default, it was grandfathered into a permanent piece. I think that's the brilliance of how they plan ahead. In Bloom, Amsterdam, NL, 2010 Florian Idenburg: In Bloom was a project that was so temporary that it never even happened. We were asked by Ben Kinmont, an artist, to work on an installation together. And he is very interested in bringing people together also through events and ceremonies and rites. Jing Liu: It was an object but at the same time is also a situation. So the architecture was a facilitator for an event and a relationship to happen. But it also had a form to it that was very recognizable and it became the symbol of that event, which is also what architecture can do very well. it solidifies and gives importance to often things that are transient and forgotten and invisible, and it makes those things visible. Spiky, Beijing, China, 2013 Jing Liu: What's interesting about the canopy as an obsession for us is that we feel that in architecture we tend to ask very complex and complicated questions and not enough of the simple questions. For example, what it means to be under something. The question of the primitive hut: what it means to create an environment that was human and how do we re-examine that question of inhabiting, not just nature in such a direct way, but in a mediated way and make something that's easily deployable. And also it's about working with the light in this very transient way. Florian Idenburg: And the creation of a canopy certainly also affects a lot of our other thinking, I think the space right above us, the relationship between us and say, the heavens and how to filter that layer is something that you know, you see in projects like UC Davis , or in our proposal for the Adelaide Contemporary or in some of these other more permanent institutional spaces. L'Air Pour L'Air, Chicago, USA, 2017 Mark Lee: We invited SO-IL to collaborate together with the artist Ana Prvački. Florian Idenburg: Probably the most intimate space in a way is literally the space one needs to be; just around you. So is it a piece of cloth? Is it a tent? Is it a shelter? What is it? It's like right on the edge of architecture, Mark Lee: It's a performance piece, you know, so it has a really temporary setting and it's both a sound performance as well as an environmental performance. Talk about the air filter, which these structures are made out of, and how this breathing of these wind instruments you know, kind of facilitate the symbolic idea of the exchange of air between the plants and the human inhabitants.

SO-IL designed air-filtering costumes for a musical performance at the Chicago Biennial. Photo is by Iwan Baan Florian Idenburg: We worked together with a composer, Veronika Krausas. She wrote a piece which is performed by instruments that need air in order to produce music. Mark Lee: You know, you go there you have a certain quietness of observation and studying the plants and suddenly there'll be these trombones and trumpet players, you know, and then maybe those who don't understand the environmental story behind it, but I think the performance became a window for the general public to understand the deeper message. Tricolonnade, Shenzhen, China, 2011 Florian Idenburg: We are part of a continuous flow of architectural culture. Jing Liu: By replicating and mirroring that one surface, that entire environment becomes this marble forest and this endless marbleized space that you walk into. Although it's only created by something that's very two dimensional and very thin. Florian Idenburg: You see people enter and you don't know where they exit. It's a quite simple installation but I think spatially really rich. It does sort of riff on this traditional idea of the colonnade. Once you get into the space some people call it like digital space; it's almost like an infinity. And I think that relationship between something that's maybe, from the outside, typologically very historical, but as soon as you enter, you're sort of in a spatial dimension that maybe is a completely new type of experience. Breathe, Milan, Italy, 2017 Jing Liu: In order to consume, we're producing a lot of things, but actually living can be very minimal. We were interested in doing more with less. And this situation that we created that we were imagining would be quite a dense living situation with very minimal material means to achieve that.

