equivalents-
the ability of one thing to bring to mind something else
triggers memory
elicits feelings
threshold-
not just an entry from light to dark but a bodily threshold
a constructed experience
how to inhabit a threshold
a space of memory-negotiates the self
thoughts
[the place, the site: the longing to reach the place to be able to look back]
threshold > memory >rhythm, light
wall
imprints of memory-the wall create registrations
the space in between
tools: change in thickness, frame, track-projection line
plot intentional trajectories
how to create a long exposure…
use the limitations
the placement of the wall…where it breaks, how it stands
tolerance
a shift is dimensional
a wrinkle is qualitative
an intention…that has to be forgotten
the looking back
the shifting perspective > a construction in perspective
the reflection finishes/completes
A beginning…
to propose an architecture of the looking back
to start by constructing a camera obscura that is inhabitable and moveable (a precedent for further constructions)
this will be measured according to my body (the body)
to draw what is seen and what is reflected. A threshold/ a container.
To produce these drawings that are on top of each other to understand how to then move to find a buildable element to study.
the beginning of a conversation [hopefully]
part 1
to make layers
The concept of [the idea of] an object to represent an idea or belief is something that we are accustomed to and it is well received. The only thing[s] we seem to argue are the representations themselves - perhaps there could be a better way to [re]present. In terms of drawing, this is ever present and ongoing, in painting, sculpture, aRchitecture, finances, avant-garde film, philosophy, etc., but I would like to start with paper.
The concept of paper and what it comes from is an understanding learned at an early age when we are shown the source and then the material in our hands. It is awe-inspiring to understand the magnitude of the mechanical process and breakdown to achieve something that I can then hand to someone and say, here are my thoughts.
I began to understand that paper was indeed a representation of something else [some say a by-product] and, that through manipulations, there can be a new way of conceptualizing the already made in hand. This led to a questioning of the source and then the reproduced. What did money (currency) have to do with this? (and also its receipt) This understanding of the paper in hand was linked to an understanding, a belief that there was a source somewhere. I had never seen this source, never experienced its way finding into the existence of my necessity. Yet I was supposed to believe in it like there was a source, unending in its nature, but definitely not bottomless from my approach. This creates some thoughts and questions, but the one to touch on first is the fact that money does not exist [in and of itself]. There is no such thing, never lived or died -only the understanding of it. To hold it in hand and see that it is a complex representation of the time spent, hours accumulated, people networked, labor issued, workman produced…creates a vortex of the [input/output] of the meaning put into each piece [of paper]. There are hierarchies of attendance issued with each ‘bill’, levels of manipulation of time and [our own] spaces. What it becomes, then, is an issuance of containment – an ideology that we prescribe to – to survive a daily existence. [what is being called ‘collective judgment’]
The capital then becomes the object and the source to the user due to the disconnect between the object of mediation and the material or structure represented.
As a continual user, this disconnects becomes more apparent and, at times, incomprehensible as we base so much on belief and ephemeral complacencies. The value placed is uncomfortable in the fact that it is (yes, fluctuating but…) indefinitely growing, [re]printing…itself on our interactions as a co-modifiable and relatable resource. Everyone should have one! Put it in your pocket…many of them!
There was a reference in a talk to “a promise between lovers”. This seems a fit. An unspoken agreement, a nodding of the head, a continuation of a need. By handing over a physical belief system [written in a code already understood by and taught to everyone at an early age] we then make our selves vulnerable in hopes of a reimbursement of our givings.
This leads to the question that has been a plague in my mind for a long time. What if we decided not to believe. What if this bill in hand becomes nothing. No thing. A figment of the imagination used to do a bidding for a time, but then terminated. The act of everyone for five minutes to agree to not believe. The chaos that would ensue for everyone would be insurmountable, but the fact of the matter would be even more scarring.
To stop believing in god might not do so much harm/good/…
We would be equal. All equally nothing.
