8/3/2019 Arakawa Gins Reversible Destiny Questionnaire 1996

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ARCHITECTURAL BODY RESEARCH FOUNDATION ARAKAWA + GINS

Reversible DestinyQuestionnaire -- 1996

STAY ALIVE

STAYING ALIVE

A MEASURED OR MATURE RESPONSE TO THESE MATTERS IS YET TO BE FOUND. ITS EITHER FAITH OR NOTHING. THOSE NOT ADOPTING

A PIE-IN-THE-SKY ATTITUDE REMAIN CONVINCED THAT NOTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE MORTAL. THE

DEFEATIST ATTITUDE TOWARD MORTALITY RUNS RAMPANT. ANOTHER POSSIBILTY: REVERSIBLE DESTINY A FRONTAL ATTACK ON

MORTALITY ITSELF.

REVERSIBLE DESTINYQUESTIONNAIRE

THIS QUESTIONNAIRE INVITES QUESTIONS AS MUCH AS ANSWERS.

PREFERENCE SHOULD BE GIVEN TO ANSWERS THAT TAKE THE FORM OF ACTION.

Human mortality need not be inevitable. How does

this statement sit with you? Human mortality is a

given condition. But could it be that it is only

provisionally a given?

We may be bound to an apparently intractable

so-called human destiny simply because we have

been unable to gather enough information on our

own behalf and to coordinate it properly. Are we

in the throes of an inexorably abominable

condition that, in effect, is nothing but a sad

consequence of the left hands not knowing what

the right is doing?

Surely there has never been a sufficiently

diversified approach to the study of the body in

relation to the universe, and only recently has

an efficient coordinating of information from

existing branches of research become possible.

Wheres the harm, then, in proceeding on the

premise that human mortality theoretically can be

amended?

Just as people throughout the ages and well into

the nineteenth century dismissed out of hand the

possibility of human flight, so too have people

ruled out and continue to rule out the

possibility of a nonmortal human life. An

entirely new order of architectural surround

the airplane had to be engineered before human

flight became fact. Should we not now, at the

start of a new millennium, be busy at work on

architectural surrounds that directly address thedaunting problems of mortality?

Every architectural surround augments the body

proper to some degree. In order to become

nonmortal, the body proper needs a new degree of

augmentation. The body proper in combination

with an architectural surround constitutes an

architectural body. What architectural

surrounds promote the most long-lasting

architectural bodies?

Shouldnt cities be dedicated to the perpetuation and

further invention of human life? What if simply walking

through a city you could study all you need to know and

more? Would you not like to live within surroundings

specifically constructed to elicit from you a great

number of possible ways one more surprising than the

next for you to exist as a sensorium?

The architectural surround can greatly influence the

storage rate or recycling rate of transformatory

massenergy or spacetimemassenergy. How can we go about

assessing which conditions are most conducive to maximum

storage and recycling?

Would you be willing to live your life as part of an

architectural research project directed toward helping

mortals cease to be mortal?

Do you want to live in an apartment or house that can

help you determine the nature and extent of interactions

between you and the universe? What lengths would you be

willing to go to, or how much inconvenience would you be

wiling to put up with, in order to counteract the usual

human destiny of having to die?

How much joy would you be willing to endure in order to

secure a possibly uninterrupted (endless) future?

m>Reversible Destiny Questionnaire -- 1996 http://www.reversibledestiny.org/qu

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