Mimeo as Junkspace

Rem Koolhaas on Junkspace:

"In Junkspace the tables are turned: it is subsystem only, without superstructure, orphaned particles in search of a framework or pattern. All materialization is provisional: cutting, bending, tearing, coating: construction has acquired a new softness, like tailoring . . . The joint is no longer a problem, an intellectual issue: transitional moments are defined by stapling and taping, wrinkly brown bands barely maintain the illusion of an unbroken surface; verbs unknown and unthinkable in architectural history - clamp, stick, fold, dump, glue, shoot, double, fuse - have become indispensible."

If the triple-decker or the doorstop novel can be seen as the medium, the building block of 19th Century nation-state and its manifestation in a city like London, then the mimeo mag serves as the fantastic architecture of the postmodern age. Mimeo as literary representation of junkspace, the Composite City, the Generic City. Yet unlike Koolhaas, I view mimeo as a positive force. Mimeo is junk mail in the best sense. Think W.A.S.T.E. in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Mail art distributed via Tristero. A call to arms sounded by the muted bugle. It is in those interzones in the wasteland that special things and thoughts can catch hold and grow.

JB

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