Material Studies, 2026
Record ID: 005
Date: March 24-2026
Subject: Ask Me at the Finish Line
Filed Under: Self / Practice / Confession
In my world, ambivalence isn’t necessarily confusion. It can be a form of awareness. The ability to hold multiple perspectives at once without forcing them into resolution. I found myself thinking: If coexistence can happen between people, why not between ideas? Nothing is fixed. Most things are still in motion while we’re experiencing them throughout our entire lives.
Within this period, there is still a responsibility in how that state is held, especially in relation to others. To recognize when something is still forming internally, and not project that instability outward without consideration. With a certain level of self-awareness, we can allow for discovery without introducing unnecessary conflict into each other’s lives. This is where pragmatism takes over. Where existential questions become unavoidable. We still make decisions. And within those decisions, more will always follow.
In relationships, I’ve let things extend longer than they should have, waiting for clarity to arrive on its own instead of making a decision. I continue to lead with sincerity, immersing myself fully even while knowing a form of pain will arrive at any moment. I accept that cost, while still holding a quiet disdain for it. I’ve started to distrust clarity when it feels too sure of itself, almost arrogant. It feels like a thief in the night. The moment I feel sure of something, something shifts and takes that feeling away, leaving behind a rush of nervous energy . A therapist once told me, “sometimes we label anxious feelings as fear when they’re actually excitement.” They feel similar enough to be mistaken for each other.
I assume direct answers will bring satisfaction. But when they arrive, I question them. I guess I am a soldier of contradiction. The uncertainty pushes back. It creates resistance. I become chaotic in that way. Not because I want to, but because I don’t fully accept what’s in front of me. I’ve come to see the relationship between ambivalence and resolve. If resolve is a temporary outcome of ambivalence, one cannot exist without the other. If ambivalence is the friend you can sit on the couch with for days, resolve is the one you meet for a drink every now and then before heading back home.
In my practice, I am especially drawn to things that don’t fully resolve. Surfaces that reveal and conceal at the same time. Structures that allow for partial visibility. Light that feels inviting but immediately restricting. The work doesn’t begin from clarity. It begins from tension. As we approach the work, we become curious. Our brains perceive it with the level of information we have at the time. Not as a measure of intelligence, but of presence. I aim to bring tension. I want to say “come in, we’re open,” but frustrate you with locked doors. Because if everyone is using the same key at the same time, no one learns what actually opens their own door.
Susan Sontag writes about this in Against Interpretation, placing more value on the viewer’s experience than on fixed meaning. That initial ambivalence, even discomfort, isn’t a limitation. It’s part of the process.
I live with the idea that we can remain ambiguous about many things in life until we reach the end of our lives. Multiple positions can stay active until we’ve experienced something in full. In the meantime, we feel our way through it. If we’re feeling lucky, we can say, “ask me at the finish line.”
Ambivalence exists because nothing has finished becoming.
I asked a few friends how ambivalence shows up in their relationships, work, and creative practice.
AF: Ambivalence in my life usually means uncertainty for too long, friction. Which is usually resolved by distancing altogether, removing myself from whatever is stirring such conflicting feelings.
Love life: trying to qualify poor qualities with redeeming qualities in a person in hopes of a net positive. If not resolved or removed, can turn into resentment.
Work/Artistic: If something isn’t clear it’s either tabled or workshopped until it’s defined. Very Brancusi “simplicity is complexity resolved.”
EA: Ambivalence might actually be the thing that happens right before victory or harmony or conquering a basic skill set like drifting in a car… except that in our life, our meat suits are the vehicle… Today I wanna drive to the horizon line and sunset… tomorrow I might not want to step outside.
HM: Ambivalence feels like a rollercoaster for me. It can be uncomfortable, but I also find it fascinating because it pushes me to explore the contradictions within myself instead of rushing to resolve them. Having conflicting feelings sparks curiosity about myself and others, and sometimes even makes me feel free, as if questioning my desires opens paths I hadn’t considered. Even when ambivalence leans toward the negative side, it offers new perspectives and reminds me that freedom often comes from embracing tension rather than trying to fix it. For me, ambivalence is simply part of understanding the complexity of being human.
BC: I carry two answers in the same breath, one that wants to choose, and one that refuses.
Ambivalence is not a problem I solve, it’s a room I pace in at 3am, barefoot, thinking of Gandhi whispering that everything I do will dissolve into dust yet somehow still matters enough to keep my hands moving.
I don’t trust clean answers. They feel like new paint over old walls, like certainty bought too cheaply.
I’ve always felt closer to the in-between. The magic in life comes at the point of solving. Once solved, I’m back to something else. The journey is more important to me than the destination. I don’t care about the result as much as the work.
In love:
I am both all-in and already grieving, falling while watching the fall, holding someone like a found object that I know was once discarded and could be again but choosing, anyway, to call it sacred. To be open enough that I could be crushed at any moment, but knowing the openness is needed to find something true, something real. The mix between giving someone the ability to break me and trusting they won’t.
In work:
I build things I don’t fully believe in at first, just to see if belief follows action, like dragging meaning behind me hoping it sparks. The mix of expectations, requirements, rent due, bills, a talent, hours traded for money because someone somewhere decided for me that I needed it to live.
In art:
I don’t resolve the contradiction, I exhibit it. I frame the hesitation, stretch the canvas between yes and no, leave the mark and erase it, leave the erasure visible. I place two opposing objects together, sometimes feeling confrontational. The idea always comes first and the idea is always open. I like to pose questions more than make a statement, and when statements are made, they tend to be laced with irony or some kind of satire.
Ambivalence is my medium.
