suddenly: where we live now

More on suddenly:

suddenly was born of urban planner Thomas Sieverts’s astonishing observation that “the shaping of the landscape where we live can no longer be achieved by the traditional resources of town planning, urban design, and architecture. New ways must be explored, which are as yet unclear.”

suddenly comprises a set of exhibitions, an annotated reader, and a series of public events that attempt to find these new ways in contemporary art, literature, and the conversations they spark. It will take place at various locations around the world, beginning this fall in Portland, Oregon, and traveling to Claremont, California in January 2009.


suddenly seeks new descriptions that give the landscape where we live an independent identity in the imagination of its occupants. We propose new language to displace ‘the city’ and ‘the countryside’ as the subject of our hopes and our struggles — the subject of our politics.

Throughout his work, Sieverts poses a radical question: what if there is no separate, centralized “city” and no pristine, natural “countryside,” but just one vast fabric of human (and non-human) habitation? What if where we live is an inextricably mixed-up and in-between landscape? Should we — can we — learn to see pattern and beauty in this dynamic, contradictory landscape rather than fighting hopeless political battles to legislate planning solutions for problems that cannot be solved by architecture or planning?

We no longer live in the distinct, ideal realms of “city” and “countryside.” More laws and discussion to prop up those images will not help us live better or more responsibly. What we lack is not smart planning or brilliant architects, it is the will and imagination to live here now, rather than seeking escape within ideas and representations of a disappeared past. We need better imaginations, and better art and literature, in order to initiate an organized aesthetic response to the mixed-up, in-between landscapes where we live.

This is what suddenly tries to provide: an imaginative tool kit for engaging the place where we live now through something other than, something beyond nostalgia. John Cage is an eloquent spokesman for the cause: “Our intention is to affirm this life, not bring order out of chaos or to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of the way and lets it act of its own accord.”

Conceived by Matthew Stadler and Stephanie Snyder

Thomas Sieverts •• Saskia Sassen •• Fritz Haeg •• Karl Marx •• Shawn Records •• Lisa Robertson •• Michael Damm •• Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College •• Storefront for Architecture, NY •• The Zwischenspiel Puppet Opera Company •• Program, Berlin •• Frank Heath •• Hadley+Maxwell •• The Corridor Project, Michael Hebb •• Molly Dilworth •• Castillo/Corrales, Paris •• Michael McManus •• Yi-Fu Tuan •• Raymond Williams •• Alexandra Harmon •• Gallery Homeland •• Aaron Betsky •• Oscar Tuazon •• Coll Thrush •• Fernand Braudel •• Rem Koolhaas •• Pomona College Museum of Art •• James Glisson •• Mostlandian Citizens Junior Ambassador and Katy Asher •• Diana George •• Mike Merrill •• Zoe Crosher •• Sarah Dougher •• David Harvey •• Athens West •• Mark Allen, Machine Projects •• Mile Post 5 •• Anselm Hook •• Rebecca McGrew •• D. Lee Williams •• Beaverton Creek Village Mall •• Gary Wiseman •• David Cunningham Gallery, San Francisco •• Colin Beattie •• Lucien Samaha •• Kenneth Mroczek •• Michael Reinsch, the Conversation Grant •• Danielle Dutton •• Marc Joseph Berg •• Matthew Stadler •• Stephanie Snyder •• and others...