Non-Violent Communication
Pierre Huyghe, Variants, 2021 – ongoing © Pierre Huyghe. Courtesy the artist, Kistefos Museum, and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Mara Trübenbach
Drafts on my first chapter on The Nature of Making Material (social systems)
Multiple acceptances of a variety of sensitivity are necessary to build respectful relationships both between the material itself and between the people who process it. The language architects use in conversations about circular challenges is loaded with expertise and meanings that are not always accessible to clients or society at large. Architects mediate this meaning through their designs. It is important to relate these meanings, which have completely different backgrounds, to create not only relationality but also accessibility for the audience with whom architects seek to interact. This chapter will emphasize that rather than one specific understanding of materiality, a diversity of understanding of materiality is necessary, and to a certain extent exists, amongst (architecture) designer; Where does the material come from? Who has engaged with the material? What does the material trigger? It is a matter of the lexicon and what we actually associate and thus translate with each term. This lexicon is not only based on written words, but also includes mediation, craft skills and the body, as material literacy in design goes beyond writing and reading.
The relationship between language and things and the knowledge of transfer with and through material is essential in architectural education.[1] There is no doubt that we sense material (even our health does). An obvious example is the moment you wear trousers that just don’t feel right against your largest organ, the skin. The fabric is either too thin or too thick, the fit too tight or too loose, and sometimes you can’t even describe why you can’t stand the garment, even though other people say it looks good on you. It is a nondescript, vague feeling that I want to explore. It is about how something looks externally compared to how it feels from the inside that is the embodied aspect I focus on here. After all, it is the material itself that (re)acts not on but with our individual bodies, our memories and our subconscious, enabling us to react, to participate in a dialogue with the material. Through literally feeling the clothes you automatically become present to yourself and your feelings, sometimes even embodied in pants that are too tight and stretching on your skin. It is like closing your eyes in a meditation and starting to connect your body by beginning to feel the ground that supports your body, simply because of gravity. This awareness is not easy to maintain in stressful everyday life, so it seems all the more important to know how material can actively help us with this once we have explored its nuances and how they affect us.
[1] Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. 2015. “Objektstunden. Vom Materialwissen zur Materialbildung.” In Materialität. Herausforderungen Für Die Sozial-
Und Kulturwissenschaften, 1:171–93. Paderborn: Fink Verlag.
Pierre Huyghe, Variants, 2021 – ongoing © Pierre Huyghe. Courtesy the artist, Kistefos Museum, and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Mara Trübenbach
The dissertation project focuses less upon the "materiality of object but [upon] the emotions that sensation of feeling materials delivers" by examining authors and practitioners in architecture and performing arts who interact with material – either in writing or through physical engagement. This interaction, I argue, is a performance of surfaces, senses and emotions. The real attention to that is what material engagement means emotionally. Human experience and memory are intimately connected to ethical and political concerns, which leads me to the question of the material existence of human beings. Social theorist Diana Coole and political theorist Samantha Frost, advocators of New Materialism (NM), emphasize the relationship of biological matter to science and technology, which leads to the notion of the materiality of the body. The interrelationship between the body and our environment is undeniable. “As human beings, we inhabit an ineluctably material world. We live our everyday lives surrounded by, immersed in, matter. We are ourselves composed of matter. We experience its restlessness and intransigence even as we reconfigure and consume it."[2] New Materialists lay on the theory that everything is material, even immaterial things like emotions, time or agency. According to sport scientist Monforte, it is not only the scientists of NM, who define the “new” of materialism but the audience that interacts with the term by translating it and positioning themselves within the debate.[3] With Monforte’s thesis of the definition of the “new”, we continue with the notion of the total network that expands in the context of NM. Instead of looking at the research object from the outside, New Materialists scholars focus on matter to find alternative answers to research by counting themselves in as part of the studied phenomena. There is no disciplinary boundary on which one could capture the constantly changing materiality and crises we encounter in our daily live. Thus, NM gives material a platform that enables material to have power and become politically relevant, especially with regard to the climate crisis.
[…] The contemporary textile designer Seetal Solanki and her London-based design studio ma-tt-er aimes to humanize material and to build up a "more respectful and carrying relationship" to the material to not only understand the importance of sustainability but also the diversity in a collaborative spirit. Solanki's article aims to build up enlightenment of material knowledge by channeling through a three-stage process: identity, lifecycles and application. The shift of the human being’s emotion towards the interest “in emotional and functional qualities" of material supports the notion of sustainability when working with the material in design processes.[4] Solanki argues that material literacy provides for a “natural” shift of perceptions that will “reach the wider public”. If we follow Solanki’s idea of “humanising” materials and believe in interacting with them as Berger has described, humans should try to control things and start building trust. In doing so, in order to feel free and safe, we should find ways to articulate needs and desires.
This is basically the core of Non-Violent Communication (NVC), founded by the psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg in the 1960s and 1970s. Rosenberg begins his dissertation with the poem Words Are Windows (or They’re Walls) by Ruth Bebermeyer, which describes the importance of the act of listening very well: “(…) Before I rise to my defense, Before I speak in hurt or fear, Before I build that wall of words, Tell me, did I really hear? (…)”[5] As I mentioned earlier, the architect communicates her/his vision through sketches, drawings and models; the spoken word acts as a support. How powerful is the conversation between architect and architect (inside)? How differentiated is the dialogue between architect and client (outside)? Language is often less meaningful to the architect than for the client, who lacks the ability to understand plans because he/she is not trained to recognize them at first glance. Outside the architectural office, brainstorming must work without visual support. The client must trust the architect and her/his knowledge acquired through experience. In his article Architecture as Embodied Knowledge (1987), architectural historian and theorist Alberto Pérez-Gómez looks at the tacit knowledge of architects and how this can be captured not only in the present but also in history. Pérez-Gómez considers knowledge as the „possession of embodied consciousness“.[6] The author identifies a lack of clarity among architects when it comes to formulating architectural ideas. According to Pérez-Gómez, there is a gap between the „world of buildings“ and „architectural intentions“. Pérez-Gómez emphasizes the false assumption that compares and identifies the history of buildings with the history of architecture. Furthermore, he sheds light on prejudices that arise from the limited view of practice. The article points out the danger of the intertwining of cultural values and personal knowledge and that „objectivity in the physical sciences was a delusion“. Pérez-Gómez assumption leads me to the notion of attention and makes me wonder whether it is either the representation of embodied knowledge, the process of doing, or the correlation of both that captures the different understandings of material. I claim, performance and the conscious use of its methods can help to establish a literacy that pays a respectful and empathetic attention to material: “Let’s shine light of consciousness on places where we can hope to find what we are seeking.”[7]
[2] Frost, Samantha, and Diana Coole. 2010. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, 1–44.
p.1,ll.1-5.
[3] Monforte, Javier. 2018. “What Is New in New Materialism for a Newcomer?” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 10 (3): 378–90.
[4] Solanki, Seetal. 2019. “Material Literacy: Why We Need to Rethink Language to Survive the Climate Crisis.” Accessed June 06, 2020.
[5] Rosenberg, Marshall B. 2015. Nonviolent communication. A language of life (3rd edition) Encinitas: PuddleDancer Press.
[6] Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. 1987. “Architecture as Embodied Knowledge.” Journal of Architectural Education 40 (2): 57–58.
[7]Rosenberg, Marshall B. 2015. Nonviolent communication. A language of life (3rd edition) Encinitas: PuddleDancer Press.