THE FOUNDATION DEPOSIT by benandsebastian

On THE FOUNDATION DEPOSIT of the BANKRUPTS’ INSTITUTE by R.A.B. Clement Foundation Deposit Curator

THE FOUNDATION DEPOSIT of the BANKRUPTS’ INSTITUTE by R.A.B. Clement Foundation Deposit Curator

AN INTRODUCTION

with thanks to Jonathan Hill, Jane Rendell and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;my glamorous assistantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for their many gifts

‘Every man has a property in his own person, This nobody has any right to but himself’’

John Locke

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; You know, if you have a friend in whom you have confidence, And if you wish to get good Your soul must blend in with his And you must exchange presentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Lines from the Edda

Curator’s Note Shortly after the Bankrupts’ Institute was first conceived in 2006, I was given the task of compiling and curating a ‘foundation deposit’ for the institute. In ancient Egyptian tradition, the purpose of a foundation was to ‘prevent the building from falling into ruin’1. I felt immediately burdened by what seemed an onerous task. For one thing, the institute’s foundations are built on the ‘ruins’ of its residents. Unlike the ancient Egyptians who heaped offerings of ‘mulets, scarabs, food, or ritual miniature tools2’ into mudbrick-lined pits under their temples and tombs, the new residents at the Bankrupts’ Institute (BI) arrive in Venice with nothing. As freshly bankrupt individuals, this is a legal requirement. The very idea of creating a sealed foundation deposit seemed to run at odds with the founding premise of the institute, in which a continual exchange of ‘gifts’ was encouraged.

Two excerpts from Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress (2006), one of the two foundation texts at the BI.

Please note: Footnotes are marked in RED Endnotes are marked in BLACK

The first items to enter the Bankrupts’ Institute’s foundation deposit were two texts, both written and compiled in 2006. The first text, Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress (2006), acknowledged the institute’s debt to William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1733–1734) and invited a reading-between the spaces of Hogarth’s drawings and the drawings of the institute. The second text, Bankrupts’ Institute (2006), provided an introduction to the institute and its promotion of a ‘gift economy’, containing drawings that describe a series of rooms within the building. The institute was founded on the idea that bankruptcy is a gift. That gift, in the form of the cancellation of unpaid debts, is one that creditors are forced, by law, to give to their debitors. The debitors are, in turn, obliged by law to accept the gift with all the binding conditions that it entails. The foundation texts of the institute questioned the fact that while our economy relied on the then

The professions of 100 Personal Bankrupts Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DayI, 2006

The professions of 100 Personal Bankrupts Easter DayII, 2009

builder unemployed unemployed nurse/part-time musician retired unemployed unemployed taxi driver taxi driver credit and receivables analyst unemployed company director painter/decorator teacher waste water operator carpet fitter unemployed staff nurse bar worker unemployed unemployed retired hairdresser sales executive care assistant retired unemployed medical receptionist unemployed data entry / invoice clerk unemployed chef publican

sales assistant unemployed hauler unemployed musician unemployed beauty therapist unemployed support worker martial arts instructor property manager landscape gardener administration supervisor retired train driver registered nurse chef building surveyor retired teacher taxi driver unemployed self-employed musician unknown housewife homemaker carpenter administration officer self-employed unemployed unemployed learning support assistant unknown

continues overleaf \/

widespread availability of anonymous financial credit - housing us, educating us, feeding us, clothing us – the point at which the accompanying indebtedness became unmanageable continued to be stigmatised. Many wrongly associate reaching this point – in bankruptcy – with reckless extravagance, dishonesty and generally immoral behaviour. However, the vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the UK were then, as now, caused by family break-ups and death. Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress pointed to the important role of the symbolic in the proposed gift economy of the Bankrupts’ Institute, making the argument that gifts are only possible through things not being equivalentI. If you give me back exactly what

I In exchange, the daily circulation of things around people, it is primarily the object’s differences that are gauged. These differences are expressed as a value; usually as the price one is prepared to pay. However, the value of an object as a gift is not invested in its material property or its financial price, but in the mode of its giving or reception: ‘It’s the thought that counts’. (Cummings / Lewandowska, Capital (London: Tate Publishing 2001)p31)

accountant photographer retired unemployed consultant unemployed retired self-employed retired team-manager bar-tender baker disk jockey support worker aircraft loader medically retired retired retired sheltered housing coordinator unemployed minibus driver postman unemployed technical operator unemployed unemployed kitchen fitter unemployed commercial vehicle hirer unemployed unemployed unemployed landscape gardener unemployed trainee dispenser taxi driver unemployed mill worker sales assistant sales assistant carer unemployed administrator

child minder music teacher telesales operative part-time administration assistant retired blind fitter senior clinical coder liaison officer retired unemployed graphic designer unemployed school crossing guard curtain fitter unknown painter and director unemployed school caretaker builder user support technician unemployed self-employed builder unemployed unemployed unemployed post office clerk self-employed company director unemployed unemployed electrician substance misuse trainer service station attendant credit controller administrator unknown online travel agent unemployed property manager sales representative courier social worker unemployed

continues overleaf \/

I give you, you refuse my giftII. This understanding of the symbolic basis of the gift economy has guided my attempts at curating the Bankrupts’ Institute’s Foundation Deposit. The foundation texts proposed that in a situation where the availability of financial credit is strictly limited (due to strict caps on the provision of anonymous credit following bankruptcy), the role of the gift economy would be increasingly important. The texts suggested that this gift economy would shape the Bankrupts’ Institute, and that its architecture could act as currency within this economy. In contrast to the exchange economy in which the value of an object or service is assessed primarily in terms of differences, the architectural currency of the gift economy in the Bankrupts’ Institute is valued according to the way in which it is given or received. II Pierre Bourdieu states, in The Logic of Practice (1990), ‘a gift returned with like is tantamount to rebuttal of the gift’.

vehicle refinisher replenishment analyst warehouse operator unemployed unemployed pharmaceutical technician sales advisor recovery manager unemployed unemployed civil servant / student unemployed plumber unemployed unemployed unemployed unemployed retired team leader manual engineer unemployed window technician

clerk lorry driver unemployed motorcycle racer unemployed scaffolder assessor warehouseman housewife detention officer unemployed HGV driver furniture maker unknown unemployed unemployed business development manager extended schools coordinator driver retired graphic designer printer

from THE LONDON GAZETTE, #57901

from THE LONDON GAZETTE, #59036

Those listed above face credit restrictions until 14/02/2011, unless they have previously been bankrupt, in which case the restrictions will last until 14/02/2021

This list includes less than a third of the number of personal bankruptcies per day in the UK in 2009

Therefore elements of negligible financial value, such as an intervention that links two floors of the institute by means of an apparatus allowing the shared use of a bath and an IT desk, can assume high or low value in the institute’s gift economy precisely because of the way in which they are given and received by the two residents responsible. The value of the BI is entirely dependent on the way in which the constituent parts of its architectural currency are given, and received.III Much has changed since the writing of the Bankrupts’ Institute’s two foundation texts. The global economy has entered a crisis that many consider to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. III The focus on the manner of giving and receiving the elements of architectural currency in the BI’s gift economy has developed with reference to Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska’s Capital (2001), of which they write: ‘In exchange, the daily circulation of things around people, it is primarily the object’s differences that are gauged. These differences are expressed as a value; usually as the price one is prepared to pay. However, the value of an object as a gift is not invested in its material property or its financial price, but in the mode of its giving or reception: ‘It’s the thought that counts’. (Cummings, Lewandowska, 2001:31)

The United Kingdom now has its highest peacetime debt since records began. Financial credit, still widely and cheaply available in 2006, has become difficult or impossible for many to obtain. Corporate stalwarts have collapsed overnight, the once-praised centres of wealth have become subjects of resentment and suspicion, and bankruptcies have become everyday news.. On April 5th 2009, The Times reported Begbies Traynor, an insolvency and restructuring group, predicting that 125,000 personal bankruptcies will be declared this year in the UK, the equivalent of 342 per day, and a considerable rise from the 2006 peak of 107,0003. In the United States the number of annual personal bankruptcies rose to over a million in 2008, a rise of 31% from the previous year.4 What effect these international events have had on attitudes towards bankrupts is currently unclear. One might expect the familiarity of news of bankruptcy to

lessen its stigmaIV. On the other hand, the international media has illustrated a new desire for accountability, or even scapegoating, and anonymous generosity (measured, for example in gifts to charitable causes) has been curbed by a new spirit of fear, retribution and austerityV. Writing in 2009, I have found the two original 2006 foundation texts inadequate as a curatorial premise for the Bankrupts’ Institute’s ‘Foundation Deposit’. Their essentially linear and sequential structures cannot describe the complex and constantly changing patterns of the contents of the institute’s deposit, whose character seems subject to continual flux. However, like the text Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress, in curating IV A report carried out by the UK-based Insolvency Service in 2007 found that 85% of the bankrupts participating considered there to be stigma associated with bankruptcy V The Telegraph newspaper reported that ‘Bankrupts feel more harshly treated by friends, family, and business partners than they did two years ago’ in Businesses harden attitudes towards bankrupts’. (The Telegraph, 10 Aug 2007)

the foundation deposit I will be acknowledging the institute’s debt to William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1733-1735). This debt continues to be active in the Foundation Deposit, not only through the work’s strong influence on the two foundation texts, but also through the way Hogarth satirically reverses and ties loops with the notion of linear economic progress. As the ‘foundation deposit’ has developed over the last 3 years, I find that it its contents and character are increasingly at odds with its namesake of ancient Egyptian tradition. While ancient foundation deposits, ritual mudbrick lined pits or holes dug at specific points under Ancient Egyptian temples or tombs, could be described as physically-sealed microcosms of the culture contemporary to their creation, the Bankrupts’ Institute’s deposit has shown a strong tendency for circulation.

