Email: March 2006
A conversation with Bryan Finoki of Archinect.com prior to
the posting of OneSmallProject as a new feature

From: Bryan Finoki
To: kurt west
Date: Mar 26, 2006 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: individual contributor urls?

right on, cool, kurt.
i lke your logic with the leftover-minded people; leftover readers picking through the site. it might even be interesting to present the site some more like that. strewn some, half-grouped, taxonomic, maybe the interface allows the user to arrange the site somehow in their own fashion. like leftover materials, scavenged links, the patterns of that, an interface with the reader's use of the leftover. whatever.

i dont know if i got the one of the woman and child in surat, i dont think i did.  i was thinking the evansville river camp raised trailer -- dead but inhabited -- in lush green grass and foliage.  i just love the contrast of that one, and the symbolic weight of this flimsy worn out trailer still coming to life. but i think they are all very striking, and really evocative of the work itself. I love the raw colors and the culture, those deep tones of dirt, primordial churning over of human spirit: the hands, earth, and shelter.  the organic connection of helping people, helping people to find themselves...it's great.

it makes me crazy to get back to india again, or egypt, the west bank. i am trying to plan a trip down to the border, US-Mex, the imperial valley, chart the territory of the proposed border fence additions. talk to teddy cruz. tour tunnels, get more scoop on the tijuana estuary...scope it out more.  it think it is the most fascinating culture right now.  but there's still africa, dying to go.

i need to tour the world some more, plain and simple. til i cant tour no more.

glad youre diggin' archinect.

any front page image you particularly want to use i am totally down, just let me know.
b



From: kurt west
Sent: Sun 3/26/2006 10:52 AM
To: Bryan Finoki
Cc: Janz, Wes
Subject: Re: individual contributor urls?

your thinking about the website is the direction we are taking for the
book's structure.  no arranging involved but we're interested in less
direct grouping of topics but more of incidental
combinations/juxtapositions of seemingly unrelevant content.  through
the process of building the book we're interested in seeing how
santiago parejo's work/words interacts or makes new connections to say
harvey finkles photography.  so in some ways we're going into the book
blind and very interested in seeing new insights brought upon this
chance process.  imagine a scenario of portions of 4 contributors'
works/images from 2 galleries/8 statistics finding their way one page.
so in a nutshell, instead of your typical breakdown of chapter,
breaks, sections, we're more interested in various lines of inquiry
colliding or supporting each other while streaming throughout the book.
not stopping and going.

good selection with the river camp image.. the photo slightly skewed
(wes's work), the clouds are present and the location is in indiana
which is unexpected considering the global scope of the work involved.

go for it.

kurt

From: Janz, Wes
To: kurt west, Bryan Finoki
Date: Mar 26, 2006 1:24 PM
Subject: Savita and Manu

Kurt, it's great you're in these conversations, finally.

Bryan . . . Kurt's got it exactly.  Man, I am so juiced to do this book, when I read what Kurt says.

I like the Indiana opening as well, very much.  I think it's easy to talk about "over there" and forget what is going on nearby.
Probably I'll spend the next year or so working in Flint and Indianapolis, primarily.  Bryan, I'll email you more about this as soon as we get the interview done.  I'd love to get you involved in some of this . . . that's why your comment regarding San Diego - Tijuana borderland is perfect timing.  More on this soon.

Bryan, here's a caption for the image I just sent you from Surat.  It was taken by a graduate assistant of mine before she came to Ball State, in response to an assignment I gave the students before their departures, based on the "thoughtless acts?" book by Jane Fulton-Suri.

Feel free to alter the caption if you choose to use the image. This is Savita and her son Manu.  They live in Surat, India.  Savita's husband is a cart puller who works for daily wages in the nearby area.  Surat floods every year.  Many people move from their slum dwellings alongside the river and construct temporary dwellings throughout the city: alongside foot paths, inside railway stations, and in city parks -- this is what it means to live on an annual flood plain.  Savita's younger son is asleep inside the temporary structure.  Photo by Anindita Chaudhary (2005).

Right now I'm trying to get Anindita to write-up a series of GREAT images she took of people living in Surat.  She has a powerful image of a squatter taking a shower in the middle of a railway yard under a leaking water spigot that is used to wash the trains. She also has fantastic, amazing image of young children tied up in a hammock, the hammock wrapped around them like a cocoon, so the mother and father can go to work, their house in a squatter settlement nearby the construction site where they work.  I mean, unbelieveable to me, two very young children swinging in a hammock this is wrapped/tied around them, being watched by another woman.

I want to use her images and captions on onesmallproject and in the book too.

Don't know if it fits, but when you wrote in your last email: "I love the raw colors and the culture, those deep tones of dirt, primordial churning over of human spirit: the hands, earth, and shelter. the organic connection of helping people, helping people to find themselves...it's great" I want to remind you of the images of my students and Kalametiya villagers working alongside each other, digging in the dirt, literally, together.  It's obvious, "we" are helping "them" build new houses, but for me, just as important is our students finding themselves in the digging, finding out how good it can feel to be involved in this way.  "They" help "us" with our own lives and futures.  Maybe that would be a great closing image, just before your closing remarks.

Anyway, just wanted to say that.
Thanks!
Wes.