Deserted Islands

Deserted Islands

Institute for Art and Architecture

Deserted Islands

Anne Kathrin Müller

Masterthesis Academic Degree Master of Architecture MArch

Advisors: Aristide Antonas Luciano Parodi

Vienna 2021

Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisors, Aristide Antonas and Luciano Parodi, who supported me throughout my process.

Further thanks go to my family and my very dear friends without whom this thesis would not have been possible.

Verschoben und verschieben durch die Kraft des Meeres, die Wucht der Wellen, im Vergehen, erstehen.

Sich formen, neu formen, wieder aufgehen und versinken.

Die Grenze sich mäandernd einem Wert nähernd und ihn sogleich wieder lassen.

Schwindend, sich windet in der Zeit, in dem festen Griff zwischen Sein und Vergehen.

Undefinierbar, nicht realisierbar, versteckt sie sich vor jedem Wort, jedem Begriff, dem Versuch einer Linie, einer Gestalt.

Wunsch und Traum werden zu Meeresschaum und zerfließen leise; durch geben nichts nehmen.

Fragil und zart wie ein Hauch ist sie ein schweres Gewicht, kraftvoll die Meeresoberfläche durchbrechend reißen.

Rauh und zart, hart und weich.

Sich ergießend, zerfließend bestehen.

- Anne Kathrin Müller

Introduction

Astract Introduction

Deserted Islands Is-Land Glossary

The Essence of an Island

Exploration 1 I Typology I Typologies of Islands Exploration 2 I Program I The Significance of an Island Exploration 3 I Site I Travel to a Deserted Island Exploration 4 I History & Stories I Animation: The Journey Exploration 5 I Context I The Mediterranean Sea Exploration 6 I Emotions I The Islands’ Character

10 12 14 16 26

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50 62 92 108 118

Architectonical Casestudy

Exploration 7 I Idea I Noncolonizing Architecture 134 Exploration 8 I Experiment I Architectonical Interventions 142

A Translation

Exploration 9 I Translation I Bringing the Island to Us

154

White Island Drawing Series, Jamie Kutner, 2012

Abstract ...

On the example of the typological archetype of deserted islands, I explored how to reveal and understand the essence of a place and how we can interact within it. My interest in islands was sparked by their captivation which they exercise among us – why do islands become these places of longing, of desire, of utopia. In using analytical and interpretative methodologies, I tried to understand and reveal the essence of this topographical archetype. A space whose main features lie in its desertedness, in its untouchability, in its state of being in the in-between: as a geographical existence and at the same time a projection surface. The mentioned features spark the imagination and are the reasons why deserted islands could evolve this captivation as places of possibility, of disengagement, and starting anew.

As I define architecture as an act of transformation of space that should strengthen the character of a site, the question arises of how to interact with space that asks for not being touched and which inner nature can only be experienced from the distance. In my study on inhabited islands, inhabitation always tends to fail because it reduces the islands to their geographical existence as rocks in the sea. It develops them into homogenous, common spaces, thereby resolving the dualism of imagination and existence and taking away their potential as projection surfaces.

Consequently, I decided to move away from the geographical existence of the island. Instead of transforming the actual space, I decided to translate it. To bring the island to us. To make a translation of space in order to dissolve the conflict of its untouchability. In form of an installation, I attempt to reveal the deserted islands’ essence, make it experienceable, and be able to interact with it.

Sometimes non-architecture and non-realization can be stronger than an actual transformation. We always have to listen to what the site asks for, even if it means leaving it as it is.

Introduction ...

This thesis is a journey of the exploration of deserted islands.

The travel involves several studies which are structured in three parts.

The first series of explorations revolve around the essence of deserted islands. In using different methodologies and media, which vary between analytical and interpretive approaches, I attempt to reveal their inherent nature. These explorations comprise the production of an Atlas about Deserted Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, intuitive drawings and writings, an animation, essays, and a trip to an actual deserted island. Following this part, my research focused on the question of how we can interact in an architectonical way with this topographical archetype. Therefore, I conducted a case study on how different architectonical interventions change the sites’ character and formulated the idea of a non-colonizing architecture. The third part explores the possibility to translate the island into our space in form of an installation.

My methodology can be understood as a conglomerate of explorations and studies which add up to a fragmented collage representing deserted islands. Each exploration is moving in one direction, following where it leads me to and returning. Then moving again. In this sense, all my explorations can be regarded as homogenous and do not lead to one result but rather complete each other in their addition.

Overlap of satellite images of deserted islands of the Mediterranean Sea

Deserted Islands ...

Deserted islands - places of greatest hope and biggest disappointment, paradise and hell at the same time. The greatest contradictions coalescence in one idea, on one small piece of land which emerged from the ocean. Imagery and reality fall together and forms a kind of microcosmos, separated from the world by its remoteness but still connected. The island seems to be a place that is at the same time reality and its own metaphor.1 Therefore islands, once inhibited, are used in the most divergent and opposed senses. Either they transform into the most desired, the most beloved, in form of remote, flourish paradises with fancy resorts and white sand beaches untouched by human pollution or they become its opposite, collectors for the most unwanted, the garbage of our world and serve for atomic tests leaving solely barren land contaminated for the next decades behind. The coalescence of utopia and dystopia into one land, one island.

The liaison between those incompatibles is possible because of their remoteness, their separateness from the common world, which let them transform into little microcosms characterized by a strictly limited area, where the absurdities do not lose themselves in the vast dimensions of the landmasses.2 Yet their desertedness is not caused by the islands themselves but rather by their surroundings, their circumstances. The islands themselves are far more often contrary to a desert, with their flourishing green landscape and their splendid flora and fauna, providing more than necessary for a living environment. But in its character “the island is what the sea surrounds. It is as though the island has pushed its desert outside. What is deserted is the ocean around it.”3 The feeling of separateness and disconnection from the world itself is strengthened by the imagery which is woven into the idea and existence of an island. As soon as it is inhabited in a common and mundane way it loses its inherent character with all its imagery and mythology and transforms into a profane place. The only inhabitants that can inhabit a deserted island maintaining its character of abandonment have to be pure creators.4b Everything has to be formed, thought, and born anew, maintaining what the island represents.

Simultaneously, the deserted islands themselves serve in preserving relicts of former times. Not inhabited and disconnected from the world, they give us a feeling as if time had stood still and they do not belong in the present age. Because of their remoteness and desertedness, the islands transform into repositories of the ancient, into natural archives preserving an environmental or historical state. Thinking about the particular character of deserted islands and how to deal with the topic of remoteness and isolation in an architectonical sense, the. Creating something new which respects the island’s character of imagination, remoteness, mythology, and its beauty.

1 2 3 4

Judith Schalansky, Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln, Mare Verlag, 2009, S.29 Ebd., p.25 Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands in: Desert Islands and other texts 1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.11 Ebd. 10

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Is-Land ...

Already the word island itself, “is - land” evokes the very profound, radical, and refers to the notion of the origin. Arguing with the definition that an island is solid material surrounded by fluidity, every kind of landmass can be regarded as an island. In this sense the beginning, the first creation started with the formation of an island. But the larger the land becomes, the more the essence and the inherent character of islands as places of imagination and otherness are losing themselves in the vast dimension of the landmasses, and its absurdities and peculiarities are devoured by the common.1 Their remoteness and separateness transform them into microcosmos characterized by a strictly limited area with a distinctively drawn margin. Deriving from the Latin insula “to set apart” the term island can be etymologically defined as isolated land. The island is a piece of land that has been detached from another body of land whose very nature of isolation is stated by the contrast of materiality between solid and liquid.2 The sensation of their originating character is enriched by their geographical formation.

the sea, the island becomes a mountain and without the island, the sea transforms into an endless plane without any point of orientation.

Both can only exist within the other, in their liaison, in their coalescence, in a constant trial of strength. The islands are captured in a circle of birth and death and rebirth and re-death, becoming places of emergence, power, and transformation. Nowadays we can hardly find another place which is to the same amount, and the fullest sense of the word so unwritten, so detached from any kind of body, so untouched and pure. Islands are the origin, the radical, the absolute.3 Naturally separated by the sea, the island is kept in a state of constant separation and isolation. Captured in a perpetual fight between the solid and fluid, land and sea, constantly transforming and shaping in its confrontation.

This natural separation and their smallness lead to a self-containment and autonomy of the island, which resulted in phenomena like island gigantism or the establishment of alternative civilizations.4 The sensation arises as if islands are disconnected from the time and the common, offering an alternative to the existing world in their existence as self-contained microcosmos. In this sense, islands are one of the purest forms of Heterotopias, other places, a terminology defined by Michel Foucault. He describes them as ”counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.”5

Geographically, there exist two kinds of islands. Continental islands have been once part of a continent and due to fracture or sea-level rise turned into a fragment, separated from their former land. Regardless, there is still a connection to the continent which is submerged by the great expansion of the ocean.

In opposition, the oceanic islands are born out of the ocean itself. Being formed by the powerful eruption of underwater volcanoes, oceanic islands burst through the surface of the sea, being blank and unwritten like a newborn, bare of anything. From their immediate point of birth, they begin to sink slowly back into the sea, gradually decaying. Islands can only exist in the union, the interplay of sea and land, in their mutual dependency. Taking away

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This impression of otherness is strengthened by a blurriness enwrapping the entity of the island. We spot the island from the distance as a faint appearance in the far which barely differentiating from the blue of the sky and sea.

Lightly trembles the tender line of the horizon before it becomes again a still and constant horizontal. The island is a non-graspable reality,

so fragile in its appearance from the far and yet so clear and materially defined in its existence.

Detached in solitary, a place of silence, forgetting, sidling on the edge of its disappearance.

It seems to be invisible. This particular nature of islands, triggered by their isolation and separation, has from the very beginning aspired humanity. They seem to offer us the possibility

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of an escape, a disengagement from humanity and the common; the prospect to start anew.

“Dreaming of islands – whether in joy or in fear (…) is dreaming of pulling away, of being already separate, far from any continent, of being lost and alone or it is dreaming of starting from scratch, recreating, beginning anew.”6

edness is caused by their surroundings, than the actual state of the island. “It is as though the island had pushed its desert outside. What is deserted is the ocean around it. ... The island is deserted more than it is a desert.”7 Following up this idea, deserted islands can even be populated by humans as long as the islands remain in their state of isolation. Yet, we encounter a profound dilemma. If humans move to a deserted island we intrude, from the outside and penetrate its enclosed cosmos.

Projecting our common life upon it. As soon as the island is inhabited in a common and mundane way it loses its inherent character and transforms into a profane place. The only inhabitants who can inhabit a deserted island have to be “pure creators”, as Deleuze argues, “uncommon humans, they are absolutely separate, absolute creators, in short, an Idea of humanity, a prototype, a man who would almost be a god, a woman who would be a goddess, … There you have a human being who precedes itself.”8 Everything has to be formed, thought, and born anew, maintaining what the island represents.

