J.K. Pikkujämsä

There are moment in life when the need to be close to something light, airy, primary, and quiet grows so big that it is a blessing to stumble, often by accident, upon exhibitions, books, music… that fill that precise need. I spent last Sunday afternoon with forensic architecture and The Nebelivka Hypothesis. It put my mind into a state of lightness, perhaps as a combined effect due to the fact that I had just begun to read Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a very matching contrast with traces of urban landscapes hidden from human memory. I usually don’t pick up books by their recent success in competitions, but I am glad I made an exception. That book is a delight.

“When the six of them talked about their spacewalks afterwards, they described déjà vu – they knew they’d been there before. Roman said that perhaps it was caused by untapped memories of being in the womb. That’s what floating in space feels like for me, he’d said. Being not yet born.” Samantha Harvey: Orbital (Vintage, 2024)

For the more curious mind: Pre-architecture press file.