A Brick Is... (Part 2)

Beach Brick
Originally uploaded by SideLong.


Following their summary of the historical development of brick-making and its cultural impact, the authors move on to an analysis of the brick in the collective imagination. Their method is to make a questionnaire which draws responses on the associative aspects of bricks. Questions such as: "If a brick was an animal, what animal would it be?" A question frequently answered by the response 'tortoise', a creature with a somewhat brick like shape, but which also carried its home on its back.

The responses of 120 questioned people are analysed in a structured way, looking at (1) substance: fire, earth (2) fabrication (3) aspect: form, colour, texture, density (4) construction role: basic element, decoration (5) use (6) properties: durability, weaknesses, physical constraints.

The author's interpretations are preceded by short 'poems' which reuse the words issued from the questionnaire. Here is the first one, in translation, preceding the section on 'Fire'.

THE FIRE
which smoulders under the RED EARTH
the HOT STONE
sparked from the FLINTSTONE
split by the FLAME-THROWER
the LIGHTNING
the THUNDER
disappearing into SULPHUR
ACRID SMELL OF BURNING
touching the STARS
the UNIVERSE
reappearing as a god RA SUN FLAMING
LIGHT
falling as METEOR
accompanying ORPHEUS to HELL
SATAN

VOLCANO
with its HAMMERS its ANVILS
will deliver it to men

Half the people qquestioned made reference to fire in their responses, sometimes by reference to the sun, but more often to subterranean fire, hell, volcanos... fire at once purifying, living and at the same time destructive, choking. Here, already, is the first break in signification: well-being and isolation versus violence, war and suffocation.

Moving to the second quality of substance: 'Earth' preceded by the following:

MAN
locks up the FIRE
in the BREAD OVEN
and returns TO WORK THE EARTH
HUMID
WARM
AROMATIC

Where ELMS grow
the EARTH
is HEAVY
PLASTIC
he MOULDS it

DUST
under the SUN
WATER
indeed a MUSH
that he KNEADS BY HAND
as he has seen his MOTHER do
KNEADING THE ESSENTIAL BREAD

He invents a tool to FASHION it
BEAT it
FORM it
MOULD it

So that with his MOTHER
and his FOREBEARS
leading his BROTHERS
his COUSINS
his UNCLES
he reopens the OVEN
where the BREAD is cooked
and places his DOUGH

Clay and earth are named, sometimes with the rhyming asociation of 'Terre-Mere'. reminsicent of the earth's fecundity and the matriarchal gods (Persephone, Inanna-Ishtar) worshipped by the first agricultural civilisations and later side-lined by male celestial deities in more urban, hierarchical societies.