Breathe is a a translucent prefab home in Milan Florian Idenburg: To think about a new type of living, basically a MINI Living, so small footprint, more mobile, more flexible and more in relation to the environment. So it's a concept home but it asks basically can a home also be part of creating a healthy environment. I think what's also nice about this project is that it ties into some of our other projects that deal with wrapping and skins; it creates a completely new object. It's a new way of living and it also looks like a new way of living. Into the Hedge, Columbus, USA, 2019 Jing Liu: Into the Hedge is re-examining some of the modernist ideas with a fresh eye. What if we make our project about purchasing and replanting the hedge that needs to be replaced in the Miller House? Anne Surak: In this moment in history, we had this opportunity to see these trees as individual elements and to come into contact with them not as a border and a boundary but as a place that you can walk into and engage with. Florian Idenburg: The installation in some way works with the landscape and the interior elements of the house and brings them into a new public experience. Anne Surak: It was sort of the best of both worlds. It was a temporary project that was engaging to the community. And then it also went to good use and purpose within the community afterwards. And so people could understand in a tangible way, the way that things could transform over time. And that the temporary can also have permanent influence. The whole project is really a progressive preservation effort. We want to build a community of people that cares about and understands the cultural heritage and legacy of Columbus. So when the time comes, people understand why we need to care for these things. Jing Liu: And so understanding architecture not as the end of things, but as just a momentary coming together, of ideas, of materials and also pregnant with new possibilities as a different understanding of architecture. Mark Lee: I think in the past people thought about temporary structures as an intermediate step to the permanent building. And I think in many ways, a lot of architects – I would consider SO-IL one of them – they see the temporary pieces as sometimes the final piece itself, you know. It's there for a short period of time, but it activated the life that we need it to. Eva Franch i Gilabert: Sometimes we forget for whom it is that we are actually building, experimenting, testing the ground. And I think it's important that we reflect and really start somehow being a bit more aware about agency and about the politics of those aesthetics. In fact, I think this show is not only about temporary architecture; it's about how does one push the agenda and how does one take some risks and what can that afford us. The post Lisbon's MAAT museum premieres documentary about SO-IL's temporary work with VDF appeared first on Dezeen. Source link Read the full article

[iamthechocobabe]

We All Have Battle Scars

I am on ze role! Wis mah fake Franch accant, I vill post anozer chaptah. 

I’m working on three hours of sleep. 

Once again, if you want to read the AU this was based on, check out @nifwrites Ignis soulmate AU We Intertwined 

IMPORTANT A/N: Please be aware that while this is based on the same mythology that Nif wrote, IT IS NOT THE SAME UNIVERSE. There were some changes to the mythology and characters that were created by Nif and @cupnoodle-queen and @blindbae are not in this story. 

We All Have Battle Scars

~Chapter 1~

Word Count: 2,006

SFW

~Chapter 1~

Alaea played a game whenever she came across a mirror-she would put her hand over the scar on her lower left cheek and neck and would pretend the scar wasn't there and that she was normal. 

Her hand wasn't big enough to cover the whole scar as her burn scar ran past her neck and into her chest, but she usually tried to ignore the rest of the scar and just focus on her face. When you couldn't focus on the scar, you could focus on Alaea's almond shaped golden-brown eyes, her slightly pudgy but cute nose and full lips that was naturally curved to a smile. 

But no one ever seemed to want to look past her scar. Even the workers at the Chocobo Outpost treated Alaea differently sometimes. 

The scar was bright red with bubbles of skin that hadn't been as burned throughout the scar. Wiz once compared it to a type of spider web because the bubbles connected to other bubbles through small patches of skin. 

For awhile, Alaea refused to let her scar bother her and tried to live her life as normal as possible, even going so far as to cut her long golden brown hair to her chin so that there was no way she could hide her face. But the older she got, the more kids taunted her until she finally grew her hair out to be long and wavy with  a length that reached her elbows. When she didn't have her hair up in a messy bun for working on the ranch, her hair was loose and usually hiding the left side of her face. 

And there were times she hated that face. 

"It ain't going away, Chocobee," Wiz called to Alaea.

"I know, daddy," Alaea called back and wiped some dirt off her shoulder. Her work clothes were getting dirty; mud was beginning to cake the red and black checkered button down shirt that Alaea wore over the bright purple tank top with the Wiz's Chocobo Post logo in the center. The black jeans she wore had a hole in the right knee and the white in her white and black sneakers was now an ugly brown color. 

"Chocobee, can you quit primping and take this customer's order? I need to sign our feeding shipment," 

"Only if you quit calling me 'Chocobee'," Alaea called and started to head over to the small table that had a young couple and what looked like their son, who looked to be about ten or eleven. 