Attempts to contain the ‘deposit’ have been instantly futile. Its tendency for circulation has given the deposit a pattern characterised by abrupt shifts and surprising changes in direction. I can neither write about the ‘deposit’ as a complete collection, nor as a predictably growing accumulation. Rather than attempting to prescribe a single,

linear,

path

through the Foundation Deposit, I will be inviting you as reader and viewer to construct your own route.

Gestural

The gift economy at the BI places value on what bodily gesture can carry, and the 8 gestures of bankruptcy recovery recur throughout The Foundation Deposit as symbols of time measured as stages in psychological recovery from bankruptcy. 2 suggested readings:

4 6

3 5

posture 1 = shame, frugality posture 8 = pride, generosity

Econometric = empty set = empty set, plus or minus = more than, less than = does not equal = ‘A’, identified in terms of ‘B’ = union = sum of exceeds = belongs to, broken union & does not belong to, union

An (incomplete) guide to symbols in use in The FoundNote that in the deposit refers to Introduction text

Numerical The traditional symbolism that certain numbers carry has become important in the curation of the foundation deposit after I observed the recurrence of the number 8 at the BI. The minimum time that incoming residents are contractually obliged to for is 8 months. There are also 8 floors at the BI and 8 plates to William Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s Progress’, which has

Verbal

played an influential role in the BI’s life. There are 8 deviations in the ‘Deposit in Projection’ text, and 8 sections in the ‘Deposit in Section’ text. In Christian culture 8 has come to symbolise resurrection and spiritual rebirth due to its association with Jesus Christ rising from the grave 8 days after entry into Jerusalem. As a result, much baptismal architecture takes an octagonal form.

Graphical

Giving Nothing, Take and Give, Giving the Impression Giving Time, Give and Take Giving In. Giving Out Receiving The danger represented by the thing given or handed on is doubtless nowhere better sensed than in the very ancient Germanic law and languages. This explains the double meaning of the word Gift in all these languages - on the hand gift, on the other poison. (Mauss)

-ation Deposit at the Bankrupts’ Institute in Venice refers to Projection text, refers to Section text

By inviting you to read between fragments of drawings, symbols, words and diagrams, the language of the Foundation Deposit creates semantic gaps which need to be bridged with metaphor and metonymy. These gaps are characteristic of the symbolic nature of the gift economy at the BI. Referring to situations where consumption is forcibly limited by ‘economic downturns, recessions or depressions’ Robert Bocock writes: ‘Identities are changed, shattered, or re-formed…Not being able to consume, in the post-modern sense, becomes a source of deep discontent’5. In contemporary capitalist society, the financial ruin of bankruptcy represents a threat not only to the victim’s lifestyle and material possessions, but also to their sense of self. In such a situation the role of the symbolic becomes extremely important. As Jean Joseph Goux writes ‘metaphors, symbols, signs, representations: it is always through replacement that values are created. Replacing what is forbidden, what is lacking, what is hidden or lost […]’6. Like ruination, acts of foundation have historically been loaded with

symbolic importanceVI which cannot be ignored when curating a ‘Foundation Deposit’. I have approached the symbolic in my curation through the extensive use of metaphor and metonymy. I have used metaphor in the Foundation Deposit in the sense described by Laura Ruggeri as: ‘the transference principle that encompasses all thought and VI In ‘The Walled-Up Bride: An Architecture of Eternal Return’, Manuela Antoniu investigates ‘The Legend of Master Manole’ which reoccurs, in different form, in several southeast European cultures. Its common components include an incipient construction collapsing unaccountably every night, the builders involved entering a covenant by agreeing to sacrifice a woman kin if the collapsing continues, the wife of the master mason being immured in the construction’s foundations as a sacrifice, her child being orphaned and the construction thereafter standing up. The legend is loaded with symbolic transference. Antoniu interprets the legend in terms of alchemy: ‘First encountered as a marker for the site, the wall is “wrotten”, decayed, fully subject to the passing of time, but it is also “unfinished”, which in the alchemical lexicon would be called in potentia, in embryonic form. These two superimpositions on the wall construe it as an old embryo whose delivery must be quickened by a new wall through the alchemical operations of homo constructivus. This endows architecture, already chthonic, with an obstetric dimension.; it implies that only through germination of all previous building efforts could the essence of the architectural dream be extracted.’ (Manuela Antoniu in eds. Coleman/Danze/Henderson Architecture and Feminism (New York: Princeton University Press, 1996) p125

perception by carrying over meaning from one sphere to another’7. ‘The Foundation Deposit in Section’ combines symbols from the field of econometrics with drawings of spaces from the Bankrupts’ Institute and verbal phrases describing gift conditions (Giving Nothing, Giving Time etc.). At the same time, the Foundation Deposit uses metonymy in the sense that its component parts - text, econometric symbol, diagram, drawing – are intended to work contiguously, their physical locations suggesting specific, intimate relationships within the gift economy of the BI. In this sense my ambition in curating the Foundation Deposit is metonymic in the sense that Michael Hays describes as ‘build[ing] up [...] significance through the assembly of relatively diverse parts’VII. VII Michael Hays compares Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House as a work that emphasises the pole of metaphor to works like Carlo Scarpa’s renovation of the mediaeval palace of Verona, which ‘emphasize the role of metonymy, since they do not substitute reductively from their norms, nor powerfully metaphorize their individual elements, but rather build up their significance out of the assembly of relatively diverse parts’ (K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000)

What, perhaps you are asking, is new in any of this? Ruination, deviation, fragmentation, metaphor and metonymy – are hardly new phenomena and have been integrated parts of architectural discourse for several centuries. But in the context of the BI’s gift economy, these subjects are reframed. Financial ruin generates a new constructive principle, in the BI, for an alternative economy based on gift-giving. In the context of the BI’s gift economy, deviation becomes both a means of navigating the unchartered psychological space that exists outside the measured field of settled accounts and predictable financial progress, and, more straightforwardly, a means by which a resident of the BI gradually familiarises himor her- self with the institute’s many hidden spaces. Considered as gifts, the architectural fragments that assemble in the institute’s function room (described in The Deposit in Section, pp 18-26) are loaded with active, even dangerously subversive, potential. Metaphor and metonymy provide a way of considering architecture as

currency in the institute’s gift economy, its value inflated and deflated according to the specific exchanges of its users (see the example of the IT bath in Section, pp4350), rather than the abstractions of an increasingly global market place. My attempt at curating the foundation deposit will be based on the following two approaches: Seeing the deposit ‘in projection’ is an attempt at projecting a history for the Foundation Deposit, pointing to the important role of spatial and temporal gaps in the Bankrupts’ Institute. Seeing the deposit ‘in section’ is an attempt at taking an incisive approach towards the foundation deposit, investigating eight examples of gifts within eight spaces of the Bankrupts’ Institute.

Endnotes 1 Shaw, Ian (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. p. 103. (quoted in wikipedia ‘foundation deposit’, accessed 05/03/2009) 2 Ibid 3 Times Online, accessed 19/04/2009: http://business. timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6036250.ece 4 There was a 31% in the number of annual individual bankruptcies filed in the United States from end December 31, 2007, to end December 31, 2008 (quoted on www.bankruptcyaction.com, accessed 27/04/2009) 5 Robert Bocock, Consumption (London: Routledge, 1993) p75 6 Jean-Joseph Goux, Symbolic Economies after Marx and Freud (New York: Cornell University Press, 1990) 7 Laura Ruggeri, ‘The Poetics of Urban Inscription’, in eds. Rendell, Hill, Fraser, Dorrian, Critical Architecture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007) p104

THE FOUNDATION DEPOSIT of the BANKRUPTS’ INSTITUTE by R.A.B. Clement Foundation Deposit Curator

THE DEPOSIT IN PROJECTION

‘A projection is a virtual displacement of an image; the superimposition of light on material’ b Vicente Guallart Having set out to ‘project a history’ for the Foundation Deposit at the Bankrupts’ Institute, the question now is what kind and shape that history should take. Bankruptcy makes nonsense of the projection of history as a line progressing towards inevitable economic growth. Bankruptcy represents a departure from the measured field of the quantifiable (credits and debts measured, settled, accounted for) into an unbounded space dominated by forces as unquantifiable as stigma, trust and guilt.

Please note: Footnotes are marked in RED Endnotes are marked in BLACK

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, vol 9 (1765-69)

In order to start projecting such a history into this unbounded space, I should first declare my debt to Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1769), because I am inspired by, and in full agreement with, the following: Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule, —straight forward; ---for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to the left, —he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end; ----but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually solliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various Accounts to reconcile: Anecdotes to pick up: Inscriptions to make out: Stories to weave in: Traditions to sift: Personages to call upon: Panygericks to paste up at his door: Pasquinades at that: — All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from.c

CONTENT I

III

VII

VIII

Tom Rakewell inherits his miserly father’s hoarded wealth, and breaks off his engagement with Sarah Young. Tom Rakewell is pictured spending his fortune on fashionable pursuits, attended by a tailor, a dancing teacher, a jockey and a landscape gardener. Fashionable Tom Rakewell is pictured in one of London’s seediest spots, The Rose Tavern, drunk and being robbed by a prostitute. Tom Rakewell is arrested for debt on his way to a royal levee at St. James’ palace. Sarah Young pays off his bail, buying his freedom. Tom Rakewell marries a one-eyed heiress while eyeing up one of the bridesmaids in a trashy Marlyebone church Tom Rakewell frozen in cursing posture after having spent his fortune in a gambling den. The den is in flames, but the gamblers fail to notice. Tom Rakewell is in debtors’ gaol, his debts still accumulating. Sarah Young pleads to him, while his oneeyed wife berates him. Tom Rakewell, lost in his own world, is pictured locked up in Bedlam. Sarah Young, visiting, fails to get in contact with him.

