UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
01 10 Rules for students and teachers. JOHN CAGE http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/10/10-rules-for-students-and-teachersjohn-cage-corita-kent/
Rule 1: Find a place you trust, and then, try trusting it for a while. Rule 2: (General Duties as a Student) Pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of your fellow students. Rule 3: (General Duties as a Teacher) Pull everything out of you students. Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment. Rule 5: Be Self Disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a better way. Rule 6: Follow the leader. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make. Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It is the people who do all the work all the time who eventually 1
catch onto things. You can fool the fans--but not the players. Rule 8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different process. Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It is lighter than you think. Rule 10: We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules and How do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for “x� qualities. Helpful Hints: Always Be Around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read everything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully and often. SAVE EVERYTHING. It may come in handy later.
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I think it would raise a lot of questions. In some sense it’s idealized, the forms are all reconstructed and made into shadows of their ideal. Maybe some people would just take it at face value, but enough people would find it a means through which to contemplate and question why is this there and what it means that it’s in this place, during this time, with other visions of constructed reality.
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
02 ROXY PAINE with Will Corwin The Brooklyn Rail (September, 4th, 2014) http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/09/art/roxy-paine-with-will-corwin/
Roxy Paine, Checkpoint, 2014, maple, aluminum, fluorescent light bulbs, acrylic prismatic light diffusers, 14 feet by 26 feet 11 inches by 18 feet 7½ inches. Photo Jason Wyche.
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Will Corwin has spent the last three years ferreting out Roxy Paine in
Roxy Paine, “Every Ear in the NY Times on February 28, 1996,” 1996. Vinyl, paint, pencil, and ink on paper, 19 × 24 ̋.
his various habitats—upstate in Delhi, New York, and in his Long Island City and Maspeth studios—watching the progress of various works of art and attempting to develop a taxonomy of the various strains and tropes into which his ideas fall. Together in numerous discussions the artist and his interlocutor have sifted through the strata of meaning that the artist has laid down over time. Paine’s works oscillate between the overwhelmingly familiar and the disarmingly foreign. On the one hand he presents things exactly as they are, and stands back to enjoy the inherent impossibility in a field of perfectly replicated Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms sprouting from a wooden gallery floor, while on the other hand he reconfigures the fundamental definitions of what we think we know and then conjures up objects— or even better—has robots make them in front of us—and labels them “painting” or “sculpture,” forcing the viewer to reconfigure their perception of what those things really are. Will Corwin (Rail): “Checkpoint” is the centerpiece of your current exhibition Denuded Lens at Marianne Boesky, [September 4 through October 18, 2014]. It presents a security installation in what we might guess is an airport; an 80foot gauntlet of X-ray machines, full-body scanners, and even plastic tubs for shoes and laptops is meticulously rendered in wood and skewed to fit the 18 feet of a stage-set-like constructed perspective. “Checkpoint” is a diorama, but it’s a fraught one. Instead of aiming to educate the viewer about the unknown, it demands introspection. What is your history with the “media” of dioramas? What was the first diorama you ever came in contact with? Roxy Paine: The first one that I can remember was a diorama in Holland, near Scheveningen, a town by the sea. They have a diorama there that’s in the round— you actually come into the center of it through a tunnel. It’s the sea, sand, and ocean, the painted backdrop is of the water and the sky. I remember the absence of a focal point. It had a gray, cloudy sky, which is typical in that area. I remember it had a starkness to it. It was unusual to me in that it was a recreation of a place that you could just step outside and see. Rail: Was this your first interaction with hyper-banality? 2
inspirational or aspirational space, this is not a space that elevates dialogue or elevates human thought. This is a place of complete standardization for gathering and monitoring information. I guess on the positive side, people would say it protects and provides security and comfort. You could certainly make another argument that it’s about the government expressing power, and reminding people of its power over you. I’m not putting this piece forth to say “question all checkpoints, or security lines now,” but to question it as an expression of power. Getting back to looking at it as this base element, it was something I wanted to be trans-mutated and alchemically transformed. If it exists as a space that’s not about contemplation or the higher realms of human thought, then to try to make it into that. Maybe it’s a futile effort, but it’s an interesting attempt to try. Rail: What would be its opposite? Paine: You mean how to turn something spiritually elevated into a base place? Perhaps turning a Buddhist temple into a parking lot. Unfortunately humans do things like this all the time. Rail: What would be your reaction if a Natural History Museum wanted to place it in their galleries? Paine: I would be okay with it as long as there wasn’t some attempt to make it what it’s not. Actually if I walked into the Museum of Natural History and saw this, 19
control than we do. It was such a surprise for us to find out that we have no idea
Paine: [Laughs.] Well, maybe it was an influence on my hyper-banality.
what happened to the Malaysian jet that disappeared off of Australia—we think we should at least know something about a man-made object that’s flying 30,000
Rail: Do you remember your impressions of it?
feet in the sky and carrying 300 people. At least we think someone must know, but no one does. I’m interested in the limits of control and our knowledge. We think
Paine: I’ve always been melancholy, even as a kid, so I think I felt a certain syn-
about chance—three months ago, if you had wanted to buy stock in Malaysian
chronicity with it, a certain harmony, even as a kid.
Airlines, you might think, now’s a pretty good time because there’s no way another Malaysian jet is going to go down, the chances are so slim and people are
The other earliest dioramas I can remember are the ones at the Museum of Natu-
freaked out now. What was the chance of a Malaysian jet being above Ukraine at
ral History. What really struck me was the transformative and mind-altering quali-
the exact moment when a separatist rebel had an anti-aircraft missile? What are
ties of them, and the displacement aspects. The mechanisms of illusion are not
the chances of two jets from the same airline going down in the span of several
really hidden, you just poke your head inside or at an angle and you see the lights
months in completely different circumstances in completely different parts of the
and where the wall ends. It’s almost hallucinatory with the illusions, but the means
world? Control, we have the illusion of control. We have a lot of data and a lot of
by which these effects are achieved are easily discovered and revealed at the
information, but there are huge and surprising gaps.
same time as they are functioning. I don’t often hear people talk about how mindbending they are, but for me they create a feeling that I’m under the influence of
Rail: In pieces like “Checkpoint” you place the concept and institution of control in
a psychoactive event.
a diorama setting. What is the function of elevating this dark and banal interlude? Rail: They are a very rudimentary form of time-travel and space travel. Paine: It’s about perception and it’s about how we frame information and knowledge—it changes the way we perceive it. Continuing the dialogue about control,
Paine: Yes, and I also see them as time capsules, reflective of the scenes within
this is about a certain “machine” that human beings use to control other humans,
as well as the concerns, preoccupations, and biases of the time in which they
or protect humans from other humans who might want to wreak chaos.
were made.
Rail: Does it kind of romanticize it? When most people remember a diorama, they
Rail: Looking back on some of your earlier drawings from 1994, “A Diorama for
remember this idea of wonder—of looking at something foreign, different, or his-
an Art Gallery,” “A Diorama for a Drug Dealers Apartment”—
torical that had some significance. By instigating this constructed perspective in “Checkpoint” you are forcing all the objects in the space into lines of perspective
Paine: I wish those had been fully realized at the time, and not just as drawings. I
and contracting the space to follow a perceived 2D visual geometry and perhaps
wouldn’t necessarily do those specific ideas now—I think the current iterations of
achieving a sort of magical status. I see a certain nostalgia and romance in the
the dioramas I’m working with are more indicative of my thought process now, but
presentation of this banal space.
they would have been very interesting to have done at the time.
Paine: It’s definitely not romanticization or nostalgia; it’s about transformation.
Rail: There’s a dichotomy between what you’re proposing in those early draw-
For me, this is a base element, there are certain elements in society—there are
ings and what you’re proposing with “Checkpoint” and what the Natural History
certain elements that I find more base than others. A security checkpoint is not an
Museum is doing with it’s display of, say, animals of the South African plains. The
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dioramas in the museum seek to educate, and you’re taking this mode of educational display and using it as a kind of mirroring apparatus. Where do you position yourself between mirroring and educating?
Roxy Paine, “PMU,” 2001. Aluminum, stainless steel, computer, electronics, relays, custom software, acrylic, servo motors, valves, pump, precision track, glass, rubber, 110 × 157 × 176 ̋.
Paine: It’s definitely not educating, because I’m completely anti-education—I dropped out of high school and then dropped out of college as well, so clearly I have something against educating people. Rail: Institutional education! Paine: Yeah, that’s more accurate. I never quite understood how to navigate through institutions, so I had to develop an auto-critical and auto-didactic approach to my work. With projects such as the specimen cases and dioramas, there is a clear employment and simultaneous translation of institutional modalities. Here, models are understood to provide knowledge and information—they are a lens to record, catalog, and display data. I am interested in these given structures as signifiers and taking those ends and folding them in on themselves. These dioramas are like folded spaces and elements in dialogue with our current
is replete with all these measuring and recording instruments that are also unusable, by virtue of being wood, but also have nothing to look at. What is the focus of the piece? Paine: “Scrutiny” is a cataloging of different ways we can know an object or an entity. It’s a catalog representing very different ways of measuring, weighing, understanding the vibratory aspects of a specimen. All of these are extensions of our senses—sight, sound, hearing, taste, smell—but we’ve come to develop more and more sophisticated ways of quantifying our senses into absolute values or values for comparison. It’s about this aspect of our brain that seeks to understand an object in every possible way. It becomes a metaphor for the way a human can be subject to incredible scrutiny from every possible angle, or the way that humans can suddenly be drawn by hysteria and ill-meaning people to scrutinize something they had never thought about before. It could be thought of metaphorically as an examination of the mob mentality that exists in the human instinct. Rail: Do you see the data sets and the collection of data as forms of control? Paine: Of course, knowledge is a form of control. By knowing, we can take action or measures, but more importantly it makes us feel that we’re in some kind of control. If you can understand the mechanisms of a disease, you can seek to provide a remedy for it, so you have some way of controlling this thing that
Roxy Paine, Checkpoint, 2014, maple, aluminum, fluorescent light bulbs, acrylic prismatic light diffusers, 14 feet by 26 feet 11 inches by 18 feet 7½ inches. Photo Jason Wyche.
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hitherto seemed uncontrollable. But I’m actually more interested in the way we gain comfort in the illusion of control. We tend to have a belief that we have more 17
Paine: Re-configured. It’s about seeing this entity not as a beautiful landscape,
episteme. Edification is still a potentiality even without education, even though
but as something to be broken into component parts and reconstructed, which is
there’s not a clear message to be taught. Given all this, the works become sus-
interesting to me not only as a manifestation of my own psyche, but of the human
pended moments and a pause to contemplate complexities.
psyche in general. Rail: Where do the complexities lie? You’ve stripped away the foreign-ness in Rail: So you wouldn’t recognize it necessarily. But fitting it in the pinball machine,
this piece, stripped away the difference, but you’ve kept the entertainment side
what is the game that is being played?
of it—it’s the excitement of the diorama without the usual data you’re used to receiving from it.
Paine: It’s a game of time; taking two very different conceptions of time and combining and colliding them. The geologic formation represents a conception of
Paine: Do I entertain you? Spaces that are “facts”—a fast food restaurant, a se-
time, deep time, the time of billions of years; the formation of this igneous rock,
curity line, a control room—tell us something about the processes of our contem-
its upheaval, its erosion and submersion and exposure to the elements. That
porary world: the industry of food, inspection, or control. They are architectural
conception is collided with the briefest of moments: the time of a human playing
spaces but they are also machines, they are systems. I am interested in transla-
a game with a device. Its function is a meditation on time and it has a quiet to it
tion—the translation of the languages of these systems into the language of wood
partly because of the stripping away of all the lights and the mechanisms and the
and the language of dioramas. By translating, I hope to create a third language,
bumpers and the flashing. All of that is brought to the stillness of this rock forma-
a language that has ligaments connected to the sources but existing in a tenu-
tion that exists and existed long before humans.
ous equilibrium, teetering between them. There’s an incompatibility and in this discordance is where the pieces actually become the questions they are asking.
Rail: There is no game. It’s made of wood, there’s no flipper, there’s no way to
Questions, the right questions, are important to me because they open the mind.
play the game. Part of what I’ve always worked with is a seemingly factual or fact-based situaPaine: So really, the piece is no fun.
tion—like the “Psilocybe cubensis Field” (1997) which is psychedelic and hallucinogenic, but without any amplification or exaggeration in the form or color. It’s the
Rail: Unlike something like the new table-based piece “Scrutiny” (2014), which
facts of this species: I’m limiting myself, restricting myself to that in order to create an altered state. I think of it as a banality-based psychedelia in a way. Rail: What you’re talking about is the very basis of sculpture itself: replicating or reproducing something that has a meaning in a base object, not recreating the meaning though something like a Greek Choros, the god-as-person in stone. By replicating the mushrooms in an epoxy polymer, you are designating them to a particular species; do you feel that by doing so you are investing the replica with a psychedelic power?
Roxy Paine, “SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker),” 1998. Aluminum, computer, conveyor, electronics, extruder, stainless steel, polyethylene, and Teflon. 163 × 96 × 48
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Paine: Yes, the implication is that by naming it and presenting its morphology, 5
other physical effects will occur. Perhaps it’s also akin to some kind of placebo
the stock market data was from 1999 to 2001, a period of volatility with the tech
effect. It is creating this very hallucinatory experience—this field of mushrooms
bubble and the corresponding crash. I want to make clear that I didn’t want the
growing out of the floor.
rock or the piece in the end to be a one-to-one illustration of the data: as in looking at a certain spot and saying, “that’s September 2000.” It’s more about variability
Rail: Do you feel the viewer needs to have the experience that these mushrooms
within data and how the confluence of repeated points causes a magnifying ef-
produce in order to understand the piece?
fect. The contradiction of taking something that is dry and factual, and transforming it into an evocative canyon network is part of my intention.
Paine: No, I don’t think it’s necessary to have experienced mushrooms to appreciate the piece. There are other levels to the work which are about meditation
Rail: Are you trying to create an inclusive set that implies both a natural aesthetic
within the repetition, becoming the mushrooms as I’m building them, understand-
and human activity in one larger whole?
ing every permutation of the species, understanding every possible variation of form and growth in the mushrooms. It’s about a contradictory play between the
Paine: It’s not equalizing, but rather drawing parallels between human activity,
rules of restraint and freeing your mind.
and the forces of nature, like the stock market which is not a rational activity. It’s a complex manifestation of human nature, and thus of nature itself.
Rail: Do you invent those mushrooms? Do you work from photographs to produce every one? Or do you create mushrooms as you go along?
Rail: “Intrusion” (2014), replaces the game surface with a section of a granite formation outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, which is indiscernible, to a certain
Paine: There’s a process first of studying the species to such a degree that I can
degree, from the results of the erosion machine. How does containing the geo-
then become like a D.N.A. mixing table in my brain and be able to create unique
logic topology in this envelope of a game instill meaning and how did you choose
entities that have the characteristics of the species but are not referring to, on a
that specific formation?
one-to-one basis, an existing mushroom, or one that has existed. If it was about finding a particular mushroom in the woods, casting that or taking a plaster mold
Paine: It was actually a formation I drove by, and I became obsessed with it. This
from it, and then reproducing that, that would be a very different kind of project
was about 2008, I had a 3D scan done of this formation, which was great except
and occupation. You’re a technician, but you’re really trying to get into the brain
that it was a terabyte file—a massive chunk of information. For five years or so, I
of the fungus, to become it.
couldn’t do anything with this information, you’d try and open it and it would crash the computer. Computers have gotten a lot more powerful and finally I was able to Roxy Paine, “Carcass,” 2013. Birch, maple wood, glass, and fluorescent tube, 13 ́ 7 ̋ × 20 ́ 1/2 ̋ × 13 ́ 13/16 ̋. Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin. Photo: Joseph Rynkiewicz.
deal with this data. I started to use it as a kind of raw material, and as components and elements that I could manipulate and play with sculpturally and virtually. It refers to that place, but it’s been completely cut apart and re-assembled, so its relationship to the place is very removed. Rail: When you say cut apart and reassembled, do you mean resized to fit in a pinball machine or completely manipulated and re-configured?
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different molecular weights. Alcohol is only one thing we distill, also the process
Rail: Many of the pieces you’ve created—“Weed-choked Garden” (1998), “Bad
of taking crude oil, and fractionating it, which is a form of distillation into 50 dif-
Lawn” (1998)—have to do with poisonous plants, plants that cause pain, or that
ferent compounds, from wax to diesel fuel to kerosene to precursors of different
detract from the perceived natural beauty of a garden. With the psychedelic
plastics. The drawings you spoke of are like taking this fermented soup; looking at
mushrooms, what are they as a signifier to human beings? Do they signify some
the newspaper as that fermented soup; then by a chemical process extracting the
abhorrent side of nature that invokes fear, or are they a gateway to the sublime?
one component you’re interested in from that soup. It’s cataloging, characterizing, and classifying. It’s about focus and the way the brain works when it is thinking
Paine: I’ve always been very intrigued by the relationship between plants or
about one entity in the world: you suddenly see that entity everywhere. I see it as
mushrooms and humans. It’s very gripping to think that humans, wherever they
akin to when you’re hunting for mushrooms; there’s a point when you’re walking in
live, in any climate except the Arctic, have always found whatever plant or fungus
the woods and you don’t see any mushrooms, but then when you are able to tune
is psychoactive in that area. It’s kind of incredible to think about how many people
in, they suddenly appear. It’s about perception. It’s about how the state of mind
had to die to discover which plants were going to be edible, which were going to
that you’re in directly affects what you perceive in the world.
be poisonous, and which were going to get you high. It reflects something very innate and fundamental about humans. When you think about what the arguments
Rail: A lot of your aesthetics are based on a certain secret knowledge that via
often are, in politics, as in, we want to keep people from doing this substance
the medium you’re using becomes an aesthetic representation, like in “Intrusion”
because it’s harmful, it is exhibiting a willful blindness to our history. I think it
(2014) or the “Erosion Machine” (2005). How do the algorithms that you use as a
would be more accepting of the reality to ponder our intricate relationship with
basis for these pieces generate form?
these organisms.
Paine: That came out of the whole thought process of control and absence of
Rail: Do you think they were a catalyst for human development?
control, and of seeking a different means of removing the direct control. There’s a whole lineage of that thought process that is interesting to me; the Surrealist’s
Paine: Absolutely. To advance or evolve requires breaking out of a habitual mode
Automatism, John Cage and the I Ching, but in this case the idea of removing the
of thinking. And habits are also something innate in us, and we slide into re-
artist’s control, by taking a certain set of facts and data to create these forms that
petitive modes of thinking. Drugs and psychoactive plants, especially used in a
echo and reflect this natural process of erosion in nature, was compelling to me
non-addictive way, have the potential of shedding light on a situation. You could imagine when a tribe or culture is faced with trying to solve problems it would be
Rail: In the translation between these data sets and the process of erosion, did
very important for the success of that tribe to have an alternative way of looking
you find yourself preferring certain sets despite the seeming non-correspondence
at an obstacle, a new approach. If humans had stuck with what was habitual, we
between the initial information and the end result?
would all be tending our herds, which actually might not be so bad. [Laughs.]
Paine: Yes, there are certain data sets that are extremely boring. With the stock
Rail: We’ve been talking about the dioramas, but what about the table versus the
market data that I used, there are periods that are very flat where there’s not that
window. The table takes several forms—the lab, the investigation—in the newer
much activity. The variance occurs within a much narrower spectrum which yields
pieces, like “Scrutiny” (2014), and also in older pieces like “Dinner of the Dicta-
much less variability in the forms that might be created. I guess the data sets that
tors” (1993 – 95). When did you first start visualizing the table as a tool for your
I’ve sought out are those that have greater variability. The period that I chose for
art and how has it transformed over the various projects in which it’s been used?
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Roxy Paine, “Control Room,” (2013). Steel, wood, automotive paint, glass, and fluorescent tubing.13 ́7 ̋ × 18 ́23/8 ̋ × 12 ́5 ̋. Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin. Photo: Joseph Rynkiewicz.
Rail: Those encyclopedic accumulations of brushstrokes and blobs, are they a critique of the facility of abstract expressionism? What is the idea of assembling every kind of brushstroke you can have? Paine: It’s more about tendency or innate quality of the human mind to classify, to categorize, to name everything. It’s almost envisioning where that impulse has run amok or traveled unchecked, and seeks to go from classifying and ordering and naming every type of plant or mushroom or insect, to classifying every mote of dust on this table. It’s more about our brains and specialization than about one specific painting movement from the 20th century.
Paine: I see parallels between the table and the field: the field is a place of openness in terms of engagement and the way the mind can travel within it. With the
Rail: Do you like painting?
field, such as one for a sport or game, you have rules and parameters by which that game can be played on that field, or table. With my pieces and projects, there
Paine: I love painting. There are a lot of pieces which I consider paintings, like
are parameters around the way the game can unfold and the way the mind can
the “Dry Rot” (2001) fungus. They’re three dimensional, coming off the wall, but
flow through, but they also allow for the element of potential, which can unfold in
they’re firmly attached to the wall. They’re not rectilinear, but they function on one
a great number of possible combinations and sequences. In terms of generating
level as paintings on the wall. I spent a great deal of time and intensity painting
ideas I often start with the table. I have this neurosis that the work table in my
them. Then there’s a series of, I call them “abstracts,” that are based on fungal
studio has to be cleaned off completely at night—in the morning I have to come in
modes of growth, crusts and jellies and so forth, but they’re not referring to one
to a completely open table surface.
specific species, and they become these abstractions of flow, of growth, of an entity that’s expanding on a wall. So there’s been a lot of pieces that I consider
Rail: Not to split hairs, but the decision to put “Psilocybe cubensis” on the floor in-
paintings.
stead of on the table and then thinking about another artist who does floor-based sculpture that the viewer can interact with, like Carl Andre, can you explain a bit
Rail: How do these relate to drawings like “Every Shoe in the New York Times”?
about your choice to put certain things on the floor or on the wall rather than on the table?
Paine: I did a whole series of drawings in the ’90s that were taking that day’s New York Times, and choosing an entity to search for, like an ear. I’d find every single
Paine: Why the field versus the table? They’re two iterations that function very
ear that existed in that day’s New York Times, and then I would draw them and re-
similarly for me. The floor becomes a big table, the table becomes a condensed
draw them in ink. They would be enlarged, but all would exist in the same propor-
floor.
tion to each other that they existed in the newspaper. It created this sort of floating field of that entity. It’s about extraction and distillation. Distillation has always been
Rail: Is there a convenience to the table? You put these out-of-control weeds on
a very crucial idea to me in the work. If you think about the process of distillation,
the table, which exerts a certain control over them.
where you’re taking a larger, more complex organic entity, like a brew—it’s a very complex organic soup, then by heating it, you’re separating it out according to
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MAK” extrusions resemble a process of accretion, a stalagmite.
Paine: That’s a good point. With a piece like the “Weed Choked Garden” (2006), the table provides part of the structural rigidity that the chaos of the overgrown
Paine: The flow of lava. Yes, accretion and layers of molten material that are ac-
weeds is playing against. There are also other elements of that structure and
cumulating at a certain point. They simultaneously reference art and the history
control in the piece. There are remnants of the grooves, the garden rows in the
of art, but for me it would be very unsatisfying just to be having a dialogue with
ground that indicate the attempt at order and control, which is still visible, but be-
art history by itself, or the history of painting. I want to extend the dialogue to the
ing eaten away.
natural world, the forces of nature, to the history of the factory, mass-production, labor-saving devices, and the idea that the manufactured object will free us from
Rail: What about translation on a different scale—artistic practice versus mecha-
our manual labor and free us to have more time for the mind and creative pursuits.
nization: you’ve said that you don’t want your work to “wear its labor on its sleeve.” On the one hand, the presence of the artist is suppressed by an almost Godlike
Rail: Mechanizing the creative pursuits, what does that leave time for?
craftsmanship in the woodwork—
Paine: Masturbation … and Hoarders re-runs.
Paine: Jesus was a carpenter
Rail: You’ve at times gotten a bit of criticism from painters for earlier pieces like
Rail: On the other hand your presence takes the form of the choice of the mecha-
“Model Painting” (1996), “Model for an Abstract Sculpture” (1997), and the Dis-
nism or the algorithm. Are you, as an artist, shy about expressionism? You do
play Cases—“Pigeonhole.” Would you say those are precursors to the “SCU-
drawings, but then when it comes to the big, really prominent projects, you invoke
MAK” and the “PMU”?
this perfectionist craftsmanship. You’d never take a hacksaw and make the “Machine of Indeterminacy” function like a Baselitz sculpture. Roxy Paine, “Dinner of the Dictators,” 1993-1995. Freeze-dried food, place settings, glass wood, dehumidifier, 427 1/4 × 118 1/2 × 50 ̋.
Paine: It’s an encyclopedia of all the ways to construct something or build something with wood. In “Machine of Indeterminacy,” where the piece is a conglomerate of rigid and fluid connections, it employs mechanistic methodology as well as arduous hand carving. This is a machine exerting tremendous effort but with no particular reason. It’s a good question: why not leave the chisel marks apparent? It’s about obsession, and bringing the same obsessiveness that one brings to the work conceptually to its methodology and materiality. I’m always refining whatever methodology and material I take on. It’s about transformation and applying the same rigor to the macro and the minutiae. Someone might perceive this as just a piece of wood or a piece of stainless steel, but I see it as chemistry, a cellular
Paine: For some of them, they were simultaneous, but not precursors. But yes, they all do interweave conceptually. Those works each set out to look at different realms, but they have many commonalities of thought.
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structure with great potential. Putting it another way, there’s a certain alchemical process with the wood pieces being stripped down. When you imagine a machine or industrial appliance, it has various colors, materials, metal finishes, and gloss levels. These sculptures are translations of machines, they are not machines. 9
Rail: You’ve called it a neutralization or a neutering.
Roxy Paine, “Psilocybe Cubensis Field,” 1997. Thermoset polymer, lacquer, oil, and steel, 41/4 × 328 × 222 ̋.
Paine: A sort of stripping down or unraveling of an object. In a way, it is a denuding of these physical characteristics, and a simultaneous additive of wood as a sculptural material. It’s a way of removing what’s extraneous, so that they can be taken out of their normal context, and contemplated for what they signify—when you delve into the minutiae of angles and relationships and proportions, somehow they do become inadvertently beautiful. Rail: Are the painting machines a formalization of the artist’s practice? And by painting machines I’m including “SCUMAK no. 1” (1998) and “Painting Manufacture Unit (PMU)” (1999 – 2000). What exactly do you accomplish by making a
Rail: In the dipped paintings, how did you conceptualize the process of painting
machine that creates a work of art?
as something being dipped?
Paine: It’s always about asking what it means that this machine is making art.
Paine: It began with a manual process.
What occurs when there is a series of displacements, such as the artist’s practice onto the museum or gallery, or the displaced moment of a creative act, the
Rail: Was it done by hand with the eventual intention of mechanizing the process?
displaced moment between creating the program and beginning the work? Each machine sets up a language of elements and rules by which those elements are
Paine: It was a curiosity, it was an experimentation, it was a material investiga-
utilized. I create the apparatus, I create the system, I create the controls, but
tion, but at the same time I was very much thinking about mechanization and
then it’s almost like that is the beginning of a second part of the process which
automation—factory production and mass production as points or counter points.
is really about potential. For instance, the same program will always create two
Things that are resistant to or antithetical to the so-called “creative mind” and col-
entirely unique works due to natural processes. That’s because thermodynamics,
liding these ideas and seeing what comes from the collision between them.
room temperature, drying, and cooling events are all natural forces present and not within the machine’s control. So there is this collision between industry and
Rail: With “SCUMAK,” did the form come first or the machine to create the form?
nature, and control and the uncontrolled that I find interesting. Paine: Again, it was from the most simple beginnings of experimenting with a hotRail: Where does the art reside?
glue gun. But it’s not like I was playing with a glue gun and thought of machines for the first time. It could have just been an experiment and remained an experi-
Paine: It’s in the displaced contradiction that the origin of those natural forms
ment with the material itself, but then it needed to be realized as a fully automated
comes from mechanistic processes. It’s in the dialogue between what is carefully
process.
prescribed and what is naturally happening, and it’s in the translation of geologic forces into the form of physical paintings.
Rail: The irony of this is that while you’re transforming painting—the institution— into a mechanized process you’re also mimicking a natural process. The “SCU-
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03 Una rosa amarilla AGUSTÍN FERNÁNDEZ MALLO El hacedor (de Borges). Remake. Ed. Alfaguara 2011
Pasar el control de pasaporte y el de revisión de equipaje y el pertinente cacheo y ver rotar tu cuerpo en un escáner de baja energía en un aeropuerto, comprenderte un cuerpo en 3 dimensiones que gira en una pantalla, la cabeza apunta al Norte, volar antes de volar o cuerpo ya volando, por algún motivo que se me escapa me encantan todos esos controles de aeropuertos y los cacheos y la revisión de equipajes de mano y la reconstrucción del cuerpo en, 3 dimensiones a través de un escáner que es de baja energía, no penetra, se frena en la piel, no hipnotiza tus órganos internos, no los revela ni los hace visibles al guardia de seguridad que en ese instante mastica las croquetas frías que su mujer le puso en una fiambrera junto con 180 gramos de ensaladilla rusa, y también junto a una nota de su puño y letra que dice que al salir no se olvide de ir a recoger al niño al colegio, ese guardia de seguridad mastica su vida de croquetas y ensaladilla y notas de puño y letra mientras me escanea, y yo desde el manso e inocente escáner penetro en la totalidad de su vida a través de las croquetas y la fiambrera y la ensaladilla rusa, a la que le falta atún, tiene poco atún, y a través también de la nota que discretamente le ha dejado su mujer y que aún más dis1
cretamente él esconde en el bolsillo del pantalón, junto a la pistola, y giro en ese
minando otra mesa?, ¿por ejemplo la mesa de James Joyce, la de David Foster
escáner y me siento completo o eterno, algo me observa, existo, como ahora
Wallace, la de Marguerite Duras, la mesilla de noche del mismísimo Onetti?, ¿y
mismo algo me observa en esta biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York,
si mi imagen, esa que ahora resumo en «yo mirando por la ventana del Instituto
ahora que escribo todo esto en esta biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva
Cervantes de Nueva York el jardín del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York>, estu-
York, en la que hay una cámara que enfoca directamente a mi cabeza y envía mis
viera iluminando las vidas de todos esos escritores, o mejor dicho, las noches de
imágenes a una mujer que estará en la recepción, en el piso de abajo, junto al
esos hombres y mujeres que además son escritores, porque la literatura sólo es
jardín de la entrada que es victoriano americano, mujer que a su vez las envía a
espejo en la noche o, por qué no, pura noche?, ¿podrían venir de ahí, de esas
un sistema de seguridad que tiene su nodo principal en algún edificio lejano de
noches de la literatura y de escritores -me digo-, los ruidos que continúo oyendo
esta misma ciudad de Nueva York, y los cables que transportan esas imágenes
en el piso de arriba, y en el de abajo, nunca en el mío, y que definitivamente no
son cables que se extienden a lo largo de los túneles del metro, me refiero a esos
son ratones ni dilataciones ni cualquier clase de insecto?, ¿podrían todos esos
cables que ves cuando, yendo en ese medio de transporte, miras por la venta-
escritores generar esos ruidos, ruidos de fondo, digamos?, ¿cómo serán las me-
nilla: están ahí afuera, en las paredes del tunel, todos hemos visto alguna vez
sas de esos escritores?, ¿habrá migas de sándwiches, muñecos de Kinder Sor-
esos cables, son negros y rojos, en ocasiones hay uno verde y amarillo, como si
presa, bolígrafos de propaganda de hoteles de Miami sin tinta, en esas mesas?,
fuera de <<toma de tierra>>, aunque ya esté dentro de la Tierra, son cables que
pero al momento esta idea se me revela absurda, todos esos escritores están
no dejan de acompañarte y que en realidad son tubos por los que circulan mil-
muertos, ni tienen mesa de trabajo ni pueden ya influir en el mundo si no es a
lones de electrones que más tarde se harán luz en una pantalla para reconstruir
través de lo que dejaron escrito, es decir, nada, no hay escáner de aeropuerto
tu imagen, porque ahí adentro viajan, troceadas, todas las imágenes que reco-
que escanee a esos escritores, ni cámara en el techo de color amarillo que los
gen las cámaras de seguridad del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York y, en espe-
grabe para existir en su propia carne y en una pantalla al mismo tiempo, no
cial, las imágenes que de mí ahora mismo está recogiendo la cámara semies-
emiten luz como el espejo de este jardín de grandes dimensiones que puedo ver
férica y de color amarillo que hay en el techo, cámara que al mismo tiempo
si miro por a ventana, que no ilumina y sin embargo atrae mi atención, como es-
enfoca la biblioteca, vacía de gente, porque esta biblioteca a estas horas está
tos ruidos que diré que se aproximan; porque cada vez son más intensos, y que
vacía, y sólo estamos una sucesión de libros apilados en estanterías móviles y
en efecto, ya estan aquí.
yo, estanterías de esas que también hay en las farmacias, deme una caja de aspirinas efervescentes y además una caja de pastillas para dormir, y la farmacéutica [qué preciosas son todas las farmacéuticas] hace desplazar sobre unos
¿Lo creerás, Ariadna? -dijo el muñeco Kinder Sorpresa-, el Minotauro apenas se defendió.
raíles las estanterías de medicamentos y selecciona y te da lo que has pedido, y deja las estanterías en esa posición, no trabajarán las ruedas y raíles de esas estanterías hasta que el próximo cliente haga su pedido, por eso me digo que ahora, en esta biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York, las estanterías que tengo a mi espalda están llenas de medicinas que son libros, pero todo libro es lo contrario de una medicina, todo libro es un virus, una enfermedad sobrevalorada, no conozco a nadie a quien la literatura haya hecho más feliz, o incluso mejor persona, por eso ahora siento remordimientos de estar escribiendo esto en esta biblioteca de un Instituto Cervantes, en concreto el de Nueva York, pero 2
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observar la vegetación y el árbol que centra el espacio del jardín, y mientras miro
sería igual si fuera el de Pekín, el de Estocolmo o el de Malibú en caso de que
ese árbol [pero sobre todo la, sin paliativos, preciosa gravilla que lo rodea], me
existiera, el sentimiento de culpa sería el mismo, por lo menos nadie me ve
doy cuenta de que hace un buen rato que vengo escuchando ruidos en la planta
porque nadie viene a esta hora a esta biblioteca, hay silencio y eso me gusta,
de abajo, y también en la de arriba, y ni les he dado ni les doy importancia porque
acabo de mirar hacia la ventana que tengo a mi izquierda, da al patio interior, la
estoy solo, sé que son las 3.40 de la madrugada y que estoy solo, así que esos
cámara de vigilancia de color amarillo que tengo sobre mi cabeza habrá regis-
ruidos solamente pueden ser debidos a ratones o algún tipo de insecto. Incluso
trado mi movimiento [de igual manera que las rosas amarillas detectan la presen-
también a las propias dilataciones del edificio, antiguo y pequeño en compara-
cia del primer sol de la mañana y se abren sin más, sin propósito, porque sí, así
ción con los rascacielos que lo circundan, tengo entendido que esto eran unas
de indiferentes son las rosas y las cámaras], y mi correspondiente imagen estará
antiguas caballerizas, que de aquí salían las diligencias para Boston, no lo sé, en
ya viajando por los cables de los túneles de metro de Nueva York a los que me
cualquier caso estoy tranquilo ya que estoy solo, nadie puede haber en este edi-
vengo refiriendo, mi cuerpo atomizado en millones de electrones que van a una
ficio a estas horas, y diría aún más, ni siquiera yo estoy en este edificio, me hallo
velocidad 200 mil veces superior a la del metro, sí, en esos cables, viaja mi ima-
muy lejos, en forma de luz, alumbro el dormitorio de un vigilante y de su mujer, a
gen ahora mismo para hacerse luz en una pantalla de un monitor ubicado muy
la que conoció el verano pasado en un hotel de Miami, e ilumino también su pis-
lejos, en un lugar desconocido para mí, y desde esa pantalla, que seguro está en
tola [la ha dejado sobre la mesilla de noche, como es habitual en él, no porque la
una pequeña mesa de despacho, ilumino ahora mismo un trozo de mundo, soy
necesite, en realidad esa pistola no es indispensable para su trabajo, es una
luz en una pantalla que arroja visibilidad sobre unas migas de sándwich que el
pistola personal, de uso privado, pero que deja siempre en la mesilla de noche en
vigilante no limpió, también arrojo luz unos pocos centímetros más allá de esas
la misma posición y ángulo para saber a ciegas dónde está el gatillo en caso de
migas, sobre un trozo de papel en el que hay algo importante que alguien tiene
inesperadamente necesitarlo], ilumino todo eso y no obstante esta noche del
que hacer mañana y que, seguro, ya no hará, y eso me pone triste, me provocan
jardín del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York es oscura, y el espejo del jardin al
mucha tristeza los objetos cuya función ha sido olvidada a pesar de estar siendo
que antes me referí refleja esa oscuridad, como si reflejar la oscuridad fuera po-
iluminados, la luz que despide mi imagen en la pantalla del terminal ilumina tam-
sible, digamos que el espejo simula que refleja una oscuridad, pero no lo hace
bién, unos centímetros a la izquierda, un bolígrafo casi sin tinta, y también un
porque nadie sabe que hacen los espejos bajo la oscuridad absoluta o en el cero
huevo a medio comer de un Kinder Sorpresa y el papel aluminio del Kinder Sor-
absoluto de la claridad, he vuelto a oír los ruidos e instintivamente he mirado
presa y sus trozos de chocolate y también su sorpresa, que es un pequeño mu-
hacia la cámara de seguridad del techo [como si el ruido viniera de ahí, qué ton-
ñeco desmontable con aspecto de criatura mitológica, y también mi luz alcanza
tería], cámara que es amarilla y me apunta a los ojos para llevar mi imagen por
un vaso de plástico con un poco de agua, que se evapora, mejor dicho, se irá
cables que van por los túneles del metro, imagen que nadie observa porque,
evaporando a meclida que esta noche avance, porque, no lo he comentado, aho-
desdiciéndome, acabo de pensar que ese monitor al que va a parar mi imagen no
ra mismo es de noche, en concreto, las 3.28 de la madrugada, y la mujer que
puede estar en el dormitorio del vigilante, ni siquiera en su casa, sería algo de-
suele estar en la recepción, en el piso de abajo, no está, y nadie me obliga a
masiado raro o irregular, poco creíble, así que, en efecto, el vigilante estará en su
permanecer en la biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York, he elegido
casa haciendo el amor con su mujer, pero la pantalla estará en su puesto de
quedarme, he deciclido burlar al portero que hace la ronda y cierra las puertas
vigilancia, en las oficinas de alguna corporación, lejos de su casa, no puede ser
con un fajo de llaves que tiene la forma de imposible abanico [lo he imaginado
de otra manera, sola e iluminando la mesa, las migas de sándwich, el muñeco
muchas veces intentando inútilmente abanicarse con ese fajo de llaves y me he
Kinder Sorpresa, el bolígrafo de propaganda de hotel de verano en Miami, sin
partido de risa yo solo, aquí, en la biblioteca], y ahora he girado mi cabeza hacia
tinta [el bolígrafo, no Míami], o quizá, me digo de pronto, ¿estará mi imagen ilu-
la izquierda para observar a través de la ventana el jardín interior de este Insti-
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tuto Cervantes, y esa imagen de mí, girando la cabeza, estará también ahora
conflictos internos e incluso externos porque, qué duda cabe, las migas de un
mismo viajando por los cables del metro y también ahora mismo será luz en una
sándwich están en permanente conflicto con un muñeco de un Kinder Sorpresa,
pantalla que ilumina la mesa con migas de sándwich a la que antes me referí, y
que es una actualización de algún héroe, y hasta quizá de algún animal mitológi-
es mi imagen en esa pantalla una imagen que el guardia de seguridad jamás
co, o dios o rey helénico, y ese conflicto es antiguo: los sándwiches atesoran un
verá, porque no está en su puesto de trabajo, así de simple y terrible, ha abando-
colesterol que el muñeco, como heleno, no se puede permitir, y este muñeco se
nado su puesto de trabajo porque a nadie le importa ver cómo un tipo escribe en
halla a su vez en conflicto permanente con un bolígrafo casi sin tinta que yace a
la biblioteca del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York a las 3.30 de la madrugada,
un palmo de distancia, ya que los héroes, dioses o reyes mitológicos ni escribían
aunque esté escribiendo el plan definitivo que aniquilará el mundo o una secreta
ni escriben, sólo actúan, por eso hicieron tanto bien, nos dejaron su principio de
carta de pornografía y amor a la Primera Dama, nada de eso reviste importancia,
acción física, su irreflexión, su capacidad de actuar sin dar explicaciones ni justi-
y por lo tanto mi imagen se habrá perdido para el ojo humano aunque esté per-
ficaciones, su publicidad o motor del mundo, por eso decía que no conozco a
fectamente registrada en algún archivo, y de pronto se me hace muy extraño
nadie a quien escribir o leer haya hecho mejor persona o más feliz, absoluta-
pensar que algo esté perfectamente archivado y simultáneamente perdido para
mente a nadie, un Airbus mejora más el mundo que toda la Historia de la litera-
siempre, ¿no es raro que haya un orden secreto, y que ese orden permanezca
tura, eso es así, no hay ninguna necesidad de negarlo, y de pronto me viene a la
eternamente en silencio?, me digo, ¿qué sentido tiene entonces ese orden, cual-
mente que quizá mi imagen en esa pantalla lejana que nadie ve no esté alumb-
quier orden?, por eso me alegra que al menos mi imagen sirva para alumbrar
rando la mesa del vigilante, sino la penumbra del dormito no del vigilante, porque
esta noche esa mesa de guardia de seguridad vacía, dar algún tipo de vida a
es posible que ese hombre trabaje desde casa, vigile desde su casa, en efecto,
esas migas de sándwich, a ese bolígrafo casi sin tinta, a ese papel aluminio del
tiene la pantalla en una pequeña mesa supletoria, en su mismo dormitorio, a 2
Kinder Sorpresa y su muñeco sorpresa, que es la representación contemporánea
metros de la cama, y por lo tanto quizá la luz de mi imagen cuando giro la cabeza
de algún héroe helénico, estoy pensando cuál, pero no sé dar ningún ejemplo, no
a la izquierda para ver el jardín del Instituto Cervantes de Nueva York llegue
puedo nombrar héroe helénico alguno, acabo de darme cuenta de que no sé
ahora mismo hasta la cama del vigilante, y él está penetrando a su mujer [eso no
nada de héroes helénicos, creía que sabía mucho y nada sé, pero seguro que
cambia], y yo los estoy iluminando, y su mujer abre los ojos para ver la hilera de
este muñeco del Kinder Sorpresa guarda alguna filiación con alguno de aquellos
figuritas coleccionables de los huevos Kinder Sorpresa que tiene en la cabecera
héroes o reyes, muñeco que el vigilante olvidó llevarle a su mujer, a la que gustan
de su cama y que, a su vez, la iluminan desde su infanda para recordarle [es ley]
esos muñecos hasta el punto de que los colecciona y los pone sobre la cama,
que hay una luz que nunca se apaga, como decía aquella canción de los Smiths,
porque cuando hacen el amor siente que esa hilera de muñecos guarda cierto
una luz que nunca se apaga, como yo, que aunque sea de noche tampoco me
parecido con otros muñecos que coleccionaba cuando era pequeña, y esa re-
apago, en este instante soy la luz de la penumbra de una habitación en la que
gresión a la infanda le da seguridad en el sentido de que está siendo penetrada
dos personas son mas perfectas que una película, que una enciclopedia o que
por el sexo de un guardia de seguridad y al mismo tiempo sigue en el territorio de
las partículas con que ellas mismas están hechas, y me fijo en el jardín del Insti-
la infancia, la única patria, esos muñecos meticulosamente colocados en hilera
tuto Cervantes de Nueva York y veo que hay un espejo de grandes dimensiones,
en la cabecera de la cama son la imagen que arroja luz sobre su infancia en
es raro encontrar un espejo en un jardín, la duplicación de los espejos ya ni nos
tanto es penetrada, y eso la tranquiliza, como yo, que ahora mismo doy luz a 1
impresiona ni afecta, es un material que la literatura agotó y con ello lo agotó
m2 de mesa de vigilante sin vigilante, y en estos momentos esa mesa sin vigi-
también en nuestras vidas, pero eso no impide que me pregunte ahora por qué
lante es una Atlántida, desconocida cartografía para mí, para todo el mundo,
las pantallas emiten luz y los espejos no, parece una pregunta tonta, trivial, pero
porque nadie la ve ni la verá, continente de borrosas fronteras, de pliegues y
no lo es, hasta diría que es complejísima, por eso la aparco y me entretengo en
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04 Opening Pandora’s Black Box BRUNO LATOUR Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1987
Scene 1: On a cold and sunny morning in October 1985, John Whittaker entered his office in the molecular biology building of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and switched on his Eclipse MV/8000 computer. A few seconds after loading the special programs he had written, a three-dimensional picture of the DNA double helix flashed onto the screen. John, a visiting computer scientist, had been invited by the Institute to write programs that could produce three-dimensional images of the coils of DNA and relate them to the thousands of new nucleic acid sequences pouring out every year into the journals and data banks. ‘Nice picture, eh?’ said his boss, Pierre, who was just entering the office. ‘Yes, good machine too,’ answered John. Scene 2: In 1951 in the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge, England, the X-ray pictures of crystallised deoxyribonucleic acid were not ‘nice pictures’ on a computer screen. The two young researchers, Jim Watson and Francis Crick1, had a hard time obtaining them from Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin in London. It was impossible yet to decide if the form of the acid was a triple or a double he1
lix, if the phosphate bonds were at the inside or at the outside of the molecule, or indeed if it was an helix at all. It did not matter much to their boss, Sir Lawrence Bragg, since the two were not supposed to be working on DNA anyway, but it mattered a lot to them, especially since Linus Pauling, the famous chemist, was said to be about to uncover the structure of DNA in a few months. Scene 3: In 1980 in a Data General building on Route 495 in Westborough, Massachusetts, Tom West2 and his team were still trying to debug a makeshift prototype of a new machine nicknamed Eagle that the company had not planned to build at first, but that was beginning to rouse the marketing department’s interest. However, the debugging program was a year behind schedule. Besides, the choice West had made of using the new PAL chips kept delaying the machine – renamed Eclipse MV/8000, since no one was sure at the time if the company manufacturing the chips could deliver them on demand. In the meantime, their main competitor, DEC, was selling many copies of its VAX 11/780, increasing the gap between the two companies.