Granted, we have taken a step in this direction with the advent of the idea of credit, but we still have a representation of it through the card –a plasticity of paper. [a recognizing of our technology of today]
Our consumption is even more now “deferred” due to the separateness we have taken to look the other way when asking for our needs and/or wants. The give and the take are not balanced. It is not even on the same scale. With compound interest accruing on every second of breath, a duty is performed to count those breaths, and account for them. [physical foundation and fiscal foundation]
The idea of freedom bounding through this process creates the interlacing of the realities of commonplace [the limitations we set on ourselves] and the limitations of existence. The exchange of our beliefs, the exchange of our values, the exchange of our intentions leads to the exchange of ideas and forwardings of culture and society. Perhaps this exchange of credit along with a tag of interest takes this and tongue-and-cheek(ly) shows its face. Conceptuality for concept’s sake.
What if the agreement was for one minute.
Would the wall of the ship thicken? Or would it become so transparent and thin that we could then put our hand right through its skin and change its shape, its penetrability. [referring to the owner”ship”]
This wall is a wall of memory [and so it is moving]. A part of perception.
perception- the act of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind, a cognition, and understanding. The early modern French definition is “the taking into possession of rents, crops, profits”.
A receiving or collection; to take entirely.
memory- a [re]collection, to retain and revive [facts], the ability of certain materials to return to an original shape after deformation
to memorize- to commit to writing [this definition was found to date to 1591]
the mental meaning dates to 1838
it is the absence
of a wall
that penetrates
figures perpetually whispered
to be silent
…
[john hejduk]
to make layers
In this wall of memory’ time as currency.
A reminder of our surroundings, the space of the in-between, the middle, the milieu.
The movement between [among] us as words - a way to locate ourselves among others and to discern our station in the midst of others through the echo of ourselves. A finding of measure[ment] of the silence of our imagination.
The things in between that are made real by their surrounding[s].
silence/ a hinge.
To understand the relationship between. How/who are we versus the where we are. This has been talked about as the “silence that cuts through language”. In terms of perspective, its definition as “the state of existing in space before the eye” also talks of the position of the viewer. To understand where you are is to know where you are coming from and where you are going [or perhaps not going]. This middle, where you are, is subjective and understood as a comparison.
The same with memory. To remember is to place yourself in a time [now] and recall - [re]collect how one has been according to the feelings and decisions that have happened since. A short time passed, a flicker, is perhaps a time close and “clear”. Is distant memory, a blur, a long exposure. These things are measured and categorized. They “represent” who, where, how we were. Something of which to measure ourselves by, what we are forgetting.
In order to find ourselves in the world, we speak of what surrounds. These surroundings are thoughts exchanged. These exchanges have a value attached that is exposed to all that include themselves.
To think of exchange AS the measure - the amount or quality of the exchange. What is the value of the give and the take [and what falls between].
What becomes of the middle again? The in between space that contains the action (almost). A hyphen.
If the middle becomes the activated space and the way in which to know where that is, is determined by the exchange [rate and amount] then there is a shift that occurs in understanding (an exchange of energy). This understanding is of the line on either side. The outline of the already known, the constructed, the built. But to see one in terms of the other. To know that the existence of either ‘wall’ depends on what happens between and that between is explained through the casing of its surroundings.
This measure comes through and is named. The exchange is given an existence through its being called. So to name is to measure. To allot. To say. Through the words it is so. [Is this the saying out loud or is it even in the thinking.]
For the the unsaid way of words. an expression of in-between the lines…a new message that needs boundaries to exist.
In terms of the middle, the center is defined. An unoccupied space of subjective perception (to stand amidst reflection[s]).
If “silence is an unspoken agreement [the social contract] and the law a written agreement, are words a hinge to time and does silence collapse that time.”
Is the wall the hinge in terms of the space in between.
Or does the space become the hinge in which all things rely. As Plato refers in the Republic, book X, is it the thing itself, the representation of the thing or the idea of the thing that is the measure.
And then how do you maintain this relationship between words, languages, and spaces.