ACTION

TRANSACTION

BREAK OPEN

receiving

TRANSFORM

spending

FLOW BACK

being robbed

EXCHANGE

buying back

REINITIATE

receiving (stealing)

FREEZE

spent

ACCUMULATE

gathering debt

FALL

out of economy

Flow of actions and financial transactions in A Rake’s Progress

Bearing in mind that I, unlike Sterne’s spirited historiographer, am making a journey not from Rome to Loretto, but only through the Bankrupts’ Institute’s foundation deposit and its history, that time has compressed since the eighteenth century, and that you, dear reader, are probably currently skimming through this text at high speed, your patience limited by a number of bureaucratic, environmental and socioeconomic factors, I will limit the number of deviations to 8. That number provided, after all, enough space for William Hogarth to describe the path to financial ruin in the eight plates of A Rake’s Progress (1733–1735).

Diagram of financial flow in the 8 plates of A Rake’s Progress

Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in January, his first month at the BI.

Deviation #1 Progress Rather than representing progress, or even a steady regression (a common antonymic reading of Hogarth’s title) A Rake’s Progress (1733–1734) turns the idea of linear financial progress on its head, and then ties loops with it. Tom Rakewell, its hero, ‘progresses’ from inheriting a fortune to becoming a financial and mental ruin. Tom Rakewell is shown in each frame in a series of alternating states that are very different from the smooth, predictable flow that the title of ‘progress’ might suggest. Hogarth weaves a loop into his A Rake’s Progress through several compositional similarities between the first and last plates. Sarah Young, weeping because Tom Rakewell has broken off her engagement with her after receiving his father’s fortune, weeps because she cannot get in contact with him in his deranged mental state in Bedlam. Her posture is almost exactly the same, apart from that she is kneeling instead of standing once in

Bedlam. In both plates Tom Rakewell’s legs are the focus of attention; in the first by a tailor measuring his legs for a new suit, in the eighth plate, by a guard fastening his ankle shackles. The tailor’s tape measure is echoed by a fool performing a trick with a rope. When superimposed on plate 1, Tom Rakewell fits neatly into an open chest with his father’s hoarded silverwear. The pre-empting of Tom Rakewell’s fate is also present in Tom Hoadley’s subtitles, which in the first plate ask:

Why those Bolts, & Massy Chains, Squint suspicions, Jealous Pains? Linking the chains with which Tomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father bound up his accumulated wealth, and the chains that are later to bind Tom Rakewellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legs in Bedlam, Hoadley completes the loop in his subtitles to the eighth plate: His rattling Chains with Terror hear, See Him by Thee to Ruin Sold, And Curse thy self, & curse thy Gold

The received gift of Tom Rakewell’s father’s fortune is active, not inert – the conditions in which it was given acted as a binding and disastrous bond between a miserly inattentive father, and a careless, spendthrift son. This circularity in A Rake’s Progress is one of a number of actions, transactions, flows, new beginnings, repetitions and returns which are far from straightforwardly sequential. In the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s illustration of his ‘tolerable straight line’ of a story in Tristram Shandy, I have drawn my map of A Rake’s Progress on page 7. As can be seen in my table on the page 6, connections can be drawn between the nonlinearity of A Rake’s Progress, and the behaviour of the foundation deposit. One option that would not have been available to Tom Rakewell at the time, but would now, due to the 1861 amendment of the 1571 Bankruptcy Act to include all insolvents, and not just traders, was bankruptcy.

Deviation #2 BankruptcyI bankrupt / ‘baŋkr^pt/ noun, adjective, & verb. Also †rout. M16 [ORIGIN Italian banca rotta lit. ‘bench (or table) broken’, infl. By French banqueroute and assim. To Latin ruptus broken] (Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 2006)

Bankruptcy’s etymology traces it back to the practice of breaking traders’ benches as a way of making their financial ruin material, and visible. This language of breaking up is coupled, in the vocabulary associated with bankruptcy – of ‘insolvency’ and ‘liquidity’ lost – with the suggestion of a blocked, or interrupted flow. I Under the Bankruptcy Act introduced to British Law in 1571 commissioners of bankrupts could be appointed to allow a bankrupt to discharge his debts to his creditors by an equitable and independent distribution of his assets. After such a distribution he could recommence trading. Originally only traders who bought and sold goods or who worked on materials before selling them could be declared bankrupt. All other debtors were insolvent debtors and could be jailed for non-payment of debts. (http://www.nationalarchives.gov. uk/familyhistory/guide/ancestorslaw/bankruptcy.htm)

The Gosbecks Mercury, a bronze Roman statue of the god Mercurius, god of trade, profit and commerce

There is a long history of compensating for the abstract and immaterial nature of money by loading the point at which it ‘dries up’ with material metaphors, both in language and in images. Shylock’s demand for his ‘pound of flesh’II remains a haunting reminder of a desire to literally embody debt by substituting financial borrowing with a toll on the body. The modern equivalent during insolvency procedures is the compulsory exposure, breaking up and sharing out of an individual’s material and financial assets between his/her creditors.

II In Willliam Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Shylock, a money-lender, loans the wealthy merchant Antonio three thousand ducats, interest-free, with the following bond: If you repaie me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Exprest in the condition, let the forfeite Be nominated for an equall pound Of your faire flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your bodie it pleaseth me The Merchant of Venice (c.1596) , Act I, Sc. iii., lines 151-6

The architecture of banks has had a historical role of bridging the gap between the immaterial nature of money, and our desire for it to be something solid, permanent, and ‘real’. The word ‘bank’ is substantial and suggests a piling-up of matter. Historically, banks have been built as fortresses, creating the conceit that they contain something material that can be protected by brick and mortar. In fact, The Bank of England was founded on a debt. William of Orange and Queen Mary required III

III ‘Managing the price of government debt was the function that founded the bank in 1694. When William of Orange and Queen Mary jointly ascended the throne of England in 1689 they needed cash money to continue the war with France in William’s homeland of the Netherlands. The government Exchequer declined, so a group of people got together to form a joint-stock company and on-leant money to the king in return for the loan with interest, but also (eventually) for a royal charter to enable the fledgling company to issue paper notes. The Bank, later to become the Bank of England is founded upon a debt, and the continuation of this debt, or the continuation of the repayment of this debt, is the motor of our present domestic and international financial economies. It would be fair to say that our global financial structure is fueled by debt repayments.’ Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska in An Economy of Love, htttp:// www.chanceprojects.com (accessed 25/4/2009)

cash in order to be able to continue their war with France when they ascended the throne in 1689. Being unable to borrow from the government Exchequer, they borrowed money raised by public subscription. In return, in addition to interest payments on the loan , a royal charter was eventually granted to the new bank to issue paper notes, or ‘imaginary money’d, as it was then called. The Bank of England has therefore, from its beginnings, been associated with the immateriality of money. The buildings of the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street today retain only fragments of Sir John Soane’s original building. Between 1925 and 1939, Sir Herbert Baker’s rebuilding of the Bank involved the demolition of the majority of Soane’s buildings. The gravitas of Soane’s buildings was replaced by office spaces in a building that rose seven storeys above ground and dropped three below. The demolition of Soane’s buildings coincided with The Bank of England leaving the gold standard (in 1931), a stabalising economic

system through which the Bank of England guaranteed all paper money it issued in the form of gold bullion. The paper note became entirely fiduciary, that is to say not backed by goldIV. While the partial demolition of John Soane’s buildings during Baker’s reconstruction of The Bank of England has been frequently criticised, for example by Nikolaus Pevsner who described it as ‘vandalism’e, Soane encouraged visions of his bank’s fragmentation and destruction, even going so far as to include vandals in one of his drawings V. IV On the subject of the contemporary symbols of finance, Nigel Thrift writes: ‘[…] the fact is that money is now so caught up in our practices that it often does not need to be represented at all: it is simply a part of the background of contemporary life. In turn, this means that the symbolic anchors of previous eras – like the buildings of the Bank of England – simply become signs of the circulation of money, convenient locations from which to report on monetary happenings but no longer accorded much in the way of gravitas. In a sense, the sheer practical ubiquity of monetary exchange produces its own anchor’ (‘Elsewhere’, in ed. Frances Morris, Capital (London: Tate Publishing, 2001) p98 ) Joseph Gandy’s Rendering of John Soane’s Architectural V Ruins – A Visions (John Soane’s Rotunda of the Bank of England in Ruins) (1798) includes vandals, in the historic sense of treasure hunters rather than in Pevsner’s sense of architects.

Deviation #3

The Bank at Dawn

Joseph Gandy’s rendering of Sir John Soane’s Architectural Ruins - a Vision (John Soane’s Rotunda of the Bank of England in Ruins) (1798), shows a view of the Bank of England rotunda fallen into ruin lit by the cool light of dawn. Lukacher writes ‘The masonry shell of the Rotunda, infiltrated with moss and foliage, protects only an encampment of treasure hunters. In Gandy’s matching perspective of the freshly completed Rotunda, the archway of the central passage contains a clock that will measure the commercial schedule of the building. In the vision of future ruin, time itself has been torn from the building, the image allegorizing its own temporal disorder’f The omission of the clock in Gandy’s rendering is described by Lukacher as a positive gap – positive in the sense that it generates an allegorical quality of ‘temporal disorder’. The generative potential of the ruin was recognised in the eighteenth century. In

Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in March, his third month at the BI.

its gaps there was an inspiring space in which modern experience could create its own constructions. Two years prior to Architectural Ruins – A Vision, in 1796, French archeologist Antoine Chrysostome Quatramère de Quincy asked, “What is the antique in Rome if not a great book whose pages have been destroyed or ripped out by time, it being left to modern research to fill in the blanks, to bridge the gaps?”g

Where time was. Joseph Gandy’s rendering of John Soane’s Architectural Ruins – A Vision (1796). The white dot indicates the omission of the clock in the bank’s ruined rotunda.

