“…Many friends of architecture showed up simply for a weekend of schmoozing in style and swapping appraisals about how new the “new” really looked while downing cocktails and olives at Harry’s Bar or on the waterfront terraces of the outrageously luxurious Hotel Cipriani and Gritti Palace.

‘The biennale is a good predictor of the near future,’ said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. …

This year, earnest talk of ‘fluid form’ and ‘structural solutions’ was ramped up by star sightings — Nicole Kidman! Scarlet Johansson! — since the opening overlapped with the Venice International Film Festival….”-nytimes.com

~ this intellectual decadence has recently been touched on at sisyphean.com; whilst the above absurdities serve as inspiration from some of the abstract text, the following pissy and petty invectives might not belong in the offices of the work.group. we post here, though, so you may see precisely the kind of shit we are up against. even this phrase is misleading; we don’t intend to be against this shit, we plan to step over it in disregard. we won’t fight you as you are dead to us.

also, mr riley, as the work.group was not represented at the biennale, you will soon find that it is a failure as a predictor of any future; you will learn this as we make it clear that a new century is underway, and that your merit-starved model is as much of a fossil as you are.

“…Almost every project in the show bears the look of buildings made newly possible by a sophisticated grasp of computer technology. ‘We’re all part of the post-digital age who were trained in predigital methods,’ said Lise Anne Couture of the New York firm of Asymptote, who, with her husband, Hani Rashid, designed the exhibition displays. ‘We’re on both sides of the coin, but we have learned how to use these new technologies firsthand, and we understand how to manipulate and use them at every stage in the process, from conception to construction.’…”-nytimes.com

now your hand is shown. you fail because you allow technique to engender theory; how would you fare 84 — or 216 or 500 — years ago? it appears that your goals and your work would be unrecognizable. your reliance on the alteration of technical methods to drive your practice displays the mental vacuum that resides in the brain of an automaton; like an ape, you beat whatever is before you into the same pulp that the previous ape beat. some of us live outside your prison; we hold our practice to a timeless ideal and we strive to achieve it by any means warranted, available, and necessary. the angry red planet and, by extension, work.group would always shatter the same parameters at the dawn of the perspective in italy or at the americans’ first split of the atom. you remain craftsmen whilst we serve as prophets.

~ fear not, we are not abandoning this project. despite our declaration that there will be no more posts – long time readers know how likely that is to be true – we still intend to maintain a presence here. we have spent the past five years in a schizophrenic state, as we have never reached an agreement on the purpose of this site. to make a cat move forward, you pull back its tail; we have found that we move in whichever direction our tail is pulled, such as the expense of a week on building a database for the work images only to cast it aside and write instead some snide remark about how shitty police officers are. this incongruity has arrested our development.

lately, our internet time is taken up with sophisticating sisyphean.com [w] and a new enterprise that is in development. we hope that a new structure will allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff, the style from the content, and allow all endeavours to blossom unhindered. there is no consensus on the content of the future, but we have learnt its nature; while we still intend to bring you features such as the '’history of atlanta', our goal is the return of the angry and the red to 'the angry red planet'.

~ opensecrets.org [w]

~ upon waking on the nail-strewn hardwood floor of an unheated basement apartment this morning, we discovered that our lot has not markedly improved since the seizure of saddam hussein’s person.

~ would anyone believe that we have been too busy to update? while some time has been concentrated on the work, we fear that most time has just been concentrated on work – predominately, its absence. our sympathies for those who have journeyed here in the recent past with the hopes of the requisite wry commentary on current events and found themselves discontent with the pittance they have been offered. perhaps an attempt could be made to contemplate our silence; it may be possible, although unlikely, for one to discern the slightest glimpse of the turbulent clouds thundering in our minds this season.

~ for those who are visiting for our requisite wry commentary on current events: a great method for earning our contempt is to ask for our opinion on the academy awards ‘controversies’ or to even mention the existence of the well-groomed, well-fed glitterati and to declare that not only do they actually have any problems in this world, but that they are such a burden to them, that some of the grief and worry must be distributed across the nation, lest it becomes too much to bear for the tender elite. as far as we know, we have not even seen any of the films that have been nominated, unless there is a category this year for downloading 1972’s ‘pulse’ via peer-to-peer networking.

~ anyone working at the village voice should note: contrary to the views recently put forth in your publication, we’re afraid that alanis morissette (2002) did not ‘make up’ the word ‘ungood’. please see orwell, george (1949): “If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.”

~ something tells me that these roles are reversed:
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~ we hope that life is discovered on europa sometime this week, and that there is no religion there which impresses people to cover their own cities with blood and ash, and that there are no landlords there who impress upon the tenants worthless supers who can not distinguish between a hammer and a wrench.

~ there is little to report lately. we still are languishing in the throes of s.a.d.; we still are refusing to engage in the unauthorized reproduction and illicit distribution corporate motion pictures.

~ the traditional new year’s day essentials used to be simmered on the stove for hours before gathering with family and friends for an afternoon meal. this year, we opted to choke down the lukewarm morsels alone, seasoning them, of course, only with our tears of shame.

~ citing a nervous bustdown, the angry red planet is taking august easy for restoration. no updates until september. thanks.

~ okay, there still no access, so folks waiting for emails from us will still have to wait (emergencies can reach us on our private lines); we have colds from a spell of disorientation in a rainy chinatown; we have endured ‘blair witch 2’, ‘pushing tin’, and ‘requiem for a dream: the freaking edited version’. the man who told us that you can rot in l.a. without feeling it must come to new york city; the feeling is firing the end of every nerve at once.

~ this past week = more nothing.

~ few events + constant worry = much demoralization

~ updates will be few and far between in the coming days and months.