How does one speak of silence for others.
The spoken words construct the relationship between the imagination and silence. In imagination, the word alone becomes a known. This known then decides the fact of not being so because of the naming it in reference to others. This is an interesting realization of the understanding of one’s space/place and the fact of the calling it to representation creates the relationship of the one to the others. Is there now an audience that responds [the echo] or perhaps a centrality in understanding of one’s place [the center]. The facing of one to the other creates the position as an ‘other’. In this, meaning the reciprocal of the naming
[perspective].
No two feel or see the same thing – a wrinkle.
Can anything exist without the experience of itself? Is it possible to think of a space ‘unshaped’ by perception.
To be in one place is not to deny the existence of an other, even if that other place cannot be felt or seen.
Remnants are left behind - knowledge out of experience.
There is an intention that has to be forgotten.
As Paul Virilio has said, “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing that one sees”. Perhaps this is what Debord talks about when he suggests ‘the letting go’.
A way of moving into space through perception or a change in the definition of.
bibliography
Derrida, Jacques. L’Ecriture et la Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned. 1919.
Hollander, John. The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press. 1981.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London:Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press. 1962.
Norberg-Shultz, Christian. Existence, Space & Architecture. New York, Praeger. 1971.
to connect
some questions by finding some things written...
In John Hollander’s The Figure of Echo, he talks about the echo as an understanding of reference.
“Aside from recurrence, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness.
Since objects always muffle or impede acoustic reflection, only empty place can create echoes of lasting clarity.
Hollowness only increases the eerie quality of otherness inherent in any echo.
An echo, while implying an enormity of a space, at the same time also defines it, limits it, and even temporarily inhabits it.”
Charles Fort, in The Book of the Damned, calls it a state of uncertainty between existence and non[-]existence.
Jacques Derrida, in L’Ecriture et la Difference talked about “structure and centrality” saying “The function of a center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of structure. By orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the play of its elements inside the total form.
This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of it), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center.”
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty says “… more precisely, the inner horizon of an object cannot become an object without the surrounding objects becoming a horizon, and so vision is an act with two facets.”
Christian Norberg-Schultz describes in Existence, Space, and Architecture, “In terms of spontaneous perception, man’s space is subjectively centered. The development of schemata however does not only mean that the notion of center is established as a means of general organization, but that certain centers are externalized as points of reference in the environment.”
But if space were to be the only thing we are making
________ by using materials to frame or emphasize, there is a question of making at all. There is no making.
There is only the emphasizing
exposing articulating regarding in[ex]cluding
framing reconditioning
imagining. this distance between - us -a way to explain the shift in exposure, undertaking the inverse and relating it back to the reflection at hand.
The distance within with/in.
Here is the medium again the space between us. The only thing perhaps that explains you. How else would anyone know where you are. The measure of the line that is drawn from you to me is inversely understood as the distance between me and you. And then there is the dealing with your scale to mine and the fact that the “numbers” used don’t mean anything anymore because we have destroyed them with the thing called named. So our intimacy is our distance shared. The further away the better.
A collapse. A falling [a]part. A retension.
A speculation on winnings. A position of higher learning. A station point in the picture plane.
The perspective of one to the other. Of one’s space inside of the other’s (space).
The reversal of the glare. This allowing of a distance shared.
A collision of realization. The needing of the other to know of the self.
In feeling the thickness of what is inside.
The thinness of what is not there. The hand. To be so aware of the appendages hanging at your side with nothing to do. Except to be there. By your side. With you.
To use them, to “make” things. This making again. For to make is to bring about without existence before. Is it possible to ask this of a person? Can there be face to face without looking?
In order to have a history, distance is needed. The explaining is through the word, the photograph, the film.
Each is a recorder and a transmitter. So the relation of the face to face is then projected from and through and into and out and back in again. The memory is of and from the other(s). If the memory maker is an outsider telling others of the in that they are a part of, perhaps, an evaporation.