Deviation #4

page torn out

Deviation#5

The Bank on a Golden Afternoon

32 years later after Architectural Ruins - a Vision Soane’s draughtsman Joseph Gandy rendered another image of the Bank of England in a state that ressembles a modernist cutaway isometric. But unlike the timeless objectifying quality typical of modernist drawing convention, Gandy’s Bird’s-Eye Perspective of the Bank of England (1810) is perspectival – both spatially, as a bird’s eye perspective, and temporally, as a drawing that looks through several distinct time periods. The foreground is packed with references to the past, in the form of cracked entablatures, sculptural fragments, and the exposed base of the bank’s vaults. The background contains contemporary time, in the form of the surroundings of the bank at the time of building’s construction on Princes Street. In the middleground the bank’s interior spaces are shown, as if the bank’s roofs and sections of its

walls have been roughly torn offVI The classical arches, hollow-cone vaulting, colonnaded courtyards and exposed domes offer an archeological site reminiscent of a great classical ruin. But there are no crumbling walls, no creeping vegetation and the ground has not risen around the ruins to swamp them. The bottom left corner of the bank shows the bank fully intact. But for the lack of scaffolding, the building could be seen as a construction site. But as it is, it hovers in-between, as if the bank’s construction contains its future ruination. In this sense, Gandy’s image of the Bank of England suggests what Peter Conrad describes as an ambition to ‘lay the foundation of art itself, its origins, progress, meridian, splendour and decline’h. VI Soane accompanied the drawing with words taken from Sage’s Le Diable Boiteux: ‘Je vais enlever les toits de ce superbe edifice national…le dedans va se découvrir a vos yeux de même qu’on voit le dedans d’un pâté dont on vient d’ôter la croute’ (I want to lift up the roof of that wonderful national building…the interior will be revealed to you like a meat pie with the crust removed)

clouds generally dissolving during past hour haze fog patches of mist the red line delineates contemporary time the black line delineates antique time the space in between is highly ambiguous

The temporal perspectivism is contained within the single image, and under the westerly light of a golden afternoon, where gaps in clearing clouds provide a strobe-like quality to the illumination of Gandyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective of the Bank of England. Soaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s draftsman used light itself as a way of dramatising his drawings in such a way as to suggest temporal disorder.

It is in this particular quality of light that Michael Webb describes the ‘chronic mental wanderings’ that provoked the drawings of Temple Island (1987), one of which ‘concerns a submersible floating down the regatta course towards the temple during the running of the Grand Challenge… late one golden afternoon’i.[my emphasis]

Deviation#6

…One Golden Afternoon

In, or rather on the way back to, Temple Island (1987), Michael Webb draws up ‘two islets in the Thames at Henley [on which] reposes a temple: i.e. the incorporeal and the real (one), and though the site of each remains intact, the incorporeal temple is fading, so that, were its façade to be precipitated on to a two dimensional surface, a bit of “restoration” work would become necessary so as to provide an image you could read’.j The ‘restoration’ that Michael Webb provides with the drawings of Temple Island is constantly redrawn according to the changing positions of the ‘tripper’ who makes the backwards journey towards Temple Island, emphasising the distortions that his/her perception provides to Temple Island’s image. Like Gandy’s two renderings of the Bank of England mentioned in Deviations #3 and #4, Temple Island is characterised by generative gaps. The most obvious gaps are those that Webb admits existing in OPPOSITE Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in May

Gaps in Memory. Michael Webbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Temple Island (1987 -my cropping and additions in red)

his own memory of Temple Island. As he writes, ‘Faded memory provides a nice excuse for cooking the forms and dimensions of the real temple so as to indulge some mathematical games, the rules of which require a stringently organised board’. Another set of gaps are made visible in the form of ‘white shadows’ when Webb doctors a photo of the regatta course so as to erase what is invisible to ‘an overhead observer, who sees only what the tripper at T1 sees’.

According to Temple Island contributor Michael Sorkin, Webb’s work can be seen as an experiment reminding us of another set of gaps - gaps in the form of scientific knowledge.

Gaps in Empirical Information. Michael Webbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Temple Island (my cropping and additions in red)

Webb promises to temper the ‘romantic lush’ of his drawings with ‘the art of manipulation of prosaic data’k. In his backwards trip in a submersible floating down the regatta course, Temple Island’s tripper is presented ‘with 4 mathematically interrelated images of the temple via a circular periscope screen, described as T1, T2, T3 and T4’. According to Michael Sorkin, this regulating periscope and ‘lush’ filter is Webb’s attempt at reconstructing an experiment from 1803 carried out by Thomas Young, but adding ‘an Einsteinian modification’ in the form of a ‘dot screen superimposed anterior [as] a filter for photons’ l.

Gaps in Experience

Michael Webbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Temple Island (my cropping and additions in red)

In Sorkin’s words: In 1803, Thomas Young conducted a classic experiment. In front of a source of light [...], Young placed another screen, in which he had cut two vertical slits which could be individually covered. When light shone through either of the slits singly, it spreads out – diffracted – on the wall. However, when the light shone simultaneously through both slits [...] the light struck the wall in a pattern of bands of alternating light and darkness. Explaining this as interference, a commonplace in wave mechanics, decided the issue, it seemed: light as a wave. Einstein had other ideas. For him, light was made up of particles or photons, an idea for which there was also convincing experimental proof. This evidence, however, did not disprove the conclusions of Young’s theory. Quantum mechanics was obliged to rethink the universe in order to attempt to account for this apparently contradictory duality, seeking new patterns that transcended the classic requirements of causality.’m

For Sorkin, Webb is ‘searching for a new and unifying pattern by running Young’s experiment anew’n.

Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in June, his sixth month at the BI.

Deviation#7 darkness…

Bands

alternating

light

and

To return to Sir John Soane’s draughtsman, Joseph Gandy - in the compendium of Soane’s collected drawings, Brian Lukacher describes Gandy’s rendering of light: ‘The architectural reunion is illuminated by an ornate circular mirror mounted with a spotlight for theatrical effect, a common method of studio and theatrical lighting. The reflected rays fan out in alternating patterns of light and dark, the mirror appearing like an eclipsed sun in a penumbral space. With this incredibly intricate study in shadow projection and tonal gradation, Gandy was testing the technical and artistic limits of architectural rendering’o.

This practice continues both in the drawings and experience of the Soane museum, where ‘skewed vistas’ and the ‘strobe-like illumination’ from the filtered light reflected in the numerous convex circular mirrors provides ‘an eery vibrancy to the constricted assemblage

of antique elements’p, according to Lukacher. Lukacher writes about Gandy’s rendering View of the Dome of the Soane Museum at Night (1811): ‘Disjunction of scale and inversion of proportion were prized effects in the interior distribution of the Dome. The other view from the side tribune of the Dome is even more dramatically lit from an unseen source in the crypt [150]. The strobe-like beam of light turns the narrow antiquarian passage into a yawning space. The Piranesian ramparts are prized open by the instrusive

burst of illumination, the delicate colonettes seemingly strained and stretched by the shaft of light. The architectural surfaces crawl with garland swags and Greek frets, lucidly delineated even though sunk in the shadow. The figure of Soane’s son John Jr. can barely be seen emerging from the thick transparency of darkness that was truly symbolic of the father, who had vainly

‘Thick transparencies of darkness’. (Left) Gandy’s rendering of View of the Soane Museum at Night (1811) and -opposite - the first plate of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1733-1735)

hoped that his didactic and evocative museum would spawn a “race of artists.”q Lukacher goes on to praise Gandy’s expertise ‘at capturing the ‘horror vacui’ that characterizes Soane’s Piranesian idea of museum installation’, continuing that with ‘the manic congestion of classical antiquities, the oblique distortions of perspective and the mysteriously concealed sources of light, Gandy’s imagery of the museum pays homage to (borrowing Soane’s phrase) “the Architectural blasphemy of Piranesi.”

Deviation#8

A Thick Transparency of Darkness

Gaps in knowledge, gaps in construction and gaps in illumination form links and overlaps between deviations 3,4,5,6&7. What resides in those gaps is a question relating to subjectivity. Presumably not everyone will see the figure of Soane’s son John Jr. is emerging from in Gandy’s drawing as a ‘thick transparency of darkness that was truly symbolic of the father’. Lukacher’s reading is presumably influenced by his own, subjective, interpretation of Soane’s biography. Soane had a notoriously troubled relationship with his two sons. He survived his elder son, John, who died of consumption after disappointing his father by not sharing a passion for architecture, abandoning his career and making an ‘unsuitable’ marriage. Soane’s relationship with his younger son, George, was worse. When George was imprisoned for debt and fraud in 1815, his father refused to pay his bail. On George’s release, he wrote two anonymous articles in The Champion Magazine, ridiculing his father, writing of his home at OPPOSITE Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in July, his seventh month at the BI, by which time he knows many of the institute’s residents

Lincoln Inns Fields: ‘He has reared this mausoleum for the enshrinement of his body’ and, describing Soane’s library, ‘The possessor … must stand in the midst of these hoarded volumes like a eunuch in a seraglio; the envious guardian of that which he cannot enjoy’rVII. Rather than passing on his ‘mausoleum’ and ‘hoarded volumes’ as a gift to his sons, Soane disinherited George and gave his house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as a bequest to the nation. As the writer of this text and as the curator of the foundation deposit, I find that thick transparency of darkness that was truly symbolic of the father both lurking in the cupboards of Tom Rakewell’s deceased father’s home in the first plate of A Rake’s Progress, and in the shadowy depths behind the doors of Bedlam in the final VII On finding the Champion Magazine articles and attributing them to her son, Soane’s wife Eliza is reported to have said: “George has given me my death blow, I shall never hold up my head again.”. She died two weeks later. Sir John Soane displayed the articles prominently in his Lincoln’s Inn Fields house under the title: ‘Death Blows’.