(1) Looking for a way in Where can we start a study of science and technology? The choice of a way in crucially depends on good timing. In 1985, in Paris, John Whittaker obtains ‘nice pictures’ of DNA on a ‘good machine’. In 1951 in Cambridge Watson and Crick are struggling to define a shape for DNA that is compatible with the pictures they glimpsed in Wilkins’s office. In 1980, in the basement of a building, another team of researchers is fighting to make a new computer work and to catch up with DEC. What is the meaning of these ‘flashbacks’, to use the cinema term? They carry us back through space and time. When we use this travel machine, DNA ceases to have a shape so well established that computer programs can be written to display it on a screen. As to the computers, they don’t exist at all. Hundreds of nucleic acid sequences are not pouring in every year. Not a single one is known and even the notion of a sequence is doubtful since it is still unsure, for many people at the time, whether DNA plays any significant role in passing genetic material from one generation to the next. Twice already, Watson and Crick had proudly announced that they had 2
solved the riddle and both times their model had been reduced to ashes. As to the ‘good machine’ Eagle, the flashback takes us back to a moment when it cannot run any program at all. Instead of a routine piece of equipment John Whittaker can switch on, it is a disorderly array of cables and chips surveyed by two other computers and surrounded by dozens of engineers trying to make it work reliably for more than a few seconds. No one in the team knows yet if this project is not going to turn out to be another complete failure like the EGO computer on which they worked for years and which was killed, they say, by the management. In Whittaker’s research project, many things are unsettled. He does not know how long he is going-to stay, if his fellowship will be renewed, if any program of his own can handle millions of base pairs and compare them in a way that is biologically significant. But there are at least two elements that raise no problems for him: the double helix shape of DNA and his Data General computer. What was for Watson and Crick the problematic focus of a fierce challenge, what won them a Nobel Prize, is now the basic dogma of his program, embedded in thousands of lines of his listing. As for the machine that made West’s team work day and night for years, it is now no more problematic than a piece of furniture as it hums quietly away in his office. To be sure, the maintenance man of Data General stops by every week to fix up some minor problems; but neither the man nor John have to overhaul the computer all over again and force the company to develop a new line of products. Whittaker is equally well aware of the many problems plaguing the Basic Dogma of biology- Crick, now an old gentleman, gave a lecture at the Institute on this a few weeks ago- but neither John nor his boss have to rethink entirely the shape of the double helix or to establish a new dogma. The word black box is used by cyberneticians whenever a piece of machinery or a set of commands is too complex. In its place they draw a little box about which they need to know nothing but its input and output. As far as John Whittaker is concerned the double helix and the machine are two black boxes. That is, no matter how controversial their history, how complex their inner workings, how large the commercial or academic networks that hold them in place, only their input and output count. When you switch on the Eclipse it runs the programs you load; when you compare nucleic acid sequences you start from the double helix shape. The flashback from October 1985 in Paris to Autumn 1951 in Cambridge 3
or December 1980 in Westborough, Massachusetts, presents two completely dif-
on what the domain called ‘science, technology and society’ meant- in fact, I have
ferent pictures of each of these two objects, a scientific fact-the double helix - and
rarely seen anyone agree on the name or indeed that the domain exists!
a technical artefact - the Eagle minicomputer. In the first picture John Whittaker
I claim that the domain exists, that there is a core of common problems
uses two black boxes because they are unproblematic and certain; during the
and methods, that it is important and that all the disciplines and objects of’ sci-
flashback the boxes get reopened and a bright coloured light illuminates them. In
ence, technology and society’ studies can be employed as so much specialised
the first picture, there is no longer any need to decide where to put the phosphate
material with which to study it. To define what is at stake in this domain, the only
backbone of the double helix, it is just there at the outside; there is no longer any
thing we need is a few sets of concepts sturdy enough to stand the trip through all
squabble to decide if the Eclipse should be a 32-bit fully compatible machine, as
these many disciplines, periods and objects.
you just hook it up to the other NOVA computers. During the flashbacks, a lot of
I am well aware that there exist many more sophisticated, subtle, fast or
people are introduced back into the picture, many of them staking their career on
powerful notions than the ones I have chosen. Are they not going to break down?
the decisions they take: Rosalind Franklin decides to reject the model-building
Are they going to last the distance? Will they be able to tie together enough em-
approach Jim and Francis have chosen and to concentrate instead on basic X-
pirical facts? Are they handy enough for doing practical exercises? These are the
ray crystallography in order to obtain better photographs; West decides to make
questions that guided me in selecting from the literature rules of method and
a 32-bit compatible machine even though this means building a tinkered ‘kludge’,
principles and to dedicate one chapter to each pair. The status of these rules
as they contemptuously say, and losing some of his best engineers, who want to
and that of the principles is rather distinct and I do not expect them to be evalu-
design a neat new one.
ated in the same way. By ‘rules of method’ I mean what a priori decisions should
In the Pasteur Institute John Whittaker is taking no big risk in believing
be made in order to consider all of the empirical facts provided by the specialised
the three-dimensional shape of the double helix or in running his program on
disciplines as being part of the domain of ‘science, technology and society’. By
the Eclipse. These are now routine choices. The risks he and his boss take lie
‘principles’ I mean what is my personal summary of the empirical facts at hand
elsewhere, in this gigantic program of comparing all the base pairs generated
after a decade of work in this area. Thus, I expect these principles to be debated,
by molecular biologists all over the world. But if we go back to Cambridge, thirty
falsified, and replaced by other summaries. On the other hand, the rules of meth-
years ago, who should we believe? Rosalind Franklin who says it might be a
od are a package that do not seem to be easily negotiable without losing sight
three-strand helix? Bragg who orders Watson and Crick to give up this hopeless
of the common ground I want to sketch. With them, it is more a question of all or
work entirely and get back to serious business? Pauling, the best chemist in the
nothing, and I think they should be judged only on this ground: do they link more
world, who unveils a structure that breaks all the known laws of chemistry? The
elements than others? Do they allow outsiders to follow science and technology
same uncertainty arises in the Westborough of a few years ago. Should West
further, longer and more independently? This will be the only rule of the game,
obey his boss, de Castro, when he is explicitly asked not to do a new research
that is, the only ‘meta’ rule that we will need to get on with our work.
project there, since all the company research has now moved to North Carolina? How long should West pretend he is not working on a new computer? Should he believe the marketing experts when they say that all their customers want a fully compatible machine (on which they can reuse their old software) instead of doing as his competitor DEC does a ‘culturally compatible’ one (on which they cannot reuse their software but only the most basic commands)? What confidence should he have in his old team burned out by the failure of the EGO project? 4
21
go by many different names (historians of science and technology, economists,
Should he risk using the new PAL chips instead of the older but safer ones?
sociologists, science teachers, science policy analysts, journalists, philosophers, concerned scientists and citizens, cognitive anthropologists or cognitive psychologists), and are most often filed under the general label of’science, technology and society’. It is on their work that this book is built. A summary of their many results and achievements would be worth doing, but is beyond the scope of my knowledge. I simply wish to summarise their method and to sketch the ground that, sometimes unwittingly, they all have in common. In doing so I wish to help overcome two of the limitations of’science, technology and society’ studies that appear to me to thwart their impact, that is their organisation by discipline and by object. Economists of innovation ignore sociologists of technology; cognitive scientists never use social studies of science; ethnoscience is far remote from
Uncertainty, people at work, decisions, competition, controversies are
pedagogy; historians of science pay little attention to literary studies or to rhetoric;
what one gets when making a flashback from certain, cold, unproblematic black
sociologists of science often see no relation between their academic work and
boxes to their recent past. If you take two pictures, one of the black boxes and the
the in vivo experiments performed by concerned scientists or citizens; journalists
other of the open controversies, they are utterly different. They are as different as
rarely quote scholarly work on social studies of science; and so on.
the two sides, one lively, the other severe, of a two-faced Janus. ‘Science in the
This Babel of disciplines would not matter much if it was not worsened
making’ on the right side, ‘all made science’ or ‘ready made science’ on the other;
by another division made according to the objects each of them study. There exist
such is Janus bifrons, the first character that greets us at the beginning of our
historians of eighteenth-century chemistry or of German turn-of-the-century phys-
journey.
ics; even citizens’ associations are specialised, some in fighting atomic energy,
In John’s office, the two black boxes cannot and should not be reopened.
others in struggling against drug companies, still others against new math teach-
As to the two controverial pieces of work going on in the Cavendish and in West-
ing; some cognitive scientists study young children in experimental settings while
borough, they are laid open for us by the scientists at work. The impossible task of
others are interested in adult daily reasoning; even among sociologists of sci-
opening the black box is made feasible (if not easy) by moving in time and space
ence, some focus on micro-studies of science while others tackle large-scale en-
until one finds the controversial topic on which scientists and engineers are busy
gineering projects; historians of technology are often aligned along the technical
at work. This is the first decision we have to make: our entry into science and
specialities of the engineers, some studying aircraft industries while others prefer
technology will be through the back door of science in the making, not through the
telecommunications or the development of steam engines; as to the anthropolo-
more grandiose entrance of ready made science.
gists studying ‘savage’ reasoning, very few get to deal with modern knowledge.
Now that the way in has been decided upon, with what sort of prior
This scattering of disciplines and objects would not be a problem if it was the
knowledge should one be equipped before entering science and technology?
hallmark of a necessary and fecund specialisation, growing from a core of com-
In John Whittaker’s office the double helix model and the computer are clearly
mon problems and methods. This is however far from the case. The sciences and
distinct from the rest of his worries. They do not interfere with his psychological
the technologies to be studied are the main factors in determining this haphazard
mood, the financial problems of the Institute, the big grants for which his boss has
growth of interests and methods. I have never met two people who could agree
applied, or with the political struggle they are all engaged in to create in France
20
5
a big data bank for molecular biologists. They are just sitting there in the back-
speaking character another character to whom it is speaking; then we place all of
ground, their scientific or technical contents neatly distinct from the mess that
them in a specific situation, somewhere in time and space, surrounded by equip-
John is immersed in. If he wishes to know something about the DNA structure or
ment, machines, colleagues; then when the controversy heats up a bit we look at
about the Eclipse, John opens Molecular Biology of the Gene or the User’s Manu-
where the disputing people go and what sort of new elements they fetch, recruit or
al, books that he can take off the shelf. However, if we go back to Westborough or
seduce in order to convince their colleagues; then, we see how the people being
to Cambridge this clean distinction between a context and a content disappears.
convinced stop discussing with one another; situations, localisations, even people start being slowly erased; on the last picture we see a new sentence, without any
Scene 4: Tom West sneaks into the basement of a building where a friend lets him
quotation marks, written in a text book similar to the one we started with in the
in at night to look at a VAX computer. West starts pulling out the printed circuits
first picture. This is the general movement of what we will study over and over
boards and analyses his competitor. Even his first analysis merges technical and
again in the course of this book, penetrating science from the outside, following
quick economic calculations with the strategic decisions already taken. After a few
controversies and accompanying scientists up to the end, being slowly led out of
hours, he is reassured.
science in the making.
‘I’d been living in fear of VAX for a year,’ West said afterward. (...) ‘I think
In spite of the rich, confusing, ambiguous and fascinating picture that
I got a high when I looked at it and saw how complex and expensive it was. It
is thus revealed, surprisingly few people have penetrated from the outside the
made me feel good about some of the decisions we’ve made’.
inner workings of science and technology, and then got out of it to explain to the
Then his evaluation becomes still more complex, including social, stylistic and
outsider how it all works. For sure, many young people have entered science,
organisational features:
but they have become scientists and engineers; what they have done is visible
Looking into the VAX, West had imagined he saw a diagram of DEC’s
in the machines we use, the textbooks we learn, the pills we take, the landscape
corporate organization. He felt that VAX was too complicated. He did not like, for
we look at, the blinking satellites in the night sky above our head. How they did it,
instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with
we don’t know. Some scientists talk about science, its ways and means, but few
each other, for his taste, there was too much protocol involved. He decided that
of them accept the discipline of becoming also an outsider; what they say about
VAX embodied flaws in DEC’s corporate organization. The machine expressed
their trade is hard to double check in the absence of independent scrutiny. Other
that phenomenally successful company’s cautious, bureaucratic style. Was this
people talk about science, its solidity, its foundation, its development or its dan-
true? West said it did not matter, it was a useful theory. Then he rephrased his
gers; unfortunately, almost none of them are interested in science in the making.
opinions. ‘With VAX, DEC was trying to minimize the risk’, he said, as he swerved
They shy away from the disorderly mixture revealed by science in action and pre-
around another car. Grinning, he went on: ‘We’re trying to maximize the win, and
fer the orderly pattern of scientific method and rationality. Defending science and
make Eagle go as fast as a raped ape.’
reason against pseudo-sciences, against fraud, against irrationality, keeps most (Kidder: 1981, p.36)
of these people too busy to study it. As to the millions, or billions, of outsiders, they know about science and technology through popularisation only. The facts
This heterogeneous evaluation of his competitor is not a marginal moment in the
and the artefacts they produce fall on their head like an external fate as foreign,
story; it is the crucial episode when West decides that in spite of a two-year delay,
as inhuman, as unpredictable as the olden Fatum of the Romans.
the opposition of the North Carolina group, the failure of the EGO project, they
Apart from those who make science, who study it, who defend it or who
can still make the Eagle work. ‘Organisation’, ‘taste’, ‘protocol’, ‘bureaucracy’,
submit to it, there exist, fortunately, a few people, either trained as scientists or
‘minimisation of risks’, are not common technical words to describe a chip. This
not, who open the black boxes so that outsiders may have a glimpse at it. They
6
19
is true, however, only once the chip is a black box sold to consumers. When it is submitted to a competitor’s trial, like the one West does, all these bizarre words become part and parcel of the technical evaluation. Context and contents merge. Scene 5: Jim Watson and Francis Crick get a copy of the paper unveiling the structure of DNA written by Linus Pauling and brought to them by his son: Peter’s face betrayed something important as he entered the door, and my stomach sank in apprehension at learning that all was lost. Seeing that neither Francis nor I could bear any further suspense, he quickly told us that the model was a three-chain helix with the sugar phosphate backbone in the center. This sounded so suspiciously like our aborted effort of last year that immediately I wondered whether we might already have had the credit and glory of a great discovery if Bragg had not held us back. (Watson: 1968, p.102) Was it Bragg who made them miss a major discovery, or was it Linus who missed a good opportunity for keeping his mouth shut? Francis and Jim hurriedly try out the paper and look to see if the sugar phosphate backbone is solid enough to hold the structure together. To their amazement, the three chains described by Pauling had no hydrogen atoms to tie the three strands together. Without them, if they knew their chemistry, the structure will immediately fly apart. Yet somehow Linus, unquestionably the world’s most astute chemist, had come to the opposite conclusion. When Francis was amazed equally by Pauling’s unorthodox chemistry, I began to breathe slower. By then I knew we were still in the game. Neither of us, however, had the slightest clue to the steps that had led Linus to his blunder. If a student had made a similar mistake, he would be thought unfit to benefit from Cal Tech’s chemistry faculty. Thus, we could not but initially worry whether Linus’s model followed from a revolutionary reevaluation of the acid-based properties of very large molecules. The tone of the manuscript, however, argued against any such advance in chemical theory. (Idem: p.103) To decide whether they are still in the game Watson and Crick have to evaluate simultaneously Linus Pauling’s reputation, common chemistry, the tone of the 18
7
paper, the level of Cal Tech’s students; they have to decide if a revolution is under
was a three-strand helix; Wilkins ignored the keto forms revealed by Jerry Dono-
way, in which case they have been beaten off, or if an enormous blunder has
hue; Chargaff s laws were an insignificant fact they kept in the background for
been committed, in which case they have to rush still faster because Pauling will
a long time; as to the metal atom toys, they have lent strong support to count-
not be long in picking it up:
less models that turned out to be wrong. All these allies appear strong once the
When his mistake became known, Linus would not stop until he had
structure is blackboxed. As long as it is not, Jim and Francis are still struggling to
captured the right structure. Now our immediate hope was that his chemical col-
recruit them, modifying the DNA structure until everyone is satisfied. When they
leagues would be more than ever awed by his intellect and not probe the details of
are through, they will follow the advice of Janus’s right side. As long as they are
his model. But since the manuscript had already been dispatched to the Proceed-
still searching for the right DNA shape, they would be better off following the right
ings of the National Academy, by mid-March at the latest Linus’s paper would be
side’s confusing advices.
spread around the world. Then it would be only a matter of days before the error
We could review all the opinions offered to explain why an open con-
would be discovered. We had anywhere up to six weeks before Linus again was
troversy closes, but we will always stumble on a new controversy dealing with
in full-time pursuit of DNA.
how and why it closed. We will have to learn to live with two contradictory voices (idem: p.104)
talking at once, one about science in the making, the other about ready made science. The latter produces sentences like ‘just do this... just do that...’; the former
‘Suspense’, ‘game’, ‘tone’, ‘delay of publication’, ‘awe’, ‘six weeks delay’ are not
says ‘enough is never enough’. The left side considers that facts and machines
common words for describing a molecule structure. This is the case at least once
are well determined enough. The right side considers that facts and machines in
the structure is known and learned by every student. However, as long as the
the making are always under-determined. Some little thing is always missing to
structure is submitted to a competitor’s probing, these queer words are part and
close the black box once and for all. Until the last minute Eagle can fail if West is
parcel of the very chemical structure under investigation. Here again context and
not careful enough to keep the Software people interested, to maintain the pres-
content fuse together.
sure on the debugging crew, to advertise the machine to the marketing depart-
The equipment necessary to travel through science and technology is at
ment.
once light and multiple. Multiple because it means mixing hydrogen bonds with
(3) The first rule method
deadlines, the probing of one another’s authority with money, debugging and bureaucratic style; but the equipment is also light because it means simply leaving aside all the prejudices about what distinguishes the context in which knowledge
We will enter facts and machines while they are in the making; we will
is embedded and this knowledge itself. At the entrance of Dante’s Inferno is writ-
carry with us no preconceptions of what constitutes knowledge; we will watch the
ten:
closure of the black boxes and be careful to distinguish between two contradicABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
tory explanations of this closure, one uttered when it is finished, the other while it is being attempted. This will constitute our first rule of method and will make our
At the onset of this voyage should be written: ABANDON KNOWLEDGE ABOUT KNOWLEDGE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
voyage possible. To sketch the general shape of this book, it is best to picture the following comic strip: we start with a textbook sentence which is devoid of any trace of fabrication, construction or ownership; we then put it in quotation marks, surround
Learning to use the double helix and Eagle in 1985 to write programs reveals 8
it with a bubble, place it in the mouth of someone who speaks; then we add to this 17
think they are right, they could still be deluding themselves. What will Bragg and
none of the bizarre mixture they are composed of; studying these in 1952 or in
all the other crystallographers say? What objections will Maurice Wilkins and Ro-
1980 reveals it all. On the two black boxes sitting in Whittaker’s office it is in-
salind Franklin, the only ones with X-rays pictures of the DNA, have? Will they
scribed, as on Pandora’s box: DANGER: DO NOT OPEN. From the two tasks at
see the model as the only form able to give, by projection, the shape visible on
hand in the Cavendish and in Data General Headquarters, passions, deadlines,
Rosalind’s photographs? They’d like to know fast but dread the danger of the
decisions escape in all directions from a box that lies open. Pandora, the mythical
final showdown with people who, several times already, have ruined their efforts.
android sent by Zeus to Prometheus, is the second character after Janus to greet
Besides, another ally is missing to set up the trial, a humble ally for sure but nec-
us at the beginning of our trip. (We might need more than one blessing from more
essary all the same: ‘That night, however, we could not firmly establish the double
than one of the antique gods if we want to reach our destination safely.)
helix. Until the metal bases were on hand, any model building would be too sloppy
(2) When enough is never enough
to be convincing’ (idem: p. 127). Even with Chargaff laws, with biological significance, with Donohue’s approval, with their excitement, with the base pairing all on their side, the helix is still sloppy. Metal is necessary to reinforce the structure
Science has two faces: one that knows, the other that does not know
long enough to withstand the trials that the competitors/colleagues are going to
yet. We will choose the more ignorant. Insiders, and outsiders as well, have lots
impose on it.
of ideas about the ingredients necessary for science in the making. We will have
The remainder of the double helix story looks like the final rounds of a
as few ideas as possible on what constitutes science. But how are we going to ac-
presidential nomination. Every one of the other contenders is introduced into the
count for the closing of the boxes, because they do, after all, close up? The shape
office where the model is now set up, fights with it for a while before being quickly
of the double helix is settled in John’s office in 1985; so is that of the Eclipse
overwhelmed and then pledging complete support to it. Bragg is convinced al-
MV/8000 computer. How did they move from the Cavendish in 1952 or from West-
though still worried that no one more serious than Jim and Francis had checked
borough, Massachusetts, to Paris 1985? It is all very well to choose controversies
the helix. Now for the big game, the encounter between the model and those who
as a way in, but we need to follow also the closure of these controversies. Here
for years had captured its projected image. ‘Maurice needed but a minute’s look
we have to get used to a strange acoustic phenomenon. The two faces of Janus
at the model to like it.’ ‘He was back in London only two days before he rang up
talk at once and they say entirely different things that we should not confuse.
to say that both he and Rosy found that their X-ray data strongly supported the
Janus’first dictum:
double helix’ (p. 131). Soon Pauling rallies himself to the structure, then it is the turn of the referees of Nature. ‘Of course,’ says the left side of Janus, ‘everyone is convinced because Jim and Francis stumbled on the right structure. The DNA shape itself is enough to rally everyone.’ ‘No, says the right side, every time someone else is convinced it progressively becomes a more right structure.’ Enough is never enough: years later in India and New Zealand other researchers were working on a socalled ‘warped zipper’3 model that did everything the double helix does-plus a bit more; Pauling strongly supported his own structure that had turned out to be entirely wrong; Jim found biological significance in a like-with-like structure that survived only a few hours; Rosalind Franklin had been stubbornly convinced earlier that it 16
9
Scene 6: Jim copies from various textbooks the forms of the base pairs that make
pairs, now in the keto form suggested by Jerry Donohue. To his amazement he
up DNA, and plays with them trying to see if a symmetry can be seen when pairing
realizes diat the shape drawn by pairing adenine with thymine and guanine with
them. To his amazement adenine coupled with adenine, cytosine with cytosine,
cytosine are superimposable. The steps of the double helix have the same shape.
guanine with guanine and thymine with thymine make very nice superimposable
Contrary to his earlier model, the structure might be complementary instead of
forms. To be sure this symmetry renders the sugar phosphate backbone strangely
being like-withlike. He hesitates a while, because he sees no reason at first for
misshapen but this is not enough to stop Jim’s pulse racing or to stop him writing
this complementarity. Then he remembers what was called ‘Chargaff laws’, one of
a triumphant letter to his boss.
these many empirical facts they had kept in the background. These ‘laws* stated
I no sooner got to the office and began explaining my scheme than the
that there was always as much adenine as thymine and as much guanine as cyto-
American crystallographer Jerry Donohue protested that the idea would not work.
sine, no matter which DNA one chose to analyse. This isolated fact, devoid of any
The tautomeric forms I had copied out of Davidson’s book were, in Jerry’s opin-
meaning in his earlier like-with-like model, suddenly brings a new strength to his
ion, incorrectly assigned. My immediate retort that several other texts also pic-
emerging new model. Not only are the pairs superimposable, but Chargaff laws
tured guanine and thymine in the enol form cut no ice with Jerry. Happily he let out
can be made a consequence of his model. Another feature came to strengthen
that for years organic chemists had been arbitrarily favoring particular tautomeric
the model: it suggests a way for a gene to split into two parts and then for each
forms over their alternatives on only the flimsiest of grounds. ( . . . ) Though my
strand to create an exact complementary copy of itself. One helix could give birth
immediate reaction was to hope that Jerry was blowing hot air, I did not dismiss
to two identical helices. Thus biological meaning could support the model.
his criticism. Next to Linus himself, Jerry knew more about hydrogen bonds than
Janus’s fourth dictum:
anyone in the world. Since for many years he had worked at Cal Tech on the crystal structures of small organic molecules, I couldn’t kid myself that he did not grasp our problem. During the six months that he occupied a desk in our office, I had never heard him shooting off his mouth on subjects about which he knew nothing. Thoroughly worried, I went back to my desk hoping that some gimmick might emerge to salvage the like-with-like idea. (Watson: 1968, pp. 121-1) Jim had got the facts straight out of textbooks which, unanimously, provided him with a nice black box: the enol form. In this case, however, this is the very fact that should be dismissed or put into question. Or at least this is what
Still Jim’s cardboard model could be destroyed in spite of these three
Donohue says. But whom should Jim believe? The unanimous opinion of organic
advantages. Maybe Donohue will burn it to ashes as he did the attempt a few
chemists or this chemist’s opinion? Jim, who tries to salvage his model, switches
days earlier. So Jim called him to check if he had any objection. ‘When he said
from one rule of method, ‘get the facts straight’, to other more strategic ones,
no, my morale skyrocketed’ (Watson: 1968, p. 124). Then it is Francis who rushes
‘look for a weak point’, ‘choose who to believe’. Donohue studied with Pauling, he
into the lab and ‘pushes the bases together in a number of ways’. The model, this
worked on small molecules, in six months he never said absurd things. Discipline,
time, resists Francis’s scepticism. There are now many decisive elements tied
affiliation, curriculum vitae, psychological appraisal are mixed together by Jim
together with and by the new structure.
to reach a decision. Better sacrifice them and the nice like-with-like model, than 10
Still, all the convinced people are in the same office and although they 15
the team is suffering a postpartum depression, and that the machine is not yet
Donohue’s criticism. The fact, no matter how ‘straight’, has to be dismissed.
debugged. ‘Our credibility, I think, is running out,’ West tells his assistants. Eagle
The unforeseen dividend of having Jerry share an office with Francis,
still does not run more than a few seconds without flashing error messages on
Peter, and me, though obvious to all, was not spoken about. If he had not been
the screen. Every time they painstakingly pinpoint the bug, they fix it and then try
with us in Cambridge, I might still have been pumping out for a like-with-like struc-
a new and more difficult debugging program.
ture. Maurice, in a lab devoid of structural chemists, did not have anyone to tell
Eagle was failing its Multiprogramming Reliability Test mysteriously. It was blowing away, crashing, going out to never-never land, and falling off the end
him that all the textbook pictures were wrong. But for Jerry, only Pauling would have been likely to make the right choice and stick by its consequences. (idem: p.132)
of the world after every four hours or so of smooth running. ‘Machines somewhere in the agony of the last few bugs are very vulnerable,’ says Alsing. ‘The shouting starts about it. It’ll never work, and so on. Manag-
The advice of Janus’ left side is easy to follow when things are settled,
ers and support groups start saying this. Hangers-on say, “Gee, I thought you’d
but not as long as things remain unsettled. What is on the left side, universal
get it done a lot sooner.” That’s when people start talking about redesigning the
well-known facts of chemistry, becomes, from the right side point of view, scarce
whole thing.’
pronouncements uttered by two people in the whole world. They have a quality
Alsing added, ‘Watch out for Tom now.’
that crucially depends on localisation, on chance, on appraising simultaneously
West sat in his office. ‘I’m thinking of throwing the kids out of the lab and
the worth of the people and of what they say.
going in there with Rasala and fix it. It’s true. I don’t understand all the details of
Janus’s second dictum:
that sucker, but I will, and I’ll get it to work.’ ‘Gimme a few more days,’ said Rasala. (idem: p.231) A few weeks later, after Eagle has successfully run a computer game called Adventure, the whole team felt they had reached one approximate end: ‘It’s a computer,’ Rasala said (idem: p. 233). On Monday 8 October, a maintenance crew comes to wheel down the hall what was quickly becoming a black box. Why has it become such? Because it is a good machine, says the left side of our Janus friend. But it was not a good machine before it worked. Thus while it is being made it cannot convince anyone because of its good working order. It is only after endless little bugs have been taken out, each bug being revealed by a new trial imposed by a new interested group, that the machine will eventually and progressively be made to work. All the reasons for why it will work once it is finished do not help the engineers while they are making it. Scene 9: How does the double helix story end? In a series of trials imposed on the new model by each of the successive people Jim Watson and Francis Crick have worked with (or against). Jim is playing with cardboard models of the base 14
Scene 7: West and his main collaborator, Alsing, are discussing how to tackle the debugging program: ‘I want to build a simulator, Tom.’ ‘It’ll take too long, Alsing. The machine’ll be debugged before you get your simulator debugged.’ This time, Alsing insisted. They could not build Eagle in anything like a year if they had to debug all the microcode on prototypes. If they went that way, 11
moreover, they’d need to have at least one and probably two extra prototypes
pany on behalf of Eagle. Acting as a middle-man he has filtered the constraints
right from the start, and that would mean a doubling of the boring, grueling work
imposed on the future machine by de Castro (the Big Boss), the marketing depart-
of updating boards. Alsing wanted a program that would behave like a perfected
ment, the other research group in North Carolina, the other machines presented
Eagle, so that they could debug their microcode separately from the hardware.
in computer fairs, and so on. He was also the one who kept negotiating the dead-
West said: ‘Go ahead. But I betchya it’ll all be over by the time you get it
lines that were never met. But there comes a point when all the other departments he has lobbied so intensely want to see something, and call his bluff. The situation
done.’ (Kidder: 1981, p.146)
becomes especially tricky when it is clear at last that the North Carolina group will not deliver a machine, that DEC is selling VAX like hot cakes and that all the
The right side’s advice is strictly followed by the two men since they
customers want a supermini 32-bit fully compatible machine from Data General.
want to build the best possible computer. This however does not prevent a new
At this point West has to break the protective shell he has built around his team.
controversy starting between the two men on how to mimic in advance an efficient
To be sure, he designed the machine so as to fit it in with the other departments’
machine. If Alsing cannot convince one of his team members, Peck, to finish in six
interests, but he is still uncertain of their reaction and of that of his team suddenly
weeks the simulator that should have taken a year and a half, then West will be
bereft of the machine.
right: the simulator is not an efficient way to proceed because it will come too late.
As the summer came on, increasing numbers of intruders were being
But if Alsing and Peck succeed, then it is West’s definition of efficiency which will
led into the lab - diagnostic programmers and, particularly, those programmers
turn out to be wrong. Efficiency will be the consequence of who succeeds; it does
from Software. Some Hardy Boys had grown fond of the prototypes of Eagle,
not help deciding, on the spot, who is right and wrong. The right side’s advice is
as you might of a pet or a plant you’ve raised from a seedling. Now Rasala was
all very well once Eagle is sent to manufacturing; before that, it is the left side’s
telling them that they couldn’t work on their machines at certain hours, because
confusing strategic advice that should be followed.
Software needed to use them. There was an explanation: the project was at a
Janus’s third dictum:
precarious stage; if Software didn’t get to know and like the hardware and did not speak enthusiastically about it, the project might be ruined; the Hardy Boys were lucky that Software wanted to use the prototypes-and they had to keep Software happy. (idem: p.201) Not only the Software people have to be kept happy, but also the manufacturing people, those from marketing, those who write the technical documentation, the designers who have to place the whole machine in a nice looking box (not a black one this time!), not mentioning the stockholders and the customers. Although the machine has been conceived by West, through many compromises,
Scene 8: West has insulated his team for two years from the rest of the company. ‘Some of the kids,’ he says, ‘don’t have a notion that there’s a company behind all of this. It could be the CIA funding this. It could be a psychological test’ (Kidder: 1982, p. 200). During this time, however, West has constantly lobbied the com12
to keep all these people happy and busy, he cannot be sure it is going to hold them together. Each of the interest groups has to try their own different sort of tests on the machine and see how it withstands them. The worst, for Tom West, is that the company manufacturing the new PAL chips is going bankrupt, that 13
15. Drawn by Joseph MacDonald. 16, 17. Ren6 Thom, Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975). 18, 19. Conrad H. Waddington, Strategy of the Genes (New York: Macmillan, 1957).
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
udd
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05 Landscapes of Change: Boccioni’s “Stati d’animo” as a General Theory of Models. SANDFORD KWINTER The MIT Press. Assemblage, No. 19 (Dec., 1992), pp. 50-65
24
Umberto Boccioni, study after Quelli che partono. 1912.
1
Matter, according to Henri Bergson, is made up of “modifications, per-
ability into the system. Indeed, Maxwell claimed that no event ever occured twice.
The forms of life
Poincare added to this a mathematical proof demonstrating that even impossible
differ from this only in their greater complexity of organization and their capacity
events must recur infinitely. Classical quantitative methods had simply reached
to over-come torpor,
turbations, changes of tension or of energy and nothing else”.
(1)
for both are immersed within the same universal stream
a dead end in their attempt to provide a rigorous description of events unfolding
of duration and constitute not different entities, but rather different modalities, of
over time. These historical developments cleared the way for the return of ge-
a single élan vital. Yet even as Bergson wrote, life was no longer so surely, nor
ometry (qualitative methods) as a mode of explanation. See “Does the Progress
by so great a magnitude, the most complex nor the most autonomous entity in
of Physical Science Tend to Give any Advantage to the Opinion of Necessity (or
the universe. For during the same years, the mathematician Henri Poincaré was
Determinism) over that of Events and the Freedom of the Will?” in L. Campbell
discovering, to his own horror, that the mechanics of just three moving bodies
and W. Garret, The Life of James Clerk Max-well (London: Macmillan, 1882), and
bound by a single relation - gravity - and interacting in a single isolated system
Poincare, Methodes nouvelles, vol. 1.
produced behavior so complex that no differential equation, neither known nor
25. This does, however, seem to be the way Thom seeks to understand it. An al-
possible, could ever describe it.(3) Poincaré’s discovery showed that evolving sys-
ternate, and perhaps richer, general model may be derived from the “enactionist”
tems with even very few parameters may quickly be deprived of their deterministic
theories of U. Maturana and F. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization
veneers and begin to behave in a seemingly independent (random) fashion. What
of the Living (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980).
this meant was that it was no longer possible to show that one state of nature
26. The term chreod is Waddington’s coinage, from the Greek khre “necessary” or
followed another by necessity rather than by utter caprice. Time, in other words,
“determined” and hodos “route” or “pathway.”
