Afflicting the Comfortable

We tend to notice infrastructure most when it’s not cooperating with our plans. On my way to e-flux last Saturday, the C train wasn’t operating, so I took the B25 bus. The bus cooperated with me, but at about half the expected pace, so I was glad I had (unsuccessfully) planned to stop for another errand en route and left home an hour early. I would never have made it to the panel on time otherwise.

When I finally arrived, I might have not noticed the slightly uneven white noise of the heater, had I not been primed to tune into its presence—and not just because of the subject matter of the event, the New York launch of After Comfort: A User’s Guide, presented by e-flux Architecture. Recently, I went to a guided group meditation where several of us noted in the debrief that we mistook the sound of the radiator for that of a person dozing off. When I meditate at home, I sometimes notice my own radiator’s erratic hissing. During the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned that many of NYC’s radiators are designed to operate with the windows open. HVAC systems, perhaps,…