"Ali, you know that ain't happening," 

Alaea smirked at her dad and focused on the people at the table. "What can I get you?" 

"Yes, what does your name tag say?" the woman asked, referring to the name stitched into the left side of her work shirt. "A-lah-eh-a?" 

"A-lay-a," Alaea sounded out the name, like she had done so many other times before. "It's okay, I know it's tricky," 

"Right, right," the woman gazed at Alaea for a second but looked away when their eyes met. 

"Do you need some time to look at the menu?" Alaea asked. 

"Actually, if it's possible, we were wondering..." the woman trailed off and shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable by something. Alaea had a suspicion as to what it was. 

"Yes?" 

"We know it's a lot to ask, but we would...we would feel more comfortable if...um..." the woman stuttered again and was looking at anything but Alaea until finally the husband, who hadn't once looked up from the newspaper he had bought, decided to chip in. 

"We don't want you to serve us," 

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened and Alaea knew it wouldn't be the last, but it still hurt to hear it. "Excuse me?" 

"You look like a daemon tried to chew on your face and didn't like the way you tasted and spat you out," the little boy, their son, piped up. 

"Billy!" the woman chastised her son and glanced nervously at Alaea. "It's nothing personal, dearie, it's just...we don't want anything to get into our food, you see?" 

Alaea paused, trying not to feel offended but being unable to do so. "I see...well, I can assure you, my scar doesn't peel and won't 'fall' into the food, but I'll go ask one of the other hands to help you," Alaea turned around and walked away without giving the family a chance to say anything. 

It wasn't long until Wiz came into the house and sighed at the sight of his daughter sitting and stewing in anger and bitterness on the couch in the living room. "People these days," he said. 

"Tell me about it," Alaea said, the bitterness practically dripping from her voice. 

"Don't let what they said hurt you, Ali," Wiz sat down on the couch next to her and put his arm around her. "They're just jealous that you get to hang out with the Chocobos all day," 

"Har har," Alaea said, but leaned on her father's shoulder anyway. "You'd think with bounty hunters being more frequent that people would be more used to seeing scars," 

"It's these posh people from the Crown City-we're getting more of them ever since the Empire invaded Insomnia," 

Alaea couldn't help but shiver. "You think Impirials will come here?" Alaea asked softly, not wanting to think about her precious family home and her father's life's work being torn apart by a bunch of magiteks. 

Wiz laid his head on the back of the couch and pulled his wool cap down so it covered his eyes. "I don't know, Ali. Maybe-that's why I'm trying to raise money for some bounty hunter guards, but...it's been difficult," 

"Maybe I could become a bounty hunter," Alaea mused. "Take care of that Behemoth that's shitting around the Chocobos," 

Wiz looked at his daughter with a smirk and held out his hand. "Swear jar," 

Alaea grumbled and pulled five gil out of her pocket and put it into her dad's hand. 

Wiz pocketed the change and continued. "Darling, you screamed bloody murder when a rat slithered across your foot the other day-I don't think you can handle fighting daemons, let alone a Behemoth,"

"Dad, seriously; everyone who's gone after that daemon has either come back with the shit beaten out of them or not come back at all. Aren't you the one who always said 'if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself?'" 

"That's talking about ordering Chocobo feed, Ali; we're talking about taking up a daemon that's about the size of a small house," Wiz held out his hand again. "Swear jar," 

"I can take daemons," Ali insisted while putting another five gil in her dad's open palm. Deep down, Alaea knew she couldn't really handle daemons, though. Ever since she was a baby, she'd been deathly afraid of mice and other small critters that weren't Chocobos. 

Alaea had never had the guts to fight a daemon before, but the fact that the ranch was starting to lose business was getting to Alaea. She had to wonder if she could defeat the daemon, or at least maybe trick it into leaving the valley. 

Wiz looked at his daughter and raised an eyebrow. 