Because the truth is, I don’t want a life that is decided. I want a life that is lived through, even if it flickers, even if it contradicts itself, even if it means loving something I can’t hold still. What I do may be insignificant, but I do it anyway, because not doing it would be the only real loss.
And maybe that’s it. I don’t resolve ambivalence. I walk it, crooked, and call that honesty.
Record ID: 004
Date: February 20-2026
Subject: Voids
Filed Under: Self / Practice / Scans
A few things I’ve found on the internet. All relative to current thoughts, voids.
Record ID: 002
Date: January 01-2026
Subject: This System Is Functioning as Intended
Filed Under: Self / Practice / Dystopian
As a short exploratory writing, I wanted to share a topic that was on my mind over the holiday. Why are the people in power, even villains, the ones with access to calm, serene, vast, and minimal spaces in most depictions of the future, specifically in films portraying dystopian settings?
Across science fiction film and literature, spaces associated with authority and technological control are frequently depicted as minimal, quiet, and highly ordered. These environments contrast sharply with the surrounding world, which is often portrayed as chaotic, polluted, overcrowded, or visually noisy. The more unstable or oppressive the external environment becomes, the more pristine and controlled the interior space of power appears. This pattern suggests that “calm” in speculative futures does not function primarily as healing or liberation, but as regulation. Minimalist interiors operate as controlled landscapes that reduce visual complexity, slow bodily movement, and encourage introspection. Here, peace becomes something administered rather than practiced.
Architectural commentary and film analysis reinforce this line of thinking. Cultural analyses of cinematic villain spaces, including discussions surrounding Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains (Oppenheim & Gollin, 2019), show that villains are often situated in sleek, modernist, and aesthetically refined environments. These spaces are frequently aspirational, even enviable, yet morally ambiguous. Minimalism becomes a visual shorthand for intelligence, distance, and authority. The association of calm architecture with power is not incidental, but a repeated narrative device.
This thought then led me to Zen-inspired spaces, which are often used in speculative settings because they abstract nature rather than reproduce it. In these same paradoxical futures, Zen aesthetics become a visual language detached from their philosophical origins and reintroduced as instruments of control. The garden is portrayed as scarce, inaccessible, and contained. Academic literature on Zen aesthetics emphasizes that concepts such as ma (interval or negative space) and emptiness were originally embedded in philosophical and ethical practices centered on impermanence, awareness, and non-attachment. However, global and speculative uses of Zen aesthetics often retain only surface qualities such as simplicity, restraint, and silence, while discarding their ethical foundations.
So let’s talk about calm.
The regulation of calm operates not only visually, but atmospherically. Theoretical work on atmospheres, particularly Gernot Böhme’s framework, positions atmosphere as something produced between environment and perception. Atmosphere is not a subjective mood, but a spatial condition generated through light, sound, material, and scale. Calm, in this sense, is designed.
Lighting, in particular, is permission rather than decoration. In real-world operational environments such as airports, hospitals, offices, parking garages, and data centers, lighting determines where bodies are allowed to move, where they are permitted to stop, how visible they are, and how long they are expected to remain. These spaces do not use light to express emotion, but to manage behavior, specifically through wayfinding. Calm lighting signals safety, legitimacy, and efficiency, while simultaneously enforcing control. Sound functions similarly. Low-frequency hums, mechanical rhythms, and controlled silences operate as infrastructural elements rather than background atmosphere. These auditory conditions shape attention, regulate stress, and normalize surveillance without explicit instruction. Political content can exist in sound without language.
In many speculative futures, control no longer appears violent. It appears efficient. Participation becomes difficult to distinguish from observation, and individuals internalize regulation without coercion. Surveillance is ambient, and behavior is guided by design rather than force. This raises an ethical question for contemporary artistic practice. Minimalism and meditative aesthetics are not neutral. When calm becomes scarce, it becomes a form of power. When serenity is privatized, it signals exclusion. To work within these aesthetics today requires acknowledging their associations with control, class, and governance. If an artist’s intention is purely to create commissioned works that promote peace, the question becomes: where is this work residing?
As someone who has always been drawn to works of minimalism, I have to ask: if the future I am depicting already exists in fragments today, where do I stand inside it? I am building worlds not to predict the future, but to understand my position inside the systems that will maintain it. My brutalist dreams are not fantasies about structuring lives, but about creating moments where people are encouraged to acknowledge their environment. For the public, this becomes a desire for clarity in the noisiest of times.
If I become a villain, it is by accident.
If I become a hero, it is by accident.
My desire is not power over people, but power over uncertainty.
If I become a hero, it is by accident.
My desire is not power over people, but power over uncertainty.
Coming from a design background, I have always looked at space as a form of scenography, where environments operate as stages and visitors become actors who willingly adjust their behavior to fit the part. For example, a deep red, dimly lit restaurant might be where someone wants to feel mysterious for the night. This dynamic is not inherently negative. In many cases, it is intentional, consensual, and even enjoyable. Rather than attempting to resolve or correct this condition, my interest is in staying attentive to it. I am less concerned with prescribing experience than with observing how subtle shifts in material, light, and space influence perception, behavior, and awareness over time.
Record ID: 001
Date: December 25-2025
Subject: Beginning
Filed Under: Self / Practice / Ongoing
This log exists as a place where I can speak without needing to resolve every contradiction in real time. I am treating it as a time record, not a statement. An ongoing chart of progress as both an artist and a human, written with the understanding that I do not always know what I am arriving at while I am in motion. What appears here may change or invalidate what came before it, as I remain in a constant state of external and internal discovery. It is evidence of movement. This space exists for observation. For returning later and recognizing change without fear.
Below are sketches from the past two years. They reflect lines of thinking that later developed into my work so far.