(2)
reappeared in the world as something real, as a destabilizing but creative milieu; it was seen to suffuse everything, to bear each thing along, generating it and de-
Figure Credits:
generating it in the process. Soon there was no escaping the fact that transformation and novelty were the irreducible qualities that any theory of form would need to confront. (4) It was no wonder that futurism - the social movement most deeply sen-
1. The Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Italian Futurist Painting, Drawing, Collage, and Free-Word Po-etry, ed. Anne Coffin Hanson (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1983).
sitized to cataclysmic perturbations- was obsessed with complexes: delirious, in-
2, 8, 12. Private collection, New York City.
fernal, and promiscuous. For the very ethics and physics of the futurist program,
3, 10. S. Chandrasekhar, Principles of Stellar Dynamics (New York: Dover, 1960).
conceived as an open, far-from-equilibrium system, responsive to and willing to
4, 13. W. H. Bascom, Waves and Beaches (New York: Doubleday, 1974)
amplify every destabilizing fluctuation in the environment, necessitated its mul-
5, 6. I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance (Paris: Gallimard, 1979).
tiple impregnation both in and by the social, material, and affective systems that
Redrawn by Joseph MacDonald.
surrounded it. The futurist universe -the first aesthetic system to break almost
7. Dr. Elena Budrene, Harvard University.
entirely with the classical one- could properly be understood only in the language
9. E. Sherbon Hills, Elements of Structural Geology (New York: Methuen, 1963).
of waves, fields, and fronts. The type of movements it was obsessed by were
11. Alan Garfinkel, “The Slime Mold Dictyostelium as a Model of Self-Organization
those that carved shapes in time not space; it studied the stabilities achieved
in Social Systems,” in Self-Organizing Systems, ed. Eugene Yates (New York:
through homeostatic knots of force in perpetual strife, it embraced the beauty and
Plenum Press, 1987). Redrawn by Joseph MacDonald.
evanescence of becoming.
14. G. Birkhoff and E. H. Zaran-tonello, lets, Wakes and Cavities (New York: Aca-
Yet futurism’s profoundest gift to our century was its seemingly hubristic 2
demic Press, 1957). 23
with here. I have developed some aspects of enfoldedness and virtuality in my
attempt to link the biosphere and the mechanosphere within a single dynamical
“Drawing as Eros and Memory,” Steel Notes (National Gallery of Canada, 1988)
system.
and will treat the problem of “virtuality” in depth in a forthcoming study of formal-
Umberto Boccioni’s three-painting series Stati d’animo belongs to this
ism.
project and as such comprises the first purely modal paintings in the history of
21. We owe to D’Arcy Thompson the original insight that genetic program can
art since the late medieval period.(5) The spatiotemporal locus of the train station
contribute nothing more than internal constraints on the evolution of a system or
scene is here splintered and kaleidoscoped into so much elementary matter, but
form, that much still depends on what accidental (exogenous) forces are deployed
only the better to be redeployed intensively, like sounds in a musical continuum or
with it to actualize or unfold the individual. See D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and
topological flows on a two-dimensional plane - scattered, accelerated, accreted,
Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). See also idem, “On the
collided into three entirely distinct surfaces, or developmental fields. One scene,
Shapes of Eggs and the Causes Which Determine Them,” Nature 78 (1908): 111.
but three modalities of inhabiting matter. As prime exemplars of modal complex-
In this same vein, Thom himself has gone as far as to pronounce his own work to
ity, it was natural that railroad stations should play a privileged role in futurist
be a type of “neo-Lamarckism.” See Thom, Structural Stability and Morphogen-
practice; they were the first literal, complex systems of material flows manifested
esis, 205, 281, 293, and idem, Paraboles et catastrophes, 44-45.
at a phenomenal scale whose associated forms could be apprehended as such,
22. For Thom, however, the elementary catastrophes are, on the contrary, pre-
understood and actively engaged. The dynamical and morphological phenomena
given Platonic forms that somehow determine all morphogenesis in the universe,
associated with this type of multiple convergence of flows have already been de-
from the breaking of waves in the ocean (hyperbolic umbilic) to the forma-tion of
veloped in relation to this work.(6) But the middle panel in the Stati d’animo series,
fingers on the hand (elliptical umbilic). But this formulation seems naive and in-
Quelli che partono, seems to belong to an opposite but related problem, and one
commensurate with Thom’s other, generally more nuanced positions. Preferable
that deserves serious attention. Quelli che partono no longer describes a conver-
here is Waddington’s notion of “homeorhesis,” which describes the principle by
gence of flows but rather the event of their breaking up, or bifurcation.
which inexact morphogenetic trajectories, or moving templates, guide the evolu-
What does it mean, then, when something stable and continuous ceases
tion of forms. Waddington’s equations describing nonlinearity in embryonic de-
to be so? What does it mean when the unfolding of a dynamical process suddenly
velopment are among the clearest and most accessible to the lay reader. See
shifts into a new mode, when an ensemble of units and forces breaks up to form
Conrad H. Waddington, The Strategy of the Genes (New York: Macmillan, 1957),
two or more independent, more highly organized systems? The painting Quelli
16-22.
che partono wedges its own diagonal cascades and chevron forms between its
23. Clearly, the present study does not even attempt to exhaust the immense and
two neighbor panels: on one side, the undulating, orbicular, systolic-diastolic pro-
peculiar morphodynamic power of the fold. It describes only its exfoliative proper-
cesses of organicism and embrace depicted in Gli addii, and, on the other, the
ties, leaving to one side entirely its involutionary dynamics, such as those found
inertial, gravity-subjugated, vertical striations of Quelli che restano. The fullness
in the infinite but bounded morphology of the chaotic attractor and the stretch/fold
and roundness of the first work is not simply one field of shapes among three, but
dynamics of mixing.
rather the very plenitude from which the other two are derived. Between the first
24. Between James Clerk Maxwell and Poincare (and omitting for the moment
panel and the other two, there has taken place a catastrophe.
Boltzmann’s important contribution) the whole determinacy problem became one
But before we can understand what this means it will be necessary to
of the great watersheds of late-nineteenth-century epistemology. For Maxwell,
understand precisely what a form is, how it arrives, and why the “form problem”
the impossibility of achieving absolute exactitude in the description of physical
has been so difficult to handle. Most classical theories of form are limited by a
systems would always give instabilities the upper hand and introduce unpredict-
major shortcoming: they are unable to account for the emergence, or genesis, of
22
3
forms without recourse to metaphysical models. One of these classical theories-
genesis. The chapter that develops the dynamical theory of genital “chreods” car-
perhaps the paradigmatic one - is the so- called hylomorphic model. According
ries the epigraph “And the word was made flesh” from the Gospels according to
to this model an independently constituted and fixed form is understood to be
Saint John. Because there has been an almost systematic mistreatment of these
combined or impressed with a certain quantity of hylé, or matter, itself conceived
and related ideas within architectural circles it is perhaps appropriate to register
as a fundamentally inert, homogeneous substance. Once brought together, these
the following caveat: French catastrophe theory -that of Thom and certain of his
two abstract elements are said to form a thing. Yet, as we will see, a form can no
American followers - is different, and to my mind far richer, than the apparently
more be fixed and given in advance (in what space would this work of forming
more accessible, and well-publicized, catastrophe theory of the English School
be done?) than can “matter” seriously be considered to be either static or ho-
that of Christopher Zeeman and others at the University of Warwick and else-
mogeneous. Much of this perennial misunderstanding found itself recapitulated
where. The former is primarily a philosophical, theoretical enterprise, indeed, an
throughout our modern scientific tradition because it lent itself well to reduction-
“art of models” applicable to natural phenomena in general through an intuitive
ism and controlled quantitative modeling. Reductionism is the method by which
and descriptive geo-metrical-mathematical method. The latter, however, often
one reduces complex phenomena to simpler isolated systems that can be fully
called “applied” catastrophe theory, has recourse, all too often, to simplistic and
controlled and understood. Quantitative methods, on the other hand, are related
insufficiently conceptualized models; it is far more obsessed with predictive ac-
to reductionism, but they are more fundamental, because they dictate how far
curacy and quantitative verification, criteria that arguably are partly inappropriate
reductionism must go. According to them, reductionism must reduce phenomena
and partly premature though perhaps necessary for the evangelism with which
to the ideal scale at which no more qualities exist within a system, until what is left
they disseminate the theory in popular and scientific circles. English catastro-
are only quantities, or quantitative relations. This is, for example, the basis of the
phe theory has, as a result, often overstated its case and suffered many sterile
Cartesian grid system that underlies most modern models of form.(8)
ventures and withering criticisms, while the importance and suggestiveness of
(7)
The classical grid system does not, strictly speaking, limit one to static
Thom’s work continues to increase exponentially.
models of form, but it does limit one to linear models of movement or change.
17. Trajectories in state or phase space are developmental or evolutionary path-
A linear model is one in which the state of a system at a given moment can be
ways that describe the transformative action of time on a system; they are no
expressed in the very same terms (number and relation of parameters) as any
longer simply “forms in space” in the classical (reductionist, metaphysical) sense.
of its earlier or later states. The differential calculus of Newton is precisely such
In this respect, the “history” of a system takes on an importance unprecedented
a model describing flows on the plane (differential equations are mechanisms
in scientific method.
that generate sets of continuous numerical values that, when fed into Euclidean
18. Clearly real objects are constituted in n-dimensional parameter space and
space, appear as linear movement). But if the standard calculus can successfully
inhabit folds so complex that their modality factor may be represented as n-1. For
model the evolution of successive states of a system, it can do so only insofar as
an explanation of this relation, see the ensuing discussion.
it plots the movements of a body within that system, and never the changes or
19. Evocation is another word of-ten used here (as in biochemical evocators dur-
transformations that the system itself undergoes. Indeed, not only the system but
ing embryological development) to describe the simultaneous emergence at cer-
also the body that moves through it is condemned to perpetual self-identity: for
tain critical moments within a morphogenetic field of not one, but a variety of new
it, too, can change only in degree (quantity) and never in kind (quality).(9) Further,
regimes. See Thom, Structural Stability and Morphogen-esis, 31-34, 95-96; idem,
these types of smooth continuous changes are not true changes at all, at least
Modeles mathematiques de la morphogenese (Paris: Bourgois, 1981), chap. 3;
not in the deep qualitative sense that we would need to explain the genesis or
and idem, Paraboles et catastrophes (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), 27-28.
appearance of a form.
20. This extremely interesting and complex aspect of dynamics cannot be dealt
4
21
singularities of materials in general, and water in particular (the hydraulic cultures of the Middle Ages, the fundamental role of steam pressure in nineteenth-century industrialism, etc.)? The question is always: Which singularities have crossed the defining threshold of human technics and which have not? 12. The terms system and space had become indistinguishable, I would argue, already in the work of Ludwig Boltzmann, who in the 1870s in-vented an entirely new type of space known as “phase space.” Phase space is a multidimensional space whose coordinates no longer represent “places” but rather (possible) states of a system. The coordinates represent independent variables that characterize a real system at any given moment, such as its temperature, pressure, speed, direction, and all the possible combinations of these. As a given system evolves through time, it carves out a precise figure in phase space, forming, as it were, its behavior portrait. It is this dynamical, virtual form, unavailable either to brute perception or algebraic or classical Euclidean expression, that is the propos of the present article. 13. Potential theory is in many ways the precursor of phase space and represents a crucial episode in the dynamicization of the classical coordinate grid. J.-L. Lagrange reformulated dynamics in the late eighteenth century when he introduced the theory of the conservation of energy. Each point on the grid came to represent a certain amount of available energy, or potential to change or move to another state. A few decades later William Rowan Hamilton added momentum coordinates (velocity times mass) to Lagrange’s potential coordinates, allowing one to plot the system’s total energy as a single quantity on the Cartesian plane. Seen in retrospect, it was but a short further step to the nineteenth century’s probability theory and Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics. 14. Sometimes quantum, atomic, or molecular level phenomena manifest themselves globally as in laser-phase locking, Benard convection patterns, or percolation transitions. At the biological level dictyostelium amoebas, termite larvae, and neural networks are three very commonly studied examples of spontaneously self-organizing systems. 15. M. V. Berry, “Regular and Irregular Motion,” in Topics in Non- Linear Dynamics, ed. Siebe Jorna (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1978), 16-120. 16. See Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, chaps. 9-11, for Rene Thom’s exhilirating but exceedingly bizarre demonstrations of the mathematics of organo20
5
to the time of Duccio. Futurism’s return to the modal, that is, to a space emphasizing both movement and “mosaic” qualities, does cubism one better by incorporating real, as opposed to derived or abstract, time into the modern work. 6. See my “La Citta Nuova: Modernity and Continuity,” in ZONE 1-2, The Contemporary City, ed. Michel Feher and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone Books, 1986). 7. An important systematic critique of hylomorphism can be found in Gilbert Simondon, L’lndividu et sa genese physico-biologique (Paris: PUF, 1964). See also Joseph Need-ham, “Matter, Form, Evolution and Us,” This Changing World 6 (1944). 8. The grid system, just like the so-called Western metaphysics upon which it is based, can be neither subverted nor deconstructed from within, despite the claims of practitioners who imagine they have introduced their own little cracks into it. The only “weak forms” that we know of are those weak forms of thought that, unable to resingularize a homogenous, quantitative space, console themselves by attacking it resentfully. Far more interesting is the dishomogenizing act of mathematician Rene Thom, who sees in even the hyperrational, quasi-featureless Cartesian planet he appearance of irreducible morphological qualities: in the case at hand, a so-called capture chreod in a predation loop (a point being swallowed by the x and y axes as they scissor around it). See Rene Thom, Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 314- 15. 9. I am following Bergson’s distinction between qualitative, intensive multiplicities and quantitative, extensive ones. The former are defined as those that cannot be divided without changing in nature. This is because they possess creative inhomogeneities - their intensive nature follows from the fact that they are distributed in time (and therefore unequally, cumulatively, dynamically) not space- and because they are virtual and pro-ceed by continuous actualization/ differentiation, not repetition/ representation. 10. Hassler Whitney, “On Singularities of Mappings of Euclidean Spaces: I. Mappings of the Plane onto the Plane,” Annals of Mathematics 62 (1955). Whitney is the inventor of singularity theory and the true father of catastrophe theory. 11. The perplexing results of recent cold fusion experiments suggest that one is on the verge of isolating a new singularity of water (this may not be cold fusion but it is almost certainly something else). How much of human history could be written from the perspective of how cultures organized themselves around the 6
19
sions of space and their modalities of convergence at a single specific instant in time.
Notes: I would like to express my gratitude to The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities whose invitation to be a research fellow in the fall of 1990 provided the opportunity to undertake the research and writing of this essay. 1. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 201. 2. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), chap. 2. 3. Henri Poincaré, “Sur le probleme des trois corps et les equations de la dynamique,” Acta Mathematica 13 (1890): 1-270, and idem, Les Methodes nouvelles de la mecanique celeste, vols. 1-3 (Paris: Gauthiers- Villars, 1892-99). On the homoclinic functions that Poincare discovered, compare Ivars Ekelund, Le Calcul, l’imprevu (Paris: Le Seuil, 1984), and Ralph Abraham and Chris Shaw, Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior, vol. 3, Global Behavior, and vol. 4, Bifurcation Behavior (Santa Cruz: Ariel Press, 1986-88). 4. The biological sciences were the first to turn their attention to a systematic description of morphogenesis: entelechy theory (Driesch), gradient theory (Boveri, Child), embryonic fields (Gurwitsch), system-field theory (Weiss), topological deformation analysis (D’Arcy Thompson), Umwelt theory (von Uexkiill), regulation theory. Finally, in England Joseph Needham, Conrad Waddington, and others created the Theoretical Biology Club to study developmental path-ways in complex fields. 5. A combination of Christian neo- Platonism, eastern influences, and the eventual demise of Greco-Ro-man formalisms during the Middle Ages freed pictorial representation for centuries from its more static, analytic, spatializing tendencies. This partial emancipation from op-tical space introduced the modal (or musical) tendencies that we associate with the dynamic, surface-affirming, matter-organizing rather than space-projecting works of Byzantine and Romanesque art right up 18
7
in which they arise is Conrad Waddington’s concept of the “epigenetic landscape.” The epigenetic landscape is an undulating topographical surface in phase space (and therefore a descriptive model, not an explanatory device) whose multiplicity of valleys corresponds to the possible trajectories (shapes) of any body evolving (appearing) on it. [figure 18] Assuming that there exists at all levels of nature a principle corresponding to the path of most economic action or least resistance (which is only a misguidedly negative expression of the deeper principle that every action is nonetheless accompanied by its own sufficient conditions), the rivulets and modulations of the epigenetic landscape correspond to built-in tendencies, or default scenarios, that would condition the evolution of forms in the hypothetical absence of supplementary forces acting over time. But one should not be fooled into taking the “form” of the epigenetic landscape as itself “essential,” fixed, or predetermined. For it, too, is only a template, or virtual form, assembled in another dimension, as a multiplicity generated by an extremely complex field of forces. [figure 19] Once time is introduced into this system, a form can gradually unfold on this surface as a historically specific flow of matter that actualizes (resolves, incarnates) the forces converging on the plane. These are the phenomenal forms that we conventionally associate with our lived world. What we have generally failed to understand about them is that they exist, enfolded in a virtual space, but are actualized (un-folded) only in time as a suite of morphological events and differentiations ever-carving themselves into the epigenetic landscape. We would not be unjustified in saying, then, that in Boccioni’s Stati d’animo series, what we find depicted are three evental complexes, or three morphogenetic fields, each arising within the same complex system of real matter and forces. Their startling morphological variety can be accounted for by the fact that each is triggered by a different singularity that, in turn, binds it to a specific attractor - farewells: turbulence, aggregation; parting: bifurcation, declension; staying: inertia, laminarity. The inchoate qualities of the form “fragments” that traditionally we are conditioned to see here are, in fact, nothing else than the manifest work of time plying the folds of matter to release the virtual forms within it. Each panel defines a unique field of unfolding, a section through a distinct epigenetic landscape in which forms exist only in evolution or equilibrium, that is, as event-generated diagrams, incarnating the multiple conflictual play of forces across all the dimen8
17
Modern topological theory, largely introduced by Poincaré, offered a decisive breakthrough with respect to the limitations of these systems. On the one hand, it entailed the revival of geometrical methods to study dynamics, permitting one visually to model relationships whose complexity surpassed the limits of algebraic expression; on the other, it permitted one to study not only the translational changes within the system but the qualitative transformations that the system itself under-goes. The classical calculus of Newton and Leibniz was developed along the lines of a ballistic model, the plotting of trajectories of real bodies against an inert, featureless, and immobile space whose coordinates could be exhaustively described in purely numerical terms (x, y). Topology instead describes transformational events (deformations) that introduce real discontinuities into the evolution of the system itself. In topological manifolds the characteristics of a given mapping are not determined by the quantitative substrate space (the grid) below it, but rather by the specific “singularities” of the flow space of which it itself is part. These singularities represent critical values or qualitative features that arise at different points within the system depending on what the system is actually doing at a given moment or place. It is just this variability and contingency that is of great importance. What exactly are these singularities? In a general sense, singularities designate points in any continuous process (if one accepts the dictum that time is real, then every point in the universe can be said to be continually mapped onto itself) where a merely quantitative or linear development suddenly results in the appearance of a “quality” (that is, a diffeomorphism eventually arises and a point suddenly fails to map onto itself).(10) A singularity in a complex flow of materials is what makes a rainbow appear in a mist, magnetism arise in a slab of iron, or either ice crystals or convection currents emerge in a pan of water. Some of these singularities bear designations- “zero degrees Celsius”, for example, denotes the singularity at which water turns to ice or ice back to water - yet most do not. Thus matter is not in any sense homogeneous, but contains an infinity of singularities that may be understood as properties that emerge under certain, but very specific, conditions.(11) “ What is crucial about all of this is the following: both “ice” and “water”, as well as “magnetism” and “diffusion,” are forms, and they are all born at and owe their existence to singularities. Indeed, there is no form anywhere that is not associated with at least one (though most likely more than one) singularity. 16
9
In topology singularities of flows on the plane are more limited and specific but can give rise to enormously complex and variegated behavior. These have already been classified in various ways, most often as attractors and separatrices whose varieties and combinations give rise to specific qualities and behaviors: sinks, sources (repellors), saddles, and limit cycles. Each of these describes a particular way of influencing the movement of a point in a given region of the system or space.(12) Now clearly, a plane is a very simple, even rudimentary space. A flow in the plane can essentially be described by two parameters, or two degrees of variability or “freedom”. Most systems in the real world, that is, most forms or morphogenetic fields, are clearly more complex than this. Yet it is enough to understand how forms emerge and evolve in simple “2-space” to gain an appreciation of how more complex forms evolve in more complex spaces. What is central here is the dynamical theory of morphogenesis, which characterizes all
deed, it is more truly the task of historians and theoreticians to reconstitute these
form as the irruption of a discontinuity, not on the system but in it or of it. For a
after the fact than for science to predict them before they happen.(24) Among the examples that Thom gives of geometrical entities that func-
form to emerge, the entire space (system) must be transformed along with it. This type of local but generalized transformation is called a catastrophe.
tion like virtual or enfolded forms are his concepts of “charts” or “genetic forms.”
A catastrophe describes the way in which a system - sometimes as a result of
These figures, such as the capture morphology illustrated here, are said
even the most infinitesimal perturbation- will mutate or jump to an entirely different
to exist virtually somewhere in all biological beings, waiting to be unfolded in a va-
level of activity or organization. Now it is a basic tenet of the laws of thermody-
riety of situations. These are, however, not at all fixed engrams, “but are defined
namics that in order for something to happen within a system, there must first be a
dynamically, by a kind of never-ending embryology.” The charts are triggered by
general distribution of differences within that system. In dynamics these are called
so-called perception catastrophes the sudden appearance, for example, of an
“potentials” or gradients and their essential role is to link the points in a system
object of prey in the visual or olfactory field of the predator (note that this event is
and draw flows from one place to another. A potential is a simple concept:
(13)
already the projection of a fold embedded in another, contiguous space) - that is,
anything sitting on one’s desk or bookshelf bears a potential (to fall to the floor)
by the sudden eruption of particular geometric configurations in the outside world
within a system (vector field) determined by gravity. The floor, on the other hand,
that correspond to, and trigger, a virtual matrix within the animal. But the (pred-
is an attractor because it represents one of several “minima” of the potential in
ator-prey) loop need not be conceived as a correspondence phenomenon;
the system. Any state of the system at which things are momentarily stable (book
instead, it can be seen as a chance encounter of two flows on the same fold that
on the shelf or on the floor) represents a form. States and forms, then, are exactly
causes their mutual, spontaneous geometricization and common unfolding into
the same thing. If the flow of the book on the shelf has been apparently arrested,
a single form: the “capture.” The capture chreod - the moving template through
it is because it has been captured by a point attractor at one place in the system.
which virtual forms are actualized - is once again the n-1 “space” that guides,
The book cannot move until this attractor vanishes with its corresponding basin
but does not entirely determine, morphological events playing themselves out on
and another appears to absorb the newly released flows. The destruction of the
another closely linked but higher dimensional surface.(26)
attractor (and the creation of a new one) is a catastrophe. Now before developing this theory further it will be necessary to make a 10
(25)
Among the most powerful geometrical concepts invented to depict the relation between phenomenal forms (phenotypes) and the morphogenetic fields 15
It is the way in which catastrophe theory resolves or embraces conflict
few observations. It appears, in a certain sense, that the concept of form has been
and difference that constitutes its radical opposition to hylomorphic theory. For
defined as a state of a system at a particular point in time. In fact, forms represent
catastrophe theory grants a certain reality to all virtual forces in a field, even those
nothing absolute, but rather structurally stable moments within a system’s evolu-
that have not been actualized, but remain enfolded until a singularity can draw
tion; yet their emergence (their genesis) derives from the crossing of a qualitative
them out. A form arises from something called a deployment universel (“univer-
threshold that is, paradoxically, a moment of structural instability. This is possible
sal unfolding”), a dynamical pathway in which every virtuality is activated, even
because forms are not simply systems understood in the classical sense, but
though only some get chosen.
Forms are always new and unpredictable un-
belong to a special type known as “dissipative systems”. A dissipative system or
foldings shaped by their adventures in time.(20) And, as we will see, only a fold
structure is an open, dynamical system. By “open” one means that it is an evolv-
offers the proper conditions to sustain another unfolding.
ing system, like a pot of coffee or the local weather, that has energy (information)
(19)
The idea that every object in the world can be associated with one or
flowing out of it, and likely into it as well. From where does this energy come and
another dynamical system is not new; indeed, D’Arcy Thompson had already ar-
to where does it go? It comes from other systems, both those contiguous to it and
gued this back in 1917.(21) Yet a dynamical system is much more than a substrate
those operating within it or upon it: that is, at entirely different scales of action.
space, it is in fact an “evental” complex. Now a catastrophe, as I have already
We will see what this means in a moment. For now, one need only note that it is
suggested, can occur only in the region of a singularity. The regions on the plane
the continual feeding and siphoning of energy or information to and from a sys-
(of parameter space) that give rise to catastrophes usually occupy but a small
tem that keeps the system dynamic - simultaneously in continual transformation
portion of the available space and they always have a regular and beautiful form.
locally and in dynamic equilibrium globally. The flow of energy through a system
This form is what is known as the “catastrophes et” (the seven elementary catas-
ensures the following:
trophes classified by René Thom).
1. That information from outside the system will pass to the inside. The effects
This form - the cusp, or catastrophe set - is a form indeed, yet it is of a
of this simple operation are actually very complex: the outside of the system be-
slightly different nature than the forms discussed till now. Though the cusp fully
comes slightly depleted in the process and transformed in its capacities and po-
belongs to the dynamical system, it is only a two-dimensional projection of the
tential energies; the operation affects the inside by perturbing its flows ever so
higher dimensional” event-form” unfolding as a catastrophe on the event surface
much away from their equilibria or attractors, “priming” the system for potentially
above it. Here the catastrophe is actually a three-dimensional irruption on a two-
creative disturbances (morphogenesis). It also carries energy or information from
dimensional surface (note that the action of folding is already a passage toward a
inside the system to outside, producing these same effects now in reverse.
higher dimension). What is interesting is that the catastrophe set always has the
2. That information from certain levels in the system is trans-ported to other lev-
same form (geometrically) even though the catastrophe event-form (the specific
els, with results that may be very dramatic.(14) What one means by dramatic is
unfolding) is unpredictable and open-ended. The catastrophe set is, in fact, an
simply this: certain parts, or strata, of the system may already have absorbed as
example of a virtual form.
much energy as they can hold in their current stabilized configuration. Any change
(22)
Virtual forms are real “folds” (not symbolic, not ideal) in real n-dimen-
at all, no matter how tiny, will precipitate a catastrophe (a morphogenesis), forcing
sional space that can give rise to indeterminate morphogenetic events in the n+
the system to find a new equilibrium in the newly configured field. The effect of
1 space (the space one dimension higher up).(23) A genuine freedom and indeter-
these liberated and captured flows on the neighboring systems creates an alge-
minacy reigns in the n+ 1 event space (the catastrophe surface) where forms are
braic problem too complex (because full of nonlinearities) to predict. Qualitative
actualized or unfolded, since the precise number, quality, and combination of real
modeling has a chance, however, because at the very least it offers analytic preci-
forces converging on the fold is quasi-random and unknowable in advance. In-
sion where before there were only “black boxes” of mysterious, irreducible forces.
14
11
It is the property of every dissipative system perpetually to seek a rest
one that might have allowed it to dominate in the end. The point here is that condi-
state or equilibrium where it will remain until another threshold in the system’s
tions on the dynamical plane are very erratic, and mere position means far less
dynamic is crossed. Again, figures of structural stabilization gather around singu-
than the pathway by which one arrives there.(17) Catastrophe theory specializes
larities that themselves are defined dynamically, for these, too, can be maintained
in accounting for these situations. It is interested in the effects of forces applied
only at a certain energy cost. Every real system is made up of other systems, and
on a dynamical system from outside, forces that it then becomes the task of the
they are all continually leaking information to one another in such a way as to
sys-tem to neutralize, absorb, or resolve. As the resultant point begins to make
link them across a single “continuum of influence.
All the forms of the universe
its way across the plane (phase space), it will, according to the theory, encounter
are produced as by-products or maps of particular evolutionary segments of one
(nonlinear) regions where its behavior goes haywire, where gradual, continuous
or another dynamical system. Indeed, forms are not fixed things, but continuous
inputs produce sudden, discontinuous results. Here the system flips - a catastro-
metastable events.
phe - and gives rise to a whole new state or form.
(15)
Catastrophe theory is one method for describing the evolution of forms in nature. It is essentially a topological theory that describes the behavior of forces in space over time, but its techniques have been extended to many real world phenomena, such as the forming of tools, the capsizing of ships, embryology, and psychology (anorexia nervosa, fight-flight theory). This is possible because the behavior of real forces in real space (forces applied to a beam, weight poorly distributed in a ship’s hull) follows exactly the same rules as forces modeled in complex (topological, parameter, or “phase”) space.(16) Catastrophe theory recognizes that every event (or form) en-folds within it a multiplicity of forces and is the result of not one, but many different causes. Let us look at how this is done. Catastrophe theory is a fundamentally Heraclitean “science” in that it recognizes that all form is the result of strife and conflict. It shows that the combination of any two or more conflicting forces may result in entirely irregular and discontinuous behavior if allowed to interact dynamically. This means that if one plots these forces on a plane as intersecting at a point, each force will be affected unequally as the point is moved in any direction. The effects of this initial difference produced in one of the forces may simply be compensated for, or absorbed by, a proportionate gain in the opposite force; but it may also happen that a small drop in the first force will trigger a gain in a third force that will diminish the second force to an even greater degree than the diminishment undergone by the first force. This will then set up a feedback cycle between the first and third forces that may in a short time overwhelm the second entirely. In this case, the second force could actually be said to have been fated for demolition by its own initial strength. Had it been weak at the outset a completely different scenario may have ensued, 12
13
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
udd
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
06 The Architecture of Invisible Lines MARK WIGLEY Colaboraciones: Arquitectos / Artistas. Sala Jorge Vieira. Lisboa. 2001
What does it mean for architects and artists to collaborate? What does it mean lo exhibit such work? What are we looking at exactly? Collaboration is not just talented people from different fields working together on stimulating projects. Collaboration really begins when it is no longer clear who is responsible for what. Two people sign a project but there is no visible line in the work that allows us to credit each of them with different parts or roles, no clear line between art and architecture. The line is somehow blurred in the working process and erased in the final result. The whole point of exhibiting “CoLlaborations: Architects / Artists” is that the “ / “ between architect and artist has been systematically sabotaged in each of the projects on display. Of course the removal of the line presupposes its existence in the first place. There is no collaboration without a clear line that is then withdrawn, a line that is so familiar that we may have forgotten its unique force, a line that only comes back to our attention when it is taken away. What one sees when looking 1
at his work is not some special aesthetic quality. A collaboration between disciplines does have a particular look, an extra energy resulting from the fusion of forces. On the contrary, what one sees is that something is missing, the line. And we only look for it because we have been told that the work is collaborative. Two signatures are presented to us, representing a division between fields, media, issues, or personalities. But the division leaves no trace. Collaborations are a kind of tease. The point to a line that is not there. Or, more precisely, they at once draw and erase the line, highlighting it by terrorizing it. It is important to remember that the line being threatened is a relatively recent one. The familiar division between architecture and art is product of eighteenth century specialization, even if it had taken over two millennia of industrial history to establish. Already in the time of Augustus Caesar, Vitruvius wrote the first book devoted solely to architecture as an independent field. It tried to isolate the architect as a distinct figure, detached from both the subordinate world of physical labor and from all the other similarly elevated fields. But the mission was unsuccessful and was not revived until the fifteenth century. Despite the receiving the active support of most of the leading intellectuals of successive generations, it was not successfully carried out until well into the eighteenth-century. Only then was a fine art system established with each art clearly isolated within its own disciplinary apparatus. This definitive specialization paralleled the new specialization of disciplines in the modern university during the same period. A full scale academic industry became devoted to maintaining the new system of specialties and defining the differences between the arts, between the arts and the sciences, and so on. Treatises, essays, curricula, encyclopedias, training programs, and legal regulations worked hard to identify and maintain disciplinary limits. Clear boundary lines were drawn and kept under surveillance, lines that remain powerful today. For the artist, a key step had already been made in the second half of the seventeenth century, as the center of the discourse shifted from Italy to France. Architecture, painting and sculpture were each given their own Royal Academy to regulate their respective fields. Yet the division between them only became absolutely secure almost a century later with the emergence of the first independent schools for each art form. Even the first complete school of architecture, Jacques-Francois Blondelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s private school established in Paris in 1740, included 2
a program in painting and sculpture. It is only when Blondel became the director of the first official school at the Royal Academy of Architecture in 1762 that a fully independent program of architectural education was established. The dream of specialization in the obsessively studied text of Vitruvius had finally become a reality. The background against which the disciplinary limits were established, and which they were explicitly designed to reject, was collective work. Academies were set up to take over training, production and control of the arts from medieval system o guilds in which work was produced by numerous apprentices in workshops, without a clear signature attached to the artwork or any distinction between fine and decorative arts. In major projects, architecture, painting and sculpture would be blended together. This tradition took centuries to undermine. As Giorgio Vasari started to construct the counter-image of the artists as a solitary ego and launch the first academy of art in the mid-sixteenth century, many of the artists involved, including Vasari himself, were both architects and artists according to the new distinctions. Michelangelo, his role model, was at once sculptor, painter, and architect. The individual signature of the artist was successfully invented but it took a long time for it to be associated with a particular art. The image of solitary work that Vasari read into the still collaborative scene was more a desire of himself and his friends than a reality. Modern specialization emerged extremely slowly out of the collaborative tradition. Indeed, the guild tradition never completely died until the eighteen century when arts were no longer blended together. Only then was the distinction between architecture, painting and sculpture clearly marked in each major project. The divisions of the new fine art system literally became inscribed into the surface of artworks. Strictly speaking, it is not accurate to describe the workshop tradition against which the academics struggled for so long as â&#x20AC;&#x153;collaborativeâ&#x20AC;?. It is only with the emergence of specialized fields that the idea of collaboration between them becomes thinkable. What the guilds mixed were not discrete arts as they would later be conceived. The fine art system establish an entirely different economy of interaction. In fact, it connects and unites the arts in very gesture of dividing them. The lines that hold the fields apart combine to form a dingle overall disciplinary structure. The system is a kind of diagram, a single set of coordinated lines. The idea of disciplinary specificity can only be produced within the idea of a generic 3
organization. When Blondel, for example, finally isolates architectural training off
uitous white wall of modern architecture took over the role of isolating artworks
by itself he begins by pointing to an overall system that connects architecture
from each other and from architecture so much so that modern art was able to
to other fields. In so doing, he echoes Vasari, who had likewise appealed to a
abandon traditional frames. Architecture played a key role in preserving the mobil-
“certain kinship” between all the arts and between the arts and the other higher
ity of artworks. Art could enter architecture without being absorbed by it. Safely
disciplines, who in turn echoes the way Vitruvius appeals to a “common bond”
screened off by a generic white surface, the immobility of architecture seemingly
uniting all the fields as “departments” of an overall intellectual structure. Each field
intensified the mobility of the artworks. In fact, it produces that sense of mobility.
elaborates its individual identity by establishing its familial relationship with all the
Whatever is isolated off against the static white wall is automatically, as Duch-
others. The lines dividing them also enable them to work together. The dream of
amp demonstrated, transformed into art. What defines art is the frame not some
disciplinary specificity is inseparable from the dream of collaboration. The very
unique aesthetic condition. To exhibit an architectural project in a gallery is to use
structure that isolates the fields is also the possibility of bringing the together. The
the static quality of one architecture to frame and thereby give mobility to another.
lines become joints.
Once mobilized, architecture is able to engage with new forms of collaboration.
Radical collaborations erase the traces of these joints but do not neces-
The exhibition of collaborative projects actually has a much more dynamic and
sarily threaten disciplinary specificity. Consider the way that the dominant aca-
unsettling role than their construction in fixed sites. It exposes the strange way
demic system of discrete arts organizing the training, production, commission
that lines between architecture and the other arts are simultaneously remarkably
and evaluation of works has survived the continuous brutal assault upon it. This
fragile and remarkably strong.
assault already began less that hundred years after the system had finally been
To look at collaborative work in an exhibition today is to look into an ex-
established. From the mid-nineteenth century on, there was an extended line of
tremely convoluted scene in which art and architecture are twisted over and over
theoretical attack launched by Gottfried Semper’s comprehensive rejection of the
each other in a kind of endless tumbling. This gymnastic display keeps blurring
distinction between fine and applied art and extended practical tradition launched
the reasserting the line between disciplines, repeatedly destabilizing the system
by the revival of the workshop tradition by the circle of artists around William Mor-
of specialties only to reassert them. A centuries long soap opera is acted out at
ris and the subsequent arts and crafts movement. The resulting idea of blending
blinding speed.
all the arts into a “total work of art” set off a chain reaction of collaborative groups that refused the distinction between the arts: Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, the Secessionists, the Constructivists, the Italian Futurists, De Stijl, and so on. The paradigm is the celebration of the workshop by the Bauhaus school, whose director, Walter Gropius, repeatedly identified “collaboration” between artists and arts as the key to overturning the ruling academic tradition. So much of modern art is a product of this sustained attack and yet its canonic form quickly reestablished the disciplinary divisions being assaulted. In the twenties, for example, the most influential architect, Le Corbusier, polemically collaborate with artist in running an influential little magazine and incorporated the work of artists in most of his projects. But the arts were always isolated within separate essays in the magazine, and articles written collectively by painter and architect appeared under only one author’s name. When articles were gathered 4
9
tural work, blending all the different arts as a “cathedral”. The renewed call for a
together, they formed separate books on painting and architecture, and paintings
synthesis of the arts in the forties and fifties simply repeated this absorbing ges-
and sculptures in the building were clearly distinct from the architecture they were
ture. When arguing for such a collaboration, Le Corbusier insists that architecture
placed within. Le Corbusier even wrote on the need to preserve this clear distinc-
is the “most synthetic” of the arts. Architecture is a field without clear limits. The
tion. In the thirties, this become the standard role of art in the newly canonized
real specialty of the architect collaboration. An artist working with an architect in-
International Style. The trademark white walls acted as a backdrop for isolated art
evitably becomes yet another invaluable consultant, lined up alongside the usual
works. Architecture framed art rather than blended with it.
array of structural engineers, plumbing experts, acoustics, landscape, lighting, and so on. Collaborations with architecture are never symmetrical.
It was only with the Second World War that there was another strong counter-reaction and a renewed call for a radical “synthesis of the arts” was made
In the end, the real issue is mobility. The line between architecture and
by the leaders of architectural discourse dominating, for example, the discus-
art that was inserted in the eighteenth century is also a seam. It allows art to be
sions at the successive CIAM congresses of 1941, 1949 and 1953. Individuals
stitched to architecture but also to be detached from it. The institutional specific-
like Le Corbusier, André Bloc, Sigfried Giedion, Fernand Léger, Paul Damaz, and
ity of art coincides with its independence from a particular spaces. It is not by
Gyorgy Kepes dedicated themselves to this post-disciplinary synthesis in publica-
chance that the fine art system arrive when a painting is no longer a fixed mural
tions and projects. Numerous collaborative groups like Cobra, The Situationist
on a particular wall but a framed image that can be removed from the architectural
International, Group Espace, Liga Nieuw Beelden, and The Independent Group
physical specificity. This institutional specificity of artworks is a product of lack of
emerged in the fifties and early sixties to once again efface the boundaries be-
physical specificity. This is ultimately a function of the market. Art become mobile
tween art and architecture. But in every case the members soon withdrew to their
with the emergence of an art market. The disciplinary line established and the
respective specialties. Eventually governments around the world started insisting
passage of works between collectors. It is the new forms of patronage and the
that a percentage of the budget for public buildings has to be devoted to art, and
passage of works between collectors. It is new mobility that makes the idea of
the possibility for a blending of disciplines multiplied exponentially but was rarely
collaboration possible. Only when art is not site specific do collaborations reunit-
taken advantage of. Artworks remain discrete objects placed within ready-made
ing it to specific spaces become possible. The frame (whether it be picture frame,
building designs.
pedestal, label, catalog entry, and so on) is the key. It establishes the line between
The subsequent decades were punctuated by a series of high profile col-
disciplines. Collaborations with architecture begin by removing the frame, pinning
laborations on built projects like those between Isamu Noguchi and Louis Kahn,
art to a site and absorbing it into the space.