plate of A Rake’s Progress (see pages 38-9) But I, of course, am looking for it there so that I can reinforce an argument that has been employing metonymy and wrap up with the patterns of circularity with which I started this piece of writing by identifying. More relevantly, perhaps, such gaps as the ‘transparency of darkness’ of Gandy’s rendering are generative. The generative quality of a gap between Young’s experiment’s ‘bands of alternating light and darkness’ and photon theory were so generative, according to Sorkin, as to oblige ‘Quantum mechanics […] to rethink the universe’. In Actions of Architecture (2003), Jonathan Hill describes artist John Baldessari’s use of gaps in his frameless montage piece, Fugitive Essays (1980), writing: ‘The viewer is tempted to interpret the fragments and, guessing what is missing, reconstruct or make anew the gaps, the relationship of one element to another, and the whole artwork’s. Hill quotes Baldessari’s playing with the audience’s desire for a logical structure and coherent meaning: ‘Looking for the truth implies that

Reconfigured plan showing spaces of the BI used by Joe (reportedly a plumber by trade) in August, his eighth month at the BI. By August Joe is regularly using all eight floors of institute

there is a truth. If we weren’t looking for truth perhaps we wouldn’t be so frustrated. But I guess we can never get rid of the idea that there must be a secret of some sort. I want that idea to be built in too.’t

Seeing the Foundation Deposit in projection has been an attempt to ‘project a history’ for the BI. Projecting this history has involved moving, through association, along 8 deviations. The meandering course of the text has taken us on a deviating route through ruins, fragments and shadows that has been full of gaps in form, time and illumination. That route is intended as a guide through the Foundation Deposit which reflects the BI’s own character, where loops, interruptions, omissions and deviations are all considered valid parts of the experience of life at the institute. Bankruptcy, as I mentioned at the beginning of this text, involves a departure from the well-mapped field of the quantifiable (debts and credits measured, balances settled) into an obscured terrain dominated by

such unquantifiable qualities as stigma and guilt. The gift, as theorised by Pierre Bourdieu is dependent on ‘collective misrecognition’VIII, and can only exist if it is not objectively quantified. It relies on the conditions it entails remaining unstated. If I give you something and then draw up a contract expressing when I would like you to give me something back in return, what we have is a loan, not a gift. If you give me something and I then return you something I consider to be quantifiably equal to it, what we have is a swap, not a sharing of gifts. This unquantifiable characterisitic of the gift economy also has a temporal dimension. If I don’t allow an unmeasured gap in time between your gift to me, and my gift to you, I may come across as ungrateful. As Bourdieu points out, quoting LaRochefoucauld, ‘Overmuch eagerness to discharge one’s obligations…is a form of ingratitude’u. VIII Pierre Bourdieu writes, in The Logic of Practice (1990), ‘Gift exchange is one of the social games that cannot be played unless the players refuse to acknowledge the objective truth of the game, the very truth that objective analysis brings to light, and unless they are predisposed to contribute, with their efforts, their marks of care and attention, and their time, to the production of collective misrecognition’.

The drawings of The Foundation Deposit propose that the architecture of the BI, acting as currency within the institute’s gift economy, is an architecture of fragments, and that seeing the Foundation Deposit in ‘projection’ has involved taking a meandering route through these fragments and the temporal and spatial gaps between them. Projection is understood as involving construction, in the form of ‘perceiving a mental object as spatially and sensibly objective’IXv. My hope is that you, as viewer and reader, have been able to find your own way between the fragments and within the gaps that I have introduced in this part of the Foundation Deposit.

IX The idea of objectifying a mental object through construction is described well by Sir John Soane, when he wrote of his house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields: “The natural desire of leaving works of art subject as little as possible to the chance of their being removed from their positions relatively assigned to them, having been arranged as studies for my own mind! Sir John Soane, quoted in Susan Palmer’s ‘Sir John Soane, Rewriting a Life’ in The Cultural Record (Vol 44, Nr.1, 2009) p78

pro·jec·tion

Pronunciation: \prə-’jek-shən\ Function: noun Date: 1557

1 a: a systematic presentation of intersecting coordinate lines on a flat surface upon which features from a curved surface (as of the earth or the celestial sphere) may be mapped <an equal-area map projection> b: the process or technique of reproducing a spatial object upon a plane or curved surface or a line by projecting its points [ ...] 2: a transforming

change

3: the act of throwing or thrusting forward 4: the forming of a plan : scheming 5 a (1): a jutting out (2): a part that juts out b: a view of a building or architectural element 6 a: the act of perceiving a mental object as spatially and sensibly objective ; also : something so perceived b: the attribution of one’s own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects ; especially : the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety 7: the display of motion pictures by projecting an image from them upon a screen 8 a: the act of projecting especially to an audience b: control of the volume, clarity, and distinctness of a voice to gain greater audibility 9: an estimate of future possibilities based on a current trend (Merriam Webster Online dictionary - 4/2009)

Endnotes

b Vicente Guallart, The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, Gausa/Guallart/Müller/Soriano/Porras/Morales, (Barcelona: ACTAR, 1991) p500 c Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Vol.1 Chapter XIV d John Keyworth, ‘From a National to a Central Bank’, in ed. Frances Morris, Capital (London: Tate Publishing, 2001) p27 e Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England I. The City of London’ (1957) f Lukacher, Brian, Joseph Gandy, An Architectural Visionary in Georgian England, (London:Thames and Hudson, 2006) p165 g Brian Dillon, ‘Fragments from a History of Ruin’, in Cabinet issue 20, winter 2005/6 h Conrad Peter, “Crude Hints towards a history of my house in L.I. Fields” 47-8 i Michael Webb, Temple Island (London: AA Publications, 1987) p5 j Ibid, # 02 0 k Ibid, p15 l Michael Sorkin, Canticles for Mike, in Michael Webb, Temple Island (London: AA Publications, 1987) p5 m Ibid n Ibid o Brian Lukacher, Joseph Michael Gandy: The Poetical Representation and Mythography of Architecture (Ph.D. diss.,1967) pp137-8 p Ibid

THE FOUNDATION DEPOSIT of the BANKRUPTS’ INSTITUTE by R.A.B. Clement Foundation Deposit Curator

THE DEPOSIT IN SECTION

The Gosbecks Mercury, a bronze Roman statue of the god Mercurius, god of trade, profit and commerce

‘A section is an assemblage of dark spots on a plane. It maps the residual of a surgery on an object by a plane of incision’a Curating the Foundation Deposit of the Bankrupts’ Institute has meant dealing with the raw surfaces that are revealed following bankruptcy. Under early Roman law, the body of someone in debt could be cut into pieces and shared amongst the creditorsb. Modern bankruptcy law does not translate so directly on the body, involving instead the compulsory exposure, slicing up, and sharing out of the bankrupt’s possessions, reputation and financial assets. Faced with the surgical pre-history to the institute’s foundation deposit, I was inspired by the incisive approach that architecture critic Jennifer Bloomer took in approaching Piranesi’s ‘Collegio’c drawing from 1750. I found shared characteristics in her approach to a subject that she describes as an Please note: Footnotes are marked in RED Endnotes are marked in BLACK

‘‘ampio’ (both ample and diffuse) Collegio (a college, an assembly)’ and to my curatorial ambitions for the foundation deposit at the Bankrupts’ Institute.

Jennifer Bloomer’s essay provided me with the gift of a readymade incision apparatus. Observing the Collegio’s geometry, she writes: ‘Geometry: A series of concentric rings not quite contained by a square. Some geometric barnacles clinging to the periphery. The rings are sliced into eight equal pieces by a web of eight radial swaths that gesture toward intersection at an unmarked center. We focus on this wheel, this window; the power of the instrument seems to reside here. Circles cut by Vs. Eight Vs in a circle’d

She goes on to the describe each ‘V’ as the following:

Giovanni Battista Piranesiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pianta di ampio magnifico Collegio (1750)

VARIORUM

VAGARY

INVAGINATION

VESSEL

VOID

VERGE

VIOLATION

INTERVAL

I will now borrow her 8 Vs in my own attempt at an incisive approach to the BI’s foundation deposit’

Time

Category of Gift

Giving Nothing

Description of Gift(s) 1) ‘Yuppy Cartoon’ (1987) 2) ‘Bubble Cards’ (1720)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: Steve Bell & Wikimedia commons

‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’ (1875)

Given by: Detroit Institute of Arts and James McNeil Whistler

Giving the Impression

Inspiration from ‘St. Jerome in his Study’ c.1475

Given by: Antonella da Messina’s and The National Gallery

Giving Time

Agreement to minimum of 8 months stay in BI

Take and Give

Give and Take

Giving In

Giving Out

Receiving

Given by: All residents to the BI

Mechanic apparatus Given by: enabling combined use Two residents on the of bath and IT desk fourth and fifth floors of BI Graffiti copy of black page from 1760 edition of Laurence Sterne’s TS

Winged honorific lead-cast lion (with 2 webcams installed)

Paperwork briquettes

Given by: (/stolen from) Laurence Sterne

Given by: Commune di Venezia

Given by: Arriving residents at the BI

Attempting, in my curation of the Foundation Deposit, to approach the gift economy at the BI incisively has lead to make the following chart.

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Location

Invagination

‘FALL’

Violation

‘EXCHANGE’

Interval

‘FREEZE/FRIEZE’

Void

‘ACCUMULATE’

Variorum

‘RE-INITIATE’

Vessel

‘FLOW BACK’

Lead curtain wall façade of third floor of the BI

Verge

‘TRANSFORM’

Ground trading floor of BI

Vagary

‘BREAK OPEN’

Elevator for 8th floor of the Bankrupts’ Institute (BI)

‘Function Room’

Internal partition wall on 6th floor of BI

Entire BI

Space between fourth and fifth floors of BI

Floor and internal walls of ‘Misadministration Office’

Over the last months this chart has been ceaselessly changing, often several times a day. This represents a frozen perspective on the economy at the BI (frozen on 25/05/2009 at 23:48)

Time

Category of Gift

Giving Nothing

Yuppy Cartoon’ by Steve Bell (1987)

Description of Gift(s) 1) ‘Yuppy Cartoon’ (1987) 2) ‘Bubble Cards’ (1720)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: Steve Bell & Wikimedia commons

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Invagination

‘FALL’

‘Bubble Card’ (Artist unknown, 1720)

Location

Elevator for 8th floor of the Bankrupts’ Institute (BI)

<The way up and the way down is one and the same>e Pynchon, V

<â&#x20AC;Śis heaviness truly and deplorable and lightness splendid?...The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.>f Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The foundation deposits contain two recentlyacquired gifts which are currently located in the elevators which run between the top floor apartments of the BI and its canal side entrances, with no stops on any of the floors in between. These apartments tend to be popular with new arriving residents in the institute, presumably because they offer a high degree of privacy and autonomy, luxuries that they have normally been denied during the various exposures accompanying bankruptcy proceedings. As a result of the intensely private nature of the spaces of the elevators and the small and inconspicuous nature of the gifts, which are of no financial value, left within them, it took me some time before I became aware of these items, or considered them as gifts. Moreover, a number of the longer-term residents of the institute have argued that the isolated lifestyles of these topfloor residents are self-serving and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;give nothingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to the institute, and therefore should not be considered to be part of the foundation vault. I venture here to disagree.

