Lifestyle // Traffic Jam Theater

Stumbled across this story on NPR about Los Angeles artist Joel Kyack, who stages puppet shows from the back of his truck amidst the city's worst traffic snarls.

[All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.]

 This article is fascinating for a few reasons; firstly, it touches again on the topic of mobile, or dynamic, architecture in which the paradigm of certain traditional cultural institutions - in this case, theater - has evolved to include transiency, improvisation and whimsy [see the previous post about food trucks]. Additionally, Kyack's ideas about the nature of performance, the choreography of movement and patterns of behavior are strikingly architectural. A few of my favorite quotes:

"I like chaos," Kyack observes. "I like things that are moving in and out of control, like negotiations of agency and resignation. And for me, the traffic jam is that."  

Wow, that sounds like it came straight out of architecture school. It nearly refers to "swarm intelligence," a trendy topic in many futurist / avant garde design programs about uncontrolled systems and one that I've mentioned before on this blog.

"How you navigate, how you make the world that you want around you, and how you compromise with what the world's giving you," Kyack explains. "And I think that formally, the traffic jam is sort of the perfect metaphor to explore that."

Compromise is an important facet of architecture that is often ignored in theory but appears again and again in practice; it sometimes leads so much frustration during the design process that it leads one to question the viability or usefulness of the architectural profession. But what Kyack says here, quite optimistically, is that compromise is an opportunity. It is a means by which we can explore the constraints of life, add to them, and freely enrich ourselves. The constraint of traffic, for example, could lend to compelling studies about the various layers of architecture contained within (the car environment, the road as a form of architecture that contains "inhabitants" and performs living functions, or, as shown here, the traffic jam as a staging area, etc.). After all, we spend so much time in automotive purgatory, yet traffic is very underutilized in a practical sense. Radio shows and the like are sufficient entertainment but lack context - there's no element of "now" or "here."

Lastly, my absolute favorite snippet:

He doesn't get in trouble. But then again, the cops don't quite buy his academic theories about offering a space of engagement for drivers to reflect on the chaotic structures of their daily routine.

Is this the author taking a little potshot at dullard cops? Could be...but there it is again, the conflict between academia and real life that often gets smarty types in trouble. More compromising is in order!