“They’re four young critics,” Jeff said, over the phone. “They’ve spent the last year writing... I don’t know how much stuff, for this program. Book reviews, built-work criticism, competition coverage, think-pieces.” He hesitates only momentarily before adding the Kipnis seal of faint-but-hard-won praise: “Some of it’s not bad.”
Then the kicker: “And nobody’s seen any of it.”
Even just the name for this archetypal bohemian demimonde was a mouthful: the Knowlton School of Architecture, of the Ohio State University, presents the Masters of Architectural Studies (Criticism division). An experimental four-quarter program, launched in the heady boom years of the mid-oughties, the MAS curriculum exposed its charges to the critical, rhetorical, and curatorial strategies of some of the school’s finest minds, not to mention visiting lecturers of all stripes.
The idea was to launch the next generation of young critics, and with such rising stars as Michael Abrahamson and Greg Delaney already to its credit, the value of the exercise seems proven. But MAS’s third full year was its richest, with a cohort of four almost frighteningly dedicated and ambitious young Turks: Courtney Coffman, Joe Ebert, Tom Cherry, and Ben Wilke. They cranked out paper after paper for the likes of Ashley Schafer, John McMorrough, and of course Kipnis himself.
Too many papers, in fact. As Jeff put it: “Nobody is going to want to publish you guys because you have too much to show them, and you’re still making the mistake of calling it student work. You walk up and say, ‘I’m a student...’ and the door is already being closed upon you. So my first assignment for you is, don’t do that. And for God’s sake, edit this down.”
The sheer quantity of excellent work was beginning to overshadow its quality. Everyone involved agreed there needed to be some coherent product to share with the world, but the authors also wanted to start their publishing careers with a clean slate: clear the decks of that stuff and we’ll go from there. That’s where I came in, as Jeff rang me up with his proposal: “There’ll be a publication. I’ll be the Editor-in-Chief. You’ll be the... desk editor.”
A pause, then the punchline: “Wait’ll you see the desk.”
The Desk, already infamous in certain Knowlton circles, is the repository of the MAS foursome’s intellectual project of the past fourteen months. A little secret: it’s not really a desk at all. Rather, it’s one of the countless unassuming wheeled MDF credenzas that populate Knowlton Hall - the ones design students pack with tracing paper, coffee makers, sleeping bags and Play-Doh. A couple of in-jokey labels were still masking-taped to its surface: apparently, at one time, the Four briefly dubbed themselves the “House of Payne,” after the contemporary architect around which their sensibilities divided. The name that stuck, however, was “Placebo”: an acknowledgement of their shared interest in the relation between effects and the expectation of effects... or perhaps just a gallows-humor reference to the incurable chest cold they kept passing back and forth in the harsh January of ’09.
The credenza was padlocked; I borrowed the key and unleashed a Fibber McGee closet of pure verbiage: no T-squares, no Drafting Dots, but a staggering, ungodly quantity of paper. Some of it was in a semi-organized state (old syllabi, correspondence with publishers – you know, official stuff) but the vast majority constituted a proliferating, hemorrhaging mass of loose 8.5 x 11 Whatnot, such a collection of self-similar sheets that you would assume it was a dry run for an installation piece, until you looked closer and saw all the blue ink marking up the laser-printed body text. This was the mother lode of the Placebo Four, the physical record of their intensive mutual feedback loop of drafts, reconsiderations, revisions, and recriminations. Some of it was the kind of dirty laundry that is best left unaired, but even bracketing that, I was still looking at a few hundred pieces of paper.
My job, then, was to make some sense of all this. Publishing everything, even electronically, was out of the question: the Four are their own harshest critics and simply wouldn’t allow much of the work out the door, even while they remained committed to the project of publishing it. But, as Jeff allowed, the stuff wasn’t bad. Actually, it was pretty good. Some of it was genuinely on the cutting edge of the contemporary discussion – the work not of students, but of critics.
As “desk editor,” I’ve concentrated my efforts on locating the definitive version of each text. Where the authors’ schedules have allowed, I’ve occasionally reconvened the Four to hash out particular pieces one last time, or to clarify in-group debates that had been obscure to me (but, it seemed, still touched a number of raw nerves). One piece in particular had to be fished out of the trash can more than once after its author repeatedly insisted it was “total garbage” over the objections of everyone else in the room (but I’ll leave you to guess which one that is).
How to get it out there? As Jeff allowed, “It could be online. But I don’t know how to do that and I don’t want to read it.” Well, he’d already read most of it anyway, hence this website. Placeboarchitecture.blogspot.com will act as a delayed-release capsule of the Placebo Four’s greatest hits: not their “student work,” but their work as critics, before anybody knew who they were. Every Friday, one of the twenty final selections will go live at this address.
I’ve refrained from editorializing on work itself; while I’m tempted to draw the web of thematic harmonies (and sticking points) that connects the different authors, I think when the work is viewed as a whole, these things become self-evident anyway. That said, I look forward to feedback from the readers on this selective rifle through the contents of The Desk, this protracted performance of critical mien. In due time, as our authors’ reputations enlarge, I fully expect this site to become the next great architectural “Rarities and B-sides” collection, a fan favorite and shibboleth for the critically in-the-know. Rehearse this line now, for when you’re getting ready to share the link with a nouveau critique colleague: “Some of it’s not bad.... And nobody’s seen any of it.”
Addison Godel
11.10.2010