"Well, I can still take you on, anyway," Alaea pinched her dad in the side and sat up. "At least then I can tell people I got malled by a daemon. Much more epic than a cooking accident," 

"Not everybody's gonna focus on your scar, chocobee," 

Alaea glanced at the mirror on the counter that overlooked the kitchen and scoffed. "Could have fooled me," 

"Your soulmate won't focus on it, I bet," 

Alaea couldn't help but put her hand on the back of her neck where her soulmate mark was. Her dad had one in the shape of an eye on his right foot while her mother had one on her left foot and when Wiz had met Gayle, that was how he knew she was 'the one'. 

Alaea's mark was centered on the back of her neck, just below her hairline and had the shape of an ulwaat berry, which kind of looked like a strawberry. She knew because her parents were soulmates that her soulmate would have the same mark just with the stem curving to the right instead of to the left. 

But though she would never tell her dad, Alaea didn't believe the soulmate thing was legitimate-it had been clear that people didn't just straight up fall in love just because of a soulmate mark they owned; Alaea knew this by looking at her own parents failed marriage. 

"Knowing my luck, dad, he'd have all kinds of scars with a lazy eye and a limp-or worse..." Alaea shuddered. "Blonde," 

"Not all blondes are horrific she-devils," Wiz mumbled. 

The one you married was, was what Alaea wanted to say but she bit her tongue and stayed silent for the sake of her father's sanity. 

"Anyway, now, that wouldn't be the worst thing-looks aren't everything, you know," Wiz looked at his daughter-he knew she was skeptical about the soulmate marking and was justifiably so. 

"Knowing your luck, chocobee," Wiz said while pinching Alaea's shoulder. "He'll be so devishly handsome that you'll feel inadequate to him," 

Alaea looked at her dad, one of her eyebrows raised. 

Wiz realized his error and nodded. "Right, that would be worse,"

Prompto Argentum touched the back of his neck gently as the group drove onto Lastallum. Once again, his mind was drawn to what his soulmate would look like-he had considered asking Cid if Cindy had a soulmate marking, but when Cid was approached, he gave Prompto a look that said 'if you say one word about my daughter, I will skin you alive and hang you up by your entrails,'

And Prompto would say 'well, that escalated quickly' 

But what bugged Prompto the most about his soulmate was the memory of meeting his own soulmate when he was very young. 

It was almost like a dream, but he remembered the back of a neck that had the same soulmate mark as Prompto's, just mirrored. When Prompto discovered his own soulmate mark at a young age, the memory stuck with him, but when he told his parents, they said it was probably just a dream. 

Prompto wasn't sure if it was a dream or not, but he hoped it wasn't. 

Because then that meant they were still out there, somewhere. 

Gladiolus, who sat in the backseat with Prompto, noticed Prompto tracing the outline of his soulmate marking, knowing that the mark looked like an ulwaat berry with the stem curved to the right. "Touching it is not gonna make them magically appear," he snickered. 

"Shut up," Prompto grumbled-his soulmate mark always felt private to Prompto, like it was something only he should know. But it was hard to keep something like a soulmate mark private, especially with three close friends. 

"I never could get the purpose in a soulmate mark," Noctis said from the front seat. "What if they have absolutely nothing in common? What if one of them is a thief?" 

"But what if one of them is their destined one?" Prompto pointed out and Noctis snorted. Noctis was about to say something when Prompto gasped. "OH. EM. GEE," Right ahead, at the curve of the road, was a sign that said 'Wiz's Chocobo Outpost'. "Noct, we HAVE to go! Please, please, pleeeeaaaaasssee!" 

"We have to meet Iris in Lastallum," Gladio grumbled. 

Noctis laughed softly. "Few days wouldn't hurt," he said and Ignis began to turn off the road and head towards the ranch. "I was gonna ask you a question though, Prompt," 

"What?" 

"What if your soulmate is ugly?" 

Prompto scoffed a little at the comment, irritated once again at how people were so obsessed with the looks of their soulmates. Prompto used to hear stories all the time in school, how if someone's soulmate didn't meet their expectations, they would reject them. It always pissed Prompto off. 

"Um, wow, Noctis, conceited much? Do you think I'm that shallow?"