The first of these gifts turned up just a few weeks ago in the elevator to apartment 1B. I discovered this gift after visiting the resident of apartment 1B in connection to my curatorial work for the Foundation Deposit. On my way back down to the canal after an uneventful interview, I noticed a sheet of paper floating upwards within the elevator’s interior before becoming lodged on the one of the lift’s ledges. It seemed that a rush of air rising from a ventilation aperture in the elevator’s floor had caused the sheet to rise as the elevator rushed down to the canal. The loose A4 sheet was beginning to yellow from age and made of lowgrade paper. On it was printed an email containing a cartoon strip from a 1983 edition of The Guardian. The email read:

The second of the elevator gifts is pasted (presumably with glue or wallpaper paste) to a loose lower panel of an elevator that runs in the same shaft as the one I have just described, this one serving apartment 1A. The gift is an internet-downloadedI reproduction of a ‘Bubble Card’, dating from 1720, depicting a tree on an island from the branches of which figures are hanging and falling into the water below. The accompanying text to the file reads as follows:

The Headlong Fools Plunge into South Seas Water. But the Sly Long-heads Wade with caution after – The First are Drowning but the Wise Last - ~ Venture no Deeper than the knees or Waist. ~

I A text at the base of the print stated that the image was downloaded from ‘commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_Sea_ Bubble’, part of the gift-based economy of the ‘Wiki’ group. On that webpage the image is quoted as being ‘Scanned from reprint of 1841/1852 editions of “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay, LL. D’.

Although the financial value of these two gifts is non-existent, they are of considerable worth to the Foundation Deposit because they build a bridge, not only between two elevators, but also between upward mobility in a twentieth century bubble yet to burst, and freefall in an eighteenth century bubble just burstII.

II Packs of playing cards depicting the varying fortunes of the speculators on the South Sea s Company investment bubble were popular following the stock market crash it prompted in 1720. The crash was, according to Richard Dale, in The First Crash (2004), ‘[…] the first international financial crash and has become the trigger for an intense debate about the rationality of investors and the very nature of financial makets’. He goes on to quote Alexander Pope’s lines on the subject: At length corruption, like a general flood Shall deluge all, and av’rice creeping on (So long by watchful ministers understood) Spread, like a low-born mist, and blot the sun. Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks, Peeress and butler share alike the box; The judge job, and bishops bite the town, And mighty Dukes pack cards for half-a-crown; See Britain sun in Lucre’s sordid charms (Pope, in Bateson (1951: 102))

18 18

Time

Category of Gift

Take and Give

Description of Gift(s)

Conditions of Gift(s)

‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’ (1875)

Given by: Detroit Institute of Arts and James McNeil Whistler

detail of James McNeil Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold (1873)

19 19

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Violation

‘EXCHANGE’

Sectional Perspective view of Function Room interior (2009)

Location

‘Function Room’

21 21

<Function Room Available at weekends, 9pm to 9am Cover Charge: One Gift >k Bankrupts’ Institute - Business Card (2006)

<Piranesi’s architecture is contaminated. It is kitsch (if one will allow the anachronism) violated by bits of detritus, bits of digested material. It is a metacommentary on the paradox of kitsch: Kitsch is centered around an absence. The center is unspeakable and unapproachable because it (the tube within a tube) is a vessel of –what else? Excrement, violation of the ideal. In persistent avoidance (a-voidance) of shit, shit becomes the focus, the center. Rupture – void the center and it “hits the fan”, is disseminated, making a dappled thing: mottled, motely, dark spotted, ampio. A rocket is propelled this way, by the expulsion of its own waste>l Bloomer, Toward Desiring Architecture (1991)

<“The ill-educated conceit of the artist ... approached the aspect of willful imposture, . . . I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.’>m Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (1877)

22 22

By far the most economically valuable item in ‘Foundation Deposit’ (p20) is a painting by James McNeill Whistler, entitled Nocturne in Black and Gold: Falling Rocket (1875). Currently hanging in the institute’s ‘Function Room’ it is by far the most dangerous of all the deposit’s gifts. The function room has accumulated an increasingly extravagant assortment of gifts from visiting members of the public since the condition for the cover charge for its hire to members outside the institute was declared at: ‘one gift’. The function room has become problematic for the institute in several ways:

23 23

Structurally - it was not built to sustain the loads now placed on it by the increasing number of large and extravagant gifts in the form of sculptures and even architectural elements that are now gathering within it. The room is constantly in need of additional structural reinforcement. Economically - the cost of the roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constant structural reinforcement and the cost of maintaining the particular climatic conditions that many of the gifts require is becoming unaffordable. The function room is also beginning to pose a security risk to the institution due to exaggerated rumours spreading regarding the financial value of the gifts it contains. Institutionally - the function room is beginning to develop a bad name for the BI within Venice due to its permissive stance towards the various activities taking place within it.

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‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’ represents a further complication in the function room’s history. While the BI maintains that the painting was given by an anonymous donor in return for the weekend hire of the function room, many consider the gift to be excessive. The conditions regarding the painting’s sale by the Detroit Institute of Arts (an institute which has suffered considerably under the fall in investment accompanying the collapse of the American automobile industry) to the anonymous donor, are currently under intense public scrutiny. Allegations have been made that the anonymous donor bought the painting at ‘cut price’, and rumours have spread in the Venetian press that the donation of the painting to the BI was a way of getting ‘blood off his hands’. Until disproved, these rumours are, of course, potentially damaging for the BI.

Nocturne in Black and Gold was the cause of Whistler’s bankruptcy, and the reason he moved to Venice.

25 25

Much was in the timing. Ruskin’s comments on the painting, some of which are included in the excerpt above were published in Fors Clavigera as part of a review of the exhibition in which the painting was first displayed, at the Grosvenor Gallery. Whistler then attempted to sue Ruskin for libel at what he considered (reflecting Ruskin’s own language) “the most debased style of criticism I have had thrown at me yet.” The court case was delayed due to several bouts of mental illness that Ruskin suffered, until November 25th and 26th, 1878. These delays resulted in considerable legal expenses for Whistler. At the case, Whistler was asked how long the painting had taken to produce: Holker: “Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off ?” Whistler: “Oh, I ‘knock one off ’ possibly in a couple of days one day to do the work and another to finish it...” [the painting measures 24 3/4 x 18 3/8 inches] Holker: “The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?” Whistler: “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the

26 26

work of a lifetime.â&#x20AC;?n

Whistler narrowly won the court case, but was awarded only one farthing in nominal damages, while the court costs were split, which resulted in Whistler having to declare bankruptcy. While filing for bankruptcy, and awaiting the sale of his possessions at Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s he was commissioned by The Fine Art Society to do twelve etchings in Venice, where he ended up spending the next fourteen months.

27 27

Time

Category of Gift

Giving the Impression

Description of Gift(s) Inspiration from ‘St. Jerome in his Study’ c.1475

Antonella da Messina, St. Jerome in his Study (c1475)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: Antonella da Messina’s and The National Gallery

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Interval

‘FREEZE/FRIEZE’

Sectional perspective of internal partition wall on 6th floor of BI (2009)

Location

Internal partition wall on 6th floor of BI

[on ‘Interval]

< ‘The word results from the coupling of inter (between, among) and vallum (palisade or wall, from vallus, post or stake). This suggests that an architecture of the interval is both among the walls and among-in the interstices between-the posts, or poles, totem or otherwise). “Interval” literally means “between the walls.” It suggests a place that might be occupied, a space.’g> Bloomer, Toward Desiring Architecture (1991)

One of the residents of the 7th floor, a spontaneous and, by her own admission, rather disorganised IT consultant from London, has had what she describes as ‘an ongoing relationship’ with a painting currently hanging in The National Gallery, by Antonella da Messina. Apparently, prior to her bankruptcy, she would unfailingly visit that painting once a week after work, on Friday late-night openings at the gallery. After moving to the BI, the resident became fascinated by Venice’s influence on Antonella da MessinaIII – through the clarity of the city’s light, and through the painter’s interest in other contemporary Venetian artists such as Giovanni Bellini.. She contrived to recreate the conditions of her favourite painting in her office through alterations to a screen which separated that office from the public stairway descending through the institute. These alterations offered framed views of III Antonella da Messina painted St. Jerome in his Study during one of his sojourns to Venice

her workspace. She treated those views as carefully composed tableaus, through which she attempted to project, to visiting clients, a sense of calm, order, and virtuous workmanship. The resident’s architectural adaptations of the screen also included what she describes as ‘me spaces’, out of public view, where she was able to escape for power naps, facebooking and other forms of personal relaxation.