These humans would become the island itself, fulfill it, and coalescence with its existence.

But in moving to the island from the outside, in arriving on its shores, we set a spike into its surrounding fragile shell. In the attempt to survive on the island, we begin to draw it, to discover it, to name it; in other words, we begin to colonize it. Mapping and naming as the ultimate tools of colonialization, of making a place our own. “Illegibility, then, has been and remains a reliable resource for political autonomy.”9 as Brugel states. By discovering the entire island, we negate the possibility of imagination which can only take place, if there are spaces left, which are undefined, unnamed, undrawn.

It stands in complete opposition to the act of colonizing.

These are the two movements, states Deleuze, that drive us to the island and account for the island’s fascination. Islands as physical manifestations of projection and imaginary, of possibility and utopia. On islands, the absolute and imaginary fall together. Where could you better imagine the fulfillment of your most inner desires and wishes if not on an island? Where else would you find a secret treasure, if not on an island, hidden and far from the common?

The island is a place that is balancing on the verge between reality and the imagination, between wish and existence. Promises, to be a place of unlimited possibilities, of liberty. This speculative captivation of the island’s nature is precisely why islands have served since long as setting for fictive novels, for fables of nymphs ensnaring fisherman, and passionate romances.

And certainly, it is no coincidence that the first elaboration of an utopia was set on an island.* It is difficult to imagine another place where one can better imagine a starting anew than on an island. Deserted islands symbolize an ideal state, an concrete link between illusion and reality.

Though there is one condition that necessarily needs to be fulfilled in order to become this surface for projection. The island needs to be deserted. Deserted, not in its literal sense of being an actual desert but deserted in its character. On the contrary, deserted islands are far more often the opposite of a desert, with their flourishing green landscapes and their splendid flora and fauna, providing more than necessary for a living surrounding. Their desert-

Even literature illustrates the crisis of inhab-

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come the ultimate dystopias. Repositories for the most unwanted, an externalization of the mainland.

itation of deserted islands and shows how the supposedly pure creator fails. In the novel The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne describes the story of five castaways stranding on a deserted island. To survive, the castaways begin to discover, name and draw the island: “One day, they climb on the island's highest summit and begin to name. A solemn moment, and a triumphant one, which occurs in the narrative at the precise moment they decide, as the engineer Cyrus Smith puts it, ''to no longer look upon ourselves as castaways, but rather as colonists who have come for the purpose of colonizing"10 Naming and mapping as the main principles of colonizing a place, as signs of conquest. Michel de Certeaux points out “they catch the island up in the net of these names of elonging; to turn the island into the " unfolded map" of memory that inscribes itself; to turn it into the manipulable page one can read and where one can be read: that is "to colonize."11 In this moment of discovery, and thereby taking possession of the island, the fragile balance between imagination and reality is disturbed; a coalescence of human and island is no more possible.

Studying actual inhabitations which took place in history on deserted islands we can discover similar occurrences. Its extraordinary topographic condition, as a small, limited piece of land surround by the ocean converts the island into a self-contained entity. The sea forms a distinctive border, in which to isolate, punish and banish. It becomes the perfect place for the displacement of humans we want to exclude from our lives. Thus, it is no wonder that most famous prisons like Alcatraz or the penal colony of Cayenne are located on islands, becoming a home for the most dangerous criminals.

In the 20th century, many deserted islands in the Mediterranean Sea served as well as prisons and labor camps, like Gyaros in Greece or Goli Otok in Croatia for political dissidents.12

Their geographical strategic location in the middle of the ocean gives the great capacity to frame and simplify the seemingly unbounded and complex and has great value for military purposes.13 It encourages the establishment of military bases and weapon testing. One of the most famous incidents of the devastating abuses of islands is the atomic bombing on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands at the end of World War II, destroying its rich natural ecosystem and leaving the island uninhabitable for generations.14 Many other pacific islands had to face a similar fate and were used as open laboratories for weapon testing and military operations. In the Mediterranean Sea, islands are often abused as geopolitical tools in order to claim territory, thereby triggering international conflicts.* Nowadays we can identify another development. In the uses mentioned above, the island is reduced to its geographical condition of isolation, and how this can be utilized to our benefit. These days, the image of the paradisiac islands with their white sand beaches and green palm trees under which to wander has been put into perspective. Following the concept of “getting yourself a slice of paradise” islands are converted into luxury resorts, only accessible for the few. It is even possible to buy your private island, as states begin to sell their deserted islands to improve their public purse.15 The mentioned examples illustrate, neither in literature nor in history nor nowadays we inhabit islands respecting its character of remoteness, imagery, and isolation but instead reduce it to its physical existence by the act of colonizing. We either capture them in a network of political and military interest or reduce them to geopolitical tools and luxury

Instead of the realization of a utopia, they reverse themselves in their opposite and be-

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objects. We do not start anew but rather implement our common world onto the unwritten deserted islands. We are not the pure creators Deleuze was talking about. By colonizing, we write our own story, our own thinking upon the island and thereby dominate and domesticate it. “The total control of the island needs to go through its complete domestication. The anthropomorphic ambition of the castaway is transforming the desert island into a temporary domestic island forcing its adaptation to fulfill the needs of the ruler. In this sense, the island has to comply with the new master.”,16 as Laurent Gutierrez summarizes. We take away the islands self-contained character of unintelligibility, bluriness and imagination. Its condition of not being defined needs to be maintained to keep its potential as a projection surface. Only then imagination and reality can fall together on this small piece of land. The island can only exist in the in-between – one part is given by its physical existence, its materiality. The other part is given by our minds and what we imagine upon it.

By making the island legible we reduce it to its material existence, to a simple rock in the sea, and break up the dualism of imagination and reality. It becomes a common place. Seeing a deserted island from the far we can imagine the wildest things happening upon it. But if we are actually on it, if we have the whole image of it, live upon it becomes suddenly very boring and the promises of the fulfillment of our most inner wishes did not realize. Does it fulfill its promise? Or is it just a false illusion in the lather of the sea?

and reality. It has much more importance as a thought model and in its capacity of framing the imagination than in its actual existence.

Imagination gains its value, its power in its non-realization. The Idea, the possibility of realization is stronger than its actual realization.

The deserted island’s importance lies in the geographical materialization of the possibility to start anew, the possibility to disengage, the possibility of an alternative. The island represents an ideal link between imagination

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1 Judith Schalansky, Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln, Mare Verlag, 2009, p.29 2 Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix (MAP Office), Islands & Other Invisible Territories, Hong Kong, 2010, Published in Atlas of MAP Office’s Landmarks, islands and other liquid landscapes, Melbourne, RMIT, 2015 3 Gilles Deleuze, Desert islands; in Desert Islands and other texts 1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.10 4 Island Gigantism and Dwarfism: Evolutionary “Island Rule” Confirmed, URL: https://scitechdaily. com/island-gigantism-and-dwarfism-evolutionary-island-rule-confirmed/, retrived 2021 5 Michel Focault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias; in: journal Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1984, Paris, p.4-9 6 Gilles Deleuze, Desert islands; in Desert Islands and other texts 1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.9-14 7 ebd. p.9-14 8 ebd. p.9-14 9 Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, Colonial Contours, in: Reverse Hallicunations in the Archipelago, K. Verlag and Haus der

Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, p.17 10 Michel de Certeux, Writing the Sea, in: Heterologies, Discourse on the Other, University of Minnesota, London, 2000, p. 143 11 ebd.p.143-144 12 Dir Auer, Kein würdiges Erinnern, URL: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gefaengnisinsel-goli-otok-kein-wuerdiges-erinnern.795. de.html?dram:article_id=458719, retrieved 2021 13 Daniel Daou and Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Islands; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.7 14 Christoph Seidler, als der Atompilz 40 Kilometer in die Höhe schoss, URL: https://www.spiegel.de/ wissenschaft/mensch/us-atomtestsim-pazifik-verwuestungen-bis-heutesichtbar-a-1300440.html, retrieved 2021 * This phenomenon becomes most evident in the event of a birth of an island. In the case of the Isola de Ferdinandea, which emerged in 1831 near the coast of Sicily, there was a great debate to which country the island belongs, not being attached to any state. We hardly can find any comparable situation where a piece of land is to such extend undefined.

15 Lianna Brinded, Here are the 11 cheapest Greek islands for sale

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right now, 2015; URL: https:// www.businessinsider.com/greekislands-for-sale-and-price-20157?r=DE&IR=T#1-lihnari-peninsula-3-million-21-million-33-million-11, retrieved 2020 16 MAP Office, Islands & Other Invisible Territories, Hong Kong, August 2010 Published in Atlas of MAP Office’s Landmarks, islands and other liquid landscapes, Melbourne, RMIT, 2015

Glossary

The Essence of an Island

ISLAND Using the term Island, I refer to the geographical definition of islands as pieces of land that are surrounded by water. More specifically, the piece of land should be able to be circumambulated in a small amount of time, or it is possible to see the entire perimeter of the island if you are standing on a high point. Apart from this definition based on the geographical existence of the island, there exist further definitions from the most divergent fields which argue with a more general understanding of the term. Islands can be understood as geographical entities, or, from a social/political point of view be defined by a common thought model which separates a community from its surroundings.

There exists one universal definition, which can be applied to “all kinds of islands” regardless of the field in which the term is used. The island itself always contains something homogenous (either land, concepts, political ideas, etc.), which is separated by a distinctive border from its surroundings. This border can be water, different thought models, different urban structures ect. In conclusion, an island is a homogenous entity that is separated by the different. To apply a more specific universal definition for the term Island is complicated and as far as I am concerned not possible.

PURE CREATORS The term Pure Creators is established by Deleuze in his essay “Deserted Islands”. He argues that a deserted island can stay in its nature deserted although it is inhabited as long as its inhabitants are Pure Creators.

“It is still deserted, all the more so, provided they (humans) are sufficiently, that is, absolutely separate, and provided they are sufficient, absolute creators.”7 In the following he describes these Pure Creators as “uncommon humans, they are absolutely separate, absolute creators, in short, an Idea of humanity, a prototype, a man who would almost be a god, a woman who would be a goddess, a great Amnesiac, a pure Artist, a consciousness of Earth and Ocean, an enormous hurricane, a beautiful witch, a statue from the Easter Islands. There you have a human being who precedes itself. Such a creature on a deserted island would be the deserted island itself, insofar as it imagines and reflects itself in its first movement (...) But since human beings, even voluntarily, are not identical to the movement that puts them on the island, they are unable to join with the elan that produces the island; they always encounter it from the outside, and their presence in fact spoils its desertedness. The unity of the deserted island and its inhabitant is thus not actual, only imaginary. (...) More importantly, it is doubtful whether the individual imagination, unaided, could raise itself up to such an admirable identity; it would require the collective imagination, what is most profound in it, i.e. rites and mythology.”8 In conclusion, in his point of view, Pure Creators cannot exist as human beings. Even if humans strand on a deserted island, the castaways will employ colonial methodologies and strategies in order to convert the island into a habitable environment. In this regard, we can only claim humans which live on a deserted island and never had any relation to the outside world as Pure Creators.

