House Parts, or, Ruminations on Elements of the Domestic

Plain card covers with coil binding; no publisher information; 40 "parts" from "lawn" to "wunderkammer" to cartesian squirrel, to black box; about new but for "withdrawn" stamp (estate donation) to front endpaper; with tissue overlays and one fold-out.; 6" x 10"; House Parts (1995) , his prizewinning SCI-Arc thesis, was what its author called a ârumination on elements of the domesticâ in 40 collages, objects and accompanying narratives. The strategy here was bricolage, as elaborated by Claude LÃ vi-Strauss in The Savage Mind (an important source for Liu) and applied to all narratives by Jacques Derrida in Writing and Differenceâ"a mindfully perverse, revelatory rearrangement of fragments rescued from a âheritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, â according to Derrida. In Liuâs case, the âheritageâ represented in the collection of objects and texts is that of modern dwelling, in its architectural, urban, historical and narrative dimensions. (Canadian Art).