Time

Category of Gift

Giving Time

Description of Gift(s) Agreement to minimum of 8 months stay in BI

Construction Drawing for the BI (2009)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: All residents to the BI

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Void

‘ACCUMULATE’

Location

Entire BI

<In the beginning is the woid, in the muddle is the soundance and thereinofter you’re in the unbewised again, vund vulsyvolsy.>h Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake

<The most powerful, sublime passages are those the other side of which are unknown or unspeakable, in which the void is the middle between known and unknown, speakable and unspeakable>i Bloomer, Toward Desiring Architecture (1991)

<Excerpt from Tenancy Agreement for tenants in apartments on floors 7&8 of the Bankrupts’ Institute 3: THE TENANT WILL d) Damage or injure, alter and redecorate the property during the tenancy without consent from the landlord e) Yield up the property at the end of the tenancy in a different state and condition from that in which it was at the beginning of the tenancy f) Leave additional furniture and effects,

acquired during property>j

tenancy,

within

the

The time the residents spend in the Bankruptsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Institute is a gift without which the Foundation Deposit would in no way be possible. It also provides one of the most complex of all the curatorial challenges presented by the foundation deposit.

Strictly speaking, Time, as Jacques Derrida reasonably, if unhelpfully, points out, cannot be given.

Gifts can only be given in timeIV

IV Jacques Derrida starts his playful and provocative denouncement of Marcel Mauss’ definition of the Gift by quoting words from Madam Maintenon’s (mistress to Louis XIV) letter to Madame Brinon. He plays with the paradoxes within her writing: ‘The king takes all my time/I give the rest to Saint Cyr, to whom I would like to give all’ Firstly, the possibility of giving ‘the rest’ (to Saint Cyr) when she has ‘given all’ (to the King), the rest thereby being nothing. He then moves on to the claim to be able to give time, stating that ‘according to common logic’ or economics, one can only exchange, one can only give or take, by way of metonymy, what is in time’. (Jacques Derrida, in Given Time, cited in (ed) Schrift, The Logic of the Gift, (London: Routledge (1997) p121)

Using his definition of the gift as ‘no-thing’, and linking it to the ‘nothing’ that is Time, Derrida places the gift outside the economy of equivalent exchange, stating that that all the gift can give, is time: ‘What there is to give, uniquely, would be called time/What there is to give, uniquely, would be called time/What there is to give, uniquely, would be called time (Jacques Derrida, Given Time, cited in (ed) Schrift, The Logic of the Gift (London: Routledge, 1997) p121)

As Alan Schrift summarises in his introduction to The Logic of the Gift (1997), ‘what the gift gives, in the end, is time, nothing but time – time to forget, time to return, time for a delayed reciprocation that is no longer simply a return’ (Schrift: The Logic of the Gift (London: Routledge, 1997) p10 <Extract cited in Robert Clement, Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress (2006)>

In time, the residents reconstruct the space of the institute. This reconstruction occurs through accumulation over time. Gifts are gifts, not loans or swaps, precisely because they allow for the possibility, given time, of being forgotten.V Since the BI was founded, various accumulations have taken place in the form of things left behind by its residents: Furniture, tools, repairs and memories are deposited by each resident that passes through the institute. V ‘Pierre Bourdieu also locates the nature of the gift in time, which separates it from swapping ‘which like the theoretical model of reciprocity, telescopes gift and counter-gift into the same instant’ and lending ‘in which the return of the loan, explicitly guaranteed by a legal act, is in a sense already performed at the very moment when a contract is drawn up, ensuring the predictability and calculability of the act it prescribes’. The gift lies within the time itself, as Bourdieu points out by quoting LaRouchefoucald: ‘Overmuch eagerness to discharge one’s obligations…is a form of ingratitude’. (Robert Clement, Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress, 2006, quoting Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Selections from The Logic of Practice, in The Logic of the Gift,p198)

Each resident has also been responsible for a series of erasures. Surfaces are worn away, walls are knocked down, resources are used up. The residents’ time is therefore registered by the BI’s architecture in an accumulation of traces that can appear both as positive forms, and as negative absences. This twofold process links the BI residents’ gift of time to a process of divestment described by Jean-Sébastian Marcoux in his essay, The ‘Casser Maison’ Ritual: Constructing the Self by Emptying the Home (2001). In the essay, Marcoux looks into Quebecois divestment rituals, in which elderly people practise ‘casser maison’ (literally translated: ‘breaking the house’), as way of systematically distributing their possessions among friends and relatives prior to moving into a (typically smaller) care residence. Marcoux sees

this practice as pertaining to ‘a ritualized form of construction of the self through the emptying of a place’. Marcoux presents the case for the divestment of possessions being a twofold process: 1) In the handing-down of personal possessions to willing recipients, the things ‘stand for the person and for the person’s survival in the memory of others.’ As such, the things that are given are part of the construction of ‘oneself as an ancestor’. 2) The emptying and cleaning associated with ‘casser maison’ is also a means of allowing detachment, a ‘rite aimed at putting an end to the mourning entailed by the separation with a known environment, with the belongings constituting it, and with an aspect of the self left behind’. As such, according to Marcoux, ‘It is thus an attempt to control death and its unpredictability’

Time

Category of Gift

Give and Take

Description of Gift(s)

Conditions of Gift(s)

Mechanic apparatus Given by: enabling combined use Two residents on the of bath and IT desk fourth and fifth floors of BI

Mechanic apparatus enabling combined use of bath and IT desk, plumberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective (2009)

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Variorum

‘RE-INITIATE’

Location Space between fourth and fifth floors of BI

Mechanic apparatus enabling combined use of bath and IT desk, IT consultant’s perspective (2009)

<[1 variorum of various persons…in the phrase cum notis variorum with the notes of various persons] 1: an edition of a text esp. of a classical author with notes by different persons; 2: an edition of a publication containing variant readings of the text> Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1967)

< ‘1plumb Pronunciation: \’pləm\ Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French plum, plomb, from Latin plumbum lead Date: 14th century : a lead weight attached to a line and used to indicate a vertical direction — out of plumb or off plumb : out of vertical or true’> Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (accessed 4/2009)

<1ca·ble Pronunciation: \’kā-bəl\ Function: noun Usage: often attributive Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin capulum lasso, from Latin capere to take Date: 13th century>

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (accessed 4/2009)

Two semantically outdated fields meet between the fourth and fifth floor of the BI. Plumbing, and the internet. Plumbing no longer has anything to do with lead, due to the discovery of its poisonous properties. As the internet goes increasingly wireless, it has less and less to do with cables or anything else with which you might construct a net. The density of lead made it suitable for use in determining the direction of gravitation force with the plumb line. The plumb line associated plumbing with gravity. Plumbers, though no longer using lead, work in a field where gravity is still a force to be reckoned with each day. After all, water still flows down. Meanwhile, the internet is moving from its cable-based past into an increasing air-borne future, involving wireless transmissions between devices, radio masts and satellites floating in space.

Venice is short of professionals associated with the internet and plumbing. From its outset, the BI sought to attract bankrupt professionals in both fields.

This preamble introduces an alteration made following an agreement between two residents of the institute â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a plumber on the fifth floor and an IT consultant on the fourth. The plumber was interested in exchanging the use of his large claw-footed bath for the IT consultantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soft and hardware for particular periods of the day. The plumber devised a simple pully solution whereby the bath could be lowered down to the floor below, and the IT consultantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desk could be raised up to the floor above. The desk and bath could also be used in combination with one another. Enticed by the possibility of working in the bath, the IT consultant agreed to what seemed a fair and mutually beneficial arrangement and the device was constructed.

Now, several months after the intervention was completed, the plumber is very satisfied with the arrangement, his introduction to newly-acquired IT skills putting him at a considerable competitive advantage in the local market. The IT consultant, meanwhile, has expressed regret at the intervention on the grounds that:

the threat of leaks from the pipes connected to the bath endanger her IT hardware and make her nervous while…

…quite unfairly the ‘leaks’ from her IT facilities, in the form of wireless internet access and file sharing facilities actually benefit the plumber 24 hours a day, while she only has bath access on average for one, and moreover…

…that the standards of the plumber’s personal hygiene are lower than hers so she feels obliged to clean the bath before each use.VI

VI Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress pointed to the important role of the symbolic in the proposed gift economy of the Bankrupts’ Institute, making the argument that gifts are only possible through things not being equivalent, quoting Robert Bocock’s presentation of the last section of Lacan’s The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis in the light of contemporary capitalist society, in which our unconscious desires both feed and are nurtured by our patterns of consumption. Writing about situations where consumption is forcibly limited by ‘economic downturns, recessions, or depressions’, Bocock writes, ‘Identities are changed, shattered and re-formed […] Not being able to consume, in the post-modern sense, becomes a source of deep discontent’. Bankruptcy therefore represents a threat not only to the victim’s lifestyle and material possessions, but also their sense of self. In such a situation, the role of the symbolic becomes extremely important. According to Lacan, it is loss that triggers the first experience of the symbolic.’ Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress continues by quoting Jean-Joseph Goux’s association of symbol and loss, in ‘Symbolic Economies After Marx and Freud’: ‘[…] metaphors, symptoms, signs, representations: it is always through replacement that values are created. Replacing what is forbidden, what is lacking, what is hidden or lost, what is damaged, in short, replacing with something equivalent what is not itself, in person representable.’ The symbolic is defined by non-equivalence. It is metonymical, acting as a substitute rather than equivalent. This understanding of the symbolic is key to the gift economy, which by its nature, is a symbolic economy.

Time

Category of Gift

Giving In

Description of Gift(s) Graffiti copy of black page from 1760 edition of Laurence Sterneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s TS

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: (/stolen from) Laurence Sterne

Excerpt from Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760)

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Vessel

‘FLOW BACK’

Location

Lead curtain wall façade of third floor of the BI

Detail of manipulated lead curtain wall facade on third floor of the BI (2009)

<A vessel is both a container and a conduit, the sea and the ship. It is the disseminated and the instrument of dissemination>o Bloomer, Towards Desiring Architecture (1991)

<The sea is the purest and foulest water: for fish drinkable and life-sustaining; for men undrinkable and deadly>p Heraclitus, Fragment LXX

<pla·gia·ry […] Etymology: Latin plagiarius, literally, kidnapper, from plagium netting of game, kidnapping, from plaga net, trap>q Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (accessed 4/2009)

The lead façade of the Bankrupts’ Institute forms part of a periphery of relatively high perimeter walls that enclose the Ghetto Ebraico (Jewish Ghetto). The façade bears the knocks, imprints, bends, scuffs, tears and repairs that have resulted from the past 3 years of the institute’s life, most notably on the lower floors, which are used by a higher number of the institute’s residents and members of the public. Rather than casting my curatorial focus on these ‘accidental’ gifts to the façade, I have chosen instead to describe one particular instance in which the façade has been intentionally manipulated by one of the institute’s residents.