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HETEROTOPIA The term Heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault describes a place that differs and thereby separates itself from its surroundings. It coexists and offers an alternative form of and to reality.

Foucault defines Heterotopias as “...places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.”4

THE ISLAND AS A METAPHOR

He argues that heterotopian spaces follow five principles: “Its first principle is that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias. (...) But the heterotopias obviously take quite varied forms, and perhaps no one absolutely universal form of heterotopia would be found. (...) The second principle is that a society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another. (...) The third principle. The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. (...) Fourth principle. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. (...) Fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable”5

The island is a geographical reality and at the same time, a concept that has been extensively used as a metaphor. “Islands are sites of innovative conceptualizations, whether of nature or human enterprise, whether virtual or real” as sociologist Godfrey Baldacchino asserts, able to embody a variety of dichotomies without resolving them.10 The island oscillates between an ambivalence between physical reality and metaphor. The question arises “if ‘islandness’ is to do with a generalizable condition of physical isolation or a state of personal disconnection? Or is it to do with the stuff of real geographical entities that more a less accord with one of those contested definitions of an island as physical reality” as Hay wonders.11

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DESERTEDNESS How to define Desertedness? What are the parameters and circumstances that allow a place to be called deserted? And from what is it deserted?

The word itself derives from the term Desert which implicates that a place that is deserted merely offers a hostile, harsh environment similar to the environment of the desert. But having a closer look at the desert, we can discover an abundance of life ranging from microorganisms to nomads which cross the desert since ancient times.

Arguing from this point of view, we can conclude that there actually is no place that is entirely deserted because traces and forms of life can be found everywhere, regardless of how hostile the environment seems to be at a first glance. Arguing from a humancentric perspective, deserted places can be defined as places without the actual presence of human beings. But paradoxically, particularly in those places that are untouched by humans, we discover broader biodiversity than usually, particularly because no humans are interfering with the fragile ecosystem. Hence, the term Desertedness is broadly used, and, similarly to the term Island, it is very difficult to formulate a universal definitition.

The definition always depends on which point of view we argue from.

In order to become more specific I want to focus on the defintion of Deserted Islands.

Deleuze formulates a definition that concerns more the surroundings of the Deserted Island than the actual state of the island itself. “It is as though the island had pushed its desert outside. What is deserted is the ocean around it. (...) The island is deserted more than it is a desert.”1 This adds another level of meaning to the definition and includes the accessibility and surroundings as the main reason for a place to become deserted. Accordingly, he argues that a place can be deserted even though it is populated by humans. The only condition is that they have to be Pure Creators. However, in his later work, he rebuts his own argument by claiming that the very existence of these Pure Creators as he defines them, is impossible.2 A deserted place is a place which is kept in a state of separation and detachment from the other world. Setting this in relation to Foucault’s essay “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” we can conclude that Deserted Islands are forms of heterotopias because they fulfill the five principles for heterotopian spaces as defined

by Foucault.3 In the case of islands, they belong even more clearly to this category of space because their separation derives from a very natural circumstance; the surrounding sea, which forms a natural barrier which enhances the separation and thereby the formation of a heterotopia.

Defining the term Deserted Islands I agree to great extend to the humancentric concept formulated by Deleuze with the exception that I define Deserted Islands as currently uninhabited by humans. What kind of architectonical interventions can take place on a Deserted Island that maintain the characteristics of Desertedness and isolation? Is it possible to have architectonical interventions which reflect and maintain the islands’ state of separateness and remoteness? Can people even travel to the island without corrupting its character as Heterotopia? What would be an architectonical program acknowledging the particular character of Desertedness?

Deserted Islands symbolize an ideal state, an existing, concrete real link between illusion and reality. This is even more the case because they are on the verge of falling into the imaginary and the illusion but still situated in the real. Seeing a Deserted Island from far away you can imagine the wildest things.

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UTOPIA Utopia is an idealized concept for an alternative way of living in contrast to the established system/society. The concept is absolute, pure, and positively. It is a concrete idea that exists as a thought model and leads to questioning whether it can be realized. Utopias evolve as fictive, social concepts which often result from a critique of the contemporary established system. Foucault defines Utopia as the following: “Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case, these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.”6 Thomas Morus was the first to establish the term Utopia in his novel “Utopia”, published in 1516. In his novel, the ideal form of society was realized on an Island which was called Utopia.

MICROCOSMOS The Duden defines the term Microcosmos as: “A small part of the human culture, which presents a scaled down picture of the universe.”9 In contrast to this definition I use the term as an indicator for a place as a defined, delimited, and bound space, which follows its own rules/order/system. It is segregated and encapsulated from its surroundings. It exists in coexistence with the common world without any coalescence or merger of the two opponents.

It can be delimited either by its geographical conditions (islands, mountains, ect.) or by its body of thoughts, way of living, ect. In case of geographical delimitation, the microcosmos needs to follow some form of own and independent system/rules/order. My definition follows to great extend the definition of Heterotopias as formulated by Focault. Examples: alternative human communities, alternative island communities (independent /autarky), ect.

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Quotes in Text

1 Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands; in: Desert Islands and other texts 1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.11 2 ebd. p. 11 3 Michel Focualt, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias; in: journal Architecture/Mouvement/ Continuité, 1984, Paris, p.4-9 4 ebd. p.3-4 5 ebd. p.4-9 6 ebd. p.3 7 Gilles Deleuze, Desert islands; in: Desert Islands and other texts 1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.10-11 8 ebd. p.10-11 9 Defintion by the Duden: Mikrokosmos, URL: https://www.duden. de/rechtschreibung/Mikrokosmos, retrieved 2020 10 Godfrey Baldacchino, islands, Island studies; in: Island Journal 1, no.1, 2006, p. 6 11 Stefania Staniscia, The island effect: Reality or Metaphor?; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.51

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The Essence of an Island

Keywords describing the islands’ character

The Essence of an Island...

- what are the Characteristics of an Island?

The deserted island is a geographical entity, a limited and circumscribed space separated by the ocean from the common. Since ancient times, it has been a projection surface for the most divergent wishes, narratives, and a place of longing. Often, deserted islands, once inhabited, become heterotopias, and are used in the most opposing ways.

They can become paradise or hell. Deserted islands address profound issues like isolation, transition, temporality, and silence.

In my thesis, I want to explore this particular spatial entity and discover its inherent character and how to reveal it. What does their isolated position allow for? What is the potential of deserted islands and their related issues like isolation and separateness, for us? How can we treat deserted islands without destroying their inherent character of disconnection and isolation?

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The Essence Exploration 1 of an Island TYPOLOGY

Study about Typologies of Islands

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Islands as Urban Design Strategy The term Island is heavily used as a metaphor, such as a description of a design strategy, for cultural transformations, city developments, etc. The range of its use is manifold and we can find the island metaphor in most diverse fields.

1 Oswald Matthias Ungers, Green Archipelago Berlin: urban design strategy 2 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: Islands as an abstract concept/idea 3 Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an archipelago 4 Rem Koolhaas, la Defense, Paris: Urban design strategy 5 Bernhard Tschumi, Parc de la Vilette: Landscape design strategy 6 Dogma: The design of the office works a lot with borders and seperations in its physical manifestations

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Islands within the City The term Island is used as a metaphor for describing urban structures, which we can detect within the city.

1 “Islands” of different social classes of population within the city, e.g. Favelas border with high class buildings in Rio de Janeiro 2 China Town in NY: As example for social/cultural islands within the city 3 Al Mansur’s Bagdad: An entirely round city which resembles an island 4 Athens, Greece: The city reflects in its build structure the greek Cyclades 5 Manhattan in NY: a district which was errected on an exisiting island 6 Ile de la cité, Paris, France: An actual Island on which a certain type of builing is condensed (museum/church ect.)

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Artificial Islands Artificial islands are those that have been constructed by humans for different reasons. Either for military purposes, for political reasons, or simply out of the need of its surroundings.

1 Alviso Cornaros Proposal for Venice: Fountain, Theatre and Vago Monticello; not constructed 2 Dejima Island, Japan: Served for the trade between Portuguese and Japanese in the 17th century 3 Maunsell Sea Forts, North Sea: Designed for defending the thames estuary in Great Britain 4 Palm Jumeira in Dubai: artificial islands for habitation 5 Artificial islands in the South China Sea in order to claim disputed territorial 6 Floating islands in Peru, made out of totora reeds

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Exploitation of Islands Islands have been used as laboratories or testing fields for a long time. Because of their geographical limitation, they offer an environment which is easy to monitor. Apart from this military use, some islands have inherent valuable resources which led to unsustainable exploitation.

1 Gyali, Greece: intensive pumice mining 2 Ford Boyard, France: Because of their natural seperation islands have been since long converted into prisons 3 Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands: Nucelar bombing tests in 1940-1950 by the US 4 The floating prisons of Fincantieri: Recent proposel for Italy’s overcrowded jails 5 Nauru, Pacific Ocean: Intense Phosphat mining destroyed the rich ecosystem of the islands 6 islands used as coastel defense

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Islands in Fiction Oscillating between reality and fiction, islands are places of longing, hope, of mystery and therefore they are often used as settings for literature, films ect.

1 James Bond Island: Islands as settings for film and literature 2 Homer, Odysee: Islands as imaginery, mystical places which are populated by creatures of fables or fantasy 3 Arnold Böcklund, Toteninsel: The island as a materialisation of dystopia, hell, ...

4 Painting of Atlantis: Utopia, Paradis 5 Thomas Morus, Utopia: The first Utopia was an island 6 Maps of Treasure islands

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Micronations and Islands out of Regulation Islands offer a perfect setting in order to establish micronations.

1 Isola Santo Stefano: The inmates declared their own state during a revolt 2 Cayman island: Fiscal paradise 3 Isola delle Rose: Micronation from 1968-69 4 Sealand: A micronation on one of the Maunsell Forts 5 Lesbos, Greece: Refugees are often send to islands 6 Village of Biskupin, Poland: The first models of cities resembled islands

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Islands as Heterotopias Islands are used as heterotopian spaces because of their specific topographic condition.

1 Aldo Rossi, Theatre for the Biennale 2 Mljet Island: Monasteries found on islands 3 Coney Island: An amusement park, located on the southern tip of Brooklyn 4 Delos, Greece: A holy place 5 Architectural projections: Working on fragile, vulnerable, limited spaces with limited resources offer the ideal conditions for projects that aspire to confront current challenges such as climate change, sea level rise, population rise ect.