Claus Oldenburg and Frank Gehry, Jorge Oteiza and Francisco Javier Sáenz de
Yet precisely inasmuch as architecture is itself considered a fine art, it
Oiza, Chucho Reyes and Luis Barragan, Barbara Kruger and Laurie Hawkinson,
is also mobile and has a market. It too can enter or leave a fixed space. When
James Turrell and Robert Mangurian, Vito Acconci and Steven Holl, etc. Archi-
collaborations are exhibited, for example, they have been transported from their
tects have increasingly been asked to collaborate with artists in design competi-
respective building sites into a gallery and from there to other galleries, collections
tions. The more well known an architect is, the more likely he or she is to be
and publications. Architecture now appears in the space of art rather than art ap-
asked. The leaders of the field are called on to symbolically cross the border. But
pearing in the space of architecture. Even if architecture enter the gallery on more
these projects remain the exception in the work of each architect and in the over-
equal terms.
all scene. Indeed, the only serve to reinforce the labels “architect” and “artist”. The
Things are immediately more complicated because the space for displaying art is itself an architectural work. In fact, the synthetic art of architecture has long played a key role in maintaining the line between disciplines. The ubiq8
respective specialties become more clear rather than less. The big signatures keep the disciplinary order intact in projects that apparently bypass it. In the end, collaboration remains a side effect of the fine art system 5
rather than its subversion. It is staged periodically as a king of maintenance pro-
artist”. Images of building alternate with images of paintings with the text earnestly
gram of the system. Since the mid-nineteenth century there has been an almost
stitching the two together until it concludes by appealing for new forms of “practi-
rhythmic alternation of blurring and reassertion of disciplinary limits. For an archi-
cal collaboration”, even if a recovery of the intensity of “intellectual collaboration”
tect to collaborate with a photographer, painter or sculptor today is a really not
between artists and architects immediately after the First World War is unlikely.
so different from similar projects at the beginning of the century. Once again, the
In fact, many of the pioneers of modern architecture were originally paint-
disciplines being combined almost immediately retreat to their usual locations.
ers or decorative artists. The line between art and architecture is routinely twisted.
Specialization rises again out of blurring. Indeed, ritualized blurring allows an in-
Take Le Corbusier again. Famously, he would paint in the morning and designs
dividual works to reenact the centuries-long historical process by which the fine
buildings in the afternoon. His early designs were often exhibited in a small art
arts emerged from a collaborative background. To celebrate collaboration, the
gallery in Paris. To enter the gallery was to find models and framed drawings of
very concept of which is a product of the fine arts system it appears to challenge,
modern houses. To enter those houses when they were built was to find framed
is finally to celebrate that system.
paintings, often by the architect or his colleague Léger (someone with a little
Indeed, what such collaborations disguise is that the routine operations
architectural training who turned into a painter). Architecture is framed by the art
of each discipline violate the limits that are officially assigned to them. The para-
world, then frames that world, and so on in a never ending complication. The ex-
doxical reassertion of disciplinary specific through symbolic acts od interdisciplin-
change is so fluid that many artists have simply decided to operate as architects
ary blending tries to block an ongoing insecurity about the border limits. After all,
for a while. An endless stream of artists have presented themselves as architects
no discipline is a specialized as it proclaims. The everyday practices of art and
throughout the second half of the twentieth century: André Bloc, Constant, Dan
architecture are more heterogeneous than the system acknowledges. The sys-
Graham, Arakawa, Richard Stella, and so on. This has reached special intensity
tem is endlessly reasserted precisely to produce a confident image of specificity
in the last decade as artists have increasingly moved beyond mixed media instal-
in the face of daily confusion and doubt.
lation work in fixed spaces to constructing new spaces. The number of artists with
Architects, for example, routinely present themselves as artists. Not only
“architectural projects” is rising exponentially.
do they use the same media and technique as artists when producing buildings
The fluidity of these daily exchanges across the official borderlines tends
but they present their drawings, paintings, photographs, collages, and models as
to be masked by high profile collaborations. Or, more precisely, the architect sees
artworks whose aesthetic value exceeds their utility in the design process or in
all such exchanges as being internal to architecture itself. If an architect collabo-
practical communication to clients, builders, colleagues or students. Architectural
rates with a painter, it is symptomatic that the painter is seen to be entering the
work is routinely exhibited in art galleries and museums. Furthermore, architects
world of painting. The architect’s world can absorb almost anything. Its interior
constantly refer to specific work by artists when accounting for their work and
is full of things collected from the outside. Ever since Vitruvius, the architect has
their projects are often analyzed as if they were produced by other disciplines.
been constructed as a synthesizer of multiple disciplines, absorbing and coordi-
Dominant critics evaluate buildings in the same terms as paintings. In 1941, in the
nating heterogeneous fields. When the attempt to make architecture an indepen-
most influential history of modern architecture, Sigfried Giedion compares images
dent high art was revived in the fifteenth century, architecture was again present-
paintings by Picasso and Braque to buildings by Le Corbusier and Gropius, argu-
ed as the supervising “mother” of the other arts. In the Bauhaus, with its religion
ing that modern architecture completes the unfinished project of cubist painting.
of collaboration, architecture was again the center, embracing everything else
In 1948, Henry Russell Hitchcock, another of the leading promoters of modern
and only being reached after passing through all the workshops of the specialized
architecture, published “Painting Toward Architecture”, a book on the influence of
arts. In 1919, Gropius insisted that all the arts should come under architecture’s
painters on modern architecture that is specifically addressed to “the architect as
wing and the Bauhaus institution itself was repeatedly described as an architec-
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PERSONAL SECURITY: THE DOOR AS SATUR SYMBOL, AGAIN. Security systems no longer rely on the brute force of a heavy door but on a combination of indelible biometric data and ephemeral digital records. Doors that know you in advance, likely to be phased in soon at airports around the world, do not have to unleash their full arsenal of defensive measures, and so
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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can maintain the feeling –increasingly important for our sense of status- of un-
federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
07
hindered, seamless global travel. Anyone who complains about excessive, blind, routinized airport security is now confronted with a (false) choice: either accept the democratic inconvenience of universal checks posedly risky travellers. The door, elsewhere drained of the ornamentation, finery, and weightiness that used to convey meaning about the people who could pass through it, re-emerges at the airport as a viciously precise instrument conferring status and rank. “Todays checkpoint was designed 40 years ago to stop hijackers carryng metal. Today, everybody is equally challenged to prove themselves innocent. My
Door (Extracts)
vision for the checkpoint of the future combines technology and intelligence to
REM KOOLHAAS
end this one-sizes-fits-all approach. Passengers will walk through tunnels of tech-
Elements of Architecture.- 14 International Arc. Exhibition. Biennale di Venezia
nology appropriate to the risk-level identified with background screening without stopping, stripping or unpacking”. (Giovani Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO, at Wings Club, New York, March 31, 2011)
2011. Prototype of IATA’s futuristic vision of a “Checkpoint of the future”, dividing travelers into three tunnels according to risk: enhaced , normal, known. In the “enhanced” tunnel, travelers would have to pause in front of a sequence of surveillance devices, while “known” travelers face a tunnel equipped only with an iris scanner at the beginning, to verify their identity...
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Airport: stretched door 1970-2020 As logical entrance and exit points to the city for millions of travelers, airports represent the modern equivalent of the city gate, bearing all its symbolic weight. In the Jet Age 1960s, airports are built as glamorous places; even through the 1970s, after the first modern hijackings, security involves relatively light-weight X-ray equipment. In the U.S., 9/11 provokes a dramatic explosion of ever-more demanding procedures, with each subsequent terror scare provoking new rituals: the removal of shoes, bans liquids, full body scans. “While security represented 5-8 percent of airport operating costs a decade ago”, notes the International Air Transport Association, “the figure has increased to as much as 35 percent at some airports today and there can be no confidence that this trend will change…” Today, the Transportation Safety Authority boasts no less than 20 separate checks on travellers. Screenings, searches, and scannings are only the most obvious manifestations of the procedure that extends well before and well after arrival. The airport becomes an endless door stretching out ahead of travellers…
“From 2020 and beyond it is envisaged that the passenger will be able to flow through the security checkpoint without interruption unless the advanced technology identifies a potential threat. A passenger will have a level of security screening based on information from states of departure and arrival through bilateral risk assessments in real-time. In terms of the passenger experience, there will no longer be the burden of divesting by default, and there are expected to be little to no queues as a result of the enhanced speed at which screening can oc1973 Security Check in at Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina. Scanning of all passengers becomes mandatory in the U.S. at the start of 1973
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ties, means that the airport security zone actually starts in your house. ACI unveils
20 layers of u.s. airport security
a blueprint for the three phases of implementation…” 2011 20 layers of airport security, implemented by the TSA. “We use layers of security to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation’s transportation system. Because of their visibility to the public, we are most associated with the airport checkpoints that our Transportation Security Officers operate. These checkpoints, however, constitute only security layer of the many in place to analysis, checking passenger manifest against watch lists, random canine team searchers at airports, federal air marshals, federal flight deck officers and more security measures both visible and invisible to the public. Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail during the attempt”. (About TSA: Layers of Security”, Transportation Security Authority, www.tsa.gov/).
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TXL: Berlin Tegel Thinness 1975 The unique “drive gate” terminal, designed by Gerkan, Marg and Partners (GMP), is the epitome of convenient, short walking distance between landside and airside. Cars emerge inside the ring shaped terminal to drop off passengers, who face just 25-meter walk across a corridor to their gate, where check in and security are integrated. The 21st century’s more demanding security screening requirements and the need for more shopping render the narrow geometry of Tegel’s terminal inefficient with regard to operating costs and revenue generation. The increased costs to operate the plethora of security checkpoints and the inability to concentrate passengers flows to a centralized shopping area result in significant functional and financial limitations; Tegel is declared obsolete even though it continues to handle nearly 20 million passengers per year.
CHECKPOINT THERAPY Where some see only endless layers of tedium and security state paranoia, others see a business opportunity. Yoga studios, helpful dogs, and other soothing amenities multiply to ease the stress of airport security. SMART SECURITY: 2014-2020 The dream of no having to “divest” your shoes, belts, liquids, and laptops at airport checkpoints means a surrender to enhance surveillance technology coming online in the next six years, according to the blue print of the Airports Council International (ACI), representing airport operators in 177 countries and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). “Smart Security” though is no longer simply focused on the “checkpoint”. By 200, the “bilateral agreement for 25 meters: seamless transition from curb to airplane.
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risk assessment”, in which countries share information about passenger identi9
Trays for personal belongings are larger, and clad with soothing nature imagery. Ads for SpringHill Marriot, which paid for the makeover, compete with airport signage.
BER: Branderburg Willy Brandt Thickness 2016? After years of construction and logistics delays –leading to the firing of designers, Gerkan, Marg & Partner and the bankruptcy of their partners, JSK Architekten –Berlin is waiting to see the opening of the new BER Airport, meant to replace Tegel and Schönefeld. BER will initially accommodate 27 million passengers per year, who will pass through three levels and traverse up to 500 meters distance before boarding the plane. Processing and security areas within BER include a vast departure hall with 10 check in areas and a total of 118 desks, 36 security lines and a central baggage reclaim hall with eight carousels. 150 shops, restaurants, and service facilities and a 9,000 m2 airside marketplace are planned to maximize the concession revenues of the Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH.
EXPEDITED SECURITY The TSA’s solution to the morass of airport security: make people pay pleasantries –both with money and with personal data. For an $85 fee and assent to a digital backgroung check, travellers can enjoy the “TSA PreTM Experience”, allowing them to access a special expedited line in which they do not have to remove shoes, belts, coats, or their laptop from their bag. EYE=DOOR Layers of stratification multiply within highly mobile elite traveller, who is able and willing to pay, from the rest. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport boasts that its Privium program, “for frequent fliers who want holdup-free travel”, will inject “the pleasure back to travelling”. For just €21 a year, Privium Basic members are guaranteed expedited border crossing if they submit to an iris scan. For €205 a year, Schiphol offers priority parking, a special lounge, business class check-in, and the use of special walkway circumventing the departure hall, taking them almost directly from parking garage to gate. 8
40.000 m2 departure hall. At least seven spaces have to be passed through for a passenger to reach their flight.
5
THE PAT DOWN American Civil Liberties Union, “What to Expect When Getting a New TSA PatDown”, ACLU.org, November 21, 2010. “Based on the reports we have received, those who are subjected to the searches will very likely experience the following which appear to be “standard practice”: * Agents fingering your ankles and running their hands all the way up your legs, including the area between your inner thighs and crotch; * Agents patting your genital area through your clothing; * Agents rubbing and squeezing your arms, back, stomach, buttocks, and breasts with open hands through your clothing. Screeners often run their fingers along the underwire of women’s bras; * Agents running their fingers through your hair and the area around your neck and the collar of your shirt; * Agents running their fingers several inches down the waistband of your pants or skirt, often involving touching and/or exposing your bare stomach. You may also experience what some have reported: *Agents performing these searches in full view of other, gawking passengers,
LUXURY SECURITY In lieu of a fundamental change to the typically grueling system of airport
without informing travelers of their right to be screened in private;
security, “The Next Level”, a concept in Dallas sponsored by the Marriot-owned
* Agents touching your genitals through your clothing with shocking and even
Spring Hill Suites hotel, aims to at least make it a more comfortable experience.
painful force;
The Next Level aims to transform checkpoints into “a welcoming and aesthetically
* Agents pressing between the cheeks of your buttocks through you clothing;
appealing space designed to offer travelers a new level of comfort inside a secu-
* Agents repeatedly touching the same parts of your body, for no apparent reason;
rity checkpoint”. The checkpoint features leather couches, music, nature imagery,
* Agents with demeanors that range from embarrassed or apologetic, to coldly
and direct passage into Marriot hotel lobbies. Flat-panel screens deliver both use-
professional, to aggressive and hostile, to creepy;
ful information and advertisements. The scheme is a partnership with Securityt-
* Being delayed and forced to wait for extended periods of time;
Point, a company that sells ads inside x-ray trays. “We want to think about it as a
* You may be separated from your carry-on belongings, which are often left un-
service instead of a governmental gap nobody touches and everyone tolerates”,
guarded while the pat-down takes place. One woman reported being separated
says an airport official. (Scott McCartney, “A Kinder, Gentler Airport TSA Screen-
from her infant during the pat-down…”
ing Checkpoint”, The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2013).
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08
Textos 2014-2015
federico soriano
Concreta, nº 3, 2014.
JOAN FONTCUBERTA, XAVIER ANTICH
Imágenes conspirativas, ficciones profilácticas
udd
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
1
curso. ¿En qué se funda nuestra certeza? ¿Por qué queremos creer? Estas son las cuestiones que me apasionan.
(Camuflajes), donde presentas unas series en torno a la idea de camuflaje y que
se inscribe, pienso, en ese marco que hace tiempo desarrollas para explorar las
2
J.F.: Este proyecto fue concebido originariamente en el contexto de la
aborda el estatuto de verdad de la imagen.
como la de autoría y la de museo, que continúan siendo interpeladas cuando se
grafía para interrogarse por algunas nociones-límite de las prácticas artísticas,
como El artista y la fotografía, cuya problemática desborda el ámbito de la foto-
X.A.: Tal vez puedas darnos algún detalle de alguna de las secciones,
fotografía, el camuflaje de la realidad, el camuflaje de la verdad...
refiero a diferentes niveles de camuflaje: el camuflaje del autor, el camuflaje de la
a la política, a la ciencia, a la religión, a la memoria o al arte. Y en la práctica me
tentando despojar a la fotografía de todo dogma, ya sea aplicado al periodismo,
reales pero siempre verdaderas» como le gustaba decir a Antonin Artaud, in-
esta exposición intento sumergir al público en una serie de historias, «nunca
a conjurar los regímenes de verdad y a rechazar los discursos de autoridad. En
Generar la sospecha y remitir en cuestión la credibilidad de la fotografía equivale
ralezas mutantes de lo fotográfico y nuestras relaciones con esas naturalezas.
explorar el mundo mediante la fotografía, por tanto, es preciso analizar las natu-
en que es portadora de los valores ideológicos que la hicieron nacer. Antes de
de estudio muy pedagógico: la imagen fotográfica no es inocente, en la medida
Y aún más importante: ¿cómo desactivarlas? La fotografía nos ofrece un caso
son trampas tendidas a nuestra conciencia. ¿Cómo identificar esas trampas?
Tanto la filosofía como el simple sentido común nos muestran que las imágenes
imágenes eclipsan la realidad y se instrumentalizan para controlar los espíritus?
engaño en su incapacidad para ver. ¿Qué decir pues del siglo XXI en que las
O sea, no es que el mundo engañe, sino que es el hombre el que orquesta el
stari, que escribió en el siglo XIV: «Somos ciegos porque vemos imágenes».
gias para fomentar la duda. Parto de una cita del poeta persa Mahmud Shabi-
camuflaje, que, como la impostura y la contaminación, me sirven como estrate-
Joan Fontcuberta: La exposición se articula alrededor del concepto de
edes hablarnos del proyecto?
11
epistemológica que gira alrededor de los elementos que dan autoridad a un dis-
mente en París, en la Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Camouflages
relaciones entre la fotografía y el conocimiento, la verdad y la credibilidad. ¿Pu-
en señalar y desmantelar esos nuevos prejuicios. Mi trabajo tiene una dimensión
Xavier Antich: Joan, empecemos por la exposición que tienes actual-
ham y muchos otros. Yo también fui invitado a participar en esta iniciativa y mi propuesta consistió en examinar la noción de autoría y artisticidad a partir de héroes de nuestra escena local como Picasso, Miró, Dalí y Tapies, de quienes existe en cada caso un museo monográfico. Para ello quería presentar pequeñas intervenciones en cada una de estas instituciones y evaluar hasta qué punto el contexto condiciona la percepción de la obra de arte. Preparé entonces trabajos fotográficos que parodiaban los motivos de inspiración de aquellos cuatro artistas, intentando adaptar su estilo respectivo y trasladarlo del lenguaje de la pintura, con el que habían conseguido su reconocimiento, al de la fotografía, con el que tan solo habían mantenido ligeros contactos. Seguidamente fabulé unas historias basadas en el mito del hallazgo fortuito de archivos desconocidos o de materiales olvidados, que documenté debidamente. Había varias hipótesis: en primer lugar, calibrar hasta qué punto la institución museística canoniza los objetos que contiene, es decir, hasta qué punto la condición de obra de arte la confiere el propio contenedor artístico. Pero también hasta qué punto los espectadores somos dóciles frente al poder que el museo representa y sometemos a su autoridad nuestro sentido crítico. O hasta qué punto en esa situación de percepción filtrada proyectamos espontáneamente nuestros prejuicios. Y me limitaba a gestionar los equívocos. Por ejemplo, frente a unas obras de apariencia
la mayor o menor obediencia a un modelo de conocimiento. Se podría incluso
añadir que ni realidad ni ficción existen per se, sino como efectos de ese modelo
de conocimiento. Ya que ese modelo es contingente y arbitrario, estamos con-
denados a una ambigüedad difícil de desenmarañar. Lo real contiene elementos
de ficción como la ficción contiene elementos de realidad: vivimos en el dominio
de lo que los franceses llaman vrai-faux (verdadero-falso). En mis proyectos no
me interesa tanto la naturaleza de la ficción sino los factores que influyen en su
credibilidad. Es decir, me interesa hasta qué punto una historia que es fruto de
la invención puede ser leída como real. Por ejemplo, en Sputnik relato la falsa
odisea de un cosmonauta soviético perdido en el espacio. La ficción argumental
tiene ciertamente unas calidades literarias, pero el meollo de la cuestión es como
una narración inverosímil se hace creíble presentada en un museo o en las pá-
ginas de un periódico. Me interesa por una parte investigar el dispositivo retórico
(esto es, el aparato museográfico, los documentos fotográficos, los principios de
autoridad, etc.) que aportan verosimilitud, y, por otra parte, provocar la confusión
de géneros, o sea, en este caso sería preguntarse ¿qué hace que una novela
sea leída como un reportaje periodístico? O al revés: ¿qué hace que un reportaje
periodístico -pensemos en los documentales del 11-9- sea visto como una pro-
ducción hollywoodiense?
muestran, sino también, por el lugar que acoge esta emergencia de su visibilidad y por cómo ese lugar condiciona la lectura que hacemos de la obra y de la imagen. ¿Cómo han funcionado estos trabajos fuera de los espacios que condicionaban su significación? ¿No se corre el peligro de que quede desactivada la
se llegase a lo opuesto, a un exceso de incredulidad, habría que restablecerse
el equilibrio. Los ordenadores y Photoshop han ayudado a cambiar la conciencia
del público respecto de la fotografía pero esto no nos libera, sino que nos lleva
a un estadio en el que los prejuicios son otros. Por tanto el reto actual consiste
3
no solo por lo que muestran y por lo que ocultan, y, por supuesto, por cómo lo
momentos de exceso de credulidad, hay que fomentar la desconfianza, pero si
10
X.A.: Ya sabemos que la obra y la imagen significan lo que significan
de Picasso aunque esa atribución autora no se especifique de forma explícita.
obra de Picasso, el público tiende a entender que efectivamente se trata de obras
publicaciones de Picasso, y todo ello presentado en un espacio dedicado a la
defiendo la tesis de que tan peligroso es creerlo todo como no creer nada. En
meja al de la mosca cajonera, que tiene el mandato de molestar. En mi caso, yo
J.F.: En cierto modo, el papel del artista, como el del intelectual, se ase-
proyectos?
picassiana, provistas de títulos picassianos, acompañadas de unas vitrinas con
thaers, Ilya Kabakov, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Louise Lawler, Dan Gra-
X.A.: ¿Cuál es, desde tu punto de vista, la finalidad de todos estos
de la institución museística. La selección, por ejemplo, incluía a Marcel Brood-
habían reunido a un grupo de artistas cuya trayectoria cuestionaba la naturaleza
sobre estas cuestiones a la luz de estos últimos trabajos?
J.F.: Para mí realidad y ficción no son los extremos opuestos de una
dació Antoni Tapies en 1995. Sus comisarios, Thomas Keenan y John Hanhardt,
cámara de Pandora. La fotografí@ después de la fotografía. ¿Qué puedes añadir
supuesta escala, sino simples niveles de apreciación que se caracterizarían por
exposición colectiva titulada Los límites del museo, que tuvo lugar en la Fun-
na parte de tu obra ensayística, como, El beso de Judas, Fotografía y verdad o La
una nueva problematización de la noción de autoría. Yo me valgo aquí de la complicidad de unos caracoles para realizar una obra. Hasta cierto punto caracoles y yo somos co-autores. En ARTIUM situé un terrario repleto de caracoles que disponían como único alimento un fondo de docenas de invitaciones editadas por el propio museo. De vez en cuando una de las tarjetas maltrechas por la voracidad de los caracoles era ampliada, enmarcada y colgada en unos de los muros de la sala. La misma imagen era desecho en el terrario pero obra en la exposición. El museo actuaba como cámara catalizadora en la que se producía el milagro de regenerar y de dar nueva vida a una imagen otrora agónica.
mis proyectos son concebidos para infiltrase en una de esas habitaciones y fun-
cionan en cierto modo como okupas, como squatters. Por ejemplo, Fauna al-
canza su mayor intensidad de subversión cuando se presenta en una institución
científica como un museo de historia natural. Pero cuando Fauna se presenta en
un espacio de arte, para mí no constituye tanto la experiencia del proyecto en sí,
la experiencia-obra en sus circunstancias óptimas, sino la documentación de esa
experiencia, y en consecuencia toda la retórica expositiva debe ser reajustada.
En el caso de El artista y la fotografía también debo adaptar todo el disposi-
tivo discursivo en función de las características del espacio que lo aloje. En la
4
Fotograma con las monos de antiguos trabajadores de la factoría Trepat, Tárrega, 2014.
dadera y que en cada caso atañe a una disciplina distinta: la ciencia, la política,
reúne diez series distintas. Cada serie camufla una ficción que se pretende ver-
9
Instalación de Gastropoda, 2012 en la exposición No tocar por favor, ARTIUM, Vitoria, mayo 2013, y fotograma de vídeo. Joan Fontcuberto, Gastropodo, 2012..
que no solo ha ocupado parte de tu trabajo con las imágenes, sino también bue-
a un soporte material con cualidades físicas. El tercer aspecto tiene que ver con
sempeñe. Por tanto habría tantas fotografías como habitaciones. Habitualmente
cierta paradoja: se trata de una exposición con una cierta voluntad antológica que
de la imagen de pura representación a objeto, de información visual sin cuerpo
minado cometido y adopta una determinada forma según las funciones que de-
X.A.: Estos trabajos vuelven sobre la dialéctica entre realidad y ficción
descomposición y de deterioro. Un segundo aspecto enfatiza el desplazamiento
grafía habita un determinado espacio institucional en el que desarrolla un deter-
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, de todas formas, se ha producido una
alude simbólicamente a la degradación icónica de imágenes en un proceso de
ópodos. Por tanto Gastropoda actúa en tres estadios sucesivos. En primer lugar
neutro y no connotado con la obra de esos artistas?
J.F.: A mí me gusta hablar de las habitaciones de la fotografía. La foto-
arte, las imágenes se ven intervenidas estéticamente por la acción de los gaster-
esencia de ese proyecto cuando se exhibe, como ahora sucede, en un espacio
8
invitaciones suelen ir ilustradas con reproducciones de emblemáticas obras de
tiempo, llegan los hambrientos caracoles y se zampan las cartas. Como que esas
en el exterior de la verja, y si por motivos de viaje estoy ausente durante un
bastante húmeda, el cartero deposita la correspondencia en una casilla postal
caracoles silvestres. El inicio del proyecto fue casual: resido en una zona rural
profusamente. En mi caso esas invitaciones son parcialmente devoradas por
reciclaje de tarjetas de invitación de exposiciones que los museos diseminan
formen. Gastropoda se refiere al metabolismo de las imágenes y se basa en el
gesten, nazcan, desarrollen una actividad, decaigan y mueran, o sea, se trans-
para cualquier otro organismo vivo, la biología establece que las imágenes se
J.F.: Sí, este proyecto vuelve a tratar de la vida de las imágenes. Como
recientes.
que volvía sobre algunas cuestiones que atraviesan buena parte de tus trabajos
disciplinar al público. Para esta exposición estrenaste otra serie, Gastropoda,
de tuerca a una crítica del museo como institución autoritaria cuyo mandato es
de 2013 en ARTIUM, su comisario, Jorge Luis Marzo, daba una nueva vuelta
X.A.: En la exposición Por favor no tocar, presentada en la primavera
sus instalaciones a los más innovadores fotógrafos del momento.
internacionales encargaron sus campañas de publicidad y la documentación de
con unos empresarios leridanos que demostrando una sintonía con las corrientes
fotógrafos y las fotografías. Un texto ambiguo y escueto se limitará a especular
mayores explicaciones inducirá al espectador a establecer relaciones entre los
calarán los retratos de aquellos maestros de las vanguardias. La ausencia de
libro en el que junto a una reproducción de estas fotografías históricas se inter-
todavía estructurando conceptualmente el proyecto pero me planteo realizar un
nación por la tecnología y las formas industriales y la Modernidad artística. Estoy
nificado revisitar la historia de la fotografía y reconocer el maridaje entre la fasci-
Moholy-Nagy, o por Alexander Rodchenko, etc. Hurgar en ese archivo ha sig-
haber estado firmadas por Albert Renger-Patzsch, o por Man Ray, o por Laszlo
del Surrealismo, del Constructivismo, de la Bauhaus, etc. Algunas fotos podrían
locales, a lo largo del tiempo se reconoce la influencia de la Nueva Objetividad,
históricas. A pesar de que la mayoría de fotos fueron encargadas a fotógrafos
podían haber sido tomadas por algunos de los representantes de las vanguardias
sultando el archivo fotográfico de Trepat y descubrí imágenes extraordinarias que
Folletos del proyecto El artista y lo fotografío impresos con ocasión de la muestra Los límites del museo, Fundació Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, 1995..
5
a menudo ingenua, y con los protocolos de la necesaria sospecha hacia lo que
recepción, puesto que confronta a los espectadores con su propia credulidad,
ha vuelto a poner de relieve, recientemente, la incomodidad que provoca en la
incluso, de fraude. La tradición cinematográfica y televisiva del falso documental
cede a menudo, entre los receptores de las imágenes, la sensación de engaño o,
sentido y su siempre abierta relación con la realidad puede provocar, y así su-
X.A.: Jugar con la veracidad de las imágenes para problematizar su
de cualquier ámbito menos del propio ámbito del arte.
porque presuponían que desde la institución artística se puede hacer una crítica
mi propia colección o por obras de artistas que me había influido, seguramente
conocedores de mi trabajo fueron sorprendidos por esa serie, tomándola por
circuito que fuerza a los visitantes a resetear sus expectativas. Incluso visitantes
hecho de cuestionar la misma disciplina artística genera una especie de corto-
he dado cuenta que ha sido un acierto incluir El artista y la fotografía porque el
iariza con la estratagema se predispone a identificar la ficción. Pues bien, me
sala puede provocar una cierta sorpresa pero el público, sala tras sala, se famil-
todos estos proyectos disipa progresivamente su efecto. La visita de la primera
la religión, la historia, el periodismo, etc. El problema es que la yuxtaposición de
presiones equívocas que mi proyecto podría causar», lo cual era justamente lo que yo pretendía. Claude Picasso me envió un telegrama censurándome el carecer de talento y copiar a genios como su padre. La directora del Departamento de Fotografía de un museo neoyorkino se interesó en «adquirir una de las obras fotográficas de Tapies». Y una última anécdota: en el momento de hacer el
cracker actúa por malicia mientras que en cambio el hacker pone su argucia al
servicio de lo que entre los sectores antisistema se considera una causa justi-
ficada. Yo me identificaría con el hacker, que localiza fisuras en los blindajes de
las instituciones que gestionan el conocimiento y la información, para desvelar
los dispositivos de que se sirven. A veces digo que mi trabajo funciona como
6
Realización de lo obro Petja, fotoquimigrama de lo Suite Monfseny. Del proyecto El artista y la fotografío, 1995.
Antoni Tápies con una cámara Olimpus SLR, circo 1960. Del proyecto El artista y la fotografía , 1995.
de una fundación barcelonesa, por ejemplo, me censuró «la confusión y las im-
7
brarán diferentes actos y me han pedido que desarrolle alguna idea. Estuve con-
fundación de la fábrica, que era el pulmón económico de la localidad, se cele-
de arqueología industrial. Con motivo de la conmemoración del centenario de la
setenta la empresa cerró y parte de las instalaciones han quedado como museo
Trepat, la principal productora de maquinaria agrícola en España. En los años
cargo del ayuntamiento de Tárrega. En esa localidad se fundó en 1914 la fábrica
artistas. Ahora mismo preparo una especie de secuela, con ocasión de un en-
cio del trabajo, pero la serie sigue abierta y no descarto completarla con otros
J.F.: Focalizarlo en esos cuatro artista fue una razón supeditada al ini-
de ellos. ¿Puedes darnos detalles sobre esta continuación del proyecto?
Picasso, Miró, Dalí y Tapies, y que estás trabajando en otros desarrollos más allá
X.A.: Sé que el proyecto no ha quedado circunscrito a las figuras de
simplemente a crear un espacio de ambigüedad donde instaurar la duda.
con la falsificación sino con la dialéctica entre lo verdadero y lo falso. Yo me limito
cuales las mías, ni siquiera el propio Tapies. En fin, mi trabajo no tiene que ver
las suyas con las mías. Nadie fue capaz de reconocer cuáles eran las suyas y
más en el mismo estilo y cuando se exhibió en Los límites del museo mezclamos
él realizó algunas pruebas. Cuando se fue yo mismo produje algunas piezas
la técnica del foto-quimigrama, una especie de fotografía sin cámara, con la que
día Antoni Tapies vino a mi estudio. Yo llevé a Tapies al laboratorio y allí le enseñé
proyecto, Tapies era el único de los artistas vivos a los que hacía referencia. Un
la cotización...Podría citar un montón de reacciones anecdóticas. La directora
del sistema artístico, pero sobre todo en cuestiones muy sensibles para el mer-
puede haberte acarreado problemas?
la epistemología. En el ciberespacio se distingue entre hackers y crackers. El
artista y la fotografía generó polémica porque incidía en cuestiones sacrosantas
natarios de esos proyectos se sienten engañados y hasta qué punto ese engaño
parecen calificaciones superficiales. Yo me considero más bien un hacker de
imagen. Me gusta pensar que propongo ficciones profilácticas. Al principio El
imágenes a la supuesta realidad de la que derivan. ¿Hasta qué punto los desti-
cado: yo intentaba problematizar la firma, el estilo, la originalidad, la autenticidad,
producción de anticuerpos que nos hagan más resistentes a las trampas de la
con la reserva crítica necesaria, para suspender el automatismo que vincula las
J .F.: A veces me han acusado de impostor o de embaucador, pero me
un virus benigno, una especie de vacuna, cuya misión consiste en estimular la
vemos. Sospecha que nos permite hacer frente a la producción de imágenes,
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
udd
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
09 El futuro es holográfico ANGEL LUIS SUCASAS http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/20/ciencia/1413813806_320851.html
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“Ayúdame Obi Wan Kenobi, eres mi única esperanza”. No era la actriz Carrie Fisher repitiendo una de tantas citas legendarias de La guerra de las galaxias. Era una estudiante del MIT, vestida de princesa Leia, demostrando que transmitir en vídeo un holograma, uno de los sueños de siempre de la ciencia ficción, era ya una realidad. La cruz de la moneda que, tres años después de la experiencia, “aún recibe correos de fans. Y no le gusta. No quiere que la conozcan como la princesa Leia porque está haciendo cosas mucho más interesantes”, revela su profesor, Michael Bove (Missouri, 1960), líder de un equipo de investigación en el Media Lab del MIT. Más allá de la anécdota, la tecnología holográfica vive un momento dulce. Aplicaciones para la salud prometen simplificar el diagnóstico médico con dispositivos no mayores que la yema de un pulgar. En el mundo de la informática, estas esculturas de luz pueden llegar a multiplicar en un lustro la cantidad de memoria disponible en los ordenadores. En China, la compañía Takee Technology le ganó la partida al futuro móvil de Amazon mostrando un smartphone capaz de crear estas imágenes en 3D. Microsoft y Skype investigan cómo revolucionar la videoconferencia con holografías de los interlocutores. Y hace un par de semanas, Apple patentó un dispositivo para poder tocar e interactuar con estas imágenes Médicos de Bolsillo Se sostiene con dos dedos, porque mide apenas unos centímetros. Es un dispositivo holográfico desarrollado por un grupo de investigación de la Universidad de Cambridge que sirve para acelerar el diagnóstico médico. Su funcionamiento es similar al medidor de pH y cloro de una piscina. Se analiza un fluido, la orina del paciente por ejemplo, y el ingenio genera un patrón de color que devuelve en solo tres minutos un holograma que cambia de color cuando entra en contacto con la sustancia que se desee medir, glucosa en el caso de esta investigación. “Usamos nuevos materiales como hidrogeles de metacrilato que reaccionan a la sustancia química que queramos. Podría ser cualquier tipo de aplicación clínica donde se requieran pruebas de orina o de sangre”, afirma Ali K. Yetisen (Izmir, 1986), encargado de fabricar estos dispositivos en el grupo de investigación de biotecnología que dirige el profesor Christopher R. Lowe. La 2
otra clave son los láseres de alta energía que permiten ahorrar mucho tiempo en crear un holograma: “Si antes llevaba unos 10 pasos, nosotros podemos hacerlo en un par”. El tiempo para que estos aparatos pudieran salir al mercado, “de cinco a 10 años”, porque la verificación de los diagnósticos en humanos y ensayos clínicos son un proceso arduo y riguroso. Memoria inabarcable Mientras el ordenador cuántico no llega, la holografía puede ofrecer también una revolución para la memoria informática. Al contrario que el almacenamiento magnético y óptico, que guardan los datos en una superficie, esta técnica permite guardar los datos en un volumen. El problema es que un láser tiene que leer esta información desde un determinado ángulo. Un equipo de investigación de la Universidad de California de Riverside ha encontrado una manera de combinar el almacenamiento magnético y holográfico para revolucionar la capacidad de ordenadores y discos duros. El sistema, bautizado Magnonic Holographic Memory, se queda con el almacenamiento electrónico convencional, pero usando un tipo de ondas, las spin, que operan a una longitud mucho menor. De la holografía coge esa capacidad de guardar datos en 3D. “Si conseguimos refinar la técnica, según nuestras estimaciones de la onda más pequeña que podríamos usar [en torno a cien nanómetros, la diezmillonésima parte de un milímetro], seremos capaces de meter un terabyte en un centímetro cuadrado”, afirma Alexander Khitun, líder de esta investigación. Comparado con un disco duro portátil actual, esta capacidad multiplicaría por 31 la tecnología existente. Las ventajas de contar con este trabajo en paralelo de ambos sistemas tienen, según Khitun, múltiples aplicaciones: “Por ejemplo, el reconocimiento facial es algo que por el volumen de datos que maneja le cuesta mucho a los ordenadores convencionales. Una computadora que tuviera integrado un sistema holográfico podría dedicarlo a esas tareas que a la electrónica tradicional le son demasiado costosas”. El prototipo de momento no llega al objetivo. En un circuito de dos bits, el grupo de Khitun ha conseguido encerrar ondas de una longitud de 10 micrómetros, es decir, cien veces más amplia que el ideal que permitirá alcanzar ese terabyte por centímetro cuadrado. “Hay muchos desafíos tecnológicos aún que 6
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resolver, pero creo que siendo optimistas podemos esperar tener un prototipo
Pero el equipo de Bove ya ha conseguido vislumbrar ese futuro: “Mis
funcional en cinco años”. Michael Bove, investigador del MIT, es más conserva-
estudiantes han logrado ya hologramas para una pantalla del tamaño equivalente
dor en la viabilidad económica e industrial de este tipo de investigación: “El prob-
a un smartphone. De ahí a una televisión holográfica que usar en casa queda
lema de la memoria holográfica es que en esos cinco o 10 años en que se refine
mucho. Tal vez unos 10 años para que podamos ver las primeras aplicaciones
un modelo experimental, la tecnología convencional puede haber evolucionado
comerciales”. Pero por mucho que prometa la tecnología, el sueño de ver a Leia
hasta hacerla obsoleta o inviable por los costes de fabricación”.
flotando en el aire desde cualquier ángulo aún no está resuelto. Porque todo holograma conocido se proyecta desde una pantalla. Es decir, que Leia, vista desde
La revolución del “holovideo” Las imágenes estáticas holográficas ya son posibles. Pero esas ilusio-
el lugar equivocado, sería solo una voz suplicando: “Ayúdame Obi-Wan Kenobi, eres mi última esperanza”.
nes tridimensionales e interactivas que ha recreado Hollywood en superproducciones como Prometheus o Iron Man aún tienen mucho trecho por delante. El Media Lab del MIT es puntero en conseguir video holográfico. En 2011, conseguir plasmar muy rudimentariamente a una falsa Princesa Leia. Ahora han llegado a proyectar en el espacio a una resolución aún baja: 640x480 píxeles. “Para que un holograma se mueva, para tener vídeo en alta definición, necesitamos hacer los píxeles mucho más pequeños. Tan pequeños como para meter unos 2.000 en un milímetro cuadrado”, explica Michael Bove, director de un grupo de investigación en el Media. Y hay otros desafíos: “Nuestras pantallas de momento son como las de las teles antiguas, cajas. Estamos refinando la tecnología para conseguir que sean planas”.
El prototipo de circuito holográfico y convencional integrado del profesor Alexander Khitun de la Universidad de California de Riverside.
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Una mariposa holográfica en la tecnología de vídeo del MIT. La resolución es de 640x480 píxeles..