I became aware of this when I spotted a small piece of grafitti in one of the folds of faĂ§adeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curtain wall, neatly surrounded by an inscribed rectangular frame reading:

Alas poor Y O R I C K !

Adjacent to this text a section of the interior surface of the curtain wall was scratched with hatches of approximately 1cm length, and, presumably by some oxidisation procedure, had been turned a silver-black colour that contrasted to the dull grey of the rest of the faรงade.

Time

Category of Gift

Giving Out

Description of Gift(s) Winged honorific lead-cast lion (with 2 webcams installed)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: Commune di Venezia

Econometric Description

ABOVE OPPOSITE

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Verge

‘TRANSFORM’

Location

Ground trading floor of BI

Member of the Venetian public meets BI resident on ground floor of the BI, 2009 Example of 1 of 2 webcams installed in the winged honorific lion provided by Commune di Venezia, 2009

< [me, fir. L. Virga twig, rod, streak, stripe – more at whisk] <1a (1): a rod or staff carried as an emblem of authority or as a symbol of office…;b (1) the spindle of a watch balance; esp: a spindle with pallets in an old vertical escapement c: the male intromittent organ of various invertebrates…;d (2): a bobbin guide on a lace machine; 2a: something that borders, limits or bounds…;(2) obs: an enclosing band: circlet, ring … also: rim, brim…; (7) horizon…;(8): the edge of the tiling projection over the gable of a roof…;b: the point marking the beginning-of a new or different state, condition or action: brink, threshold.>r Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (accessed 4/2009)

At the foundation of the BI, the Commune di Venezia commissioned one of the city’s artists to create an honorific winged lion sculpture to place in the entrance foyer of the institute. The sculpture was to include a map of Venice showing in which areas the residents were entitled to conduct business, and included a text defining the terms on which the institute’s residents were invited to trade.

In line with a tradition of pragmatic tolerance that runs back to the middle ages, Commune di Venezia saw the potential in allowing skilled, needed professionals to trade in Venice as a way of driving down extortionate prices in fields such as plumbing and IT consultancy. The Commune allowed the construction of the Bankrupts’ Institute, and its rent-free use with the

following provisosVII: 1) The Commune would be able to limit the area in which residents of the institute could conduct business. 2) The Commune could enforce caps on the rates the bankrupts charged their clients VII Richard Sennett argues, in Flesh and Stone (1994), that relative to the dangers of living elsewhere in Venice, or Europe for that matter at a time when religious intolerance was on the upsurge, Jews enjoyed comparative security in The Ghetto Nuovo and Ghetto Vecchio, two former foundry sites in Venice. The proposal to make use of Ghetto Nuovo was made in 1515 by Zacaria Dolfin, whose plan was to: Send all of them to live in the Ghetto Nuovo which is like a castle, and to make drawbridges and close it with a wall; they should have only one gate, which would enclose them there and they would stay there and two boats of the Council of Ten would go and stay there at night, at their expense, for their greater security’ Sennett points to the fact that unlike the German traders that were obliged to live in the ‘Fondaci dei Tedeschi’, in the Jewish Ghetto there was to be no internal surveillance. (Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone (1994::235)

3) The Commune would not monitor the internal workings of the institute, but would have the capacity to monitor and control the operations of the institute’s residents outside its walls, and on the institute’s website. In spring 2007, concerned over claims by a Mestre-based trade union that the institute’s residents were undercutting their own market share, the Commune replaced the eyes of the honorific lion with 2 internet cameras with the intention of streaming live footage of the main trading floorVIII of the institute, where its residents are entitled to advertise their services and meet with clients. In principle, there was to be no difference between the virtual trading space of the institute’s website, on which the residents also advertised, and the physical space of the trading floor. VIII The CCTV live-streaming web cameras on the BI’s trading floor offer approximately 270 degree visual coverage, when functioning correctly

However, at present there exist frequent gaps and delays in transmission from the internet camera, which has been attributed by the institute’s IT team to the large quantity of radio-wavereflecting lead in the building’s canal-side façade.

Time

Category of Gift

Giving Out

Description of Gift(s) Winged honorific lead-cast lion (with 2 webcams installed)

Detail from erased drawing of exit of the BI - phase 1 (2009)

Conditions of Gift(s) Given by: Commune di Venezia

Econometric Description

Debt to Bloomer

Action

Verge

‘TRANSFORM’

Detail from erased drawing of exit of the BI - phase 2 (2009)

Location

Ground trading floor of BI

<1 archaic: journey, excursion, tour; 2 archaic: an aimless digression; 4: a departure from the expected, normal, or logical order of the course>s Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1967)

<i) Your books and papers will normally be destroyed after your trustee has finished with them. However, you can have them back, provided they have not already been destroyed, if the court annuls your bankruptcy>t www.personalinsolvency.org.uk (accessed 4/2009)

<There is an association with architecture and economics, and it seems that architects build in a isolated, self-contained, a-historical way. They never seem to allow for any kind of relationships outside of their grand plan. And this seems to be true in economics too. Economics seem to be isolated and self-contained and conceived of as cycles, so as to exclude the whole entropic process. There’s very little consideration of natural resources in terms of what the landscape looks like after the mining operations or farming operations are completed. So that a kind of blindness ensues. I guess it’s what we call blind profit making. And then suddenly they find themselves within a range of desolation and wonder how they got there.[...]. I don’t think things go in cycles. I think things just change from one situation to the next, there’s really no return.>u Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and Economic Progress

The final element of the foundation deposit is the frequently-flooded ground floor of the institute. The floor is composed of 10x5x5cm briquettes constructed from crushed A4 paper. Prior to arriving at the institute, in fulfilment of Commune di Veneziaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s requirements, the bankrupts applying for residency are required to complete lengthy paperwork detailing their professional abilities, reasons for moving to Venice, and (for legal reasons) details of their bankruptcy proceedings in their country of origin. New arrivals at the institute are handed back these papers on the ground floor â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;misadministration officeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and invited to witness them being crushed by a large paper compacting machine.

resulting compacted

briquettes are used to form

the floor of which is in due and

the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Misadministrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Office, need of frequent renewal to general wear tear and

Detail from erased drawing of exit of the BI - phase 3 (2009)

Michael Webb, Sin Palace - photo of sketch model (date unknown)

Cadence â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Wrapping upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; seems like the wrong way to end a text devoted to incisions. Instead, I would like to end with one, final cut:

<A story is told about Webb carrying a model of the Sin Palace through the London Underground. Rushing to enter a train, he was not quite quick enough and the model was caught in the closing doors, crushed. It had to be rebuilt from scratch. T.E.Lawrence left the completed manuscript of Revolt in the Desert in a London railway station. It had to be rewritten from scratch. What do these stories have in common? The perils of the rails? The fragility of a creation? The tenuousness of record? The wages of sin? No, just two representations of the necessity of a caesura, a cadence to wandering. For his part, Webb denies the incident in the tube, having moved on to cones. >v

Endnotes

a Jennifer Bloomer, Towards Desiring Architecture: Piranesi’s Collegio, in Drawing Building Text, (ed.) Andrea Kahn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) p43 b The Roman law allowing creditors to cut into pieces and share out the body of someone who failed to pay their debts is described in the prologue to The Ethics of Bankruptcy (London: Routledge, 1998) c The full title of Piranesi’s drawing is Pianti di ampio magnifico Collegio foramata sopra l’idea dell’antiche Palestre de’Greci, e Termi de’Romani (1750) d Jennifer Bloomer, Towards Desiring Architecture: Piranesi’s Collegio, in Drawing Building Text, ed. Andrea Kahn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) p44 e Pynchon, V, 108. Jennifer Bloomer quotes from Pychon in ‘Towards Desiring Architecture’, in (ed) Andrea Kahn, Drawing Building Text (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991) p47 f Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (London: Faber and Faber, 1984),p5 g Jennifer Bloomer, Towards Desiring Architecture: Piranesi’s Collegio, in Drawing Building Text, ed. Andrea Kahn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991) p55 h James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake, 378.29-31 i Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Towards Desiring Architecture’, in (ed) Andrea Kahn, Drawing Building Text (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991) p52 j Excerpt from foundation text: Rake’s Regress, Bankrupts’ Progress (2006) k Ibid l Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Towards Desiring Architecture’, in (ed) Andrea Kahn, Drawing Building Text (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991) p54

m John Ruskin, July 2nd 1877, quoted in Ronald Anderson and Anne Koval, James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994) p. 214 n Quoted from Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, p. 349 o Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Towards Desiring Architecture’, in (ed) Andrea Kahn, Drawing Building Text (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991) p49 p Heraclitus, Fragment LXX, in Kahn, Art and Thought, 61 quoted by Jennifer Bloomer, ‘Towards Desiring Architecture’, in (ed) Andrea Kahn, Drawing Building Text (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991) p49 q Merriam Webster online dictionary, accessed 25/04/2009 r Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 1967 s Jennifer Bloomer, citing Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 1967 t www.personalinsolvency.org.uk/procedures.php ,accessed 25/04/2009 u Robert Smithson cites Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen ‘The Entropy Law and the Economic Progress’, in ‘Entropy Made Visible’ (1973) v Michael Sorkin, ‘Canticles for Mike’ in Michael Webb, Temple Island (London: AA, 1987) p5

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Lukacher, Brian

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