6 Isola di San Michele Venice: Cemetry islands

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1 Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, URL: https://www.artribune. com/attualita/2015/11/biennale-architettura-venezia-padiglione-usa-intervista-cynthia-davidson/attachment/9002_pb-indd/, retrived 2020 2 DOGMA, a simple heart, URL: http://quaderns.coac.net/ en/2013/05/dogma/, retrieved 2020 3 Oswald Matthias Ungers, Green Archipelago Berlin, URL: https:// www.arquine.com/berlin-archipielago-verde/, retrieved 2020 4 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, URL: https://tecnne.com/ biblioteca/rem-koolhaas-la-vida-enla-metropoli-o-la-cultura-de-la-congestion/, retrieved 2020 5 Bernhard Tschumi, Parc de la Vilette, URL: https://www.lemoniteur.fr/article/tschumi-une-recherche-graphique.1395669#!, retrieved 2020 6 OMA, La grande defense, URL: https://acollectionofthings.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/missiongrand-axe-oma/, retrieved 2020

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1 Rio de Janeiro, URL: https:// www.worldatlas.com/articles/cities-with-the-most-income-inequality.html, retrieved 2020 2 China Town in NY, URL: https:// www.scmp.com/magazines/ post-magazine/article/1864847/ five-reasons-new-yorks-chinatown-surviving-gentrification, retrieved 2020 3 The round city of Bagdad, URL: http://socks-studio. com/?s=round+city, retrieved 2020 4 Athens, Greece, URL: https:// www.greeka.com/about-greece/ greek-cities/, retrieved 2020 5 Map of Lower Manhattan, URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/1847_Lower_Manhattan_map.jpg, retrieved 2020 6 Ile de la cité, Paris, France, URL: https://medium. com/the-innovation/dr-panglosssaid-alls-for-the-best-in-this-thebest-of-all-possible-worlds-but-is-itaafa945f7b1a, retrieved, 2020

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- Typology -

Page 24 1 Alviso Cornaros Proposal for Venice, URL: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/303114204_HAULuP_Heritage_and_Architecture_of_Urban_Landscape_under_Production_VENEZIA_ARSENALE/ figures?lo=1, retrieved 2020 2 Dejima Island, Japan, URL: https:// www.japandigest.de/kulturerbe/ geschichte/geschichte/dejima/, retrieved 2020 3 Maunsell Sea Forts, North Sea, URL: https://explorethearchive. com/maunsell-sea-forts, retrieved 2020 4 Palm Jumeira in Dubai, URL: https://medium.com/@ angela.aguilarsolaz/5-belgian-companies-that-conquer-the-world-30af15780210, retrieved 2020 5 Artificial islands in the South China Sea, URL: https://www.infobae. com/america/mundo/2016/12/16/ crece-la-tension-el-pentagono-insto-al-gobierno-chino-a-devolver-la-sonda-submarina/, retrieved 2020 6 Floating islands in Peru, URL: http://www.oletravel.co.uk/store/ p3/Inca_Trail_to_Machu_Picchu_%26_Lake_Titicaca.html, retrieved 2020

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1 Gyali, Greece, URL: https:// greekreporter.com/2018/05/31/ the-strangest-island-in-the-dodecanese-photos/, retrieved 2020 2 Ford Boyard, France, URL: https:// www.rochefort-ocean.com/decouvrir/fort-boyard-vue-panoramiquea-rochefort-ocean/le-fort-boyarden-histoire, retrieved 2020 3 Landglutjen, URL: https://www. wikiwand.com/nl/Langlutjen, retrieved 2020 4 Nauru, URL: https://medium.com/ lessons-from-history/how-naurubecame-the-worlds-fattest-country911ee1c9b8c9, retrieved 2020 5 Bikini Atoll, URL: https://www. newsweek.com/bikini-atoll-atomic-tests-shipwrecks-seafloor-1476923, retrieved 2020 6 Floating jail, URL: https://untappedcities.com/2018/02/26/ daily-what-theres-a-floating-bargeprison-in-the-east-river/, retrieved 2020

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1 Isola delle Rose, URL: https:// www.vanityfair.fr/culture/ecrans/ story/netflix-l-incroyable-histoirede-l-ile-de-la-rose-utopie-qui-avole-en-eclats/12997, retrieved 2020 2 Isola Santo Stefano, URL: https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/48829025_On_Prisons_and_ Theatres_Santo_Stefano_and_San_ Carlo/figures?lo=1, retrieved 2020 3 Cayman Island, URL: https://www. welt.de/politik/article3225514/ Finanzkrise-fuehrt-zu-Gewaltprotest-auf-Guadeloupe.html, retrieved 2020 4 Lesbos, Greece, refugees, URL: https://www.athensvoice.gr/ greece/105296_dodekanisa-piastike-doylemporos, retrieved 2020 5 Sealand, URL: https://www.bbc. com/future/article/20150414-irule-my-own-ocean-micronation, retrieved 2020 6 Village of Biskupin, Poland, URL: https://www.kunstkopie.de/a/ english-school/reconstructionofanironage.html

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Page 28 1 James Bond Island, URL: https:// www.pommietravels.com/jamesbond-island-tour/, retrieved 2020 2 Thomas Morus, Utopia, URL: https://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article160743177/ Sechs-Stunden-Tag-Einheitskleidung-goldene-Klos.html, retrieved 2020 3 Arnold Böcklund, Toteninsel, URL: https://www.sensesatlas.com/painting/isle-of-the-dead-five-versions/, retrieved 2020 4 Friedrich Preller, der Ältere, Odysee, URL: https://i.pinimg.com/ originals/af/3a/c8/af3ac871e30b04d5a28ce7680042ec9b.jpg, retrieved 2020 5 Atlantis, URL: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/atlantis-tom-shropshire.html, retrieved 2020 6 Robert Louis Stevenson, Map of a treasure island, URL: http://selamaps.blogspot.com/, retrieved 2020

Page 32 1 Aldo Rossi, Theatre for the Biennale, URL: https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/theater-of-theworld-in-venice/, retrieved 2020 2 Mjet islands, URL: https://www. njcharters.com/the-island-of-mljet-croatia/, retrieved 2020 3 Coney Island, New York, URL: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/heres-what-it-couldlook-like-when-coney-island-reopens-051820, retrieved 2020 4 Delos Greece, URL: https://certsit.com/listing/island-of-delos/, retrieved 2020 5 Architectural proposal of artificial island cities, URL: https:// www.arch2o.com/floating-ecosystem-blue-21delta-sync/, retrieved 2020 6 Isola di San Michele, https://www. reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ j8f06f/isola_di_san_michele_venice/, retrieved 2020

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The Essence Exploration 2 of an Island PROGRAM

The Significance of an Island

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- Program -

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Casestudy about the different narratives and functions over time of deserted islands on the islands around Venice

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Lewis & Harris I, North Atlantic Island Collection, 2020

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The Significance of an Island... ...What is an island? What does an island represent? In spite of its well-defined boundaries, the island itself is a very complex and blurred entity1, which does not allow for one simple definition.2 The island can be interpreted in various ways and disciplines and has, since ancient times, become a subject of study, art and science – it is used as a metaphor and projection surface; as an object of interest for natural scientific research and philosophical conceptualization; and at the same time as a geopolitical tool for global corporations and nations. To the same amount as islands play an important role in the most divergent fields,3 they are characterized by almost oppositional categories. Islands are places of greatest hope and biggest disappointment, of paradise and hell at the same time. The greatest contradictions coalescence in one idea, in one utopia4, on one small piece of land which emerged from the ocean.

On islands, the imaginary and the absolute fall together.

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- Program -

Already, the word “island” itself- “is - land” -evokes a sense of profoundness and radicalness and refers to the notion of the origin. Arguing with the definition that an island is solid material surrounded by fluidity, every kind of landmass can be regarded as an island. In this sense the beginning, the first creation started with the formation of an island. But the larger the land becomes, the more the essence and inherent character of islands as places of imagination and otherness is lost in the vast dimension of the landmass. Its absurdities and peculiarities are devoured by the common.5 In this sense I would like to argue with the definition formulated by Marc Shell in which he defines an island as land one can walk or sail around the perimeter and end up where one began.6 Deriving from the Latin insula “to set apart” the term island can etymologically be defined as isolated land. The island is a piece of land that has been detached from another body of land whose very nature of isolation is stated by the contrast of materiality between solid and liquid.7 It is a fragment of a former land that is autonomous and self-referring, divided from the other by the ocean. It causes us to reflect on the most profound questions and notions of identity and in this sense illuminates primordial issues of philosophy.

underwater volcanoes, oceanic islands burst through the surface of the sea, totally blank and unwritten like a newborn, bare of anything. From their immediate point of birth, they begin to sink slowly back into the sea, gradually decaying. During this slow decay an atoll, which is abundant in life of different creatures and strange organisms, begins to form. After years and years, it will slowly sink back into the sea as well. The islands are captured in a circle of birth and death and rebirth and re-death, becoming places of emergence, of power, of creation and transformation.

Their geographical condition and their character of remoteness, oblivion, and separateness from the common world, stimulate their character as microcosms and heterotopias.

They have become places of longing, of imagination, and desire. As physical manifestations of projection and imaginary, places of possibility and utopia.

“If there were not islands already, it would be necessary for human beings- the logical and political creatures that we are (or strive to be) - to invent them.”8 Geographically, there are two kinds of islands.

Continental islands were once part of the continent and due to fracture and the rising sea level became a fragment separated from their former land. And yet there is a connection to the continent, which is submerged by the great expansion of the ocean. In opposition, the oceanic islands are born out of the ocean itself.

Being formed by the powerful eruptions of

“Dreaming of islands- whether with joy or fear - is dreaming of pulling away, of being separate, far from any content, of being lost and alone - or it is dreaming of starting from scratch, recreating, beginning anew.”9

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Their speculative captivation lies particularly in this nature, in the possibility of disengaging from humanity and beginning anew.10 Islands possess a great capacity to frame and simplify the seemingly unbounded and complex and to kindle different imaginaries that serve as settings for all kinds of real life and thought experiments.11 They have somehow become laboratories where the alternative conceptions become real, where experimentation is possible in a limited space.

One of the most devastating abuses of islands is the atomic bombing on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands at the end of World War II, destroying the rich natural ecosystem and leaving the island uninhabitable for generations.13 Many other pacific islands had to face a similar fate and were used as open laboratories for weapon testing and military operations.

Another form of military use for islands lies in their value for prisons and military bases since the sea provides a natural barrier, which is able to isolate, punish and banish. Hence, most famous prisons like Alcatraz or Devil’s Island are located on islands where some of the most dangerous criminals were held captive.

