Mid-February Update
It's amazing what an accidental phonecall can do...hello! For all of you out there, I am contactable and I would love to hear what you all are doing, so email to Mayee.W@gmail.com, if you like. I do miss you guys.
Yes, being a graduate student is quite different from being an undergrad. I have classes at night, and only for two days a week, and I don't hang around campus like I used to do when I was young and reckless. It's kind of like working, except you do it in your own time and you earn a lot less money. But it's been quite satisfying so far, as I am taking a class under my favourite professor who is my projected supervisor. So here's what I'm doing right now -- I've got a presentation due next week which is an analysis of the MDA senior management rap and the response to it (go look on google if you haven't seen it already) with reference to the politics of hiphop. I've also got another presentation next week for a graduate reading group on the Israel Defense Forces using the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (two French dudes whose thought is quite popular with the architects apparently, and a lot of modern artists) in their planning of urban warfare, with the intention of viewing urban warfare as an architectural problem to find new ways of defeating the enemy. In order to flush out the enemy, the army blasts holes in the walls and ceilings of homes in Nablus, a district of Israel, to "infest" the place and they end up locking out homeowners, often without any food or water, for days. There are plenty of implications to this: 1) should philosophy be used to wage war? 2) what does it mean for the soldiers to conceive of war as an 'architectural problem' and related to that, 3) where does the civilian stand in all this?
It's a crazy world out there...
There's a lovely movie out in Picturehouse now called Away from Her, a film about an elderly woman realising she has Alzheimer's disease and how her husband tries to cope with it. We see the husband struggle through loneliness and sacrifice with great love when she admits herself into a home and ends up almost forgetting him. It's a very lovely, bittersweet film. Quite sad, but I think it definitely deserves a watch if you're up for something different from the usual fare in the cinemas.
Yes, being a graduate student is quite different from being an undergrad. I have classes at night, and only for two days a week, and I don't hang around campus like I used to do when I was young and reckless. It's kind of like working, except you do it in your own time and you earn a lot less money. But it's been quite satisfying so far, as I am taking a class under my favourite professor who is my projected supervisor. So here's what I'm doing right now -- I've got a presentation due next week which is an analysis of the MDA senior management rap and the response to it (go look on google if you haven't seen it already) with reference to the politics of hiphop. I've also got another presentation next week for a graduate reading group on the Israel Defense Forces using the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (two French dudes whose thought is quite popular with the architects apparently, and a lot of modern artists) in their planning of urban warfare, with the intention of viewing urban warfare as an architectural problem to find new ways of defeating the enemy. In order to flush out the enemy, the army blasts holes in the walls and ceilings of homes in Nablus, a district of Israel, to "infest" the place and they end up locking out homeowners, often without any food or water, for days. There are plenty of implications to this: 1) should philosophy be used to wage war? 2) what does it mean for the soldiers to conceive of war as an 'architectural problem' and related to that, 3) where does the civilian stand in all this?
It's a crazy world out there...
There's a lovely movie out in Picturehouse now called Away from Her, a film about an elderly woman realising she has Alzheimer's disease and how her husband tries to cope with it. We see the husband struggle through loneliness and sacrifice with great love when she admits herself into a home and ends up almost forgetting him. It's a very lovely, bittersweet film. Quite sad, but I think it definitely deserves a watch if you're up for something different from the usual fare in the cinemas.
posted by Mayee at 11:30 PM
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