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10 Historias de Ultratumba MARIANA OTERO VERZIER http://www.domusweb.it/es/arquitectura/2012/11/12/historias-de-ultratumba.html
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“Pero, ¿se van a llevar todo?” “Si, todo,” contesta Sophie O’Brien, comisaria de la Serpentine Gallery, mientras tomamos asiento dentro del pabellón diseñado por Herzog & de Meuron y Ai Weiwei. Estamos a finales de junio y el agua de la cubierta refleja un cielo londinense sorprendentemente despejado. Sophie responde las preguntas, pero su mirada está pendiente del grupo que se nos acerca: Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist —directores de la galería— y Kazuyo Sejima. “Son unos días muy intensos,” murmura. Han pasado cuatro meses desde entonces, y pronto, en Kensington Gardens, no quedará rastro del último de los pabellones de la Serpentine, ahora perteneciente a Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal. Sus piezas serán transportadas y recompuestas, tal vez, en alguna de las propiedades que forman parte de su cartera inmobiliaria personal. La propuesta de este año pretendía alejarse del carácter de “objeto” que caracterizó a las de ediciones anteriores y, a la vez, establecer un diálogo con ellas. “Tomando un enfoque arqueológico,” explicaba el comunicado de prensa, “los arquitectos han creado un diseño que inspira a los visitantes a mirar hacia atrás en el tiempo a través de los fantasmas de las estructuras previas.” La idea
El pabellón de Zaha Hadid para la Serpentine Gallery 2000 en Kingsford venue. Foto: © Marina Otero Verzier
de excavar en busca de la historia de estas arquitecturas resultaba tan fascinante como paradójica; mientras frente a la Serpentine Gallery se invocaban sus espíritus, lejos de ahí, los 11 pabellones disfrutaban de una segunda vida bajo nuevas identidades. Las arquitecturas producidas por la Serpentine Gallery se venden. No hay presupuesto asignado para el encargo, sino que se financia a través de pa-
El pabellón de Zaha Hadid para la Serpentine Gallery 2000 en Kingsford venue. Foto: © Marina Otero Verzier
Music Pavillion de Frank O. Gehry para la Serpentine Gallery 2008 en Château La Coste, Francia. Foto: © Marina Otero Verzier
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trocinios y de la venta de la obra terminada que, según los organizadores, no cubre más del 40% de los costes. De acuerdo al inventario oficial, la mayoría de los pabellones han sido adquiridos por coleccionistas que prefieren permanecer en el anonimato. Este año, por vez primera, el nombre de los compradores se ha anunciado públicamente. “¿Y, podrías repetirme sobre qué estas escribiendo?,” pregunta Sophie. “Sobre la segunda vida de los pabellones,” contesto. Había comenzado por el primero de la lista, el diseñado por Zaha Hadid en 2000, destinado a albergar una cena de recaudación de fondos para celebrar el 30 aniversario de la galería. La estructura iba a durar una semana pero despertó tanto interés que estuvo en pie durante tres meses. Entonces, el pabellón El pabellón de Toyo Ito para la Serpentine Gallery en Battersea Power Station, Londres. Foto: © thegoatisbad
donar el circuito de la élite cultural-intelectual es, para algunos, motivo suficiente para cuestionar el valor y la autoría de una obra de arquitectura. Precisamente, es a través de los territorios donde circulan y se acumulan los pabellones de la Serpentine Gallery como se desvela el funcionamiento de una de las máquinas más eficientes para la producción, reproducción y consumo de arquitectura de autor. Las trayectorias que describen estas arquitecturas viajeras muestran, además, la relación entre capital financiero, capital cultural y
fue comprado por la Royal Shakespeare Company y vuelto a montar en el aparcamiento de Stratford-upon-Avon en 2001; rebautizado como “Summer House,” servía como reclamo para atraer público hacia el teatro. Según la información proporcionada por la Serpentine Gallery, al finalizar el verano el pabellón fue desmantelado. El siguiente, Eighteen Turns, diseñado por Daniel Libeskind en 2001, reapareció cuatro años después, cuando fue cedido por su misterioso (y desconocido) propietario, y transportado hasta Irlanda con motivo de la celebración de la Capital Europea de la Cultura en Cork. Ahí fue presentado, entre políticos,
especulación inmobiliaria, y construyen a una serie de territorios turísticos-culturales en los que el desarrollo inmobiliario y el cultural colisionan por mediación del capital simbólico de la arquitectura. El pabellón de Hadid no sólo sobrevivió, sino que fue, además, dotado de equipo audiovisual, iluminación y calefacción, y se ofrece en alquiler para celebrar bodas, fiestas o conciertos por £950 al día. No forma parte de ninguna colección de arte, ni aspira a ser referencia de futuros desarrollos urbanísticos pero es, probablemente, el más activo de los pabellones ex-Serpentine. Y es que, en el parque de atracciones, su valor de uso aún prevalece sobre su valor expositivo. Aquellos que, a pesar de todo, quieran visitarlo están avisados, ahora sólo responde a un nombre: Sala Kingsford. El pabellón de 2001 Eighteen Turns de Daniel Libeskind en Cork, Irlanda. Foto: © Ludwig Abache
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promotores inmobiliarios y planificadores, como un “icono de Cork contemporáneo, así como una expresión de las posibilidades creativas de arquitectura para el futuro de la ciudad,” especialmente para el —entonces inminente— desarrollo urbanístico de su zona portuaria. Tras los servicios prestados, “Eighteen Turns” regresó al anonimato. La adquisición del pabellón diseñado por Toyo Ito en 2002 por el magnate Victor Hwang y su compañía Parkview Internacional recibió una amplia cobertura mediática. Funcionó como centro de visitantes y estandarte de una de tantas propuestas para la reconversión de la Central de Battersea en Londres, para más tarde ser transportado por carretera hasta Le Beauvallon, un hotel (también propiedad de Hwang) localizado a unos minutos de Saint-Tropez y que quiere convertirse en destino del turismo más exclusivo. Con el asesoramiento de Cecil Balmond, la estructura se ha re-ensamblado y adaptado para ocupar un lugar privilegiado dentro del club privado, en primera línea de playa. Sorprendentemente, y a pesar de los pabellones de la Serpentine están obligados a ser la primera obra que sus diseñadores construyen en Reino Unido, la de Ito no es la única de estas obras que disfruta de su retiro en el sur de Francia. Tampoco es la primera que ha permitido a sus dueños hacer confluir su
El pabellón de Toyo Ito para la Serpentine Gallery en Battersea Power Station, Londres. Foto: © Thomas Volstorf
interés en la inversión en bienes raíces y el coleccionismo de arquitectura de autor. A pocos kilómetros de Le Beauvallon, ha ido a parar el de 2008, diseñado por
Gehry. Fue comprado por el promotor irlandés Patrick McKillen y reconstruido en Château la Coste, un viñedo que se ha reposicionado en el mercado y revalorizado al hacer convivir las vides con una colección de obras firmadas por Nouvel, Ando, Serra y Bourgeois, entre otros. Ahí, el Music Pavilion continua a la espera de encontrar algún uso que le aporte un valor adicional al meramente expositivo. “¿Cuántos de ellos has visitado hasta ahora?,” pregunta Sophie. Château la Coste era sólo una de las paradas del viaje que había comenzado semanas antes, en un tren nocturno que partía de Londres. Diez horas después llegaba a un parque de atracciones localizado en Inglaterra. Ahí se encuentra, un poco mas sucia, forrada de lona gris e ignorada por los medios culturales y de comunicación —seguramente también por sus autores— una de las primeras obras de la ganadora del Pritzker 2004: el pabellón de la Serpentine diseñado por Zaha Hadid. Mientras, sus restos y subproductos continúan ali-
El pabellón de 2001 Eighteen Turns de Daniel Libeskind en Cork, Irlanda. Foto: © Peter Bailey.
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mentando las publicaciones, exposiciones y textos de arquitectura. Puede que a eso se refieran al darlo por “desmantelado”, poniendo en evidencia que aban5
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11 Arquitectura Líquida IGNASI DE SOLA-MORALES DC. Revista de crítica arquitectònica, 2001, núm. 5-6
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La definición clásica de la arquitectura se ha hecho en base a la triada de conceptos vitruvianos: utilitas, ftrmitas, venustas, que podemos traducir literalmente por comodidad, firmeza y hermosura (1) De entre estos tres conceptos que definen la noción clásica de la arquitectura el segundo, la firmitas, es el que más claramente determina sus características materiales. Firmitas expresa la consistencia física, la capacidad de estabilidad y permanencia desafiando el paso del tiempo. Por supuesto la consistencia física de la arquitectura tiene también que ver con soluciones formales que la hagan adecuada a las leyes de la gravedad y a la acción de los agentes externos. Una arquitectura firme, estable, es también una arquitectura sólida cuyas características dimensionales y formales no cambian a pesar de los cambios de temperatura, humedad, viento, etc. Si cruzamos esta noción con las que se desprenden del mito de la cabaña primitiva también contado por Vitrubio, es evidente que el individuo que deja de ser nómada para hacerse sedentario construye, en el claro del bosque, utilizando ramas, piedras y barro, un recinto cerrado, cubierto, cuyo objetivo primordial es el de encerrar, delimitar un espacio, donde el fuego y la palabra podían tener una sede.(2) La cultura occidental ha mantenido la centralidad de este principio de estabilidad, permanencia y espacialidad como uno de los tres rasgos definitorios de la noción de arquitectura de modo que, sólo en sus márgenes, era posible concebir otras actividades estructuradoras que no tuviesen el principio de estabilidad y permanencia como una de las nociones clave a la hora de entender lo específico de la arquitectura. Si la firmitas, consistencia vitruviana, tiene que ver con la delimitación del espacio, su voluntad de permanencia y estabilidad tiene que ver con la solidez e su forma material. Lo habitual en la arquitectura es que la determinación se haga a través de materiales sólidos. De nuevo, si nos referimos a este extraño, ambiguo, pero decisivo texto vitruviano, entenderemos que la definición antropológica y estética que se propone en los dos primeros libros de su obra se desarrolle inmediatamente en los materiales que aseguran su consistencia y en las técnicas constructivas que garantizan su solidez. No es capricho ni pragmatismo el hecho de que en Occidente los tratados de arquitectura contengan de inmediato consideraciones materiales y constructivas. Al contrario, es la condición material, físicamente consistente, 2
para el análisis, la experimentación y el proyecto constituye, hoy por hoy, todavía
constructivamente sólida, delimitadora de un espacio, lo que ha hecho, durante
mas un deseo que una realidad asequible. Representar de forma no visualista
veinticinco siglos, que la arquitectura sea un saber y una técnica ligada a la per-
sino global la experiencia cinestésica del fluir en el movimiento metropolitano, de
manencia.
la deriva que se aleja de la programación y la regulación preestablecida para ex-
¿Qué sucede si intentamos pensar desde el otro extremo de estos con-
perimentar otros eventos, otras performances, es uno de los retos fundamentales
ceptos tradicionales? ¿Existe una arquitectura materialmente líquida, atenta y
para una arquitectura que mire hacia el futuro..
configuradora no de la estabilidad sino del cambio y, por tanto, habiéndoselas con la fluidez cambiante que ofrece toda realidad? ¿Es posible pensar una arqui-
NOTAS
tectura del tiempo más que del espacio? ¿Una arquitectura cuyo objetivo sea no
Foto ppal: Cavidad abdominal humana. Imagen fotográfica de un cuerpo real.
el de ordenar la dimensión extensa sino el movimiento y la duración?.
(1) Vitrubius. De Archítectura. Uber 1, cap. 6, 7.
Hoy parece más claro que nunca que nuestra civilización ha abando-
(2) Vitrubius. De Archítectura. Uber l, cap. 11, 5-32.
nado la estabilidad con la que el mundo se presentó en el pasado para, por el
(3) Gilles Deleuze. Le bergsonisme, París: P.U.F., 1966. (English translatlon.
contrario, asumir el dinamismo de todas las energías que configuran nuestro
Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books, 1988.)
entorno. Precisamente porque en nuestra cultura contemporánea atendemos
(4) Gilles Deleuze. Félix Guattari. Mille Plateaux. Paris: Minuit. 1980. (English
prioritariamente al cambio, a la trans-formación y a los procesos que el tiempo
translation. A thousond Plateaus. University of Minnesotta Press. Minneapolis,
establece modificando a través de él el modo de ser de las cosas, ya no podemos
1987.) (5) Michael Nyman. Experimental music. Cage and Beyond. New York; Schirmer Books, 1974. Allan Kaprow, Assemblage, Environments and Happenings. New York; Harry N. Abrahms, 1966. Jacques Attali. Noise: The Political Economy of music, Minneapolis: Minnesota Univ. Press, 1985. (6) Elizabeth Arnstrong, Joan Rothfuss, (ed.) In the spirit of Fluxus, Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1993. (7) Krisrine Stiles. «Between Water and Stone. Fluxus performance: A metaphisics of Acts», en el catálogo In the spirit of Fluxus, op. cit. pp. 62 y ss. (8) Andreas Huyssen. «Back to the future: Fluxus In context», en el catálogo In the spirit of Fluxus. op. cít. pp.140 y ss. (9) Louis Kahn. «Toward a plan for midtown Philadelphia», Perspecta, v. 2, (1953) pp.10 y ss. (10) Walter Benjamln. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen reproduzierborckheit (1936) Gesommelle Schrifien, Vol I Suhrkamp Veslag.1972. (Trad. esp.«La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibllidad técnica», en Discursos interrumpidos l. Madrid: Taurus. 1973. Trad. inglesa «The work of art in the Epoch of Mechanlcal reproduction», in Studies on the Left. n• 2. 1960. pp. 28-46.) Imágenes anatómicas reales de tejidos neuronales.
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pensar en recintos firmes, establecidos por materiales duraderos sino en formas fluidas, cambiantes, capaces de in-corporar. de hacer físicamente cuerpo no con lo estable sino con lo cambiante, no buscando una definición fija y permanente de un espacio sino dando forma física al tiempo, a una experiencia de durabilidad en el cambio, que es completamente distinta del desafío del tiempo que caracterizó el modo de operar clásico. Una arquitectura líquida en vez de una arquitectura sólida será aquella que sustituya la firmeza por la fluidez y la primacía del espacio por la primacía del tiempo. Este cambio, este desplazamiento de los paradigmas vitruvianos, no
C. Opie. Untitled. 1994
se hace tan sencillamente y necesita de un proceso que establezca todos los
representación convencional, perspectiva, sigue siendo completamente equivo-
estadios intermedios.
cado aunque para ello se utilicen sofisticados programas informáticos de cad. De
Hoy, más que nunca, nos interesan unas arquitecturas que están a me-
nada sirve seguir mostrando visiones, aunque sean animadas, en movimiento,
dio camino entre el espacio y el tiempo, viviendo en la tensión de las prioridades
virtuales, etc. La experiencia del lugar del flujo es cinestésica, distraída como
opuestas. Toda arquitectura que recoja este proceso como lo más esencial se
hubiera dicho Walter Benjamín, quien tuvo la poderosa intuición de que la mirada
estará colocando en la vía de los valores tardo-modernos explorados por la ar-
atenta, visualista, pertenecía a la experiencia de una cultura periclitada.(10)
quitectura actual.
Producir formas de la experiencia de lo fluido y poder disponer de ellas
En el cuadro adjunto se fijan las tres situaciones de la arquitectura: sólida, viscosa y líquida en un escalado que va evidentemente de la tradición hacia un nuevo modo de estructura que poco tiene que ver con la arquitectura clásica de occidente. Estas situaciones se definen a partir de tres condiciones materiales distintas: firmeza, ductilidad, fluidez. Tres modos distintos de la materialidad propia de la arquitectura que, como consecuencia dan tres categorías dominantes distintas: el espacio, el proceso y el tiempo como categorías básicas dominantes.
Constant. New Babylon. Dos Torres. 1959..
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o de Versalles.
BERGSONISMO
Una arquitectura líquida, fluida, no está dirigida a la representación ni al
Ha sido Gilles Deleuze quién, desde el inicio de su obra, ha señalado la
espectáculo sino que es el resultado de un pliegue sobre si misma, una suerte de
importancia del pensamiento de Henry Bergson, un pensador de éxito en Francia
interior de una cinta de Moebius en la que no es posible escapar de la forma que
a comienzos del siglo XX, pero luego relegado por las corrientes fenomenológi-
crea su misma fluctuación permanente.
cas y estructuralistas.(3)
La arquitectura que se enfrenta con los flujos humanos en los intercam-
Lo que a Deleuze le interesa de la herencia de Bergson es la reflex-
biadores, aeropuertos, estaciones marítimas o de ferrocarril, no puede preocu-
ión sobre los conceptos de espacio/tiempo tal como la moderna física los ha
parse por su apariencia o por su imagen exterior. Devenir flujo significa manipular
propuesto y el modo según el cual estos se proponen como dos polos a la vez
la contingencia de los acontecimientos, establecer estrategias para la distribu-
opuestos pero totalmente relacionados. Desde la ciencia moderna la realidad
ción de individuos, bienes o información. Una arquitectura que siga considerando
del espacio y del tiempo serían como las dos caras de una misma moneda, la
estos lugares del flujo como espectáculo caerá en la misma contradicción que la
relación inseparable de las dos categorías kantianas fundamentales que la física
que Marcel Duchamp quería cancelar cuando, abandonando la pintura retiniana,
einsteiniana y la matemática de Riemann habrían acoplado indisolublemente.
aquella sólo basada en la mirada, se aventuraba en un arte del acontecimiento. Carecemos, en buena parte, de instrumentos de control de este espa-
En el siglo XX, para la arquitectura, la noción de espacio/tiempo se convierte en el soporte teórico más decisivo a la hora de formular una teoría de la
cio/tiempo/evento que es el lugar del flujo, la arquitectura líquida. El uso de la
arquitectura moderna. De Riegl a Giedion la elaboración de la noción estética de
Constant. New Babylon. Escalera. Laberinto. 1967.
Marc Boyle. Personas cruzando una calle. Imagen de toma para un registro de fotodensidad. 1978.
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espacio se despliega como algo indisoluble a la experiencia temporal de modo
uxus. En los animadores de esta última corriente resulta irreconocible la pres-
que, al igual como postula la física einsteiniana, espacio y tiempo en el arte y en
encia de filosofía zen y de búsqueda del vacío liberador de raíz budista que, en
la arquitectura son reversibles. Ambas son formas de la extensión cartesiana que
cambio, encontramos en Cage, Cuningham y en artistas minimalistas que en
se postulan una de la otra en la necesidad de una descripción total de la experi-
algún momento tuvieron una cierta conexión con el movimiento Fluxus (Robert
encia.
Morris, Sol Le Witt, Walter de Maria, etc.). Por el contrario, no es la búsqueda de La llamada cuarta dimensión es, con todo su sofisticado soporte físico-
la unidad esencial, sino la acumulación, la sucesión, la repetición y el azar los
cuántico, una categoría mecanicista, una regla inflexible que se extiende a cu-
que definen la sensibilidad específica de Fluxus en la cual el tiempo real intuido y
alquier tipo de fenómenos. El espacio se percibe en el tiempo y el tiempo es la
experimentado es el hilo conductor fundamental sin necesidad de abstracciones
forma de la experiencia espacial. La rigidez inflexible de este par de conceptos
ni esquematismos.
tiene que ver con la rigidez de la percepción gestaltica y con el mecanicismo de la descripción del espacio construido.
Como ha dicho Andreas Huyssen, se trata de un tiempo de la distribución, es decir un tiempo que brota del universo real de lo cotidiano y de la produc-
Bergson, desde sus primeras obras, pone en entredicho esta polaridad
ción y consumo de toda suerte de mercancias. Un tiempo que no se detiene ni
mecanica de espacio/tiempo. Para el filósofo de Les donneés inmediates de la
puede teñirse de reductos individuales.(8) Un tiempo colectivo, anónimo, envol-
conscience, la experiencia de la duración, durée, es una intuición que revela la
vente en el que el arte se sublima en puro devenir inclusivo y en el que el espacio
continuidad de lo múltiple. La teoría de la relatividad resolvía lo espacial en lo
es constantemente producido por el instante y devorado por la acción.
temporal y vice-versa. En Bergson la experiencia del devenir, de la durée, introARQUITECTURA LÍQUIDA Que la experiencia de Fluxus pone ante nosotros una noción completamente diversa de la arquitectura resulta mas que evidente. En 1953 Louis Kahn proponía una estrategia para el centro de Filadelfia y lo hacia a partir de una representación del movimiento en la que la imagen convencional de un plano quedaba por completo dinamitada en millares de signos indicativos del movimiento de los flujos urbanos (9) La ciudad no podía entenderse como sistema de espacios generados por la masa construida de los edificios ni por los vacíos entre ellos sino que estos últimos no eran otra cosa mas que los bordes por donde fluían los tráficos de automóviles, de transporte público o de peatones. La estructura del espacio urbano era el resultado de sistemas de rozamientos de diversas viscosidades provocando turbulencias en los puntos de encuentro y densidades distintas en el interior de los propios flujos. La posibilidad de representar estos fenómenos mostraba sus grandes limitaciones y los bellos dibujos de Kahn eran como el palimsesto de una forma que sólo podía medirse y conformarse desde dentro. La metáfora de la forma líquida puede ser engañosa si pensamos en su repre.sentación, es decir en la forma clásica de la arquitecMarc Boyle. Personas cruzando una calle. Registro de fotodensidad. 1978.
6
tura acuática como juegos de agua, fuentes y cascadas en los jardines de Tiroli 11
cional, clasificable y separado de la vida, muestra también una particular sensi-
duce plasticidad en la experiencia espacial y temporal. Dilatación, ampliación,
bilidad hacia el entorno contemporáneo del espacio mediático, metropolitano,
fuerza, son datos a la vez externos pero también internos de nuestra experiencia
post-consumista y agnóstico. La prioridad del evento, del acontecimiento, supone
de lo múltiple. Lo múltiple tiene una continuidad interna que hace de las expe-
un desplazamiento fundamental desde la preocupación por la permanencia y la
riencias de la duración una absoluta diversidad. Nociones como perturbación,
durabilidad hacia lo instantáneo, ocasional, imprevisible y fugaz. Este desplaza-
modificación o flujo no son pensables en el esquematismo del espacio/tiempo de
miento no se produce de una forma teórica sino asumiendo la condición múltiple
la física moderna y lo son, en cambio, en la experiencia interna, de la conciencia
que encierra todo evento. Es importante notar las diferencias que, histórica-
de la duración.
mente, en los años sesenta y setenta, se dieron entre el minimalismo, siempre
El espacio bergsoniano se contrae o se dilata no por la extensión ex-
más abstracto, esencialista y reductivo, y los intereses más específicos de F/
terna sino por la multiplicidad que nuestra intuición interna, real y física, pero de la conciencia, es capaz de experimentar. El tiempo que percibe la conciencia es una sucesión, una fusión, una discriminación cualitativa, una multiplicidad virtual y al mismo tiempo continua que sólo es experimentada desde la conciencia y que nunca es reducible a una multiplicidad actual y discontinua determinada por el número. El Bergsonismo para Deleuze es el pensamiento que en la modernidad adivina la pluralidad de las duraciones. En Bergson la realidad aparece construida por acontecimientos que graban nuestra conciencia abriendo la experiencia del espacio y del tiempo a la multiplicidad. Una arquitectura basada en la intuición del devenir como durée, como multiplicidad de la experiencia de los espacios y los tiempos, ha de fundarse en esta continuidad múltiple en la cuál los acontecimientos no fijan objetos, ni delimitan espacios ni detienen tiempos. Al contrario, la experiencia moderna del espacio/tiempo en la conciencia desvela la continuidad y la multiplicidad, de modo que lo que eran espacios fijos se convierten en permanentes dilataciones de la misma manera que lo que eran tiempos cronometrabies se convierten en flujos, en experiencias de lo durable. Esta reivindicación de la intuición y de la multiplicidad significa que hoy podemos pensar la arquitectura desde categorías no fijas sino cambiantes y múltiples, capaces de reunir en un mismo plano experiencias diversas que nada tienen ni de excluyentes ni de jerarquizadas. Una arquitectura líquida significa, ante todo, un sistema de acontecimientos en los que espacio y tiempo están simultáneamente presentes como categorías abiertas, múltiples, no reductivas, organizadoras de esta apertura y
Ives Klein. Antropometries. Paris 1960
10
multiplicidad no precisamente desde una voluntad de jerarquizar e imponerles un 7
orden sino como composición de fuerzas creativas, como arte. (4)
nes de los artistas del Fluxus tomaban la forma de la interpretación musical como paradigma de cualquier actividad artística.
ARTE LÍQUIDO
Extendiendo la idea activa de interpretación el tiempo se convierte, para
En la experiencia artística del grupo Fluxus hay una serie de referentes
Fluxus, en el soporte material más evidente de modo que las acciones, los con-
recurrentes. Posiblemente el más importante sea la música. No sólo por el papel
ciertos, las instalaciones, exploran tanto nuevas posibilidades de la producción
central que ocupan las aportaciones de Nam June Paik y John Cage sino por
de sonidos y de silencios como el sentido musical de cualquier otro tipo de ac-
todo el entorno musical en el que se origina este movimiento. Tanto la person-
ción entendida precisamente en su valor temporal limitado, instantáneo, even-
alidad de George Maciunas, animador principal del debate desde la fundación
tual. Cuando Emmet Williams interpreta su Continuing song for La Monte Young,
de este movimiento en 1961, como las actividades de todo el grupo tanto en los
en el Festival Fluxurum de Düsseldorf (1963) los movimientos de los actores, la
Festivales de música en Wisbaden (1962), como en el reiterado papel asumido
música propiamente dicha, pero también las acciones de subirse a una escalera,
por la música en las acciones artísticas, desde las performances (5) a las insta/
romper papeles, pintarse el rostro o verter agua desde lo alto, está ampliando
adones, se pone de manifiesto que la música asume un protagonismo fundamen-
la forma musical de la interpretación a partir de eventos no sólo musicales sino
tal. Es evidente que la misma palabra performance procede, en buena parte, de
físicos, corpóreos, visuales.(6).
su utilización para referirse a la interpretación musical de manera que las accio-
Se ha repetido reiteradamente que Maciunas -por cierto formado como arquitecto en la escuela de la Cooper Union- propuso el nombre de Fluxus inspirándose en el pensamiento del filósofo pre-socrático Heraclito para el cuál toda la realidad formada por los cuatro elementos --aire, agua, tierra y fuego-- era un flu ir permanente. Advirtamos, por otra parte, que para los artistas de Fluxus la reminiscencia de estos cuatro elementos cambiantes y fluidos forma parte de la iconografía a menudo repetida en sus acciones. Me interesa señalar, en especial, la referencia al agua y más en general, al estado liquido como una referencia reiterada en las presentaciones de Fluxus. Es líquida, en no pocas ocasiones, la fuente musical de algunos conciertos. Son líquidas o viscosas, ciertamente fluidas, las tinturas y el color con el que los cuerpos, directamente, se embadurnan y manchan suelos, paredes y lienzos. Es líquida el agua que cae unificando los materiales de muchas acciones. Son líquidos, fluidos, la sangre, la orina, el flujo vaginal, los jugos gástricos a los que se convoca con tanta frecuencia en muchas de las performances. Kristine Stiles en un inteligente ensayo sobre las performances de Fluxus las define como creadoras de un espacio between water and stone, repitiendo una expresión tomada del antropólogo Bengt af Klintberg y señalando el origen duchampiano de los cuatro elementos --agua, aire, tierra y fuego-- que determi-
Sigfried Giedion. Portada de la primera edición de Space, Time ond Architecture. 1941.
8
nan la dimensión alquímica del pensamiento del autor del Grand Verre.(7) Pero Fluxus, que desarrolla la radicalidad de una crítica al arte conven9
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
12 Berlusconi teleurbanista ANDRÉS JAQUE http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/08/14/babelia/1408017947_556388.html
1
A pesar de que Silvio Berlusconi es conocido por su actividad política y empresarial, es en realidad el urbanismo el origen de su poder y el terreno en el que desarrolló las estrategias con las que ha desafiado el rumbo de Milán, de Italia y de la Unión Europea. Berlusconi y sus empresas Edilnord, Fininvest y Mediaset son los principales promotores de un urbanismo radical, diseñado para aislar a la población en sectores homogéneos y para eliminar la política de las relaciones entre consumo y producción. La RAI comenzó sus emisiones en 1954 desde sus estudios de Corso Sempione, diseñados por Gio Ponti. Con el tiempo, la RAI unificó los usos lingüísticos, los horarios de comidas o las horas de sueño en Italia, para aportar una masa de trabajadores estandarizados, que fabricase y consumiese los productos genéricos de la industria nacional. La televisión, las viviendas sociales y el diseño de los espacios industriales fueron parte de un mismo proyecto de ensamblaje social. Los cuerpos, las vecindades y las ciudades como Milán, Madrid o Barcelona se reconstruyeron en su relación con televisiones nacionales, como la RAI o TVE, y con conglomerados industriales públicos, como el IRI en Italia o el INI en España. Todo esto entró en crisis a finales de los sesenta. No solo los estudiantes protestaban en el Milán de 1968. También los trabajadores de la industria, que llegaban atraídos por el “milagro económico”. Pedían viviendas. Aunque en Lombardía los sueldos duplicaban los del sur, la escasez de viviendas cuadruplicaba el coste de la vida. En las calles se reclamaba más financiación. La revista Casabella apelaba a la industria para que usase la misma fuerza con que atraía a los trabajadores para generar soluciones constructivas rápidas y baratas. Bruno Zevi proponía en L’Espresso que se urbanizasen zonas rurales en las que el suelo era barato. 1968 es también el año en que Edilnord, la promotora de Silvio Berlusconi, presentó su plan para construir Milano 2, una urbanización de 712.000 metros cuadrados en el municipio de Segrate, a diez minutos de Milán. 2.600 apartamentos, en bloques aislados, construidos con tecnología de Siemens y Bticino. Los bloques rodeaban un espacio central con piscinas, pistas de tenis, colegios y un “jardín de la agresividad” en el que los niños, tal como explicaban los anuncios, podían aprender a pelearse como “indios y vaqueros”. Todo inmerso en una jardinería exuberante con un espectacular, y aburrido, lago con cisnes. La financiación, la industrialización y la urbanización de zonas rurales habían 2
llegado, pero no para solucionar los problemas de los trabajadores, sino para escapar de ellos. Edilnord anunciaba Milano 2 como “la ciudad de los número uno”. La arquitectura para una nueva clase de milaneses: los ejecutivos empleados por empresas como IBM o Unilever que, con una presencia multinacional, comenzaban a desafiar las economías nacionales. Los número uno no tenían
Estudios de Tele Milano en los años setenta, en Milano 2
3
grandes propiedades, pero tenían grandes sueldos. Eran los número uno del
embargo de drogas, malos tratos o explotación laboral con una claridad y detalle
consumo, autoexiliados en una isla en la que Edilnord controlaba los alquileres
con los que rara vez se habla en los Parlamentos. En la recepción y en el margen
de los locales comerciales en los que podrían gastar sus sueldos.
para el descontrol que contienen puede surgir lo político. En Facebook, por ejem-
Si la vivienda social italiana tenía cubierta plana y hormigón gris, la ciu-
plo, se ha promovido el intercambio de contenidos abiertos y se han fortalecido
dad de los número uno era folk, con fachadas rojo lombardo y tejado cerámico.
movimientos de protesta que han llegado a ocupar las plazas y a incomodar a las
Para evitar que las antenas de televisión enturbiasen la evocación folk, Giancarlo
corporaciones internacionales. Contribuir a potenciar la parte urbana, política e
Ragazzi y Giulio Possa, los arquitectos, decidieron instalar una red subterránea
inclusiva de las arquitecturas transmediáticas contemporáneas es el reto al que
de televisión. En 1974 Giacomo Properzj y Alceo Moretti se engancharon a la red
ahora nos enfrentamos.
y comenzaron a emitir happenings cutres en los que participaban los vecinos de Milano 2. Nacía Tele Milano Cavo, y fue un éxito. Un año después Berlusconi se
El pasado 7 de junio se inauguró la 14ª Bienal de Arquitectura de Venecia, que
hacía con la cadena. Emitían de madrugada, innovaban en los formatos, daban
permanecerá abierta hasta el 23 de noviembre. El arquitecto Andrés Jaque y su
espacio a lo juvenil y a lo experimental, a mucho de lo que no encajaba en el
estudio Oficina de Innovación Política presentan el proyecto Sales Oddity. Milano
proyecto vertical de la RAI. Fue un éxito de audiencia. Con la evolución de la
2 and the politics of direct-to-home TV urbanism (Perdidos en la televenta. Milano
legislación italiana llegaría a ser la principal cadena del emporio internacional de
2 y las políticas de los urbanismos televisivos a la carta), por invitación del direc-
Mediaset. Desde entonces, en el centro de Milano 2, junto al lago de los cisnes,
tor de la bienal, Rem Koolhaas.
están los estudios y oficinas de Mediaset. Publitalia, la agencia que comercializa los contenidos publicitarios de Mediaset, modificó radicalmente la relación entre anunciantes y consumidores. Si la RAI unificaba a la sociedad, Publitalia comenzó en 1980 a diseñar la programación para aislar en una franja horaria y en un canal concreto a los potenciales compradores de los productos de sus anunciantes. Si la RAI educaba y agrupaba, Mediaset atraía y aislaba en sectores de programación especializados. Berlusconi lo explicó claramente: “Yo no vendo espacio, vendo ventas”. Las estrategias que habían funcionado comercialmente en el diseño de Milano 2, y que forman parte de la cadena de proyectos que han arrasado con la posibilidad de una Europa equitativa, fueron aplicadas con las mismas intenciones en el diseño de medios. Milano 2 atrajo y promovió entre los líderes del consumo la autoexclusión frente a la promiscuidad comercial de Milán. Y su evolución, en forma de urbanismo transmediático, distribuye a la población en nichos aislados de consumo, en los que se vive observando contenidos televisivos cargados con patrones de consumo. Un aislamiento que nunca sería posible sin edificios en los que para ver a los vecinos hay que encender la tele. En estas redes que conectan los cuartos de estar con, por ejemplo, el simplista y reaccionario programa televisivo Sálvame deluxe, se ha hablado sin 4
5
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
13 The best of the prose poem DAVID FOSTER WALLACE disponible en http://www.servinglibrary.org/read.html?id=153336
WARNING TO THE READER Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light. But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat’s hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out! I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the comer with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed... They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor. . -- Robert Bly 12
1
• Physical dimensions of The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal anthology in cm: 15 x 22.5 x 2. • Weight of anthology in grams: 419. • Total # of words in anthology: 85,667. • Total # of words devoted to actual prose poems: 69,986. • Rain Taxi ’s length-limit for review of Best of The P. P. : 1,000 words. • Form of review: indexical/statistical/schematic. • Official name of this new, transgeneric critical form: the Indexical Book Review. • Tactical reason for review form: The words preceding each item’s colon technically constitute neither subjective complement nor appositive nor really any recognized grammatical unit at all; hence none of these antecolonic words should count against R.T.’s rigid 1,000-word limit. • Other, better-known and/or currently fashionable transgeneric literary forms: the Nonfiction Novel, the Prose Poem, the Lyric Essay, etc. • Basic aesthetic/ideological raison d’etre of the above forms: to comment on, complicate, subvert, defamiliarize, transgress against, or otherwise fuck with received ideas of genre, category, and (especially) formal conventions/constraints. (See by analogy the historical progres- sion rhymed accentual-syllabic verse → blank verse → vers libre, etc.) • Big paradox/oxymoron behind this raison and the current trendiness of transgeneric forms: In fact, these putatively “transgressive” forms depend heavily on received ideas of genre, category, and formal conventions, since without such an established context there’s nothing much to transgress against. Transgeneric forms are therefore most viable — most interesting, least fatuous — during eras when literary genres themselves are relatively stable and their conventions wellestablished and -codified and no one seems much disposed to fuck with them. And ours is not such an era. • From eminent prose poet Russell Edson’s definition of “Prose Poem” in a famous essay on the form called “Portrait of the Writer as a Fat Man: Some Subjective Ideas or Notions on the Care and Feeding of Prose Poems”: “A poetry freed from the definition of poetry, and a prose free of the necessities of fiction; a personal form disciplined not by other literature but by unhappiness; thus a way to be happy.” • From C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon’s A Handbook to Litera ture, Sixth 2
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NOTES
Edition’s definition of “Prose Poem”: “A poem printed as prose, with both margins justified.”
1. N.B.: from The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition’s definition of “pro-
• Obvious but crucial distinction: between a prose poem as an individual artwork
saic”: “consisting or characteristic of prose”; “lacking in imagination and spirit,
and the Prose Poem as an actual literary genre.
dull.”
• Signs that some person/persons are trying to elevate a certain trans- gressive
2. (Numerals don’t count as words either, obviously.)
literary form or hybrid into an actual genre: Literary journals start having special
3. N.B. that this sort of problem is endemic to many of the trendy literary forms
issues devoted to the form, then whole new journals exclusively devoted to
that identify/congratulate themselves as transgressive. And it’s easy to see why.
the form spring up (often with the form’s name somewhere in their titles), and
In regarding formal conventions primarily as “rules” to rebel against,
various “Best of ” anthologies from these new journals begin hitting the market. A
the Professional Transgressor fails to see that conventions often BECOME con-
critical literature starts to assemble itself around the form, much of that criticism
ventions precisely because of their power and utility, i.e., because of the para-
consisting in apologiae, encomiums, and (paradoxically) definitions, codifications,
doxical freedoms they permit the artist who understands how to use (not merely
and lists of formal characteristics (→ conventions). Some writers start identifying
“obey”) them.
themselves professionally as practitioners of the form. Finally, the form begins to
4. (Imagine offering a gymnast the chance to levitate and hang there unsupport-
get treated as a separate/special category for the purposes of book publishing,
ed, or an astronaut the prospect of a launch w/o rocket.)
prizes and awards, academic appointments, etc.
5. Just in case these reasons [as well as the anthology’s real intended audience]
• Within pages of Best of The P. P. , total number of ads for, references to, and lists
are not yet obvious, q.v. the following announcement, variations of which appear
of other journals/collections/articles/anthologies/presses devoted to the Prose
in regular font on Best of The P. P. ’s editorial page, in bold at the end of Johnson’s
Poem: 78.
Intro, AGAIN in bold in an ad for The P. P. after the contributors’ bio-notes, and
• Bio-note on anthology’s editor: “Peter Johnson is founder and editor of The
yet AGAIN, in a bold font so big it takes up the whole page, at the very end of the
Prose Poem: An International Journal. His latest books of prose poems are Pretty
anthology:
Happy! (White Pine Press, 1997) and Love Poems for the Millennium (Quale Press, 1998). He received an NEA for Creative Writing in 1999.” • From bio-notes on random Best of The P. P. contributors:“Ellen McGrath Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in literature at Duquesne University, where she is completing a doctoral dissertation that deals with the American prose poem”; “Mark Vinz is the author of ... a book of prose poems, Late Night Calls. He is also co-editor of The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry, published by New Rivers Press.” • First sentence of Peter Johnson’s Introduction to anthology: “In editing The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, I feel humble and defensive at the
The Prose Poem: An International Journal will be reading for Volume 10 between
same time.”
December 1, 2001 and March 1, 2002. Unsolicited work submitted before this
• Total # of pages in anthology, including editor’s Intro, prenominate
date will be returned unread. Please include an SASE and a two-sentence
p.p. ads and lists, and bio-notes on contributors: 288.
biographical note. Please send no more than 3 to 5 poems.
• Total # of pages devoted to actual prose poems: 227.
10
3
• Total # of prose poems in anthology: 204.
against the lines’ own punctuation and meter, the use of breaks and enjambment
• Arrangement of constituent p.p.’s: alphabetical by author.
and metrical scheme to control speed, emphasis, multivalence of expression, etc.
• Average number of words in a constituent p.p.: 342.3 (mean), 309 (median).
W/r/t Best of The P. P. , the absence of formal controls seems like the major
• Longest p.p. in anthology: John Yau’s “The Newly Renovated Opera House on
reason why so many of its constituent p.p.’s seem not just non- urgent but
Gilligan’s Island,” 1,049 words.
incoherent; most of them literally fall apart under the close, concentrated attention
• Shortest p.p. in anthology: G. Chambers & R. Federman’s “Little Request,” 53
that poetry’s supposed to demand. 3
words.
• Paradoxical consequence of above paradoxical problem for the 31 p.p.’s in the
• Constituent p.p.’s that, like “The Newly Renovated Opera House on Gilligan’s
book that really are rich and alive and fine: It makes them seem even better,
Island,” have titles that turn out to be way more interesting than the poems
and not just better in comparison to the dross that surrounds them. It’s more
themselves: “T.S. Eliot Was a Negro,”“That UFO That Picked on Us,”“The Big
like the 173 mediocre/bad p.p.’s here help the reader appreciate the terrible,
Deep Voice of God,”“The Prodigal Son Is Spotted on the Grassy Knoll,”“Lullaby
almost impossible disadvantages of the p.p. form, which then makes the pieces
for the Elderly,”“The Leopard’s Mouth Is Dry and Cold Inside.”
from Davis, Ignatow, et al. seem less like just successes than like miracles. The
• Some random relevant questions: Are the pieces in, e.g., Lydia Davis’s Break It
experience of reading a piece like Davis’s “The Frogs” or Stevens’s “The Sign”
Down or Diane Williams’s Excitability prose poems? Is Eliot’s “Hysteria” a prose
or Ignatow’s “My Own House,” of watching the p.p. somehow achieve poetry’s
poem? What about the three long prose pieces in Ashbery’s Three Poems? Are
weird blend of logic and magic with hardly any of poetry’s regular assets or tools,
the little italicized entr’actes in Hemingway’s In Our Time prose poems? Are
helps us to understand the allure of transgressive forms for writers, 4 and maybe
Kawabata’s “Palm-of-the-Hand Stories”? Is Kafka’s “A Little Fable”? What about
to remember that most formal conventions themselves start out as “experiments.”
