Madeline Gins


Madeline Helen Arakawa Gins was an American artist, architect, and poet.
WWW reversibledestiny.org

Early life and education

Gins was born in New York City, November 7, 1941, and raised on Long Island, in the village of Island Park. She studied physics and Eastern philosophy at Barnard College.

Career

Gins met her partner and husband, artist Shusaku Arakawa, in 1963, while studying painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. One of their earlier collaborations, "The Mechanism of Meaning", was shown in its entirety at the 1997 Guggenheim exhibition, Arakawa/Gins – Reversible Destiny/We Have Decided Not to Die.
In 1987, as a means of financing the design and construction of works of architecture, Arakawa and Gins founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation. The Foundation actively collaborates with practitioners in a wide range of disciplines including, experimental biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, experimental phenomenology, and medicine. Their architectural projects included residences, Reversible Destiny Lofts, parks and plans for housing complexes and neighborhoods.
She and Arakawa "lost their life savings" to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
Arakawa and Gins cofounded the Reversible Destiny Foundation, an organization dedicated to the use of architecture to extend the human lifespan. They co-authored books, including Reversible Destiny, which is the catalogue of their Guggenheim exhibition, Architectural Body, and Making Dying Illegal, and designed and built residences and parks, including the Reversible Destiny Lofts, Bioscleave House, and the Site of Reversible Destiny–Yoro.

Death

On March 18, 2010, Arakawa died, after a week of hospitalization. Gins would not state the cause of death. "This mortality thing is bad news," she stated. She planned to redouble efforts to prove "aging can be outlawed."
On January 8, 2014, Gins died of cancer at age 72.

Architectural works by Arakawa and Gins

  • "UBIQUITOUS SITE, NAGI'S RYOANJI, Architectural Body
  • "Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro Park
  • "Shidami Resource Recycling Model House
  • "the Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA – In Memory of Helen Keller
  • "Bioscleave house – LIFESPAN EXTENDING VILLA
  • "Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator

Publications

Books by Madeline Gins

  • The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words. Edited by Lucy Ives. Catskill, NY: Siglio Press, 2020.
  • Helen Keller or Arakawa. Santa Fe, NM: Burning Books with East/West Cultural Studies, 1994.
  • Helen Keller ou Arakawa. Portrait de l'artiste en jeune aveugle., Paris, Hermann, 2017, trans. Marie-Dominique Garnier, pref. Jean-Michel Rabaté.
  • What the President Will Say and Do!! Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1984.
  • Intend. Bologna: Tau/ma, 1973.
  • Word Rain . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.

Books by Arakawa and Madeline Gins

  • Making Dying Illegal, Architecture Against Death: Original to the 21st Century. New York: Roof Books, 2006 ; Tokyo: Shunjusha, 2007.
  • Le Corps Architectural. Paris: Editions Manucius, 2005
  • Architectural Body. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2002
  • Reversible Destiny: We Have Decided Not to Die. New York: Abrams, Inc., 1997,
  • ARCHITECTURE: Sites of Reversible Destiny: Architectural Experiments after Auschwitz-Hiroshima. London: Academy Editions, 1994.
  • Pour ne pas mourir. To Not To Die. Paris: Editions de la différence, 1987.
  • Mechanismus der Bedeutung. The Mechanism of Meaning. Introduction by Lawrence Alloway. Munich: Bruckmann, 1971 ; New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1979, 2nd edition ; New York: Abbeville Press, 1988, 3rd edition.
  • For Example . Milan: Alessandra Castelli Press, 1974.

Essays by Gins

  • '"The Architectural Body – Landing Sites", Space in America: Theory History Culture
  • '"LIVING BODY Museum", Cities Without Citizens, pp. 243–57
  • '"Gifu-Reversible Destiny", Architectural Design, Games of Architecture, pp. 27–35
  • '"Housing Complexity", Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts, No. 6, pp. 88–95
  • '"Landing Sites/The End of Spacetime", Art and Design
  • '"Person as Site in Respect to a Tentative Constructed Plan". ANYWHERE, pp. 54–67
  • The Tentative Constructed Plan as Intervening Device for a Reversible Destiny ''A+U: Architecture and Urbanism'', pp. 48–57.
  • '"The Process in Question," Critical Relations. Highgate Art Trust, Joan Burns, Williamstown, Massachusetts
  • '"To Return To!", Marcel Duchamp and the Avant-Garde Since 1950. Köln: Ludwig Museum
  • 'Essay on Multi-Dimensional Architecture"
  • '"Forum: Arakawa's The Sharing of Nameless, 1982–83," DRAWING, Jan.-Feb. 1985, pp. 103–04