Based upon this fundamental nature it is not surprising that they have become an object of interest by global networks of corporations and nations, and chart human actions and experimentation. “Out of sight, islands somehow are still considered as invisible or secret lands, and their use in the globalization process is largely informed by this initial condition. Together, they form a complex network of possibilities for different strategic platforms – human migration, money, drugs, weapons, and waste – to exist outside their countries and without any form of regulation or control.”12 As Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix (Map Office) argues. Perceived as invisible, because of their remoteness and isolation, islands play a decisive role in the world’s geopolitical strategies. They serve the realization of alternative communities as well as the establishment of military regimes and occupied domains; regarded as law free zones and invisible by the state they have become significant as fiscal paradises, and places of illegal trade. Particularly islands located in the Caribbean Sea, like Barbados and Saint Martin, have emerged into financial offshore centres and tax havens with great importance for the global market.

To the same degree as they are used as geopolitical and military tools they also serve as retreats for the realization of utopian concepts and ideas. Their initial character as being unwritten and detached from any established body of nation and system* allows for the most divergent uses. This phenomenon becomes evident in the case of a birth of an island. In the case of the Isola de Ferdinandea, there was a great debate as to which country the island belongs, and not being formarly attached to any form of land and state allows for a great variety of uses. We can discover a similar phenomenon just recently with the birth of the island of Surtsey, next to Iceland. We hardly have any comparable situation where a piece of land is undefined to such an extent.

Thus, the island becomes a place where hell and paradise fall together.

Their location in the middle of the ocean is of great value in terms of military purposes and encourages the formation of military bases, weapon testing, and prisons.

Throughout history, we can find attempts to found alternative forms of civilizations within the boundaries of an island, like the Dilmun

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Civilization on the Failaka Islands in the Red Sea, which found an abrupt end by European colonisation. Even today, there still exist some alternative forms of civilization on islands like the Gay and Lesbian kingdom in the Coral Sea which was created off the coast of Australia in 2004 as a protest against the conservative government that refused to recognize samesex marriage.14 At the time of colonization and conquest, islands developed as major centers of trade and strategic points and were therefore highly fought for. The spice route created a new complex network of trading ports and the Indian Banda islands served as a geographic nexus of imperial greed and an important key position for the mercantile trade.15 The occupation by the Europeans resulted in numerous conflicts with the local population, pirates, and mercenaries.

“European expansion and the establishment of colonies, essential to the process of imperialism, dramatically altered the definition of the islands, giving rise to their contemporary identity as national and private property.” 16 Concludes Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix. Today we can observe the phenomena of “islands for sale”. Some states, such as Greece sell their national islands to private investors in order to improve their states’ budget.17Following the concept of “acquiring a slice of paradise” these islands convert into luxury resorts and exclusive leisure, only accessible to a few.

The notion of a disappearing island has always stimulated the construction of myths and fables, and the sensation of being lost triggers the imagination. One of the most famous fables in this regard is about the lost island of Atlantis, on which the principles of a perfect

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society were realized.18 There are countless examples of islands throughout ancient mythology that played an important role as sanctuaries or retreats of utopian ideas and religious visions existing alongside the common world.

Today, the concept of the disappearing island has become a much more pressing actuality concerning the predicted sea level rise. Many islands are threatened by submersion as it is the case for the Maledives, which are located only two meters above sea level.19 Coupled

with this, there is a great need for the protection of World Cultural Heritage Sites located in coastal areas, which are threatened as well.

The potential of islands as spaces of the most multiple and divergent narratives and fields of

The Island Delos, Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann, Oil on cardboard, 35,5 x 45,5 cm, 1847

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experimentation and imagination is illustrated by the examples mentioned above.

novels.

We always have to remember their potential as spaces of imagination and at the same time realization. They offer us the chance to start anew, anew as pure creators.

Their initial character as being unwritten, separated, and detached from any kind of established system* allows them to become surfaces of imagination, projection, and realization. Their significance and importance for our human civilization in all kinds of fields – from the construction of myths to the testing of nuclear bombing is evident throughout history.

The island has become a heavily combatted geopolitical tool and has been site to wars as well as a stage of the most romanticized fictions and

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1 blurred entity as reference to the heavy use of island as metaphor (see glossary on island metaphor) 2 Stefania Staniscia: The „Island Effect“: Reality or Metaphor?, in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.51, 3 To the same amount as islands are used in literature as places of sensation and longing, they play as well an important role for contemporary issues like geopolitical implications, prediction of sea level rise and indicators for climate change, migrative flows ect.

4 See glossary on Utopia 5 Judith Schalansky, Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln, Mare Verlag, 2009, p.29 6 Marc Shell, Islandology; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.45 7 Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix (MAP Office), Islands & Other Invisible Territories, Hong Kong, 2010, Published in Atlas of MAP Office’s Landmarks, islands and other liquid landscapes, Melbourne, RMIT, 2015 8 Marc Shell, Islandology; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.45 Gilles Deleuze, Desert islands; in Desert Islands and other texts

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1953 – 1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2002, USA, p.10 See glossary on island metaphor Daniel Daou and Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Islands; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.7 Ebd. p.7 Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix (MAP Office), Islands & Other Invisible Territories, Hong Kong, 2010, Published in Atlas of MAP Office’s Landmarks, islands and other liquid landscapes, Melbourne, RMIT, 2015 Until today the Bikini Atoll remains uninhabíted and although the Atoll is no more declared as an restricted area there is still an harmful radiation exposure MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix), Desert Island: An Atlas of Archipelagic Laboratories; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, Harvard University press, 2016, p.67 Ebd. P.67 Ebd. P.67 Lianna Brinded, Here are the 11 cheapest Greek islands for sale right now, 2015; URL: https:// www.businessinsider.com/ greek-islands-for-sale-and-price2015-7?r=DE&IR=T#1-lihnaripeninsula--3-million-21-million-33million-11, retrieved 2020

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18 Robin Mackay, Philosopher’s Islands; in: New Geographies 08: Islands, 19 Harvard University press, 2016, p.57 Nenad Jari Dauenhauer, On front line of climate change as Maldives fights rising seas, 2017; URL: https://www. newscientist.com/article/2125198on-front-line-of-climate-change-asmaldives-fights-rising-seas/#ixzz6N9z8zNXH https://www. newscientist.com/article/2125198on-front-line-of-climate-change-asmaldives-fights-rising-seas/, retrieved 2020 * Though today, islands do belong to a state and mostly, the regulations of the government are valid for the island. Still, often on islands these rules are less strictly conducted and controlled. In particular regarding tax and financial regulations IMAGES 1 Lewis & Harris I, North Atlantic Island Collection, 2020; URL, https:// www.atlasofplaces.com/research/ north-atlantic-island-collection/, retrieved 2020 2 The Island Delos, Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann, Oil on cardboard, 35,5 x 45,5 cm, 1847; URL: https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Anton_Joseph_Rottmann_001. jpg, retrieved 2020

The Essence Exploration 3 of an Island SITE

Travel to a Deserted Island

The Trip As I already researched in depth about deserted islands, I felt that it was necessary to experience myself, through my own body, how it is to live on a deserted island. To experience with what kind of space do I encounter and if the island can be experienced as this projection surface in reality as well. Questions like, how does desertedness feel, and what isolation can offer me accompanied during my travel. If the promise of imagination fulfills or if deserted islands are just a barren stone in the sea.

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Last September I went to the deserted island of Kato Koufonisi in the Greek Cyclades. The trip from Athens to the island took about 8 hours. In contrast, my flight from Vienna to Athens was only about two hours. I stayed for one week on Kato Koufonisi. On the island, there live only two main inhabitants, lots of goats and during the day sometimes some tourists arrive spending the day on one of its splendid beaches. The following pages are a photographic essay of my journey.

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The sculpture abstracts the islands charateristics. The rock symbolizes the rough materiality of the island, its untouched nature. The the contant seperation by the water is symbolized by the steel plate. The cube of plaster shows its connection the the ground and the islands’ heavyness. The textil which enwraps around the island illustrates the blurriness in which the island is enwrapped.

- Islandness -

ISLANDNESS Being on a deserted island we hear silence.

We feel the wind caressing our skin, we feel the hard stones underneath our feet.

Walking.

We hear the wind.

Everywhere.

The wind drifts through our hair, through our clothing.

We can hear nothing but the wind.

It is some form of silence.

Silence from words, from speech, from sounds of humans.

It is slowly.

The deserted islands are slow moving, dedicated, and ruled by the nature.

Everything depends on nature.

When the sun is rising, you get up, you go to the margin, to the sea and take a swim, a bath.

Returning.

Eating what is there.

Wandering around the island.

Discovering its hidden places, its high mountains, its low-lying beaches.

Feeling how the vegetation is changing.

From arid, small, and spiky bushes to lush trees in the valley.

The stone changes its colors from a dusty yellow to a copper red.

Dusty.

Sandy.

All covering.

From far you can detect a palm tree, probably planted by pirates long time ago, indicating that there is drinkable water on the island.

This palm tree reminds you of an oasis.

An oasis in the desert of the sea.

You sit down underneath a small tree.

Exhausted from the walking, exhausted from the burning sun.

Goats are observing you, hiding beneath small trees.

They are everywhere.

Their bleating is cutting through the monotone sound of the wind.

The goats are used to the harsh environment.

They do not need much.

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In contrast to us humans who need a lot of water, a lot of food, shelter, warm clothing.

As soon as humans arrive on the island, we begin to colonize it.

We begin to name it, to draw it, to map it in order to understand but we do not realize that we, by doing so, overrule the island, overtake it.

Is a very natural behavior and often only results from the pure need for survival.

But even the castaways’ first move is to build himself a shelter and to discover and understand the island.

To map it and to look for its resources.

- The Essence of an Island -

Make it legible.

In other cases, when people do want to move on an island, they just bring their things from the mainland to the island.

Similar as I did.

Before moving to the island, I bought food, I took my own tent, I walked around the perimeter in order to grasp the island.

To know where I am.

In a certain way, I was a colonizer as well.

Living on a deserted island everything depends on the weather.

It is not always accessible.

Sometimes the wind is too harsh, so there is no ship which can pick you up and you have to stay there.

It is a very unusual feeling, this feeling of dependence, this feeling of not being your own master but rather to yield down and let nature take the rope.

During my journey, I talked to an old man, who was born on this one island.

He likes the life there.

The silence, the slowness, the temporality, the isolation.

He doesn’t miss anything.

He appreciates what the island is offering him; He respects it.

He doesn’t wish for any change.

It is good as it is, he says with a wide smile on his face.

He was calm and I was calm.

I walked on to the sea.

The water slowly moving onto my feet.

The cold water.

Underneath my foot, I could see stones, like small jewels in all colors.

I do not want to change the island.

There is no need for it.

