Mousetrap is a scientific autobiography written in the Spring of 1993 for an Architecture History and Theory course taught by Deborah Gans at Pratt Institute. This revised edition revisits the dialectic rhetoric of Kant and Hegel in the original paper, while expanding a metaphysical and phenomenological study of interior/exterior space.
excerpt:
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the
Mohican, the Pokanoket? They have vanished before the
avarice and oppression of Man, as snow before a summer sun.
Will we let ourselves be destroyed without a struggle, give up
our homes and everything that is sacred to us? Never! Never!
What remains to remind of an absence? No quarter is given for
the forgotten, vacancies are not easily perceived.
A long time ago, home changed. A duality was created as the
wilderness world (huya ania) was made exterior by the
enclosure of interior space.
There was a time when we would drink from the streams that
gather and flow on the surface – no longer. We have turned
inward, down under the surface, where things are hidden from
sight. Unable to return the calls of the forest, we vacated.
What have we gained by moving inside? What have we lost?
What stock has been taken? What consequence considered?
mousetrap (2016)