Cormac McCarthy’s dreamy, anapestic prologue to Suttree? What about the
• Source of metaphorical description of a prose poem as “a cast-iron aeroplane
innumerable
that can actually fly,” which image conveys the miraculous feel of the anthology’s
s in Faulkner that scan perfectly as iambic- pentameter sonnets?
Why are so many tiny and self-consciously lyrical stories published these days as
best p.p.’s way better than the purely expository review
“shortshorts”or “flash fictions” and not as prose poems?
Russell Edson, as duly quoted by Peter Johnson, whose Introduction however
• Approximate % of Best of The P. P. ’s 9-page Introduction that Peter Johnson
can’t leave the perfect image alone to ramify in the reader’s head but has to gloss
spends talking about how fiendishly difficult he finds it to define “Prose Poem”:
it with “Edson’s metaphor and his comment on literary definitions are attractive to
75+.
poets because he champions the unconscious and the personal imagination in its
• Representative excerpts from this discussion: “Just as black humor straddles
attempt to escape literary and cultural contamination.”
the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in
• Probability that; if this reviewer were named Peter Johnson, he would publish
prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting
under either “Pete” or his first two initials: 100%.
precariously on banana peels”; “When I first began writing prose poems and
• Indexical Book Review coda: Another famous R. Edson pronouncement,
consciously considering prose poetry as a distinct genre, I thought of the platypus,
although this time one that P. Johnson, Ed.— for rather obvious professional
that lovable yet homely Tasmanian hybrid, but then came to see the weakness
reasons 5 — does not quote in his Introduction: “What makes us so fond of [the
of that comparison. The platypus’s genetic code is predetermined. It can’t all of a
p.p.] is its clumsiness, its lack of expectation or ambition. Any way of writing that
sudden grow an elephant’s trunk out of its backside.”
isolates its writer from worldly acceptance offers the greatest creative efficiency.
• From Holman and Harmon’s Handbook to Literature’s definition of “Prose
Isolation from other writers, and isolation from easy publishing.”
just above does:
Poem”: “The point seems to be that a writing in prose, even the most prosaic,1 is 4
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struggling manufacturer of colorful and sometimes even relatively amusing toys
a poem if the author says so.”
— I’ve felt that this constant placing of myself into bad moods by the conventional
• From anthology’s bio-notes on contributors: (1) “Aloysius Bertrand (1807–1841)
world, practically amounts to theft!” (Michael Benedikt’s “The Toymaker Gloomy
has sometimes been called ‘The Father of the Modern Prose Poem,’ though he
but Then Again Sometimes Happy”); “She intended to be epic with repercussions
never used the term to describe his own work”; (2) “Barry Silesky is the author of
this time, so through mostly legal methods she hastened his entrapment” (Brian
One Thing That Can Save Us, prose poems (called short-short fiction by Coffee
Swann’s “The Director”); “No good, the slow resisting of rage, the kindly cupping
House Press).”
of each hand in prayer while facing the shot-up outskirts of the town, as though to
• Of the 144 contributors to Best of The P. P. , total # who are, like
hold water out to a thirsty sniper, and see the rifle laid down, and water taken as
M. Aloysius Bertrand, now dead: 14.
a final covenant” (Robert Hill Long’s “Small Clinic at Kilometer 7”).
• Total # of contributors who have also published work in literary organ called
• Total # of zeroes in anthology’s Library of Congress Control Number: 5.
Flash Fiction : 6.
• Total # of postcolonic words left before RT’s 1,000-word limit is exceeded: 267,
• Total # of contributors who do/did edit literary journals, anthologies, and/or small
minus this phrase’s own 5 2 words.
presses: 21.
• Most common problems with the substantial % of the book’s prose poems
• Titles of published books listed in bio-note for anthology contributor Nin Andrews:
that are mediocre/bad: (1) The p.p.’s argument/theme/point/ project is either too
The Book of Orgasms and Spontaneous Breasts.
obvious or too obscure; (2) The p.p. lacks formal control, logic; it comes off flabby,
• Average # of prose poems from each Best of The P. P. contributor:
arbitrary, dull — see, e.g., “All over the world the shooting goes on. Then the
1.42 (mean), 1.58 (median).
doorbell rings and the pain is actually gone. With the notes buried in the counter’s
• Examples of particularly well-known or eminent contributors, with
daily junk pile, you had no idea you’d even entered. Now it’s another city. No
# of included p.p.’s from each: Russell Edson, 7; David Ignatow, 4; Charles Simic,
paradise, but all the blood, sex, he, she, flushed away. It’s not all luck” (Barry
4; James Tate, 4;, Robert Bly, 2; Maxine Chernoff, 2;
Silesky’s “Saved”).
Larry Leis, 2; Henri Michaux, 2; Stuart Dybek, 1; Bill Knott, 1; Gabriela Mistral, 1;
• How problem (2) directly above is related to what reviewer sees as the most
Pablo Neruda, 1.
serious, paradoxical problem for the Prose Poem per se: Like all self-consciously
• Total # of above p.p.’s that seem like they’re anywhere even remotely close to
transgressive poetic forms, the p.p. is, by both definition and intent, antiformal.
their eminent contributors’ best work: 3.
That is, it is distinguished as a form primarily by what it lacks, viz. stuff like line
• Total # of times Peter Johnson quotes or refers to Russell Edson in his
breaks, enjambment, formal rhyme- or metrical schemes, etc. At the same time,
Introduction: 13.
a prose poem very consciously calls itself a POEM, which of course sends the
• Another typical sentence from Peter Johnson’s Intro: “To me, literary theory, like
reader a message, namely that this is a particular kind of literary art that demands
philosophy, provides few answers; instead, and most importantly, it creates an
a particular kind of reading — slow, careful, with extra
endless internal and external dialogue which forces us to constantly reevaluate
attention paid to certain special characteristics. Not least of these special
our standards.”
characteristics are the compression and multivalence of the poem’s syntax and
• Highest conceivable grade that anthology’s Introduction would receive in an
the particular rhythms and tensions of the poem’s music. These are what give a
average university Lit./Composition class: B-.
poem the weird special urgency that both justifies and rewards the extra work a
• Total # of anthology’s 204 prose poems that are good/alive/powerful/ interesting
reader has to put into reading it. And see that it’s nearly always FORMAL features
enough to persist in reader’s mind more than 60 seconds after completion: 31.
that create and convey this poetic urgency: e.g., the tension of the line breaks
• Of these 31, # that are so great you end up not even caring what genre they’re
8
5
supposed to be part of: 9.
lift the branches of the red pine” (Thomas R. Smith’s “Windy Day at Kabekona”);
• Of these 9, # that are by one Jon Davis, a poet whom this reviewer’d never heard
“It’s of no consequence to the grass that it withers, secure in its identity” (David
of before but whose pieces in this anthology are so off-the-charts terrific that the
Ignatow’s “Proud of Myself ”); “This is not an elegy because the world is full of
reviewer has actually gone out and bought the one Jon Davis book mentioned in
elegies and I am tired of consoling and being consoled” (Jon Davis’s “The Bait”).
his bio-note and may very well decide to try to advertise it in this magazine, at
• Total # of anthology contributors who are employed as Poet in Residence at a
reviewer’s own expense if necessary — that’s how good this guy is: 5.
children’s hospital: 1.
• Of the remaining 4 great pieces here, # that are by the late David Ignatow and
• # who are described in bio-note as “the enfant terrible of Greek Surrealism”: 1.
concern his impending death and are so totally beautiful and merciless that you
• # who have the last names Johnson or Smith: 6.
can’t forget them even if you want to: 2.
• Total % of anthology prose poems that are primarily about death/loss/ life’s
• Other contributors, previously unknown to reviewer, who have good/alive/
transience: 57.1.
powerful/interesting pieces in anthology: Gary Fincke (“The History of Passion
• % about sex: 16.6.
Will Tumble This Week”), Jennifer L. Holley (“The Rubbing”), Jay Meek (“Leaving
• % about love: 0.2.
the Roadside Motel”), Fred Muratori (“From Nothing in the Dark”), J. David
• % about cooking: 0.2.
Stevens (“The Sign”), Helen Tzagoloff (“Mail-Order Bride”).
• Square root of book’s ISBN: 43,520.065.
• Some of the common features of the 31 g/a/p/i pieces in anthology:
• Of Best of The P. P. ’s 173 unmemorable or otherwise ungreat prose poems,
(1) Even without line breaks or standard prosodic constraints, the p.p.’s seem
total % that deploy as topoi or include as important characteris- tics (1) bitter
tightly controlled; they possess both a metrical and a narrative logic. (2) Their
or unhappy childhood memories: 21.3; (2) an object, scene, or tableau that
sentences tend to be short, almost terse.
is described, analogized, troped, associated, and ruminated over until the
(3) Many of the p.p.’s are subtly iambic; what meter and alliteration there is
establishment of its status as a metaphor seems to be the p.p.’s only real aim:
unheavy and tends to make the piece read faster rather than slower. (4a) The
50.6; (3) references to or discussions of Poetry itself: 12.1; (4) ultrararefied
pieces’ realistic imagery is concrete, its descriptions compact and associations
allusions to, e.g., Theophile Gautier, Paul Quere, Sibelius’s “Swan of Tuonela,”
tautly drawn. (4b) The pieces’ surreal imagery/associations never seem
etc.: 13.8; (5) heavy-handed use of anaphora, ploce, repetend, and/or alliteration:
gratuitously weird; i.e., they end up making psychological or emotional sense
20.7; (6) assorted jeux d’esprit whose main purpose seems to be to make the
given what the p.p.’s about. (5) Any puns, entendres, metapoetic allusions, or
poet appear clever: 15.5; (7a) surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose
other forms of jeu d’esprit come off as relevant/serious and never seem like their
obvious point is the psychoaffective disorder of the modern world: 21.8; (7b)
main purpose is to make the writer appear clever. (6) The pieces’ tone tends to
surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose point or even relation to anything
be intimate rather than formal (meaning, in other words, that the p.p.’s exploit one
else in the p.p. is indiscernible: 48.3; (8a) surreal or free-associative transitions
of the big advantages of much good prose, which is the reader’s impression of
between sentences or
a human being actually sitting right there talking to him). (7) They all have actual
discernible point or resonance and make the whole p.p. seem at once pretentious
narratives and/or Dramatic Situations. (8) If there’s an argument, the argument is
and arbitrary: 46.6; and (9) just plain bad, clunky writing, no matter what genre or
tight, comprehensible, and if not persuasive then at least interesting. (9) The good
era it is: 51.7.
31 are all, without exception, moving.
• Examples of above feature (9) from randomly selected anthology p.p.’s: “I don’t
• Examples of opening lines of constituent p.p.’s that have some or all of the above
know how you feel about it, but for years and years, from the point of view of a
qualities: “Only a picture window stands between us and the full force of gusts that
person practicing my own, would-be benignly optimistic profession — that of a
6
s: 51.7 ... (8b) which transitions themselves have no
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UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
14 The carbon dioxide trapped in your meeting is making you think more slowly. JOSEPH STROMBERG http://www.vox.com/2014/8/6/5971187/carbon-dioxide-indoors-air-pollution
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If, after sitting for hours in a stuffy, crowded meeting room or classroom, you’ve found yourself thinking a little more slowly than usual, it may not have been your imagination.
and engineers need to prioritize indoor air quality if they want to put students or workers in a position to succeed. “Codes need to be in place, and they need to be enforced,” he says.
An emerging body of research is indicating that the high levels of car-
“And people who design buildings need to have the awareness to construct ones
bon dioxide and other indoor pollutants that we face in poorly ventilated rooms
that are healthier for people to spend time in. To really solve the problem, all par-
reduces our cognitive performance and decision-making ability.
ties need to be involved.”
A study published in 2012 by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Na-
Of course, most of us aren’t architects: we’re the people who spend so
tional Laboratory found that levels of carbon dioxide commonly found in crowded
much time sitting in stuffy workspaces and classrooms. In the meantime, we may
rooms decreased people’s performance on decision-making tests, and ongoing
not be able to redesign these buildings — but the next time you’re part of a stuffy,
work at that and other labs has found that many other volatile organic compounds
unproductive meeting that’s dragging on endlessly, you can use all this research
(VOCs) — emitted in slight quantities by building materials and even personal
as a great reason to end it.
care products — also play a role. “I see this as a significant issue,” says William Fisk, the researcher who’s
Joseph Stromberg on August 6, 2014, 9:10 a.m.
led much of the work. “And for carbon dioxide in particular, it’s been really surprising to see such a strong detrimental effect.” All this research is in its early stages, and other labs are still checking to see if it can be consistently replicated. But a growing amount of evidence suggests that poor ventilation may be affecting the thinking skills of students and office workers to a far greater degree than previously thought. What researchers thought they knew about indoor pollutants Over the past few decades, a number of different studies have shown that in indoor spaces with poor ventilation, people’s cognitive abilities — whether office workers’ ability to proofread and add numbers or call center workers’ performance on talking tasks — suffer. Initially, researchers blamed VOCs or other pollutants. “We’ve known for a long time that higher carbon dioxide levels were statistically correlated with reduced performance,” Fisk says. “But we assumed it was a proxy for other pollutants that varied with ventilation rates. That’s basically been the dogma.” It’s well-known that carbon dioxide can cause detrimental physical effects at extremely high levels: at 100,000 parts per million, for instance, it can cause unconsciousness, and even higher levels can lead to death. But no one had specifically considered the effect of carbon dioxide at high but environmental2
7
would affect not only carbon dioxide levels, but the levels of VOCs emitted by
ly relevant levels — say, 3,000 ppm, a concentration frequently found in crowded
individual people — and found greater declines in performance than with carbon
places like elementary school classrooms.
dioxide alone elevated.
That changed with a small study published in 2012 by researchers from
One thing that’s unclear, though, is which types of VOCs are most impor-
Budapest University of Technology and Economics. They found spending a few
tant. In most scenarios, they individually exist at very low levels, and researchers
hours in a chamber with carbon dioxide concentrations elevated to 3,000 ppm
hypothesize it may be the combination of different VOCs that affect thinking skills,
made it more difficult for people to concentrate. “That really caught our attention,”
but it still needs to be tested.
Fisk says.
What can be done to improve indoor air quality.
How carbon dioxide may affect thinking and decision making
For both carbon dioxide and VOCs, there are regulations in place that
The study led Fisk and other Berkeley lab scientists to conduct research
govern indoor air quality — but in both cases, they’re aimed at preventing the
evaluating how a few different carbon dioxide concentrations — 600, 1,000, and
much higher concentrations of the pollutants known to cause physiological prob-
2,500 ppm — affected decision-making. Working with Usha Satish, a psychiatry
lems, rather than these lower levels that may simply cause us to think a bit more
researcher at SUNY Upstate Medical University, they put 22 participants in an
slowly.
office-sized chamber and subjected them to each of the three carbon dioxide Fisk, for one, thinks that stricter indoor air quality regulations, in terms
of ventilation, are merited. But even beyond that, he says, enlightened architects
(FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/GettyImages)
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concentrations for 2.5 hours each. They also had the participants take something called the Strategic Man-
(Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images)
3
agement Simulation, a test that gives people hypothetical scenarios and asks
Levels in the majority of offices, Fisk says, are generally below 1,000 parts per
them to plan an appropriate response, then grades them in a variety of factors:
million, but he’s found that in a crowded conference room, concentrations can
basic activity, applied activity, focused activity, task orientation, initiative, informa-
climb quickly and break through this threshold within a half hour or so. He’s es-
tion orientation, information usage, breadth of approach and strategy. The idea
pecially concerned about schools: one survey, for instance, found that 21 percent
is that this sort of test, which considers more complex thinking skills, is more of a
of elementary schools in Texas had carbon dioxide concentrations above 3,000
realistic indicator of a person’s workplace productivity than, say, proofreading or
ppm.
arithmetic ability.
Now, Fisk and the other researchers caution that these findings need to
Satish had previously used this test to measure the effect of things like
be replicated. Both this and the Hungary study both had small sample sizes, and
prescription drugs and alcohol — and she and the other researchers were sur-
looked at the effects of carbon dioxide at lower levels that no one ever had before.
prised to find that the impact of 2,500 parts per million of carbon dioxide was
But if ongoing replication projects elsewhere do show the same results, this could
roughly equivalent to a .08 blood alcohol concentration, the legal limit for driving
be a very legitimate real-world problem, impacting office workers’ ability to think
in most states.
clearly during long, stuffy meetings and students’ ability to learn and perform to
“We found some pretty dramatic results,” Satish says. “People had a lot
their full potential on tests.
more difficulty taking initiative, staying oriented to a task, thinking strategically and managing information usefully. People’s abilities to make high quality decisions
How other indoor pollutants may impact our thinking too
seemed to be compromised.” How common is 2,500 parts per million carbon dioxide in the real world?
All this research, though, doesn’t let VOCs off the hook. Like carbon dioxide, it’s long been known that they cause physiological problems at higher levels, and recent work by these scientists and others has found that at lower thresholds, they likely affect decision-making as well. VOCs can come from a number of different sources. For the first few days after paint is applied, it emits slightly higher levels of them, and Satish has found that putting people in a freshly painted room causes their performance on the same test to diminish as well. VOCs can also be emitted by building materials — again in highest quantities when buildings are new — and potentially by computers and other electronics. “For our latest study, which we haven’t yet published, we had levels of organic pollutants that would be relatively typical of an office that had been renovated within the past year or so,” Fisk says. “And again, we saw cognitive declines.” Other experiments at Berkeley have even raised the possibility that VOCs emitted in slight amounts by people’s clothing and personal care products
In most categories, 2,500 ppm of carbon dioxide led to statistically significant decreases in performance. (Satish et. al., Environmental Health Perspectives)
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like shampoo and perfume may affect cognitive performance. In one study, Fisk and other researchers varied the chamber’s ventilation rate per person — which 5
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Textos 2014-2015
federico soriano
Publicado: 10 Abril 2014, BBC Mundo.
MARIA ELENA NAVAS.
La basura que se ha encontrado al buscar el avión desaparecido.
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UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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“De manera que todas esas partículas, al final, quedan concentradas en
En cada una de las cuencas océanicas del mundo hay una isla de ba-
2
y el sur. Y la isla del Océano Índico está centrada entre Australia y África.
Los océanos Pacífico y Atlántico tienen dos islas de basura cada uno, en el norte
sura y el problema es cada vez más grave e inmanejable, dice la científica.
marina”.
zonas concretas y localizables formando las llamadas islas o manchas de basura
Oceana
ni siquiera es posible investigar debido a la cobertura de basuraSilvia García,
expediciones: hemos llegado a zonas plagadas de sedales, redes y cañas donde
los mares, pero está claro que no están funcionando. Lo hemos visto en nuestras
Hay normas y convenios internacionales y naciones que prohíben el vertido en
científica marina de la organización ecologista Oceana.
desechos que encuentran en el camino”, le explica a BBC Mundo Silvia García,
neta y a medida que avanzan van vertiendo hacia centro todas las partículas y
tornados. Son los giros oceánicos que se forman en distintos puntos del pla-
“Todos los mares tienen corrientes que se mueven en giros, como los
Giros oceánicos
contínua con consecuencias catastróficas para la vida marina.
manecer en un sitio, como en tierra firme, acumulan restos girando de manera
Es la versión oceánica de un vertedero terrestre. Pero en lugar de per-
llaman “manchas” o “islas de basura marina”.
y otros objetos flotantes que en medio del océano forman los que los expertos
desechos de contenedores, piezas de equipos de pesca, hasta bolsas de plástico
de cerca por las embarcaciones, han resultado ser desde restos de barcos,
Esas imágenes difusas han mostrado cientos de objetos que, vistos
de la búsqueda del vuelo MH370.
problema es tan grave que incluso puede observarse en las imágenes satelitales
No es el único: todos los mares del mundo están contaminados. Y el
Índico está cubierto de basura.
ha logrado encontrar la aeronave, pero ha dejado en claro una cosa: el Océano
La gigantesca operación de búsqueda del avión de Malaysia Airlines no
agrega. En el fondo del mar se deposita la contaminación sólida.
3
y las ramblas y eventualmente contribuyen a la formación de las islas de basura”,
las playas. Todo tiene un impacto porque los desechos se canalizan por los ríos
barcaciones, sino también los que vierte el público y el turismo en las costas de
llegar a estas islas. No sólo son los desechos que vierten las industrias y las em-
“El problema es que cualquier vertido que flote puede eventualmente
indica Silvia García, de Oceana.
brimiento de la del Pacifico Norte la que hizo sonar la alarma de los ecologistas,
El Atlántico Norte también tiene su isla de basura, pero fue el descu-
la isla de basura del Pacífico norte.
de objetos grandes de madera, incluidas vigas de casas derribadas flotando en
de los desechos del tsunami japonés y calcula que hay entre 100.000 y un millón
nal del Pacífico de la Universidad de Hawái, ha estado estudiando la migración
Nikolai Maximenko, oceanógrafo del Centro de Investigación Internacio-
de basura.
durante el terremoto y tsunami de Japón en 2011, migraron hacia esta mancha
gas, postes telefónicos y otros restos de construcciones que se desprendieron
Algunos informes indican que muchos desechos de madera, como vi-
y se calcula que tiene una extensión de 1,4 millones de km2.
Está ubicada entre Hawái y California, al occidente de Estados Unidos,
Restos de tsunami
Los desechos tienen un impacto catastrófico en la vida marina.
basura del Pacífico” que fue descubierta hace cuatro años en el Pacífico norte.
a estas islas. La más grande -y la más famosa- es la llamada “Gran mancha de
El problema es tan grave que los investigadores les han puesto nombre
mundo”, dice la científica de Oceana.
el Mediterráneo que es uno de los mares con más contaminación química en el
cipalmente por las sustancias químicas que se hunden desde la superficie. Como
porque las corrientes son menores, pero también están muy contaminados prin-
“En los mares la basura flotante no se concentra con esa envergadura
científica.
marina. Marcus Eriksen, científico marino de la Universidad de California del Sur,
4
contaminación química que se hunde y la sólida que acaba en el fondo del mar”.
“Y no sólo es lo que vemos flotando en la superficie sino también la
cañas donde ni siquiera es posible investigar debido a la cobertura de basura”.
en nuestras expediciones: hemos llegado a zonas plagadas de sedales, redes y
vertido en los mares, pero está claro que no están funcionando. Lo hemos visto
“Hay normas y convenios internacionales y naciones que prohíben el
verter en los mares”.
inviable. Lo único que podemos hacer es combatir el origen, es decir, dejar de
“Surgen intentos contínuamente, pero económica y técnicamente es
es suficiente para limpiar una mancha como éstas”, explica Silvia García.
“El problema al que nos enfrentamos es que hoy en día la tecnología no
un lado a otro, de África hacia Australia.
debido a las fuertes corrientes de ese océano está migrando constantemente de
Algunos informes dicen que puede tener una extensión de hasta 5.000 km2 y
titulares, es la más desconocida y se cree que puede ser enorme.
La mancha de basura del Océano Índico, que ahora está acaparando
Muchos de los objetos de imágenes satelitales son basura marina.
y focas heridas debido a los desperdicios plásticos”.
mar mueren o sufren sin llegar a morir al quedar atrapadas en redes, o cetáceos
“En efecto tenemos datos de miles de especies que en la superficie del
consumidores no intencionados de plástico, explica Silvia García, de Oceana.
Las aves, tortugas, cetáceos, mamíferos y otras especies marinas son
de aves”.
utensilios de plástico. He extraido colillas de cigarros de cientos de esqueletos
dos los desechos que utilizamos una sola vez como bolsas, botellas, tapas y
“Estamos viendo una abundante acumulación de microplásticos de to-
los desechos de las cinco manchas de basura del mundo son plástico”.
océanos. Tal como explica en la revista National Geographic “cerca de 90% de
5
chas que ya se convirtieron en los mayores vertederos del planeta”, afirma la
los desperdicios que se encuentran en el mar, el mayor impacto es en la vida
se ha dedicado a investigar el impacto de la contaminación del plástico en los
este problema y las consecuencias catastróficas que están teniendo estas man-
también para el público. Y son necesarios más controles para poder combatir
“Es necesaria más concientización pública, no sólo para la industria sino
Además de los informes de colisiones o de embarcaciones dañadas por
Vida marina
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA El carácter siempre permutable de las configuraciones de imágenes, en el atlas Mnemosyne, señala por si solo la fecundidad heurística y la sinrazón intrínseca de tal proyecto. A la vez análisis acabado (pues Mnemosyne no utiliza en total más que un millar de imágenes, realmente muy pocas en una vida de historiador del arte y, más concretamente, en un archivo fotográfico como el constituido por Warburg con sus colaboradores Fritz Saxl y Gertrurd Bing), y análisis infinito (pues siempre podremos encontrar nuevas relaciones, nuevas “correspondencias” entre cada una de las fotografías). Warburg, sabido es, colgaba las imágenes del atlas con pequeñas pinzas en una tela negra montada en un bastidor -un “cuadro”, vaya-, después tomaba una fotografía o mandaba que la tomasen, obteniendo así una posible “mesa” o lámina de su atlas, después de lo cual podía desmembrar, destruir el “cuadro” inicial, y volver a comenzar otro para deconstruirlo otra vez. Esta es, así pues, nuestra herencia, la herencia de nuestra época. Locura de la deriva, en cierto sentido: mesas proliferantes, desafío ostensible a cualquier razón clasificadora, trabajo sisífico. Pero en otro sentido, prudencia y saber: Warburg comprendió bien que el pensamiento no es asunto de formas encontradas, sino de formas transformadoras. Asunto de “migraciones” (Wanderungen) perpetuas, como gustaba decir. Comprendió que incluso la disociación es susceptible de analizar, remontar, releer la historia de los hombres. Mnemosyne lo salvaba de su locura, de sus “¡deas huidizas”, tan bien analizadas por su psiquiatra Ludwig Binswanger. Pero, al mismo tiempo, sus ideas continuaban “brotando” útilmente, cual imágenes dialécticas, a partir del choque o de la relación de las singularidades entre sí. Ni desorden absolutamente loco, ni ordenación muy cuerda, el atlas Mnemosyne delega en el montaje la capacidad de producir, mediante encuentros de imágenes, un conocimiento dialéctico de la cultura occidental, esa tragedia siempre renovada -sin síntesis, por tanto- entre razón y sinrazón o, como Warburg decía, entre los astra de aquello que nos eleva hacia el cielo del espíritu y los monstra de aquello que vuelve a precipitarnos hacia las simas del cuerpo.
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
16 Herencia de nuestro tiempo: el Atlas Mnemosyne GEROGES DIDI-HUBERMAN en Atlas, ¿cómo llevar el mundo a cuestas?, MNCARS, Madrid, 2010.
No resultaría difícil, parafraseando las fórmulas de Ernst Bloch en Herencia de esta época, considerar la forma atlas -al igual que el montaje del cual provienecomo el tesoro de imágenes y pensamientos que nos queda de la “coherencia derrumbada” del mundo moderno. Desde Warburg, no sólo el atlas ha modificado en profundidad las formas -y por ende, los contenidos- de todas las “ciencias de la cultura” o ciencias humanas, sino que ha incitado además a gran número de artistas a repensar por completo, en forma de compilación y de remontaje, las modalidades según las cuales se elaboran y presentan hoy las artes visuales. Desde el Handatlas dadaísta, el Album de Hannah Höch, los Arbeitscollagen de Karl Blossfeldt o la Boite-en-valise de Marcel Duchamp, hasta los Atlas de Marcel Broodthaers y de Gerhard Richter, los Inventaires de Christian Boltanski. los montajes fotográficos de Sol LeWitt o bien el Album de Hans-Peter Feldmann, toda la armadura de una tradición pictórica hace explosión. De este modo, lejos del cuadro único, encerrado en sí mismo, portador de gracia o de genio -hasta en lo que denominamos obra maestra-, algunos artistas y pensadores se han aventurado a bajar de nuevo, digámoslo así, hacia la más simple aunque más dispar mesa. Un cuadro puede ser sublime, una “mesa” probablemente nunca lo será. Mesa de ofrenda, de cocina, de disección o de montaje, depende. Mesa o “lámina” de atlas (dícese plate en inglés o lámina en español, pero el francés table, lo mismo que Tafel en alemán o tavola en italiano, posee la ventaja de sugerir cierta
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relación tanto con el objeto doméstico como con la noción de cuadro). Como en el caso de la huella -procedimiento sin edad que tantos contemporáneos habrán explorado sistemáticamente desde Marcel Duchamp-, comprobamos que, para inventar un futuro más allá del cuadro y su gran tradición, hubo que retornar a la más modesta mesa y a sus pervivencias impensadas. El atlas constituye un objeto anacrónico porque tiempos heterogéneos trabajan en él siempre de común acuerdo: la “lectura antes de nada” con la “lectura después de todo”, como he dicho, pero también, por ejemplo. la reproductibilidad técnica de la edad fotográfica con los usos más antiguos de ese objeto doméstico denominado “mesa”. Recuerdo que, en la época estructuralista, se hablaba mucho del cuadro como “superficie de inscripción”: en efecto, instituye su autoridad a través de una inscripción duradera, un cierre espacial, una verticalidad que nos domina desde el muro del que cuelga, una permanencia temporal de objeto cultural. El cuadro consistiría, por lo tanto, en la inscripción de una obra (la grandissima opera del pittore, escribía Alberti) que pretende ser definitiva ante la historia. La mesa es mero soporte de una labor que siempre se puede corregir, modificar, cuando no comenzar de nuevo. Una superficie de encuentros y de posiciones pasajeras: en ella se pone y se quita alternativamente todo cuanto su “plano de trabajo”, como decimos tan bien en francés, recibe sin jerarquía. A la unicidad del cuadro sucede, en una mesa, la apertura continua de nuevas posibilidades, nuevos encuentros, nuevas multiplicidades, nuevas configuraciones. La bellezacristal del cuadro -su centrípeta belleza encontrada, fijada con orgullo, como un trofeo, en el plano vertical de la pared- da paso, en una mesa, a la bellezafractura de las configuraciones que en ella sobrevienen, centrífugas bellezashallazgos indefinidamente movientes en el plano horizontal de su tablero. En la famosa fórmula de Lautréamont, “bello como el encuentro fortuito en una mesa de disección de una máquina de coser y un paraguas”, los dos objetos sorprendentes, máquina de coser y paraguas, no constituyen desde luego lo esencial: cuenta más el soporte de encuentros que define a la propia mesa como recurso de bellezas o de conocimientos -conocimientos analíticos, conocimientos por cortes, reencuadres o “disecciones”- nuevos. Al propiciar el encuentro, en la misma lámina preliminar de su atlas Mnemosyne, de un mapa geográfico de Europa y Oriente Medio, un conjunto de animales fantásticos asociados a las constelaciones del cielo, y el árbol genealógico de una familia de banqueros florentinos, Aby Warburg no pensaba en modo alguno que obraba como historiador “surrealista”. Lo que sin embargo aparece en su lámina -su pequeña “mesa de trabajo” o de montaje- es la propia complejidad de los hechos de cultura que todo su atlas trata de relatar en la larga duración de la cultura occidental. Por lo demás, las pocas palabras elegidas por Warburg para introducir la problemática en juego no trataban de simplificar lo inagotable de su tarea: existe, decía, una gran “diversidad de sistemas de relaciones en las que el hombre se encuentra comprometido” (verschiendene Systeme von Relationen, 2
in die der Mensch eingestellt ist) y que el pensamiento mágico (das magische Denken) presenta en forma de “amalgama” (Ineinssetzung). Desde el comienzo, pues, Warburg enuncia en su atlas una complejidad fundamental -de orden antropológico- que no se trataba ni de sintetizar (en un concepto unificador) ni de describir de modo exhaustivo (en un archivo integral), ni de clasificar de la A a la Z (en un diccionario). Se trataba de suscitar la aparición, a través del enruentro de tres imágenes disímiles, de ciertas “relaciones intimas y secretas”, ciertas “correspondencias” capaces de ofrecer un conocimiento transversal de esa inagotable complejidad histórica (el árbol genealógico), geográfica (el mapa) e imaginaria (los animales del Zodíaco). Aun cuando el atlas Mnemosyne constituye una parte importante de nuestra herencia -herencia estética, ya que inventa una forma, una manera nueva de disponer las imágenes entre sí; herencia epistémica, pues inaugura un nuevo género de saber-, y continúa marcando profundamente nuestros modos contemporáneos de producir, exponer y comprender las imágenes, no podemos, antes incluso de esbozar su arqueología y explorar su fecundidad, silenciar su fragilidad fundamental. El atlas warburgiano es un objeto pensado a partir de una apuesta.. Apostar que las imágenes, agrupadas de cierta manera, ofrecerían la posibilidad -o mejor, el recurso inagotable- de una relectura del mundo. Releer el mundo: vincular de diferente manera sus trozos dispares, redistribuir su diseminación, un modo de orientarla e interpretarla, sÍ, pero también de respetarla, de remontarla sin pretender resumirla ni agotarla. ¿Pero en la práctica, cómo es ello posible? Sin duda al famoso dictum warburgiano “Dios anida en el detalle” (der liebe Gott steckt im Detail) cabría añadir éste, que lo interpreta dialécticamente: un diablillo anida siempre en el atlas, esto es, en el espacio de las “relaciones intimas y secretas” entre las cosas o entre las figuras. Un astuto genio yace en algún punto de la construcción imaginativa de las “correspondencias” y “analogías” entre cada detalle singular. ¿Acaso cierta locura no es inherente a todos los grandes retos, no se sustentan en ella, en el fondo, todas las empresas expuestas a los peligros de la imaginación? Así es el atlas Mnemosyne: proyectado en 1905 por Aby Warburg, su comienzo efectivo no se produjo hasta 1924, o sea en el preciso momento en que el historiador emergía -remontaba, se reponía- de la psicosis. El Bilderatlas no fue para Warburg ni un simple “prontuario” ni un “resumen en imágenes” de su pensamiento: proponía más bien un aparato para poner el pensamiento de nuevo en movimiento, precisamente allí donde se había detenido la historia, precisamente allí donde faltaban aún las palabras. Fue la matriz de un deseo de reconfigurar la memoria, renunciando a fijar los recuerdos -las imágenes del pasado- en un relato ordenado, o algo peor, definitivo. Quedó inconcluso a la muerte de Warburg en 1929.
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17 Contra la interpretación SUSAN SONTAG en Contra la interpretación y otros ensayos Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1984
El contenido es un atisbo de algo, un encuentro como un fogonazo. Es algo minúsculo, minúsculo, el contenido. WILLEM DE KOONING, en una entrevista. Son las personas superficiales las únicas que no juzgan por las apariencias, El misterio del mundo es lo visible, no lo invisible. OSCAR WILDE, una carta.
1 La primera experiencia del arte debió de ser la de su condición prodigiosa, mágica; el arte era un instrumento del ritual (las pinturas de las cuevas de Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.). La primera teoría del arte, la de los filósofos griegos, proponía que el arte era mímesis, imitación de la realidad. Y es en este punto donde se planteó la cuestión del valor del arte. Pues la teoría mimética, por sus propios términos, reta al arte a justificarse a sí mismo. Platón, que propuso la teoría, lo hizo al parecer con la finalidad de establecer que el valor del arte es dudoso. Al considerar los objetos materiales ordinarios como objetos miméticos en sí mismos, imitaciones de formas o estructuras trascendentes, aun la mejor pintura de una cama sería sólo una «imitación de una imitación ». Para Platón, el arte no tiene una utilidad determinada (la pintura de una cama no sirve para dormir encima) ni es, en un sentido estricto, 1
verdadero. Y los argumentos de Aristóteles en defensa del arte no ponen realmente en tela de juicio la noción platónica de que el arte es un elaborado trompe l’oeil, y, por tanto, una mentira. Pero sí discute la idea platónica de que el arte es inútil. Mentira o no, el arte tiene para Aristóteles un cierto valor en cuanto constituye una forma de terapia. Después de todo, replica Aristóteles, el arte es útil, medicinalmente útil, en cuanto suscita y purga emociones peligrosas. En Platón y en Aristóteles la teoría mimética del arte va pareja con la presunción de que el arte es siempre figurativo. Pero los defensores de la teoría mimética no necesitan cerrar los ojos ante el arte decorativo y abstracto. La falacia de que el arte es necesariamente un «realismo» puede ser modificada o descartada sin trascender siquiera los problemas delimitados por la teoría mimética. El hecho es que toda la conciencia y toda la reflexión occidentales sobre el arte han permanecido en los límites trazados por la teoría griega del arte como mímesis o representación. Es debido a esta teoría que el arte en cuanto a tal — por encima y más allá de determinadas obras de arte— llega a ser problemático, a necesitar defensa. Y es la defensa del arte la que engendra la singular concepción según la cual algo, que hemos aprendido a denominar «forma », está separado de algo que hemos aprendido a denominar «contenido», y la bienintencionada tendencia que considera esencial el contenido y accesoria la forma. Aun en tiempos modernos, cuando la mayor parte de los artistas y de los críticos han descartado la teoría del arte como representación de una realidad exterior y se han inclinado en favor de la teoría del arte como expresión subjetiva, persiste el rasgo fundamental de la teoría mimética. Concibamos la obra de arte según un modelo pictórico (el arte como pintura de la realidad) o según un modelo de afirmación (el arte como afirmación del artista), el contenido sigue estando en primer lugar. El contenido puede haber cambiado. Quizá sea ahora menos figurativo, menos lúcidamente realista. Pero aún se supone que una obra de arte es su contenido. O, como suele afirmarse hoy, que una obra de arte, por definición, dice algo («X dice que...», «X intenta decir que...», «Lo que X dijo...», etc., etc.). 4 La actual es una de esas épocas en que la actitud interpretativa es en gran parte reaccionaria, asfixiante. La efusión de interpretaciones del arte envenena hoy nuestras sensibilidades, tanto como los gases de los automóviles y de la industria pesada enrarecen la atmósfera urbana. En una cultura cuyo ya clásico dilema es la hipertrofia del intelecto a expensas de la energía y la capacidad sensorial, la interpretación es la venganza que se toma el intelecto sobre el arte. Y aún más. Es la venganza que se toma el intelecto sobre el mundo. Interpretar es empobrecer, reducir el mundo, para instaurar un mundo sombrío de 2
significados. Es convertir el mundo en este mundo (¡«este mundo»! ¡Como si hubiera otro!). El mundo, nuestro mundo, está ya bastante reducido y empobrecido. Desechemos, pues, todos sus duplicados, hasta tanto experimentemos con más inmediatez cuanto tenemos. 5 En la mayoría de los ejemplos modernos, la interpretación supone una hipócrita negativa a dejar sola la obra de arte. El verdadero arte tiene el poder de ponernos nerviosos. Al reducir la obra de arte a su contenido para luego interpretar aquello, domesticamos la obra de arte. La interpretación hace manejable y maleable al arte. [...] 7 [...] El hecho de que las películas no hayan sido desbordadas por los interpretadores es en parte debido simplemente a la novedad del cine como arte. Es también debido al feliz accidente por el cual las películas durante largo tiempo fueron tan sólo películas; en otras palabras, que se las consideró parte de la cultura de masas, entendida ésta como opuesta a la cultura superior, y fueron desechadas por la mayoría de las personas inteligentes. Además, en el cine siempre hay algo que atrapar al vuelo, además del contenido, para aquellos deseosos de analizar. Pues el cine, a diferen-cia de la novela, posee un vocabulario de las formas: la explícita, compleja y discutible tecnología de los movimientos de cámara, de los cortes, y de la composición de planos implicados en la realización de una película. 8 ¿Qué tipo de crítica, de comentario sobre las artes, es hoy deseable? Pues no pretendo decir que las obras de arte sean inefables, que no puedan ser descritas o parafraseadas. Pueden serlo. La cuestión es cómo. ¿Cómo debería ser una crítica que sirviera a la obra de arte, sin usurpar su espacio? Lo que se necesita, en primer término, es una mayor atención a la forma en el arte. Si la excesiva atención al contenido provoca una arrogancia de la interpretación, la descripción más extensa y concienzuda de la forma la silenciará. Lo que se necesita es un vocabulario —un vocabulario, más que prescriptivo, descriptivo— de las formas.1 La mejor crítica, y no es frecuente, procede a 1
Una de las dificultades está en que nuestra idea de la forma es espacial (todas las metáforas griegas de la forma derivan de nociones espaciales). Es por ello que disponemos de un vocabulario de las formas más elaborado para las artes espaciales que para las temporales. Entre las artes temporales una excepción natural es el teatro, quizá porque el teatro es una forma narrativa (es decir, temporal) que se proyecta visual y pictóricamente en un escenario... Nos falta, sin embargo, aún una poética de la novela, una noción clara de las formas de narración. Quizá la crítica cinematográfica proporcione la ocasión y sirva de punta de lanza, pues el cine es primordialmente una forma visual, sin por ello dejar de ser una subdivisión de la literatura.