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- Islandness -

Islands have always been places of heterotopias.

Special places.

Different places.

Other spaces.

Either in the worst or the best of this sense. They have been islands of pain or holiness, places of wealth and festivals or of exile and banishment. During my travel to the Greek islands, I discovered that nowadays many islands, having had formerly incorporated divergent meanings and significations, have all become the same: Touristic holiday paradises with white-washed houses, smiling waitresses, and luxury apartments. During the summertime, they are crowded and overpopulated. In winter they are deserted. The restaurants and bars begin to shut down. The people start to leave and move back to Athens. This is one of the reasons, I was so fascinated by deserted Islands in the first place - they still incorporate the pure essence of an island. They have not yet been colonized and made the same.

The deserted island, or in other words, the uncolonized islands, is an entity, a limited and bound space. It addresses very profound issues like isolation, transition, temporality and thereby relates to us humans. In a certain sense, even we can be regarded as islands. Islands which are connected, which form an archipelago and depend on the other, but are divided by our one body, one entity which will always be for itself, always separated by and from the other.

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The Essence Exploration 4 of an Island HISTORY & STORIES

Animaion : The Journey

- History & Stories -

- The Essence of an Island -

The traveler, send to find places, where the impossible becomes possible, places whi unwritten and separated from the common, which offer space for projections. Wh desires and wishes manifest in a spatial way, where the fictional begin to merge real. After years and years of research, he discovers the geographical entity of desert as places where narration begins, where desires manifest, a space that is balancing verge between the real and utopian.

- Animation The Journey -

ich are here the with the ted islands on the

The travel to the desired islands takes long. It can take hours, days and sometimes even months. Sometimes you have to travel by ship, sometimes by plane or you can only reach the islands by walking. It seems as if they are hiding, and it is difficult to find islands where narration and fascination become real, islands which did not became common yet. The islands must be deserted in that sense that they do form a heterotopia and are kept in a state of isolation and remoteness. If they are inhabited than by pure creators. Not only separated by the ocean but by their character; their island-ness, their isolation.

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

- Animation The Journey The traveler arrives with a small boat on a tiny island. From far it just seemed like any other usual island, with its reddish stones, breaking through the surface of the water and its small green speckles of vegetation. A breeze of hot air welcomes the stranger when she sets a first step on the islands’ ground. Already from far she notices the ruins of a huge construction which follow the islands’ contour transforming the entire island into a prison structure. There are no windows in the thick walls made out of sandy stones except for some small holes which are barred with rusty old steel bars. Welcome to the island of the forgotten ones. This island has been since long a place of isolation and condemned to the ones you do not want to know about. It became an externalization of the mainland. A place where you are sent to die, to be erased and forgotten. A place for the sick ones, for the prisoners, for exile. The conditions are unbearable. It is a pitiful condemnation; it is a grave.

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

Hasty she leaves the island and continues her travel. After hours and hours on the rough sea, she recognizes an elevation in the far. Moving towards it she hears loud noises and catches glimpses of many ships approaching the island.

When arriving on the harbor I nearly get knocked over by all the busy men transporting all kinds of materials and goods.

The smell of sweat and fish is overwhelming. In the far, she notices a medieval cloister with its priests engrossed in prayers. When she looks to her right, she catches glimpse of a huge building from modern times with barred windows and doors. The island has become a place where the most different narratives can take place. On the island time becomes blurry and the most opposing programs begin to coalesce. The island can become everything – hell and paradise – a luxury harbor city or a quarantine space for mental illness where no one wants to set a foot on.

- Animation The Journey -

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

I return to the harbor and hoist the sails of my small boat continuing my search to find out what the islands can become. Back on the ocean, the wind enwinds my hair and gives me a freeze. It has become cold. I stop stirring and just leave the ship to its own waiting where it will take me to. I can only hear the wind and the calming rhythm of the waves clenching against my ship. Animals accompany my boat. But somehow weird animals with huge figs on their back and fur instead of fish scales. I begin to wonder, am I still in the real world? Do these islands exist in reality or are they only in my mind? Can we still find those uncommon places in our world? Where is the border between real and fiction? My eyes get heavy… slowly I fall asleep

- Animation The Journey -

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

- Animation The Journey -

Noises of mourning and panting wake me up. I open my eyes look around and can see in the distance a glistening white rock emerging from the dark blue sea. The more I approach the island the sobbing becomes louder and I notice people in prison suits carrying heavy white marble stones. During their work, I can hear them chanting: We stay here until we or the island dies. Man and nature are symbiotically exploited. The resources of the island are taken, and the men, prisoners, are exploited by their labor force. The island is separated and kept in a state of isolation as a place for exploitation where regulations have become overridden and injustices can take place nobody wants to know about.

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

- Animation The Journey -

Without even having set a foot on the island I turn with my boat and follow southwards until I am blinded by a golden reflection in the deep blue sea. I notice a big island made out of golden stone not far away. Landing at the port, I am welcomed by two Greek maids who offer me wine, leading me to a path that leads to an ancient temple. “You just arrived in time,” they said. “Today we celebrate the rebirth of our god Apollon.” He is reborn every year on this holy island and like the island, which begins to sink back in the sea as soon as it is born, kept in a constant circle of birth, death, and rebirth until entity. Only saints are allowed to enter the island and to assist this festival. It is a special place. A holy place… maybe here utopia can cross the border and become reality.

- The Essence of an Island -

- History & Stories -

- Animation The Journey -

The Essence Exploration 5 of an Island CONTEXT

The Mediterranean Sea

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Partly finished Roman columns from the Cipollinomarble quarries on southern Evvoia, Greece

The Mediterranean Sea...

- A contested territory

...The Mediterranean Sea, situated between the three continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, is a highly contested and conflicted territory, with multi-stratified transnational constellations and most divergent functions, oscillating between its capacity of connecting and separation. Its adjacent nations encompass the most diverse cultures and traditions, though still concluded under the denomination of “The Mediterranean”. But what is “The Mediterranean”?

What are its limits, what is its essence?

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- The Essence of an Island -

- Context -

Thinking about the Mediterranean, pictures of white houses in a delightful landscape with abundant olive trees come to our mind; people drinking wine in small bottegas in the old historical cities of ancient civilizations.

These idealized images of the Mediterranean lifestyle are almost exclusively rooted in the southern European countries, like Greece, Italy and South France. Thus, thinking about the Mediterranean revolves around the imagined and idealized lifestyle of these few countries and creates a “Mediterranean” identity based upon these Southern-European stereotypes.

But this “identity” does not take into account the vast geographical expansion of the Mediterranean and that the nations connected by the Mediterranean Sea, and hence belonging to “The Mediterranean”, go far beyond the southern European states.

ticularly the Arabic nations, which can result in some kind of Mediterranean nationalism and new forms of ethical and national conflict.

The concept of “the Mediterranean“ was only created in the nineteenth century and hence, is linked to imperial and imperialistic domination, particularly France’s supremacy over North Africa.3 This explains the predomination of the Southern European states in the image of the Mediterranean. We can observe, as Martin Herzfeld argues, that there are strong cultural tendencies that lead to a production of differences. Where he sees the danger, is in how those differences become exaggerated leading to a suppression of anything, that does not conform to the stereotypes.4 We have to be aware when using the term “The Mediterranean” what we are implicating with it. We have to rethink its narrow-minded and unquestioned definition and be more deliberately transformative of the notion of the Mediterranean. Rethinking the definition of “The Mediterranean”, we have to analyze its inherent nature, its geopolitical situation, and the way its countries interact with each other.

The question arising is precisely, what unites the region, what is its common ground?

Wouter Vanstiphout gives us an idea, stating:

The fact, that the image of the Mediterranean is largely determined by those stereotypes leads to a domination of the identity, the brand or what might be considered the Mediterranean aesthetics by only a few countries.1

“What unites the Mediterranean region at this point is that it produces most of the political, economic, and demographic issues that divide Europe, and even the world.

It is the region where the EU is breaking apart, the region the wave of immigration comes from or passes through, fuelling xenophobic popularism; it is the region of the Israel -Palestine conflict, and of civil war in the Balkan and Syria. In a purely negative way, it still is mare nostrum - our sea - that defines who we are and around which the world revolves. Only this time it does not distribute goods, knowledge, culture and wealth as it did in antique, but strife and controversy.”5

“These claims on the brand drive the identity of the region as an image that has imposed itself on both reality and the imaginary, upsetting the balance of the two, leading to a new understanding of the whole, but with a contested meaning”.2 Furthermore, this idea of “The Mediterranean” excludes the other adjacent nations, par-

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- The Mediterranean Sea -

Collage of mediterranean cultural Heritages

The Mediterranean has become a zone of conflict and competition, which keeps the region together as fundamental parts of coexistence.

“In order for either to assert a structural continuity that survives major wars, there must be an idea of the Mediterranean that exists independent of sovereign states, institutions, religions and armies.”6 One of these conflicts has nowadays become a pressing actuality and questions the determined geographical limitation of the Mediterranean. Due to climate change, leading to the desertification of the Sahara and the Sahel, the Mediterranean Sea has become the vehicle of escape for refugees from the North African countries, challenging the South European nations and demanding new concepts of ref-

ugee policy. Matters of responsibility as well as methodological concepts like scale and limit, and the actual sovereignty and jurisdiction are questioned, regarding the fact, that western civilization and its environmental behavior is the main cause of climate change.

“Because the mechanics of climate form a transport system, redistributing the effects of pollution according to a trans-boundary, nonlinear logic, the space of violation is separated form the space of its repercussion.”7 explains Adrian Lahoud. Hence, our logic of responsibility and jurisdiction bound by national borders cannot be applied in matters of

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- Context -

- The Essence of an Island -

climate change and demands for a new kind of refugee policy.8 “Even the most isolated event will quickly lead from the Mediterranean to the Mediterranean world. If the expansion of the Sahara follows aerosol dispersion in Europe and America the world dies twice over, once with particles migrating south through the atmosphere and second time with people fleeing north toward the sea.”9

ritory. An essential point of conflict for immigration is the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, connecting the southern countries with Europe and being one of the most highly secured waterways. It has become a fluid territory with a network of precise routes bound by political and physical limits, containing divergent flows of people, commodities, information, and resources, varying between the legal and illegal.10

as Lahoud concludes. The western civilization has to be held accountable for its actions, but often the burden of policing is shifted to non EU states such as Libya, Algeria and Morocco in order to limit legal obligations conferred to claimants within the sovereign European ter-

These pre-established rigid routes of monocultural specialized people (illegal immigrants, sailors, tourists…) intersect without ever meeting, often not allowing their passengers any cultural exchange, no dialogue, no real interaction.11

GSEducationalVersion

Cultural Heritage sites are often located on islands.

