When we act with the material world we often plan while things happen unpredictably. In constructing a building, we first imagine its potential future. The constructed future is immaterial, and exists differently within imaginations. The present is the touchable time and what happens, as it happens, occurs in matter.
Through material reorganization we affect rhythms and processes in and around material. Our reorganized material acts through time – becoming cultural heritage sites, pollution, food for termites – sometimes retaining its shape for a long time, sometimes dissolving but always changing in a complex way unique to its time and place.
To act with matter in the present, in its complex relationships, in its environment, do we need a radical approach to planning? Is there a way of preserving multiplicity and allowing nonlinear incidents and relations? Planning the future through the study of past events can offer change, but not radical change. Even though repeating an action in a shifting world is different every time, we argue that the ambition for a truly radical future needs to be higher.