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disolver las consideraciones sobre el contenido en consideraciones sobre la forma. Puedo citar, sobre el cine, el teatro y la pintura respectivamente, el ensayo de Erwin Panofsky, «Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures», el ensayo de Northrop Frye, «A Conspectus of Dramatic Genres», y el ensayo de Pierre Francastel «La destruction d’un espace plastique». La obra de Roland Barthes Racine y sus dos ensayos sobre Robbe-Grillet son ejemplos de análisis formal aplicado a la obra de un solo autor. (Los mejores ensayos en Mimesis, de Erich Auerbach, como «La cicatriz de Odiseo », son también de este tipo.) Un ejemplo de análisis formal aplicado simultáneamente al género y al autor lo encontraríamos en el ensayo de Walter Benjamin «The Story Teller: Reflections on the Works of Nicolai Leskov».
debe plantearse precisamente a la luz del condicionamiento de nuestros sentidos, de nuestras capacidades (más que de los de otras épocas).
Igualmente válidos serían los actos de crítica que proporcionaran una descripción verdaderamente certera, aguda, amorosa, de la aparición de una obra de arte. Esto parece ser más difícil incluso que el análisis formal. Parte de la crítica cinematográfica de Manny Farber, el ensayo de Dorothy Van Ghent «The Dickens World: A View from Todgers» y el ensayo de Randall Jarrell sobre Walt Whitman se cuentan entre los raros ejemplos de lo que pretendo significar. Son ensayos que revelan la superficie sensual del arte sin enlodarla.
La finalidad de todo comentario sobre el arte debiera ser hoy el hacer que las obras de arte —y, por analogía, nuestra experiencia personal— fueran para nosotros más, y no menos, reales. La función de la crítica debiera consistir en mostrar cómo es lo que es, inclusive qué es lo que es y no en mostrar qué significa.
9 El valor más alto y más liberador en el arte —y en la crítica— de hoy es la transparencia. La transparencia supone experimentar la luminosidad del objeto en sí, de las cosas tal como son. En esto reside la grandeza de, por ejemplo, las películas de Bresson y de Ozu, y de La règle du jeu de Renoir.
Lo que ahora importa es recuperar nuestros sentidos. Debemos aprender a ver más, a oír más, a sentir más. Nuestra misión no consiste en percibir en una obra de arte la mayor cantidad posible de contenido, y menos aún en exprimir de la obra de arte un contenido mayor que el ya existente. Nuestra misión consiste en reducir el contenido de modo de poder ver en detalle el objeto.
10 En lugar de una hermenéutica, necesitamos una erótica del arte. (1964)
En otros tiempos (y esto va por Dante) pudo haber habido una tendencia, creadora y revolucionaria, a concebir las obras de arte de manera que permitieran su experimentación en distintos niveles. Ahora no. Sería reforzar el principio de redundancia, que es la principal aflicción de la vida moderna. En otros tiempos (tiempos en que no abundaba el gran arte), pudo haber habido una tendencia, creadora y revolucionaria, a interpretar las obras de arte. Ahora no. Decididamente, lo que ahora no precisamos es asimilar nuevamente el Arte al Pensamiento Lo (lo que es peor) el Arte a la Cultura. La interpretación da por supuesta la experiencia sensorial de la obra de arte, y toma a ésta como punto de partida. Pero hoy este supuesto es injustificado. Piénsese en la tremenda multiplicación de obras de arte al alcance de todos nosotros, agregada a los gustos y olores y visiones contradictorios del contorno urbano que bombardean nuestros sentidos. La nuestra es una cultura basada en el exceso, en la superproducción; el resultado es la constante declinación de la agudeza de nuestra experiencia sensorial. Todas las condiciones de la vida moderna —su abundancia material, su exagerado abigarramiento— se conjugan para embotar nuestras facultades sensoriales. Y la misión del crítico 4
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18 EL sistema de los objetos JEAN BAUDRILLARD Siglo XXI, México, 1969
INTRODUCCIÓN ¿Puede clasificarse la inmensa vegetación de los objetos como una flora o una fauna, con sus especies tropicales, polares, sus bruscas mutaciones, sus especies que están a punto de desaparecer? La civilización urbana es testigo de cómo se suceden, a ritmo acelerado, las generaciones de productos, de aparatos, de gadgets, por comparación con los cuales el hombre parece ser una especie particularmente estable. Esta abundancia, cuando lo piensa uno, no es más extraordinaria que la de las innumerables especies naturales. Pero el hombre ha hecho el censo de estas últimas. Y en la época en que comenzó a hacerlo sistemáticamente pudo también, en la Enciclopedia, ofrecer un cuadro completo de los objetos prácticos y técnicos de que estaba rodeado. Después se rompió el equilibrio: los objetos cotidianos (no hablo de máquinas) proliferan, las necesidades se multiplican, la producción acelera su nacimiento y su muerte, y nos falta un vocabulario para nombrarlos. ¿Hay quien pueda confiar en clasificar un mundo de objetos que cambia a ojos vistas y en lograr establecer un sistema descriptivo? Existen casi tantos criterios de clasificación como objetos mismos: según su talla, su grado de funcionalidad (cuál es su relación con su propia función objetiva), el gestual a ellos vinculado (rico o pobre, tradicional o no), su forma, su duración, el momento del día en que aparecen (presencia más o menos intermitente, y la conciencia que se tiene de la misma), la materia que transforman (en el caso del molino de café, 1
no caben dudas, pero ¿qué podemos decir del espejo, la radio, el auto?). Ahora bien, todo objeto transforma alguna cosa, el grado de exclusividad o de socialización en el uso (privado, familiar, público, indiferente), etc. De hecho, todos estos modos de clasificación, en el caso de un conjunto que se halla en mu- tación y expansión continuas, como es el de los objetos, podrán parecer un poco menos contingentes que los de orden alfabético. El catálogo de la fábrica de armas de Saint–Étienne, a falta de un criterio de clasificación establecido, nos proporciona subdivisiones que no tie- nen que ver más que con los objetos definidos según su función: cada uno corresponde a una operación, a menudo ínfima y heteróclita, y en ninguna parte aflora un sistema de significados.1 A un nivel mucho más elevado el análisis funcional, formal y estructural de los objetos, en su evolución histórica, que encontramos en Siegfried Giedion (Mechanization Takes Command, 1948), esta suerte de epopeya del objeto técnico señala los cambios de estructuras sociales ligados a esta evolu- ción, pero apenas si da respuesta a la pregunta de saber cómo son vividos los objetos, a qué otras necesidades, aparte de las funcionales, dan satisfacción, cuáles son las estructuras mentales que se traslapan con las estruc- turas funcionales y las contradicen, en qué sistema cultural, infra o transcultural, se funda su cotidianidad vivida. Tales son las preguntas que me hago aquí. Así, pues, no se trata de objetos definidos según su función, o según las clases en las que podríamos subdividirlos para facilitar el análisis, sino de los procesos en virtud de los cuales las personas entran en relación con ellos y de la sistemática de las conductas y de las relaciones humanas que resultan de ello. El estudio de este sistema “hablado” de los objetos, es decir, del sistema de significados más o menos coherente que instauran, supone siempre un plano distinto de este sistema “hablado”, estructurado más rigurosa- mente que él, un plano estructural que esté más allá aun de la descripción funcional: el plano tecnológico. Este plano tecnológico es una abstracción: somos prácticamente inconscientes, en nuestra vida ordinaria, de la realidad tecnológica de los objetos. Y, sin embargo, esta abstracción es una realidad fundamental: es la que gobierna las transformaciones radicales del ambiente. Incluso es, y lo decimos sin afán de paradoja, lo que de más concreto hay en el objeto, puesto que el proceso tecnológico es el de la evolución estructural objetiva. Dicho con todo rigor, lo que le ocurre al objeto en el dominio tecnológico es esencial, lo que le ocurre en el dominio de lo psicológico o lo sociológico, de las nece- sidades y de las prácticas, es inesencial. El discurso psicológico y sociológico nos remite continuamente al objeto, a un nivel más coherente, sin relación con el discurso individual o colectivo, y que sería el de una lengua tecnológica. A partir de esta lengua, de esta coherencia del modelo técnico, podemos comprender qué es 1 Pero la sola existencia de este catálogo es, por el contrario, rica en sentido; en su proyecto de nomenclatura completa existe una intensa significación cultural: que no se llega a los objetos más que a través de un catálogo, que puede ser hojeado “por puro gusto” como prodigioso manual, un libro de cuentos o un menú, etcétera.
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ción continua. Ahora bien, el hecho de que el sistema tecnológico esté hasta tal punto implicado, por su revolución permanente, en el tiempo mismo de los objetos prácticos que lo “hablan” (lo cual es también el caso de la lengua, pero en medida infinitamente menor); el hecho de que este sistema tenga como fines un dominio del mundo y una satisfacción de necesidades, es decir, fines más concretos, menos disociables de la praxis que la comunicación que es el fin del lengua- je; el hecho, por último, de que la tecnología dependa estrictamente de las condiciones sociales de la investigación tecnológica y, por consiguiente, del orden global de producción y de consumo, limitación externa que no se ejerce, de ninguna manera, sobre la lengua, de todo esto resulta que el sistema de los objetos, a diferencia del de la lengua, no puede describirse científicamente más que cuando se lo considera, a la vez, como resultado de la interferencia continua de un sis- tema de prácticas sobre un sistema de técnicas. Lo que nos da cuenta y razón de lo real no son tanto las estructuras coherentes de la técnica como las modalida-des de incidencia de las prácticas en las técnicas, o más exactamente, las modalidades de contención de las técnicas por las prácticas. Y, para decirlo todo de una vez, la descripción del sistema de los objetos tiene que ir acompañada de una crítica de la ideología práctica del sistema. En el nivel tecnológico no hay contradicción: sólo hay sentido. Pero una ciencia humana tiene que ser del sentido y del contrasentido: de cómo un sistema tecnológico coherente se difunde en un sistema práctico incoherente, de cómo la “lengua” de los objetos es “hablada”, de qué manera este sistema de la “palabra” (o intermediario entre la lengua y la pala- bra) oblitera al de la lengua. Por último, ¿dónde están, no la coherencia abstracta, sino las contradicciones vividas en el sistema de los objetos?3
3 Con fundamento en esta distinción, podemos establecer una analogía estrecha entre el análisis de los objetos y la lingüística o, más bien, la semiología. Aquello a lo que, en el campo de los objetos, llamamos diferencia marginal, o inesencial, es análogo a la noción semiológica de “campo de dispersión”. “El campo de dispersión está constituido por las variedades de ejecución de una unidad (de un fonema por ejemplo), mientras estas variedades no traigan consigo un cambio de sentido (es decir, no pasen al rango de variaciones pertinentes)... En alimentación, se podrá hablar de campo de dispersión de un plato, el que estará constituido por los límites en los cuales este plato sigue siendo significante, cualesquiera que puedan ser las ‘fantasías’ de su ejecutor. A las variedades que componen el campo de dispersión se las llama variantes combinatorias. No participan en la conmuta- ción del sentido, no son pertinentes... Desde hace mucho tiempo se han considerado las variaciones combinatorias como hechos de palabra; es cierto que se les asemejan muchísimo, pero en la actualidad se las considera como hechos de lengua, puesto que son ‘obligadas’.” (Roland Barthes, Communications, núm. 4, p. 128.) Y R. Barthes añade que esta noción habrá de ocupar un lugar preponderante en semiología, pues estas variaciones, que son insignificantes en el plano de la denotación, pueden volverse de nuevo significantes en el plano de la connotación. Se observa una profunda analogía entre variación combinatoria y diferencia marginal: ambas tienen que ver con lo esencial, carecen de pertinencia, dependen de una combina- toria y cobran su sentido al nivel de la connotación. Pero la distinción capital es que, si la variación combinatoria sigue siendo exterior e indiferente al plano semiológico de denotación, la diferencia marginal, por su parte, nunca es precisamente “marginal”. Esto se debe a que el plano tecnológico no designa, como el de la lengua para el lenguaje, una abstracción metodológica fija, que llega al mundo real por intermedio de las connotaciones, sino un esquema estructural evolutivo que las connotaciones (las diferencias inesenciales) fijan, estereotipan y hacen regresar. El dinamismo estructural de la técnica se fija al nivel de los objetos en la subjetividad diferencial del sistema cultural, el cual repercute en el orden técnico.
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lo que les ocurre a los objetos por el hecho de ser producidos y consumidos, poseídos y personalizados. Por lo tanto, es urgente definir desde el principio un plano de racionalidad del objeto, es decir, de estructuración tecnológica objetiva. Veamos, en Gilbert Simondon (Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Aubier, 1958), el ejemplo del motor de gasolina: “En un motor actual, cada pieza importante está hasta tal punto vinculada a las demás por cambios recíprocos de energía que no puede ser distinta de como es. La forma de la culata, el metal con que está hecha, en relación con todos los demás elementos del ciclo, producen una determinada temperatura en los electrodos de la bujía; a su vez, esta temperatura reacciona sobre las características del encendido y del ciclo entero. El motor actual es concreto, mientras que el motor antiguo es abstracto. En el motor antiguo, cada elemento interviene, en un determinado momento, en el ciclo, y después se le pide que ya no actúe sobre los demás elementos; las piezas del motor son como personas que trabajaran cada una por su parte, pero no se conocieran entre sí... De tal manera, existe una forma primitiva del objeto técnico, la forma abstracta, en la cual a cada unidad teórica material se la trata como un absoluto, que necesita para su funcionamiento constituirse en sistema cerrado. En este caso, la integración nos plantea la resolución de una serie de pro- blemas... es entonces cuando aparecen estructuras particulares a las que podemos llamar, para cada unidad constituyente, estructuras de defensa: la culata del motor térmico de combustión interna se eriza de aletas de enfriamiento. Éstas están añadidas desde el exterior, por así decirlo, al cilindro y a la culata teórica y no cumplen más que una sola función, la de enfriamiento. En los motores recientes, estas aletas desempeñan además un papel mecánico, pues se oponen, a manera de nervaduras, a la deformación de la culata por la presión de los gases... ya no podemos distinguir las dos fun- ciones: se ha desarrollado una estructura única, que no es una componenda, sino una concomitancia y una convergencia: la culata nervada puede ser más delgada, lo cual permite un enfriamiento más rápido; la estructura ambivalente aletas–nervaduras cumple sintética- mente, y de manera mucho más satisfactoria, las dos funciones antaño separadas: integra las dos funciones, rebasándolas... Diremos entonces que esta estructura es más concreta que la anterior y corresponde a un progreso objetivo del objeto técnico: el problema tecnológico real es el de una convergencia de las funciones en una unidad estructural y no el de la búsqueda de una componenda entre las exigencias rivales. En el caso límite, en este paso de lo abstracto a lo concreto, el objeto técnico tiende a alcanzar el estado de un sistema totalmente coherente consigo mismo, plenamente unificado” (pp. 25–26). Este análisis es esencial. Nos proporciona los elementos de una coherencia jamás vivida, jamás legible en la práctica. La tecnología nos cuenta una historia rigurosa de los objetos, en la que los antagonismos funcionales se resuelven, dialécticamente, en estructuras más amplias. Cada transición de un sistema a otro mejor integrado, cada conmutación en el interior de un sistema ya estructurado, cada síntesis de unificaciones hace que surja un sentido, una “pertinencia” objetiva independiente de los individuos que la llevarán a cabo: 3
nos encontramos en el nivel de una lengua, y por analogía con los fenómenos de la lingüística, podríamos llamar “tecnemas” a estos elementos técnicos simples (diferentes de los objetos reales) en cuyo juego se funda la evolución tecnológica. A este nivel, es posible pensar en una tecnología estructural, que estudie la organiza- ción concreta de estos tecnemas en objetos técnicos más complejos, su sintaxis en el seno de conjuntos técnicos simples (diferentes de los objetos reales), en el seno de conjuntos técnicos privilegiados y las relaciones tecnológicas de sentido entre estos diversos objetos conjuntos. Pero esta ciencia no puede ejercerse rigurosamente más que en sectores restringidos que van de las inves- tigaciones de laboratorio a las realizaciones muy técni- cas como las de la aeronáutica, la astronáutica, la ma- rina, los grandes camiones de transporte, las máquinas perfeccionadas, etc. Allí donde la urgencia técnica hace que se emplee a fondo la constricción estructural, allí donde el carácter colectivo e impersonal reduce al míni- mo la influencia de la moda. Mientras que el automó- vil se agota en el juego de las formas, mientras conserva un status tecnológico minoritario (enfriamiento por agua, motor de cilindros, etc.), la aviación, por su parte, está obligada a producir los objetos técnicos más concretos por simples razones funcionales (seguridad, velocidad, eficacia). En este caso, la evolución tecnológica sigue una línea casi pura. Pero es evidente que, para dar cuenta y razón del sistema cotidiano de los objetos, este análisis tecnológico estructural es insuficiente. Se puede soñar en una descripción completa de los tecnemas y de sus relaciones de sentido que baste para agotar el mundo de los objetos reales. Pero no es más que un sueño. La tentación de utilizar los tecnemas como astros en la astronomía, es decir, según Platón “del mismo modo que la geometría, valiéndonos de pro- blemas, sin detenernos en lo que pasa por el cielo, si queremos hacernos verdaderos astrónomos y convertir en útil lo que hay por naturaleza de inteligente en el alma” (La República, VII, iv–2), tropieza inmediatamente con la realidad psicológica y sociológica vivida de los objetos, que constituye, más allá de su materialidad sensible, un cuerpo de constricciones tales que la coherencia del sistema tecnológico se ve continuamente modificada y perturbada. Es esta perturbación, y cómo la racionalidad de los objetos choca con la irra- cionalidad de las necesidades, y cómo esta contradic- ción hace surgir un sistema de significados que se pro- ponen resolverla, lo que nos interesa aquí, y no los modelos tecnológicos sobre cuya verdad fundamental, sin embargo, se destaca continuamente la realidad vivida del objeto. Cada uno de nuestros objetos prácticos está ligado a uno o varios elementos estructurales, pero, por lo demás, todos huyen continuamente de la estructuralidad técnica hacia los significados secundarios, del sistema tecnológico hacia un sistema cultural. El ambiente cotidiano es, en gran medida, un sistema “abstracto”: los múltiples objetos están, en general, aislados en su función, es el hombre el que garantiza, en la medida de sus necesidades, su coexistencia en un contexto fun- cional, sistema poco económico, poco coherente, análo- go a la estructura arcaica de los motores primitivos de gasolina: multiplicidad de funciones parciales, a ve- ces indiferentes o antagónicas. Por lo demás, en la 4
actualidad no se tiende a resolver esta incoherencia, sino a dar satisfacción a las necesidades sucesivas mediante objetos nuevos. Así ocurre que cada objeto, sumado a los demás, subviene a su propia función, pero contraviene al conjunto, y a veces incluso subviene y contraviene, al mismo tiempo, a su función propia. Además, como las connotaciones formales y técnicas se añaden a la incoherencia funcional, es todo el sistema de las necesidades (socializadas o inconscientes, culturales o prácticas), todo un sistema vivido inesencial, el que refluye sobre el orden técnico esencial y compromete el status objetivo del objeto. Pongamos un ejemplo: lo que es esencial y estructural y, por consiguiente, lo que es más concretamente objetivo en un molino de café, es el motor eléctrico, es la energía distribuida por la central, son las leyes de producción y de transformación de la energía (lo que es ya menos objetivo, porque es relativo a la necesidad de una determinada persona, es su función precisa de moler el café); lo que no tiene nada de objetivo y, por consiguiente, es inesencial, es que sea verde y rectangular, o rosa y trapezoidal. Una misma estructura, el motor eléctrico, puede especificarse en diversas funciones: la diferenciación funcional es ya secundaria (por lo cual puede caer en la incoherencia del gadget.). El mismo objeto–función, a su vez, puede especificarse en diversas formas: estamos aquí en el dominio de la “personalización”, de la connotación formal, que es el de lo inesencial. Ahora bien, lo que caracteriza al objeto industrial por contraposición al objeto artesanal es que lo inesencial ya no se deja al azar de la demanda y de la ejecución individuales, sino que en la actualidad lo toma por su cuenta y lo sistematiza la producción,2 que asegura a través de él (y la combinatoria universal de la moda) su propia finalidad. Es esta inextricable complicación lo que determina que las condiciones de autonomización de una esfera tecnológica y, por consiguiente, de posibilidad de un análisis estructural en el dominio de los objetos no sean las mismas que en el dominio del lenguaje. Si se exceptúan los objetos técnicos puros con los que nunca tenemos que ver en su calidad de sujetos, observaremos que los dos niveles, el de la denotación objetiva y el de la connotación (por los cuales el objeto es caracterizado, comercializado y personalizado hasta llegar al uso y entrar en un sistema cultural), no son, en las condiciones actuales de producción y de consumo, estrictamente disociables, como lo son los de la lengua y la palabra en lingüística. El nivel tecnológico no es una autonomía estructural tal que los “hechos de palabra” (aquí, el objeto “hablado”) no tengan más importancia en un análisis de los objetos que la que tienen en el análisis de los hechos lingüísticos. Si el hecho de pronunciar la r arrastrada o guturalmente no cambia nada en el sistema del lenguaje, es decir, si el sentido de connotación no pone para nada en peligro a las estructuras denotadas, la connotación de objeto, por su parte, afecta y altera sensiblemente a las estructuras técnicas. A diferencia de la lengua, la tecnología no constituye un sistema estable. Al contrario de los monemas y de los fonemas, los tecnemas se hallan en evolu2 Las modalidades de transición de lo esencial a lo inesencial son hoy relativamente sistemáticas. Esta sistematización de lo inesencial tiene aspectos sociológicos y psicológicos, y tiene también una función ideológica de integración (véase “Modelos y series”).
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UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
19 Tips for Negotiating IVANKA TRUMP The Trump Card, Touchstone, 2010.
1. Know what you want. It’s the number one rule going into any negotiation. People who start in on a series of discussions and figure their objectives will become clear to them in time will allow the other party to define their goals, instead of the other way around. State your needs right away. The longer you wait to show your hand, the fewer cards you’ll have to play. 2. Think up options. Anticipate why and how the other party will resist your demands and prepare acceptable alternatives beforehand. That way you’ll be prepared to make suggestions you’ve thought out before the negotiation takes place. This is to say BE FLEXIBLE! Sometimes the most creative ideas come from negotiation solutions. 3. Avoid arguing. State the disagreements between the negotiating parties assertively, but don’t waste time trying to prove the other wrong. Don’t take things personally. Remain emotionally in control. Remember negotiating is about reaching a solution, not the struggle that takes you there. 4. Be aware of your physical appearance. Size matters. Height, stature, how you carry yourself– they all come into play in a negotiation. A show of strength will be interpreted as... well, strength.
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5. Try to read the people across the table from you. Put yourself in their shoes. Think about what makes sense for them in this deal. Think about the points they might be unwilling to concede– and why. Learn what they’re really looking to get out of the deal, not just what they’re telling you. Remember that a deal is a win-win for both parties. 6. Focus on the other party’s pressure. Worry less about your own need to make a deal and more about the other side’s. Look for ways to use the pressure they’re under to your advantage. 7. Give to get. Don’t give away anything without getting something in return. Make sure your concessions are acknowledged. Even if they’re relatively small. It’ll help your case later on if the other guys feel as if they’ve won a point or two. 8. Remember timing is everything. Recognize the good and bad times to negotiate. Don’t rush things unnecessarily; patience is a virtue. On the flip side, don’t let things drag on for too long or both parties will begin to lose enthusiasm in the deal. 9. Don’t be afraid to walk away. Let it be known that you’re perfectly willing to let a deal go if you can’t make it work. If the other guy thinks you’re forced by circumstances to do a deal, he’ll have an advantage.
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UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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20 Roma Interrotta AAVV Architectural Design, Vol 49, No 3-4, 1979, “Roma Interrotta”. p 2-3
Roma Interrotta was a design exhibition and text involving twelve invited proposals based upon interpretation of the 1748 Nolli map of Rome. In describing Roma Interrota, Michael Graves wrote: ...If one were to compare modern Rome with Nolli’s plan of 1748, the development which has occurred since the 18th century is, one might think, crude and without the substance of the urban structure as recorded by Nolli. In speculating about the nature of urban experience, it seemed appropriate to identify the thematic assumptions of the proposed exhibition around the expansion of Nolli’s Rome to accommodate the city’s growth. Since Nolli’s plan was divided into 12 sections, presumably because of the technical limitations of printing, it was felt that the distribution of these sections to individual participation might yield a comparison of urban intentions, especially at their junctures or seams. The twelve primary investigators in the exhibition included: Piero Sartogo, Constantino Dardi, Antoine Grumbach, James Stirling, Paolo Portoghesi, Romaldo Giurgola, Venturi and Rauch, Colin Rowe, Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi, Rob Krier, Leon Krier.’
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UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE Artists and intellectuals despondent over the prospects for originality can take heart from a phenomenon identified about twenty years ago by Don Swanson, a library scientist at the University of Chicago. He called it “undiscovered public knowledge.” Swanson showed that standing problems in medical research may be significantly addressed, perhaps even solved, simply by systematically surveying the scientific literature. Left to its own devices, research tends to become more specialized and abstracted from the real-world problems that motivated it and to which it remains relevant. This suggests that such a problem may be tackled effectively not by commissioning more research but by assuming that most or all of the solution can already be found in various scientific journals, waiting to be assembled by someone willing to read across specialties. Swanson himself did this in the case of Raynaud’s syndrome, a disease that causes the fingers of young women to become numb. His finding is especially striking—perhaps even scandalous—because it happened in the ever-expanding biomedical sciences. Undiscovered public knowledge emboldens us to question the extreme claims to originality made in press releases and publishers’ notices: Is an intellectual or creative offering truly novel, or have we just forgotten a worthy precursor? Does solving certain scientific problems really require massive additional funding, or could a computerized search engine, creatively deployed, do the same job more quickly and cheaply? Lastly, does our appetite for creative vitality require the violence and exasperation of another avant-garde, with its wearisome killing-the-father imperatives, or might we be better off ratifying the ecstasy of influence—and deepening our willingness to understand the commonality and timelessness of the methods and motifs available to artists?
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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21 “The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism” JONATHAN LETHEM texto íntegro en: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . . I —John Donne LOVE AND THEFT “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.” The line comes from Don Siegel’s 1958 film noir, The Lineup, written by Stirling Silliphant. The film still haunts revival houses, likely thanks to Eli Wallach’s blazing portrayal of a sociopathic hit man and to Siegel’s long, sturdy auteurist career. Yet what were those words worth—to Siegel, or Silliphant, or their audience—in 1958? And again: what was the line worth when Bob Dylan heard it (presumably in some Greenwich Village repertory cinema), cleaned it up a little, and inserted it into “Absolutely Sweet Marie”? What are they worth now, to the culture at large? Appropriation has always played a key role in Dylan’s music. The songwriter has grabbed not only from a panoply of vintage Hollywood films but from Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Junichi Saga’s Confessions of a Yakuza. He also nabbed the title of Eric Lott’s study of minstrelsy for his 2001 album Love and Theft. One imagines Dylan liked the general resonance of the title, in which emotional misdemeanors stalk the sweetness of love, as they do so often in Dylan’s songs. Lott’s title is, of course, itself a riff on Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel, which famously identifies the literary motif of the interdependence of a white man and a dark man, like Huck and Jim or Ishmael and Queequeg—a series of nested references to Dylan’s own appropriating, minstrel-boy self. Dylan’s art offers a paradox: while it famously urges us not to look back, it also encodes a knowledge
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of past sources that might otherwise have little home in contemporary culture, like the Civil War poetry of the Confederate bard Henry Timrod, resuscitated in lyrics on Dylan’s newest record, Modern Times. Dylan’s originality and his appropriations are as one. Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time. When I was thirteen I purchased an anthology of Beat writing. Immediately, and to my very great excitement, I discovered one William S. Burroughs, author of something called Naked Lunch, excerpted there in all its coruscating brilliance. Burroughs was then as radical a literary man as the world had to offer. Nothing, in all my experience of literature since, has ever had as strong an effect on my sense of the sheer possibilities of writing. Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers’ texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the Forties and Fifties, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me. By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Burroughs was interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all. CONTAMINATION ANXIETY Blues and jazz musicians have long been enabled by a kind of “open source” culture, in which pre-existing melodic fragments and larger musical frameworks are freely reworked. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called “versions.” The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music. Visual, sound, and text collage—which for many centuries were relatively fugitive traditions (a cento here, a folk pastiche there)—became explosively central to a series of movements in the twentieth century: futurism, cubism, Dada, musique concrète, situationism, pop art, and appropriationism. In fact, collage, the common denominator in that list, might be called the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first. But forget, for the moment, chronologies, schools, or even centuries. As examples accumulate—Igor Stravinsky’s music and Daniel Johnston’s, Francis Bacon’s paintings and Henry Darger’s, the novels of the Oulipo group and of Hannah Crafts (the author who pillaged Dickens’s Bleak House to write The Bondwoman’s Narrative), as well as cherished texts that become troubling to their admirers after the discovery of their “plagiarized” elements, like Richard Condon’s novels or Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons—it becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production. What happens when an allusion goes unrecognized? A closer look at The Waste
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bought and sold. We consider it unacceptable to sell sex, babies, body organs, legal rights, and votes. The idea that something should never be commodified is generally known as inalienability or unalienability—a concept most famously expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the phrase “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” A work of art seems to be a hardier breed; it can be sold in the market and still emerge a work of art. But if it is true that in the essential commerce of art a gift is carried by the work from the artist to his audience, if I am right to say that where there is no gift there is no art, then it may be possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a pure commodity. I don’t maintain that art can’t be bought and sold, but that the gift portion of the work places a constraint upon our merchandising. This is the reason why even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it’s never really for the person it’s directed at. What’s remarkable about gift economies is that they can flourish in the most unlikely places—in run-down neighborhoods, on the Internet, in scientific communities, and among members of Alcoholics Anonymous. A classic example is commercial blood systems, which generally produce blood supplies of lower safety, purity, and potency than volunteer systems. A gift economy may be superior when it comes to maintaining a group’s commitment to certain extra-market values. THE COMMONS Another way of understanding the presence of gift economies—which dwell like ghosts in the commercial machine—is in the sense of a public commons. A commons, of course, is anything like the streets over which we drive, the skies through which we pilot airplanes, or the public parks or beaches on which we dally. A commons belongs to everyone and no one, and its use is controlled only by common consent. A commons describes resources like the body of ancient music drawn on by composers and folk musicians alike, rather than the commodities, like “Happy Birthday to You,” for which ASCAP, 114 years after it was written, continues to collect a fee. Einstein’s theory of relativity is a commons. Writings in the public domain are a commons. Gossip about celebrities is a commons. The silence in a movie theater is a transitory commons, impossibly fragile, treasured by those who crave it, and constructed as a mutual gift by those who compose it. The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn’t mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole. Honoring the commons is not a matter of moral exhortation. It is a practical necessity. We in Western society are going through a period of intensifying belief in private ownership, to the detriment of the public good. We have to remain constantly vigilant to prevent raids by those who would selfishly exploit our common heritage for their private gain. Such raids on our natural resources are not examples of enterprise and initiative. They are attempts to take from all the people just for the benefit of a few.
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an expensive one. To live outside the law, you must be honest: perhaps it was this, in part, that spurred David Byrne and Brian Eno to recently launch a “remix” website, where anyone can download easily disassembled versions of two songs from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an album reliant on vernacular speech sampled from a host of sources. Perhaps it also explains why Bob Dylan has never refused a request for a sample. Kenneth Koch once said, “I’m a writer who likes to be influenced.” It was a charming confession, and a rare one. For so many artists, the act of creativity is intended as a Napoleonic imposition of one’s uniqueness upon the universe—après moi le déluge of copycats! And for every James Joyce or Woody Guthrie or Martin Luther King Jr., or Walt Disney, who gathered a constellation of voices in his work, there may seem to be some corporation or literary estate eager to stopper the bottle: cultural debts flow in, but they don’t flow out. We might call this tendency “source hypocrisy.” Or we could name it after the most pernicious source hypocrites of all time: Disnial. YOU CAN’T STEAL A GIFT My reader may, understandably, be on the verge of crying, “Communist!” A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without some form of intellectual property. But it takes little reflection to grasp that there is ample value that the term “property” doesn’t capture. And works of art exist simultaneously in two economies, a market economy and a gift economy. The cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange is that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection. I go into a hardware store, pay the man for a hacksaw blade, and walk out. I may never see him again. The disconnectedness is, in fact, a virtue of the commodity mode. We don’t want to be bothered, and if the clerk always wants to chat about the family, I’ll shop elsewhere. I just want a hacksaw blade. But a gift makes a connection. There are many examples, the candy or cigarette offered to a stranger who shares a seat on the plane, the few words that indicate goodwill between passengers on the late-night bus. These tokens establish the simplest bonds of social life, but the model they offer may be extended to the most complicated of unions—marriage, parenthood, mentorship. If a value is placed on these (often essentially unequal) exchanges, they degenerate into something else. Yet one of the more difficult things to comprehend is that the gift economies—like those that sustain open-source software—coexist so naturally with the market. It is precisely this doubleness in art practices that we must identify, ratify, and enshrine in our lives as participants in culture, either as “producers” or “consumers.” Art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—is received as a gift is received. Even if we’ve paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us that has nothing to do with the price. The daily commerce of our lives proceeds at its own constant level, but a gift conveys an uncommodifiable surplus of inspiration. The way we treat a thing can change its nature, though. Religions often prohibit the sale of sacred objects, the implication being that their sanctity is lost if they are
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Land may help make this point. The body of Eliot’s poem is a vertiginous mélange of quotation, allusion, and “original” writing. When Eliot alludes to Edmund Spenser’s “Prothalamion” with the line “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” what of readers to whom the poem, never one of Spenser’s most popular, is unfamiliar? (Indeed, the Spenser is now known largely because of Eliot’s use of it.) Two responses are possible: grant the line to Eliot, or later discover the source and understand the line as plagiarism. Eliot evidenced no small anxiety about these matters; the notes he so carefully added to The Waste Land can be read as a symptom of modernism’s contamination anxiety. Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety? SURROUNDED BY SIGNS The surrealists believed that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity that had been dulled by everyday use and utility. They meant to reanimate this dormant intensity, to bring their minds once again into close contact with the matter that made up their world. André Breton’s maxim “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table” is an expression of the belief that simply placing objects in an unexpected context reinvigorates their mysterious qualities. This “crisis” the surrealists identified was being simultaneously diagnosed by others. Martin Heidegger held that the essence of modernity was found in a certain technological orientation he called “enframing.” This tendency encourages us to see the objects in our world only in terms of how they can serve us or be used by us. The task he identified was to find ways to resituate ourselves vis-à-vis these “objects,” so that we may see them as “things” pulled into relief against the ground of their functionality. Heidegger believed that art had the great potential to reveal the “thingness” of objects. The surrealists understood that photography and cinema could carry out this reanimating process automatically; the process of framing objects in a lens was often enough to create the charge they sought. Describing the effect, Walter Benjamin drew a comparison between the photographic apparatus and Freud’s psychoanalytic methods. Just as Freud’s theories “isolated and made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception,” the photographic apparatus focuses on “hidden details of familiar objects,” revealing “entirely new structural formations of the subject.” USEMONOPOLY The idea that culture can be property—intellectual property—is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone. Corporations like Celera Genomics have filed for patents for human genes, while the Recording Industry Association of America has sued music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as twelve. ASCAP bleeds fees from shop owners who play background music in their stores; students and scholars are shamed from placing texts facedown on photocopy machines. At the same time, copyright is revered by most
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established writers and artists as a birthright and bulwark, the source of nurture for their infinitely fragile practices in a rapacious world. Plagiarism and piracy, after all, are the monsters we working artists are taught to dread, as they roam the woods surrounding our tiny preserves of regard and remuneration. A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation. Even as the law becomes more restrictive, technology is exposing those restrictions as bizarre and arbitrary. When old laws fixed on reproduction as the compensable (or actionable) unit, it wasn’t because there was anything fundamentally invasive of an author’s rights in the making of a copy. Rather it was because copies were once easy to find and count, so they made a useful benchmark for deciding when an owner’s rights had been invaded. In the contemporary world, though, the act of “copying” is in no meaningful sense equivalent to an infringement—we make a copy every time we accept an emailed text, or send or forward one—and is impossible anymore to regulate or even describe. At the movies, my entertainment is sometimes lately preceded by a dire trailer, produced by the lobbying group called the Motion Picture Association of America, in which the purchasing of a bootleg copy of a Hollywood film is compared to the theft of a car or a handbag—and, as the bullying supertitles remind us, “You wouldn’t steal a handbag!” This conflation forms an incitement to quit thinking. If I were to tell you that pirating DVDs or downloading music is in no way different from loaning a friend a book, my own arguments would be as ethically bankrupt as the MPAA’s. The truth lies somewhere in the vast gray area between these two overstated positions. For a car or a handbag, once stolen, no longer is available to its owner, while the appropriation of an article of “intellectual property” leaves the original untouched. As Jefferson wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” Thinking clearly sometimes requires unbraiding our language. The word “copyright” may eventually seem as dubious in its embedded purposes as “family values,” “globalization,” and, sure, “intellectual property.” Copyright is a “right” in no absolute sense; it is a government-granted monopoly on the use of creative results. So let’s try calling it that—not a right but a monopoly on use, a “usemonopoly”— and then consider how the rapacious expansion of monopoly rights has always been counter to the public interest, no matter if it is Andrew Carnegie controlling the price of steel or Walt Disney managing the fate of his mouse. Whether the monopolizing beneficiary is a living artist or some artist’s heirs or some corporation’s shareholders, the loser is the community, including living artists who might make splendid use of a healthy public domain.