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- The Mediterranean Sea -

ture and fishing, whereas conflict develops on the frontier between profoundly discrepant realities and cultures.”15

The Mediterranean Sea becomes a solid sea, as Adamo Garritano argues, which is a multi-layered, complex network with multi-stratified constellations and most divergent functions as well as many levels of meaning and significance.

This is also manifested in the case of illegal immigration where the islands become an externalization of the border, as it is the case of the island Lampedusa, which has converted into an enormous improvised refugee camp.

Because of their inherent nature as places upon which one can project any narrative, they reflect the most conflictual and contemporary dynamics of ongoing changes and have become a hotspot of territorial mutation, able to anticipate what will happen on the mainland.16 As Stefania Staniscia concludes

It is kept in a state of uncertainty; the uncertain existence of its surrounding nation states, cultural identities, legal maritime division, and the oscillation of its liquid existence, altering its geographic morphology on a daily basis.12 Another geopolitical essential peculiarity of the Mediterranean Sea is its numerous islands scattered in the expansion of the sea’s topography. They condense a multiplicity of meanings, both physically and metaphysically and become pivotal in the complicated and intertwined logic of exchange and control between the Mediterranean Sea and its shores.13 Their particular position of ambiguity between isolation and interconnectivity has made them a host of manifold and strong-functional specializations over centuries, elevating them to a superior territorial rank.14 Particularly their value for human movement processes is pivotal, which however often results in the abuse of the islands, implicating violation in form of pressure, abandonment, and conflict.

“Nothing reveals the Mediterranean destiny better, than its islands”17

“Islands often suffer from pressure produced by tourism, loading a limited territory beyond its carrying capacity; abandonment affect those territories whose main resources are still agricul-

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- The Essence of an Island -

- Context -

1 Antonio Pretov, World’s Regions, Cities, and Architectures, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.53 2 Ebd. P.53 3 Jean-François Daguzen, “France’s Mediterranean Policy: Between Myths and Strategy,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17, no. 3 (2009), p.387 4 The Sea of Scales and Segments, Interview with Hashim Sarkis and Michael Herzfeld by Naor Ben-Yehoyada, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.67 5 Wouter Vanstiphout, Braudel’s Donkey, Historians and the Mediterranean as a Political Project, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.103 6 Wouter Vanstiphout, Braudel’s Donkey, Historians and the Mediterranean as a Political Project, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.105 7 Adrian Lahoud, The Mediterranean, A new Imaginary, , in: New Ge-

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ographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.98 currently issues of transboundary environmental rights exist in the absence of any authority within universal environmental jurisdiction and takes place through private laws remedies such as litigation Adrian Lahoud, The Mediterranean, A new Imaginary, , in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.100 Adamo Garritano and Christina Gaiger, A delineation of a (solid) Sea, in: Horizonte Stefania Staniscia, The Island Paradigm and the Mediterranean, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.257 Adamo Garritano and Christina Gaiger, A delineation of a (solid) Sea, in: Horizonte Stefania Staniscia, The Island Paradigm and the Mediterranean, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.255 Islands are often peripheral frontier-regions which frequently act

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like sensors, intercepting innovative organizational modes and territorial developments. This is due to the little resistance they put up against change, whereas central regions and consolidated territories tend to preserve their roles, hardly contemplating the possibility of inventing new ones. In comparison with consolidated landscapes, marginal ones have a greater ability to mutate and adapt to stimuli that change over time and differ from those that originally shaped these landscapes.( Quote STANISCIA) 15 Stefania Staniscia, The Island Paradigm and the Mediterranean, in: New Geographies: 05 The Mediterranean, Harvard University press, 2013, p.257 16 Islandness reveals itself to be a hermeneutic method to comprehend processes of change, and islands emerge as “critical control points” (Ricci 2003), able to anticipate places and conditions of crises and, at the same, to test new development opportunities.

17 Ebd. p.255

- The Mediterranean Sea -

IMAGES Michel Higgins, Geology of the Greek Islands, 2009, URL: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/256975462, retrieved 2020 1

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The Essence Exploration 6 of an Island EMOTIONS

Formulation of Statements about the Islands’ Character

- The Essence of an Island -

- Emotions -

- Statements -

ON AN ISLAND IMAGINATION MERGES WITH REALITY Die verlassene Insel, eine Versprechung der Verwirklichung unserer Wünsche, unserer Sehnsüchte; ein Ort, der balanciert auf der schmalen Grenze zwischen Realität und Wunsch, zwischen Imagination und Existenz. Gefangen in dem fragilen Moment des Kippens; des Schweifens von dem Einen zum Anderen. Reibung in Diskrepanz. In ihrer Beschaffenheit fernab von dem was verbindet, ist die Insel sekludiert, auf sich selbst bezogen.

Fern. Unerreichbar. Getrennt von dem Allgemeinen, von dem Bekannten.

Sie verspricht das Andere, einen Übertritt, eine Überschreitung der Grenze. Doch wohin? Sie verspricht Ort zu sein der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten, der Fantasie und Freiheit. Flüstert dir zart Geschichten über mystische Wesen vergangener Zeiten ins Ohr; Geschichten über Abenteurer und Entdecker. Ist Schatzinsel und zugleich Insel der Verdammten. Ihr Gestein glänzt in der Sonne; ihre zerklüftete Haut aus hartem schwarzem Basalt spiegelt sich in der stillen Meeresoberfläche. In ihrer Rauheit und Natur so klar definiert, entgleitet dir ihre innere Natur umso mehr. Du versuchst sie zu fassen, doch entwindet sie sich deinem festen Griff. Hält sie ihr Versprechen? Oder ist sie nur ein Trug im Meeresschaum?

The deserted island, a promise of a realization of our innermost wishes, our longings, our desires. A place balancing on the verge between the real and the imaginative, between wish and existence. Captured in the fragile moment of its tremble, tilting from one to the other, kept in constant wavering. Friction in discrepancy.

In its essence, separated from the connecting, the island is secluded and self-referring. Far. Unattainable. Separated from the common, from the known. It promises the other, a conversion, an overstepping of the border. But where does it leads you? Promises, to be a place of unlimited possibilities, of fantasy, of liberty. Tenderly whispering in your ear tales of forgotten times, of adventurers and mermaids. Being island of treasure and condemnation at the same time. Its rugged skin of rough, black basalt is reflecting in the still surface of the sea. So clearly defined in its harshness, yet its essence is kept obscured. You try to grasp it but it enwinds your grip. Does it fulfill its promise? Or is it just a false illusion in the lather of the sea?

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- The Essence of an Island -

- Emotions -

- Statements -

YOU BECOME THE ISLAND Die verlassene Insel ist Natur, auf die wir auf unsere eigene Natur, unseren eigenen Körper zurückgeworfen werden. Du spürst die kühle Meeresgischt auf deiner sonnenverbrannten Haut, das Salz auf deinen spröden Lippen, den Wind, der wüst durch dein Haar fährt. Der raue Stein unter deinen nackten Füßen sticht leicht in deine Haut und lässt dich tänzelnd den Weg suchen; du wanderst steile Klippen hinab, die wie Schorf die Haut der Insel überdecken; streifst durch savannenartige, plane Ebenen, bis du die Weiche des Strands erreichst. Unmittelbar nimmst du die Insel durch deinen eigenen Körper wahr. Endeckst sie durch dich selbst und versuchst zu verstehen, durch das auf die Insel bezogen sein. Sich in ihre Abhängigkeit fügen. Wir formen die Insel, und die Insel formt uns.

The deserted island is nature, on which you are thrown back onto your own body. Feeling the cold spume of the sea on your sunburned skin, the salt on your rough lips, the wind which wildly entangles your hair. The rough stone underneath your bare feet spikes softly into your skin and leads you sashaly searching for a way. You are stumbling down the steep cliff, which covers the island’s skin like scabs; wandering through flat planes until you reach the smoothness of the beach. You perceive the island immediately through your own body. Discovering it through yourself in the attempt to understand, to be related onto the island. Allowing to be submitted to its dependence. We form the island and the island is forming us.

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- Emotions -

- Statements -

THE ISLAND SEEMS TO BE INVISIBLE It’s a blurry entity Wir können die Insel nur vom Weitem erspähen als eine blasse Erscheinung in der Ferne, die sich kaum abhebt von dem Blau des Himmels und des Meeres; die leicht die zarte Linie des Horizontes erzittern lässt, bevor sie wieder zu einer ruhigen und konstanten Horizontalen wird. Die Insel ist eine verschwommene Entität, eine nicht greifbare Realität, so fragil in ihrer Erscheinung aus der Ferne und doch so klar und körperlich in ihrer Beschaffenheit. Die Insel scheint entrückt und fern, verschwommen und vernebelt, und wird so zu einem Ort des Vergessens. Losgelöst und einsam, ein Ort der Verschwiegenheit, tänzelnd am Rande des Momentes des Verschwindens.

We can only spot the island from the distance as a faint appearance in the far which hardly differentiates from the blue of the sky and the sea. Which lets lightly tremble the tender line of the horizon before it becomes a still and constant horizontal again.

The island is a blurry entity, a non-graspable reality, so fragile in its appareance from afar and yet so clearly defined in its materiality.

The island seems to be lost in reverie, fading, enwrapped in fog, and has become a place of forgetting. Detached and solitary, a place of silence, secretiveness, prancing on the edge of the moment of dissappearance.

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- The Essence of an Island -

- Emotions -

- Statements -

THE ISLAND IS SEPERATED FROM THE COMMON In its isolation the island is separated from time and the common Auf natürliche Weise getrennt durch die Weite des Meeres von dem Festland, ist die Insel in einem Zustand konstanter Separation und Isolation.

Gefangen in dem immerwährenden Kampf zwischen dem Flüssigem und Festem, dem Meer und dem Land, das sich in seinem Zusammentreffen beständig formt und transformiert. Das Aufeinandertreffen der Elemente wird zelebriert an der Grenze, an dem Übergang; An der zerklüfteten Küste, die durch das Wasser gestaltet und geformt, sich ins Meer schiebt, hineinragt und dort abrupt endet. Fragend dich hinterlässt wohin sie führt.

Naturally separated through the vastness of the ocean, the island is kept in a state of constant disconnection and isolation.

Captured in a perpetual fight between the solid and fluid, land and sea, which constantly transforms in its confrontation. The encounter of the elements is celebrated on the border, on the margin; on the rugged coastline, shaped and molded through the force of the water, sliding into the sea, stopping there with a sudden. Bewildered leaving you behind.

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- Emotions -

- Statements -

THE ISLAND IS A PEDESTAL Die Insel in ihrer Erscheinung, ihrer Gestalt, ist ein natürliches Podest, eine Bühne. Gleich einem Koloss liegt die Insel im Meer; schwer und doch begrenzt durch die Seperation zwischen Wasser und Stein, Meer und Landschaft, fest und schwindend. So ist die Insel, in ihrem inneren Wesen, eine schwimmende Plattform im Wasser, eine Bühne, und erhebt das was auf ihr passiert zu einer Szenerie, zu einem Stück, zu einem Schauspiel, dem sie den Rahmen verleiht.

In its nature, its character, the island is a pedestal, a stage.

Like a colossus, it floats in the sea; heavy and yet limited through the separation between water and stone, sea and landscape, solid and fluid. The island is, in its inner being, a floating platform in the water, a stage. Elevating what unfolds on it into a scenery, a play to a spectacle, which it provides the framework for.

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- Emotions -

- Statements -

THE ISLAND IS THE ORIGIN On an island we are confronted with the radical and fundamental: Die Insel als Ort der Geburt und des Todes, der Erstehung und der Kraft; als Ort des Prozesses des Erschaffens und der Unzähmbarkeit der Natur. Durch die kraftvolle Eruption von Unterwasservulkanen geformt, durchsticht sie die Oberfläche des Meeres, vollkommen unbeschrieben und undefiniert wie ein Neugeborenes. Vollkommen in ihrer Leere. Von dem Punkt ihrer Entstehung an, beginnt sie sogleich wieder langsam zurück in die Wogen des Meeres zu gleiten, langsam zu vergehen. Sie kann eine kurze Erscheinung, ein kurzes Aufflackern sein oder eine Konstante für die Jahre die kommen werden. Die Insel fängt den Kreislauf von Geburt und Tod, von Wiedergeburt und wieder Vergehen als eine kraftvollen Akt der Natur ein. Ein Neugeborenes, das an unsere innersten Wünsche und tiefsten Gedanken appeliert.

Islands as places of birth and death, of emergence and power, as places of the process of creation and the untamableness of nature. Being formed by the powerful eruption of underwater volcanoes, they burst through the surface of the sea, being totally blank and unwritten like a newborn. Absolutely blank and bare of anything. From their immediate point of birth, they begin to slowly sink back into the sea, slowly decaying. They can be a short appearance, a short flare, before sinking back into the waves of the ocean or staying for years and years to come. Islands capture this circle of birth and death and rebirth and re-death as a powerful force of nature. A newborn which aspires to our most profound, to our innermost thoughts and wishes.

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- Emotions -

- Statements -

Architectonical Casestudy

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The Essence Exploration 7 of an Island IDEA

Non-Colonizing Architecture

- Transformation -

- Idea -

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With this sculpture I tried to rebuild a shore fragement of the island, I have visited during my travel.

- Noncolonizing Architecture -

A Casestudy on the Island...

- a Non-Colonizing Architecture

The island is an enclosed cosmos that cannot be penetrated from the outside and has more value in its capacity as a projection surface, in its non-realization. From what moment on, from what degree of intrusion from the outside, does its complete cosmos begin to tremble and its characteristics begin to change or even reverse into its opposite?

Arguing that deserted islands’ biggest potential is their dualism of reality and imagination, I want to identify where exactly lies this Kippmoment. At what particular point lies the moment, that reality begins to dominate over the imagination and the fragile balance between both opponents begins to fall out of equilibrium? Examining to what degree can we penetrate the island’s cosmos, its shell, its Vollkommenheit?

In the identification of this point, we define as well the term desertedness and to what extend a human-made intervention from the outside can happen upon a deserted is-

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- Idea -

land, maintaining its characteristics of remoteness and imagery.

- Transformation -

Examples of inhabitation on islands have always been an intrusion to the fullest degree and did not show the attempt to acknowledge the character of the island. The analyzed forms of inhabitation (see page x) used methodologies of colonialism, of taking possession in immediately inscribing a program or a function. An inhabitation of deserted islands was always equalized with the act of colonialization. As colonization means, to make a place legible, to make a place understandable and thereby taking possession of it, which stands in opposition to the island’s character.

To retain the fragile balance, the island needs to be left obscured and only known to us in its fragments. In taking possession of the island the equilibrium between humans and nature is disturbed, and their union becomes impossible. In this sense, I want to experiment how can we interact with the deserted island without colonizing it. Questioning if an actual, real interaction with the island is possible, still maintaining its dualism, its in-betweenness. I argue that as soon as we begin to inscribe something onto the island, like a program or a particular significance, it is no more deserted.

But if we leave the island illegible and leave a blank space for our imagination, an arrival from the outside, an intrusion, is possible.

Thus, I argue the Kippmoment is that moment as soon as we begin to inscribe a program. If we write on the island; if we label it, if we draw it, intending to make it legible and comprehensible, to conclude, if we colonize it. In defining the whole island, there is no more space left for our imagination.

I argue that we can interact with the island as long as we do not colonize it, as long as we do not inscribe on it. Planning without drawing, designing without knowing.

To challenge my hypothesis, I want to conduct a case study in which I examine with different architectonical scenarios how they

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- Noncolonizing Architecture -

These models illustrate in a very abstract way, the intrusion of an external material in the islands’ skin. We can see the encounter of two very different materials. On the one hand the smoothness and molded skin of the island, and on the other hand the hard steel of the architectonical intervention.

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- Idea -

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change the island’s character and until what point the deserted island remains in its fragile equilibrium. Arguing with the definition of imagination that it is only possible if there is left a blank space, can it still work even if we have touched the island? If we draw an arbitrary wall on it, does its enclosed cosmos remain intact?

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The Essence Exploration 3 8 of an Island EXPERIMENT Case Study

- Transformation -

- Experiment -

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ARCHITECTONICAL INTERVENTIONS As I argued that we cannot touch the island, I wanted to conduct a case study that reveals how different degrees of architectonic interventions change the island’s character. Until which degree of intervention does the island remains deserted? What happens with the island’s shape If I begin to construct structures upon it? When do its characteristics get lost and how does the island change in relation to the different architectonical interventions?

To make a case study on the utopia of a deserted island, thereby questioning how we as architects interact with any given site.

The case study consists of five scenarios, which increase in their intensity of interaction with the island. They illustrate how they change the island’s body and its characteristics. With this study, I do not want to give a “right” answer but rather want to encourage a questioning of our profession and role as architects concerning our interaction with any given context.

Sketches of Potential Models The sketches on the left side are ideas for models which illustrate different degrees of interventions with the island. The different colors stand for the different elements. Violet symbolizes the island. Red stands for human-made intrusions. Yellow is the sea. The constructing elements for the models are shown in purple. In this sense, we can detect which element begins to dominate and how the island’s body changes in correspondence to the different interventions.

1 We build around the island 2 We begin to integrate external material into the island 3 We begin to construct onto the island. Hence the island just becomes a skin anymore - and the dominant part is already the humanmade changes 4 We alter the island entirely. The shape of the island has completely changed

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- Experiment -

- Transformation -

SCENARIO I No intervention on the island No humans No function No architecture

Characteristics of the island the island remains deserted on the island imaginary and reality merges the island is nature the island is a pedestal the island seems to be invisible still, island as the origin the island stays separated from the common

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- Case Study -

SCENARIO II We build around the island

Building a pathway around the island - a surrounding structure on which humans can walk

No humans on the island but the sea No function No architecture on the island but its surroundings

Characteristics of the island the island becomes less deserted the island is still imaginary because it is still undefined the island is nature the island is a pedestal the island is no more invisible, as we can see the island from the pathway the island as the origin the island stays separated from the common 145

- Transformation -

- Experiment -

SCENARIO III Working with the material the site is offering us

what happens if we shift the island’s stones and build a wall? What happens if we dig a hole into the island?

Humans can enter the island No function Architectoncial intervention with the material found on site

Characteristics of the island Can remain deserted if no humans stay constantly on it The island is still imaginary because it is undefined as there is no function added The island is nature - we just change the material on the site The island is a pedestal The island is no more invisible, as humans can see and enter the island stays still separated The island cannot be regarded anymore as the radical origin because now we touched the island; it is no more these raw, unwritten place Remains separated 146

- Case Study -

SCENARIO IV Taking external material from the outside and adding a function

intervening just on one specific place and adding a very subtle function, like a cemetery, archive, nothing which requires constant human presence Adding of one subtle function Humans can enter the island for a short period of time they do not stay on the island; Architectonical intervention on one specific location with external material

Characteristics of the island Parts of the island, as long as they are not accessible, remain deserted The island lost its imaginary character as we added a definition to it The island is nature The island is a pedestal The island is still separated from the common as the added function adds to the category of heterotopias It is no more invisible The island cannot be regarded anymore as the radical origin because now we touched the island; and it is no more these unwritten, raw place The island remains still separated

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- Experiment -

SCENARIO V - Transformation -

Appropriation of the island

We bring external material on the island and add many functions to it - we make the island inhabitable but with the smallest intervention. e.g. construction houses, adding small infrastructure, etc.

Permanent functions for living Humans live on the island Several architectonical interventions like housing structures and permanent functions on the whole island Characteristics of the island The island is no more deserted, as humans live on the island The island is no more imaginary because it is now defined We tamed nature so it is no more ruling us The island is a pedestal The island is no more invisible The island is no more the origin The island cannot anymore be regarded as the origin The island remains separated, though only in an geographical but not metaphorical sense

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SCENARIO VI Reversing the island characteristics into its opposite

we appropriate the island and inhabit it entirely. big constructions, complete infrastructure, bridges that connect it to the mainland Many permanent functions Humans live on the island Big architectonical interventions on the whole island

Characteristics of the island No more deserted, as humans live on the island No more imaginary, as every spot of the island have been defined by us We tamed its nature to make the island habitable The island is no more invisible because you can see and enter it The island is no more a pedestal, as it is connected to the mainland with bridges The island is not anymore the unwritten place it has been before It is no more separated, as bridges connect it to the mainland but in contrast has even become a part of the mainland

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The Essence Translation

of an Island

The Essence Exploration 8 of an Island TRANSLATION

Bringing the Island to Us

- Translation -

- Bringing the Island to Us -

Excerpts from the Video “Creating your own Island”

- Installation -

Bringing the Island to Us...

- an Act of Translation

As I argued the main value is the island’s importance as a thought model and in its capacity to offer a physical space for our imagination. To be able to offer us this space of imagination, its condition of not being defined – of not knowing – of just giving us a fragment - is essential. I identified for the island several character traits and tried to grasp its essence to reveal why deserted islands had since always this particular captivation and fascination among us humans.

The islands great potential as a projection surface, can it be transferred to a different context? Not far out in the sea, unreachable, untouchable, but can we actually bring the island to us? I want to conduct an experiment and bring the island to us in form of an installation. To indulge in the island and what the island represents. What happens if we decouple the physical space from the island’s geographical materiality? The installation comprises a video with a focus on creating your own island and models.

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Declaration I hereby declare, that all content which is not marked differently is produced by Anne Kathrin Müller

The Essence of an Island