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THE BEAUTY OF SECOND USE A few years ago someone brought me a strange gift, purchased at MoMA’s downtown design store: a copy of my own first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music, expertly cut into the contours of a pistol. The object was the work of Robert The, an artist whose specialty is the reincarnation of everyday materials. I regard my first book as an old friend, one who never fails to remind me of the spirit with which I entered into this game of art and commerce—that to be allowed to insert the materials of my imagination onto the shelves of bookstores and into the minds of readers (if only a handful) was a wild privilege. I was paid $6,000 for three years of writing, but at the time I’d have happily published the results for nothing. Now my old friend had come home in a new form, one I was unlikely to have imagined for it myself. The gun-book wasn’t readable, exactly, but I couldn’t take offense at that. The fertile spirit of stray connection this appropriated object conveyed back to me—the strange beauty of its second use—was a reward for being a published writer I could never have fathomed in advance. And the world makes room for both my novel and Robert The’s gun-book. There’s no need to choose between the two. In the first life of creative property, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. After the commercial life has ended, our tradition supports a second life as well. A newspaper is delivered to a doorstep, and the next day wraps fish or builds an archive. Most books fall out of print after one year, yet even within that period they can be sold in used bookstores and stored in libraries, quoted in reviews, parodied in magazines, described in conversations, and plundered for costumes for kids to wear on Halloween. The demarcation between various possible uses is beautifully graded and hard to define, the more so as artifacts distill into and repercuss through the realm of culture into which they’ve been entered, the more so as they engage the receptive minds for whom they were presumably intended. SOURCE HYPOCRISY, OR, DISNIAL The Walt Disney Company has drawn an astonishing catalogue from the work of others: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Song of the South, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, and, alas, Treasure Planet, a legacy of cultural sampling that Shakespeare, or De La Soul, could get behind. Yet Disney’s protectorate of lobbyists has policed the resulting cache of cultural materials as vigilantly as if it were Fort Knox—threatening legal action, for instance, against the artist Dennis Oppenheim for the use of Disney characters in a sculpture, and prohibiting the scholar Holly Crawford from using any Disney-related images—including artwork by Lichtenstein, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others—in her monograph Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art. This peculiar and specific act—the enclosure of commonwealth culture for the benefit of a sole or corporate owner—is close kin to what could be called imperial plagiarism, the free use of Third World or “primitive” artworks and styles by more privileged (and better-paid) artists. Think of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, or some of the albums of Paul Simon or David Byrne: even without violating copyright, those creators have sometimes come in for a certain skepticism when the extent of their outsourcing became evident. And, as when Led Zeppelin found themselves sued for back royalties by the bluesman Willie Dixon, the act can occasionally be
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
22 Furnishings AMADEU SANTACANA en Words, CTA-ETSAM, Madrid, 2012. p-98-103.
The differential value between furnishings (“mueble” - movable) and property (“inmueble” - immovable) is clearly shown by the dates the actual words appeared. Furnishing (“mueble”, from the Latin; mobilis) is already registered in Spanish in 1030 while property appears some 300 years later, more than a semantic necessity, as a negation of what was previously meant by furnishings. The necessity to name this new concept also clearly indicates certain changes in social behaviour, moving from more portable structures to increasingly more sedentary settlements and acquiring a desire for the appropriation of permanent possessions. Even so, 1000 years later, we are much more familiarised with property than with furnishings. The slow but unfailing move towards sedentariness of our societies has/have brought us dangerously closer to the denial of the “furnishing” (movable) than to the transitory. Apparently we have come close to stationary. Apparently, because it can be observed that the value of the properties does not depend on our relationship with these but on other market factors which regulate the value (not only economic) of these physical properties. However, we assign our “prices” according to our relationship to these objects. We establish different types of relationships, but even so, a large majority of our preferences are towards the most transitory, the most short-lived. Value is given to what disappears to what can be displaced, to what can be transferred. As in heraldry the characteristics of “mueble” (figure) defines the 1
form of the coat of arms. The figure which is in transit, which moves along the rigid frame and the infl exible bands of the shield. The figure which can mutate, which can disappear, but at the same time that which endows meaning, signifi cance. The furnishings, because of their genetic condition, are what we take with us; a part of ourselves. It is, in fact, that which we have closest to ourselves. It is the clothing which accompanies us. It is the clothing which identifi es and capacitates us for certain actions. Paradoxically, the most transitory and mutable, the most lightweight, is what most capacitates us for particular actions, what makes us specific to particular situations, just as the lightest prosthesis exponentially increases the potential of our own body. Furnishings are the direct relationship between our body and its potential and ambition. They are the link between ourselves, who we really are, and the physically permanent. Property (“inmueble” - immovable) has only the characteristic of a support, a blueprint, a music score. That which is static becomes an inert guide which establishes variations in the whole but with certain undetermined tangible specifics. It establishes relationship guidelines without conditioning what will happen in each delimitedspace - the relationship fi eld. The battle fi eld which only becomes meaningful when the characters appear, equipped with their clothing specialised for action. Furnishing (“mueble” - movable) has the specifi c characteristic of a designated activity. The furnishing is the element of relationship and connection between user and space. It is the device which prompts the user to make a specific use of an indeterminate space. It is the signal which sends the command to set a situation in motion. Furnishing is the clothing which allows us everything. The clothing which allows us to work, eat, rest... For the Japanese the bed is the clothing they “wear” to sleep. Japanese culture squeezes its characteristics of mobility to the limit and transfers all the properties of the transitory to the permanent.
obviously facilitates this huge variety of uses. In sum, 48 spaces are confi gured in the initial ideogram, their dimensions not committed or linked to their respective activities. The areas and the size of the rooms have an element of indefiniteness which leaves them open on a programmatic level. Neither do the specific characteristics of their materiality and position defi ne in the least their subsequent use. The continuity and connections between the different rooms are arbitrary and permit a great degree of freedom in movements from one to another. In the ideogram previous to the project and the subsequent model, the only material which configures the programme is the furnishing. The elements of furnishing are what make possible the actions the inhabitants of this house will engage in. The propertyfurnishing (“mueble”-”inmueble”) dichotomy is taken to its limits, leaving all the programmatic capacities to the furnishing, to the transferable or portable. The furnishing sets in motion all actions that will occur, from the most recreational to the most vital. The furnishing and its configurations are the architectural programme, and due to its implicit mobility it gives the programme a condition which is much closer to our actions, with a capacity for flexibility and variation much more real and contemporary, endowing the whole (inhabitant-furnishingshabitat) with a great many possibilities which auto-regulate and adjust themselves constantly.
A good example of this is the House in China by Ryue Nishizawa in 2003. It is an exploration of the expansion of an ambitious domestic programme in a location of vast proportions. The project is located in an large residential complex, of dubious pertinence, with an urban plan by Riken Yamamoto, in the outskirts of Tianjin (China). The house, of approximately 620 square metres, is confi gured on only one level. This considerable vastness of surface means that activities which in a small house would have had to be overlapped or excluded, could be contemplated; activity areas such as an art gallery, a basketball court, a greenhouse, a tea room, a breakfast room, a studio, a patio with swimming pool, a gymnasium, a sauna, a music room, a video room, a spacious dining room where it is possible to dance and hold parties. The great number of rooms 2
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1 Rem Koolhaas, “Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos,” in Under Siege: Four African Cities—Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos (Documenta11_Platform4), ed. Okwui Enwezor, Carlos Basualdo, Ute Meta Bauer, Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash, and Octavio Zaya (Ostfildern-Ruit, 2002). 2 Cited in Adnan Morshed, “The Cultural Politics of Aerial Vision: Le Corbusier in Brazil (1929),” Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 55, no. 4 (2002): 201–10; 205. 3 This encounter was thoroughly criticized by various writers for obfuscating the ground realities of Lagos. For a critical response see Matthew Gandy, “Learning from Lagos,” New Left Review 33, (May– June 2005).
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4 Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” October 59 (Winter 1992): 3–7; 4. 5 Jean Baudrillard “The Beaubourg-Effect: Implosion and Deterrence,” trans. Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson, October 20 (Spring 1982): 3–13; 5. 6 Ibid., 5. 7 Ibid. 8 Pointing to Italian “radio pirates” at the end of the essay, Baudrillard suggested that their real danger to the “system” lay not in their politics but in their “non-extensible” and “dangerous” localization.
federico soriano
Post-Postcolonial Sensory Infrastructure RAVI SUNDARAM
9 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). Kittler began his classic text with this sentence: “Media determine our situation, which—in spite of, or because of it—deserves an explanation.” xxxix. 10 See Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 11 See Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, ed. Meg MacLagan and Yates McKee (New York: Zone Books, 2012). 12 Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman, “Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis,” Public Culture 7, (1995): 323–52; 340. 13 See Gulf to Gulf to Gulf in the Indiancine.ma archive 14 William Mazzarella, Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). 15 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 16 Informal tenure rather than formal, title defines urban residence in most postcolonial cities. 17 It is also a visceral vehicle of terror where political productivity can articulate intimidation, exploitation, and aesthetics. 18 See Nigel Thrift, “Pass it on: Towards a political economy of propensity,” Emotion, Space and Society 1 (December 2008): 83–96. 19 See Geert Lovink, Sebastian Olma, and Ned Rossiter, “On the Creative Question – Nine Theses”, Institute for Network Cultures
available in http://www.e-flux.com/journal/post-postcolonial-sensory-infrastructure/
More than a decade ago, Rem Koolhaas published his widely circulated essay “Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos” as part of a Documenta 11 platform in that city devoted to African urbanism.1 Koolhaas went on to consider the status of Lagos, which seemed to have an aura of “apocalyptic violence” and of a “smoldering rubbish dump.” A series of further enquiries revealed new informal networks entering the interstices of older, decaying infrastructures. Finally, it was a crucial helicopter ride by which Koolhaas showed that Lagos, rather than bordering permanently on chaos, functioned as a series of functional correspondences, with a dynamic “confrontation of people and infrastructure.” This clinching aerial insight followed a familiar trend in the history of architecture. It was through Corbusier’s flights in Brazil in 1929 and in colonial Algiers that he formulated his claims for a new form of urban imagination, distinct from ground-level perception. Thus, after one of his Brazilian flights Corbusier wrote ecstatically: From the houses, no one sees [Rio]. There is no more land to build upon … There are nearly a dozen bays, closed, isolated. If you walk through the maze of streets, you rapidly lose all sense of the whole. Take a plane and you will see, and you will understand, and you will decide.2 Despite or because of its revelatory encounter lineage, the Koolhaas essay suggested that there was an emerging “instant urbanism” in Lagos beyond
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the design and designation of postcolonial planning. Its significant limitations notwithstanding, this altogether rare encounter of global architecture with postcolonial urbanism shed light on a dysfunctional-productive space of infrastructure, where constantly moving networks bypassed states and the language of sovereignty.3 In fact, for some time now, the problematic of circulation has emerged as a new theoretical challenge for debates on infrastructure beyond appearing as a familiar adjunct to neoliberal commodity economies and space-time compression in global capitalism. But first, for a bit of context, let’s rewind to the 1950s and the early 1960s. Talk of Sovereignty The 1950s saw a tribe of modernist planners and architect-adventurers who ventured to the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa like modernized versions of nineteenth-century European colonial travellers. Le Corbusier in Chandigarh, Doxiadis in Islamabad, and Buckminster Fuller in Africa and India were all part of this traffic to the Third World. Pushed by local regimes to set up showcase cities, and even by US and Soviet foreign policy coffers, architecttravellers were in fact on the sidelines of a significant urban transformation initiated by lesser-known transnational urban planners and designers who worked to plan and develop actually existing cities with large populations, such as Delhi, Lagos, Beijing. In 1950s Delhi, for instance, the Ford Foundation sponsored a major exercise by US urbanists to design a city masterplan. Leading the team was Albert Mayer, regionalist architect from New York, who had collaborated closely with Lewis Mumford in the 1940s. Mayer had done the first masterplan for Chandigarh, which formed the basis of Corbusier’s larger, better-known interventions. The Delhi Masterplan designed by Mayer and his team incorporated a technocratic grid that would deflect migration flows to the periphery, and protect an urban core that assured sovereignty for postcolonial power. It was the model of the city as an urban machine, with neighborhoods as cellular units, linked by a technocratic hierarchy of functions and power. This was a model city with a centralized command regime, with designated legal subjects. The design was a dramatic performance of postcolonial sovereignty for the new regime. The nationalist city would oversee the proper circulation of people and things through careful zoning and state control of all land. This would purge the circulatory corruptions of the Moghul city, with its mixing of bazaar and residence, human and animal, all of which was seen by the US planners through the pathologies of 1950s modernization theory and Cold War liberalism. Infrastructure itself would designate the form of the city, and resolve what was seen as the ultimate postcolonial shame: poverty and the urban slum.
based information systems for routine policing as well as the management of migrants, epidemics, and cross-border movements. After independence, the postcolonial regime drew significantly from this system, by aligning it to republican democratic politics. As typical postcolonial technologies of visibility, paper-based information systems allowed the regime to manage urban residents through systems of inclusion and exclusion, while for political groups, entry into the database constituted an important vector of everyday life. Such political strategies could range from selective, strategic entry into some databases (electoral rolls, ration cards) with fuzzy land-ownership patterns and informal systems of electricity and water.16 In short, entry into one information system could coexist with tactical invisibility in another. Small traders and migrant residents of squatter settlements moved in this shifting information ecology. In the contemporary digital era, this is a neurophysiological zone amplified by the mix of mobile computing objects, moods, and sensations. Provisional networks form around these temporary connections: Bluetooth sharing of media by sailors, urban proletarians, and migrants; shadow libraries moving via USB drives; hawala transfers via text; neighborhood shops that refill phone memory cards with pirate media. Online shadows exist in WhatsApp sharing networks, dancing around regimes and mobile company filters. This is a remarkable infrastructure of agility and possibility.17 Will this become a logical object of a new post-Tardean political economy of propensity?18 This means not just emerging corporate-funded research on proprioception, facial recognition, and gesture, or all the contemporary Big Data rhetoric and the excitement about the algorithmic turn. Emerging players like Alibaba in China and Snapdeal in India dream of tapping the energies of the new urban information ecology, while regimes push for connecting cellular phones to identification. But perhaps not. The dream of stable designation was the ruination of postcolonial design in its powerful heyday, and the current dream of platform capitalism may be no different.19 An architecture of shadows anyone?
In a way, this model became a liberal design narcotic for the postcolony of the 1960s. The Ford Foundation sponsored the largest urban project in the world in Calcutta, funding international planners, architects, and sociologist 2
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The management of public affect through authorized circulation has broken down all over the postcolonial world, if not elsewhere, disrupting older transactions between sovereign power and a population seen as susceptible to sensorial powers. Media has become the infrastructural condition of living, rather than existing as distinct, regulated sites like the cinema theater, or as celluloid. The always emergent potential (or “becoming virtual”) of mediation is now a generalized condition of affect-driven postcolonial media modernity in India, if not most parts of the world today.15 The older police function of postcolonial governance was to privilege select circuits of media exhibition and consumption. Today, new forms of unauthorized publicity have actively destabilized this regime and fed into new loops of circulation. Blurring and confusing the distinctions between the legal-nonlegal, private-public, factartifact, and governmental-nongovernmental, the new interventions span homes, governmental offices, political parties, individuals, industrialists, and just about all walks of life. This has been accompanied by thousands of everyday acts from a mediaenabled population. A volatile, sensory infrastructure emerged, combining pirate tactics, media forms, and paralegal space. New, unregulated forms of media (audio, video, images) began to rapidly circulate from urban populations hitherto seen solely as social-political actors. These interventions operated alongside an expanded and often chaotic governmental surveillance regime, as well as a visceral media archive that emerged from the private collections of accident witnesses, estranged lovers, paramilitary torturers, and ordinary citizens with camera-equipped phones. From the initial affect-charged moment of publicity, this media archive joins the global traffic in poor images, moving away and attaching to new environments. This ever-expanding circulation engine has significantly challenged the premises of postcolonial urban design, which at its origin was indexed to stable arrangements of people and things. The category of the population, seen as solely an object of nurture and welfare, is now increasingly unsustainable. What do you do when social-political actors are also media proliferators? There is a conceptual (and productive) blur between affect-driven infrastructures and the movement of media. Ficto-graphic atrocity stories (images, sounds, videos) circulate and attach themselves to sites of violence; in India, for instance, “fake” videos have been held out as reasons for disturbances in various cities and for the intimidation and killing of minority populations. Crowds or Shadows? The circulation engine creates a surplus of shadow networks. In older modes of governance in India, paper-based databases (electoral rolls, ration cards) produced by state functionaries intersected with political mobilizations at local and city levels. Colonial power was based on a powerful deployment of paper6
consultants. Western design and engineering firms successfully pitched urban modernization projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The last few decades have seen the unraveling of this model of urban planning, a tiringly familiar story that played itself out in Asia, Africa, and partly in Latin America. In Delhi, for example, the very forms that the technocratic machine sought to control—economic proliferation, urban sprawl, pirate markets, and migration—all imploded and rendered the control model inoperable. The exact infrastructures that were the hallmark of a new modernity—electricity, roads, water pipes—became locations for new conflicts and claim-making by subaltern populations. The already tottering planning machine splintered, and the technocratic hierarchies of the plan became meaningless. As urban regimes lost the ability to sustain the definitional aspects of the city, infrastructures became the site of new experiments. Pirate cities saw populations poach existing sites: overpasses, unused urban land, abandoned spaces. Remarkably, almost to the letter the post-planning mise en scène resembled Deleuze’s fragmentary notes on “control society.” Deleuze had suggested that modulation, rather than old-style discipline, transforms the rhythm of movement, blurring entry and departure points. Control society was “like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point.”4 Remarkably, just a few years before this time, Jean Baudrillard’s 1977 text “The Beaubourg-Effect” had confidently announced the obituary of radical movements of urban circulation.5 Ostensibly a critique of the Renzo Piano/ Richard Rogers Pompidou Centre complex in the Beaubourg area of Paris, Baudrillard’s essay connected information, transparency, the circulation of people and fluids, and the death of the social project associated with 1968. For Baudrillard, the Beaubourg “thing” was a “carcass of flux and signs, or networks and circuits,” its “cool” exposed tubes on the building suggesting not transparency, but a strategy of anxious spatial “deterrence.” Along with its over-informationalized exterior, the building’s model of endless internal circular movement was an image of controlled socialization. At the heart of the rhetorical populist gesture incorporating the mass was a shift: Because this architecture, with its networks of tubes and the look it has of being an expo or world’s fair building, with its (calculated?) fragility deterring any traditional mentality or monumentality, overtly proclaims that our time will never again be that of duration, that our only temporality is that of the accelerated cycle and of recycling, that of the circuit and of the transit of fluids.6 What emerges in the tense encounter between the design and the flow is a critical mass “no longer tied to specific exchanges or to determinate needs but to a kind of total universe of signals; through this integrated circuit impulses travel everywhere in a ceaseless transit of selections, readings, references, 3
marks, decodings.”7 Notice how in Baudrillard’s post-Marxist moment, the signal has replaced abstract labor/money, dis-embedding the “mass” in the process of circulation. Frankly, Baudrillard’s prescient synthesis of McLuhan and Adorno did not do much for me when I first read it some years ago; but today we can better grasp his points about the disjunction between the different orders of circulation: the cool surface and the uncontrolled, unknowable “mass” it sought to incorporate. If the Beaubourg design proclaimed the end of the old social model of revolutionary politics, the only hope was a post-universal, “ungraspable” and “non-extendable” model of circulation.8 What if a different constellation emerged from this transaction of populations and information in “ceaseless transit,” one that forced us to ask questions about the political itself? This question has come to the fore in postcolonial cities, and I suspect in every other urban form across the globe. A Sensory Infrastructure? Postcolonial urban governance operated within a code that functionally separated the social and the medial. The domain of the social was demarcated by welfare and the governmental nurturing of a healthy population. The medial occupied the realm of leisure: to be serviced by infrastructural sites like newspapers, film studios, television networks, cinema theaters, radio stations. Welfare was the domain of the state and politics, and the institutions of the medial were managed by regulators and censors. Governmental power periodically filtered and differentiated two orders of circulation: of people and things, and of public affect—where populations were kept away from the dangers of “sensuous provocation.” Once the movement of people and things began overlapping with circulating media, this postcolonial design stood compromised, putting the “social” into question. Via a Kittlerian lens, we could say that if media “determines” our urban situation by becoming its infrastructural mesh, it simultaneously undermines and implodes the representational models of postcolonial power.9 By the late 1980s, infrastructures became the center of media circulation by way of entangling people, objects, knowledges, and technologies. Following the cassette boom in the 1980s, media infrastructures expanded rapidly in the postcolonial world, in the context of a large urban informal economy. Media formats and platforms have proliferated along with an endless profusion of personalized media gadgets that range from expensive smartphones to lowcost models used by the poor. The transformation of postcolonial life into a dynamic technological culture is wide ranging, affecting all sections of the population. The majority of India’s citizens now have cellular phones, through which they have access to audio, video, and still images. With the cellular phone, a growing section of the postcolonial population is now the source of new-media output—which in turn links to online social networks, mainstream television, and peer-to-peer exchanges of text, music, and video. 4
These expanding media infrastructures have formed a dynamic loop between fragile postcolonial sovereignties and informal economies of circulation.10 Indifferent to property regimes that come with upscale technological culture, subaltern populations mobilize low-cost and mobile technologies to create horizontal networks that bypass state and corporate power. Simultaneously, we witness the expansion of informal networks of commodification and spatial transformation. This loop shapes much of contemporary media circulation, where medial objects move in and out of infrastructures and attach themselves to new platforms of political-aesthetic action, while also being drawn to or departing from the spectacular time of media events.11 As state authority weakens either through economic crisis, neoliberal reforms, or war, infrastructures also perform a kind of “doubling” role. Two decades ago, an essay by Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman intimated this churning: Fraudulent identity cards; fake policemen dressed in official uniform; … forged enrollment for exams; illegal withdrawal of money orders; fake banknotes; the circulation and sale of falsified school reports, medical certificates and damaged commodities … It is also a manifestation of the fact that, here, things no longer exist without their parallel. Every law enacted is submerged by an ensemble of techniques of avoidance, circumvention and envelopment which in the end, neutralize and invert the legislation. There is hardly a reality here without its double.12 This doubling of infrastructures may also produce a poetics, with new aesthetic and political possibilities. This is powerfully expressed in the Bombay artist collective CAMP’s recent video project From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf.13 The project tracks the movements of commodities, local ships, and sailors across the contemporary turbulent geographies of the Indian Ocean: Somalia, Aden, Sharjah, Iran, Pakistan, and Western India. In Gulf to Gulf to Gulf, sailors’ cell phone videos generate connections between sailing routes, the death and life of ships, and work time and dream time. The film portrays the edge zones of the sea, moving beyond the familiar tropes of maritime piracy, terrorism, and war. By using the infrastructural turn for a conversation on space, aesthetics, and politics, Gulf to Gulf to Gulf moves easily between the circulations of people, media, and commodities. Circulation Takes Command William Mazzarella suggests that postcolonial censorship’s “performative dispensation” was to play both police and patron, in a chronic state of cultural emergency that is the condition of mass publicity. This was a foundational transaction between the unstable “open edge” of mass publicity, and the assertion of sovereign power, whose authority was periodically evoked to filter authorized and unauthorized sensuous transgressions.14 5
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
24 For a Project Methodology ANTONI MUNTADAS MOnos#4
Project What do we mean when we talk about projects? Etymologically, “project” derives from the Latin projèc- tus, where the root pro, forward, and the suffix jacère, to throw, indicate “what one intends to create in the future”. It is a set of phases and moments, of sketches and plans, stemming from the core of the work. The project articu- lates a path that is yet to be covered; the experience of its covering will, in the final step, reveal what method has been used, or rather, the properties of each project within its modi operandi. The concept of “project” as a form appeared in contem- porary artistic language when the development of an artwork was first perceived as closely connected to a con- text. This shift occurred at the end of the Sixties and through the Seventies, after which certain elements emerged: the specificity of place as material (context as material), the importance of the temporality and duration of a thought process, and the refusal of the object as the final artistic product. WHO? Method Method as a temporal structure of development of the project The project methodology proposes itself as a form that can vary in relation to the individual, to his or her practice and to the context; it is not absolute, singular or rigid. 1
It is a structure that makes the very development of the project possible. One important aspect is its appropriable nature, of which anyone can make use, adapting it to his or her own needs and shaping a procedural form of work where time turns out to be the decisive feature. Working through a planning structure allows for reflection over time and also the questioning, at any moment of the pro- cess, of both the completed work and that which remains to be completed. The process originates from an intuition related to curiosity, to an idea, and to the interests emerg- ing from a previous work (one piece leads to another) or from the collection of facts and knowledge concerning a territory or a certain situation. A lengthy exploration allows for the elaboration of a project that can be considered both finite and a path leading to instigate the same process, thus producing a work that evolves over time. This procedural development passes through phases that are not necessarily mechanical. They are moments when the project grows and delineates dynamics and relation- ships that, in their own way, stimulate their own needs to be satisfied. The time requirements of the planning of a work, wheth- er it is of an individual, a collective, a community or a group varies depending on the case in question. Likewise, the phases of development change according to their intensity. Questions The method answers to the questions: “Who?” “What?” “Why?” “How?” “Where?” “When?” “For who?” and “How much?” The method is a process open to the questions that must be answered and against which it must measure itself. The questions “Who?”, “What?” and “Why?” relate to desire, interest, need and one’s own responsibility in the procedure; moreover “Why?” defines a crucial phase of the process. “How?” is the medium with which the work will be realized. The identification of this comes about in an organic and nonmechanical manner. The project itself will seek out the form. “Where?” and “When?” are linked to space and time, and it is in these questions that we find the notion of site-specific: a notion that has been funda- mental to the history of art since the end of the Sixties, requiring that the artwork is necessarily considered in relation to the space where it is produced. In order to understand this pivotal concept, we can look to the work of artists such as Michael Asher insofar as his practice is focused on the specificity of the setting and its “institutional” role, destroying the idea of a universal art object independent from its context. Two seminal works, dating 1969, show Asher’s redefinition of the relationships established between art and the surrounding space. Created for Anti-illusion: Procedures/Materials at the Whitney Museum of American Art and for Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, both works take on the form of environmental installations that rely on the conditions of perception controlled by the artist himself. The Whitney piece consisted in a very subtle crack of air, perceptible only to touch, on the threshold between two halls of the museum. In Spaces, a room was presented in which light and sounds coming from the outside constitut- ed the elements of the work. 2
entails revision. This selecting of what is left out and what remains also applies to work that is not videographic. The production phase is followed by a distribution phase. In the case of a publication, it is impor- tant that it does not lie dormant and therefore it is best to dedicate oneself immediately to the identification of suit- able channels of distribution. Once the work has been finished, displayed and distrib- uted, one must consider the form in which it will be documented. Whether it is produced in a protected space or in public, the work must be seen and shared through documentation that will attest to the original. For this pur- pose, different media function as tools; care must be taken to use these and not to be used by these. In many cases, the production of the project and its print publication are, if not parallel, complementary. The latter provide additional information concerning the work. The graphic design and layout prototype enrich the mate- rials and can cause decisions on the work’s presentation to vary. Dialogue is indispensable in this process as it accom- panies a work from the beginning to the phase of discussion with colleagues and critics as well as with the press, the media and the specialized public.
Space is connected to territory, to the history of a place, to its geographic features and to their hic et nunc. So what is the specificity of the time in which a work is realized? The “When?” concerns history and is the factor determin- ing the urgency of a work. We can consider Guernica time-specific. This is not to deny the artistic value, but rather to highlight the historic value, placing emphasis on the problems that were responsible for the events and on the specificity of the time in which the work was created and intended to be read. The “For who?” does not univocally define the recipient of a work (whether it be a single person or a specified pub- lic). Even when a work is directed at oneself, it is always subject to a space of communication and sharing. Certainly, it will not be received in the same manner with- in an institutional space, that is, in a protected location with a specific public (intentional participants), as it would in a public space, where contact with a spectator comes about in a more random manner. The “How much?” is a decisive element and is not to be underestimated in our times. It is important to learn how to do much with little and not to necessarily seek out con- spicuous funds. Rather, one must move with great skill and creativity in order to obtain maximum profit at a con- tained price.
FOR WHO? Feedback Critique, self-critique The methodology must be neither understood dogmati- cally nor as a closed formula to follow. It is through its very structure that the quality with which we must evalu- ate ourselves in relation to the project methodology will surface. Self-critique means being aware of how one oper- ated. It also always implies an effort of active comprehension of the results in relation to the aims estab- lished by the methodological structure itself. Not in the “demographic” sense of how the public received the work, but in the personal sense of how the project’s aim was achieved. This constitutes an important moment of self- reflection concerning the experience of communication and the process of working with others in order to decide whether future projects will be faced in a more or less sim- ilar manner.
WHAT? Typology The initial phase of the project methodology must con- sider the typology of work the individual wishes to carry out. One must keep in mind that each person works at his or her own pace over the course of a project. This has a bearing on the way objectives will be reached in a set peri- od of time. It is crucial to distinguish the peculiar characteristic of the project in a way that allows for the emergence of a solid structure corresponding to one’s own interests. Whether the work is determined by a personal and intro- spective interest, requested by the individual of him or herself, or whether it is determined by an external request –on the part of an institution or a city commissioning a piece for a public space– it requires an understanding of the historical and geographic context on which one will work. The resulting connections will enrich the very struc- ture of the methodology.
HOW MUCH? Research What is meant by research and consultation of materials for an artistic project? Once a field of research has been chosen, it is essential to begin a long period of dictionary and encyclopaedia- based research in order to question one’s own way of understanding the concerns, as well as the public and col- lective form that the analyzed terms can take on. Personal and absolute values sometimes must find broader meaning and sense pertaining to the collectivity. The research period consists in the consultation of traditional sites and material such as libraries and books, which may be subse- quently supplemented with other sources including virtual libraries. I feel it is important to go to the library before going online, insofar as the two cases dictate different reading speeds. One can start 6
3
with the library one is best acquainted with, offering free access to books and a help- ful staff (they are our accomplices in locating information). Personally, at the beginning of every project, and still today, I have always visited the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library and the Rotch and Hayden Library at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The skills each person develops in this form of investiga- tion condition the course of a process that can vary in speed. Along with systematic research in libraries and on the Internet, it is crucial to have someone with whom to main- tain a constant dialogue and engage in brainstorming sessions in order to enhance the quality of information and sound out the project. This is how the initial intuition and curiosity develop and overcome personal and absolute values (those values that, as previously mentioned, define the ambition of the project). Even if a project only reaches the prototype phase, this does not mean it is not authen- tic, potential and significant. Each project assumes the risk of breaking new ground and dealing with a uniqueness of the different. The bibliography serves to delineate new ideas and is also an example of how certain sources have influence on the planning nature of the method in question. Each per- son can build his or her own systematic and variously arranged repertoire in relation to the concepts elaborated in the project, whether it concerns discursive and critical references or references to other works of art. WHY? Form Individual, group, collaborative, contribution and community-based work Understanding art as an inclusive and not exclusive sys- tem requires an openness to other disciplines. Many cases present the possibility of working in a group where people of different interests contribute to the methodology. Aware of the social sciences –such as sociology and anthropology– and fieldwork –such as interviews and the study of data– as tools, the artist does not become an anthropologist or a sociologist, but observes how these dis- ciplines operate on a territory. Data, information and statistics are complementary to other visual practices. The creation of a team entails searching to bring specific elements to a project through competent people who are directly interested in the work and whose tasks are essen- tial within the methodological structure. The group must be organic and willing to collaborate as accomplices on a shared concern (otherwise it simply becomes a mechani- cal tool). Collaboration is very different from contribution. The former constitutes a relationship in which dialogue attempts to instigate a hybridization among the participat- ing subjects for the attainment of a shared objective, while the latter implicates one person sharing his or her knowl- edge under the form of a service in order to facilitate the attainment of another person’s goal. The community is decisive within the context it operates and creates complex relationships concerning time and place. 4
Those projects that take a community and the interac- tion with its needs into consideration are particularly important, as they do not solely depend on themselves, but rather on all those involved in the work. In other words, it is fundamental to give importance to the “with” rather than the “for”. It would be totally populist to work for the community without considering one’s own desires. HOW? Budget The collection of funds and administration of a budget is an inescapable phase in the development of a project. It is necessary to know how much money is available for the production of a work. In this sense, negotiating plays a fundamental role, not only in the managing of the funds with which a project is produced, but also in ensuring total freedom of action, especially in cases involving commis- sioners or third parties with whom agreements have been stipulated and who subsequently will evaluate the complet- ed work. The different situations we construct around each pro- ject may subsequently determine specific interests on the part of whoever has the will to contribute through spon- sorship, either under the form of a commission or a collaboration with shared and concrete aims. For example, in the case of The File Room (1994), moving from the need to display more than four hundred filing cabinet drawers, it was necessary to find different solutions to make the project feasible. This occurred through dona- tions, sponsorships and leasing, just as with the sale of the elements at the end of the project. Today the drawers are distributed throughout various studios of artists, designers and architects of Chicago. WHERE? Calendar For a good result, each phase must take its required time. Deadlines set at the beginning become more flexible depending on the duration of every single step and the changes occurring during their realization. Sometimes the commissioners will dictate changes and redefinitions according to their evaluations. One assumes that the choice of a medium –whether it is an installation, a publi- cation, a series of photographs or an intervention in a public space– is calculated in the preliminary phase in order to design a structure to be followed. The production time involves the management of the location (object of study) and its specificity insofar as context and space (site-specificity). The use of space, not only for presenta- tion, exhibition and installation of the work, determines those aspects of “How is it done?” and “Why is it done?” in one form or another. WHEN? Development Postproduction, exhibition, distribution, documentation In the post-production phase, if one is working on mov- ing images, editing 5
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
udd
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
25 Arte, muerte y posmodernidad ZYGMUNT BAUMAN en Arte, ¿líquido? Madrid: Sequitur, 2007.
En el otoño del año 1930, un ingeniero mecánico de treinta años llamado Alexander Calder visitó el taller de Piet Mondrian. Como recordaría más tarde en una carta dirigida al coleccionista de arte A.E. Gallatin, Calder se quedó maravillado y asombrado ante lo que vio ahí: lo que vio fue una enorme pared blanca de la que colgaban unos tableros rectangulares pintados de amarillo, rojo, azul y varios grises que formaban una composición. Sintió, sin embargo, que algo faltaba en esa perfección compositiva: una perfección muerta porque completa y para siempre inmovilizada. Una desazón que su anfitrión también compartía. Calder le preguntó a Mondrian si no sería mejor si esos elementos de color pegados y fijados a la pared pudieran moverse; moverse cada uno con un ritmo distinto, con su propia velocidad. A Mondrian no pareció gustarle la idea, pero poco le importó a Calder, que acabaría inventando él solo lo que vendría en llamarse ‘arte cinético’. “Los movimientos se pueden componer del mismo modo que se componen colores y formas”, así definió Calder su proyecto artístico. “En este caso, la composición nace de la interrupción, provocada por el artista, de la regularidad: la ruptura de la regularidad crea y destruye la obra de arte”. Calder reconocía en Mondrian un alma afín: ambos estaban fascinados y hechizados por el juego de lo pasajero/duradero, pero una misma fascinación suscitó dos proyectos artísticos claramente distintos. Si Mondrian buscó la excelencia absoluta de la composición perfecta en la que las cosas quedan para siempre fijas, Calder rechazó esta finitud e hizo que, con el movimiento, las cosas exploran siempre nuevas posibilidades. 1
Marcel Duchamp llamaba a Calder el “Maestro de la gravedad”, aunque más correcto sería calificarlo como “poeta del movimiento” y, ¡cuidado!, no de cualquier movimiento. Hacer que se muevan objetos inanimados, inmóviles, no tiene en definitiva nada de especial: lo hacemos a diario con esos ensamblajes de hierro y plástico que llamamos coches y trenes. En estos casos, queremos que los artilugios se muevan en la dirección y los tiempos que hemos marcado: queremos que sus movimientos sean normales y predecibles. Pero esta monotonía predecible no da vida a esos objetos, simplemente se les obliga a moverse, de modo parecido a como condenamos otros objetos a permanecer inmóviles, clavándolos en la pared o encerrán- dolos en un cajón o en un marco. Calder buscaba un movimiento completamente distinto, un movimiento espontáneo y elemental, sin ninguna rutina ni regularidad, cambiante de un momento a otro y sin secuencia previsible, que sorprendiera incesantemente al observador, que no tuviera pauta. Un movimiento que significa algo más que movilidad en el espacio: es un símbolo, o quizá la esencia misma, de la vida. Alexander Calder quería, nada menos, que dar vida a la mate- ria muerta. Damien Hirst, que en estos últimos años de “joven promesa” ha pasado a ser figura destacada del mundo del arte, está −como Calder− fascinado por el misterio de la vida, pero si Calder quería dominar las leyes de la gravedad, Hirst desearía controlar la inevitabilidad de la muerte; y lo hace, ciertamente, no animando la materia muerta sino paralizando la decadencia de la materia viva. Hirst se hizo famoso con su instalación “La imposibilidad física de la muer te en la mente de alguien vivo”: un tiburón traído de los mares de Australia metido en una inmensa urna llena de formol. Con su mandíbula abierta y esos dientes-puñales que muestran una cavidad oscura que espera de ser llenada, el tiburón parecía estar vivo: parecía estar vivo en una urna llena de formol. “Espero que en la primera impresión parezca vivo... Se trata de la obsesión de conseguir revivir lo muerto o de que lo vivo no muera nunca”, en palabras de Hirst. Para comprender el mundo, “hay que sacar las cosas fuera del mundo... se matan las cosas para observarlas...”. [Esta obra] “también tiene que ver con el miedo ante la fragilidad de lo vivo, y quería hacer una escultura donde lo frágil quedara encajonado... Me gusta la idea de lo sólido, pero para encontrar algo sólido en mi cuerpo antes tendré que convertirme en esqueleto”. En la exposición Kunst und Natur (Arte y naturaleza) celebrada en la galería Zacheta de Varsovia, la polaca Jonna Przybyla también se acerca a este misterioso dilema. Del techo de la sala cuelgan un montón de ramas rotas, en putrefacción, desordenadas, pero que aún se mueven, se balancean huyendo de la muerte, como volando en un sueño de vida. Las paredes de la sala, por el contrario, están cubiertas de otro tipo de madera: tableros cuidadosamente cortados, acuchillados y barnizados, barnizados con productos químicos para que no se desintegren nunca, para que duren para siempre. El precio de esta eternidad es la muerte irrevocable. Los objetos muertos son reacios a vivir. Calder quiso impregnarlos con la esencia de la vida: que pudieran resistirse a los deseos de su creador. Les dio esa rebeldía y esa irreverencia que son la esencia de la vida. Damien Hirst 2
¿Qué se sigue de todo esto? Sin duda algo, aunque no sabría decir exactamente el qué. ¿Conseguirá el arte ser la última muralla defensiva de la inmortalidad, de una inmortalidad deconstruida con ahínco y gozo por las fuerzas conjuntas del consumo y los postmodernos buscadores de sensaciones? Y si no logra cumplir esa función, ¿habrá llegado entonces a su fin el largo romance de la humanidad con lo supra-humano, con lo extra-temporal, con lo inmortal? Y si esto ocurre, ¿cuál será entonces la suerte de la cultura, que nació de ese romance y creció bajo su sombra y cobijo? No sabría dar ninguna repuesta concluyente a estas preguntas. Pero estoy seguro que el planteárselas tiene para el arte, y no sólo para el arte, la misma relevancia que la cuestión a la que estas preguntas se refieren: es, en efecto, una cuestión de vida o muerte.
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quiere parar la muerte justo un instante antes de que se produzca, como una especie de “mortalidad suspendida”. Aunque muertos, los tiburones, vacas o moscas de Hirst se muestran alertas y tensos ante su evidente decadencia, fragilidad, desintegra- ción. Pero el formol se hace turbio y nubla la visión: la deseada soli- dez no desvela su misterio. Hirst quiere que los seres que vivieron perduren en sus gestos, se perpetúen inmóviles sin dejar de ser lo que el destino les impone: un ser marcado por el recuerdo de la vida, que muestra sus movimientos y sus cambios. El comentario de Przybyla es triste y escueto: estarás vivo siempre que estés degradándote; si has de durar en la eternidad, es que ya estás muerto... Como dijo el poeta alemán Lessing, la Ilustración, de la que nació nuestra mentalidad moderna, se afirmó sobre el rechazo a tres creen- cias: en la Revelación, en la Providencia y en la Condena Eterna. Tres creencias, una triple trinchera tras la que se escondía la aterradora naturaleza de la mortalidad humana, es decir, toda la fragilidad y contingencia de lo humano. La religión que regía las mentes pre- modernas era, como dijo el filósofo francés Cornelius Castoriadis una máscara: una máscara que escondía el caos constitutivo del ser. Ahora el caos ya no está tapado. Y el arte lo mantiene visible. El arte es como una ventana sobre el caos : lo muestra al mismo tiempo que trata de enmarcar su deforme fluir. El arte se diferencia de la religión en que no niega la realidad del caos ni pretende enmascarar su pre- sencia. El gran arte logra que, tras cada una de las formas que hace aparecer, veamos el ilimitado caos del ser. Cada forma informa que es solo eso: una forma, una construcción, un artificio. Es en este des- velar el caos cuando el arte “cuestiona todos los significados establecidos, también el sentido de la vida humana y todas las verdades tenidas por irrebatibles”. La razón instrumental, la mayor de las invenciones de la modernidad y la más determinante de las herencias de la Ilustración, se concibió para servir a la libertad y a la auto-realización del hombre. Pero desde sus mismos orígenes quedó, como señala Castoriadis, cercenada por la propensión a usar la libertad de elección para cerrar las opciones que la libertad debía mantener abiertas. Surgió “una fatal y quizá inevitable tendencia a buscar fundamentos absolutos, certezas definitivas, catalogaciones exhaustivas”. Una tendencia, en definiti- va, a enmascarar una vez más la contingencia y fluidez del ser, precisamente en el momento en que se abrían de par en par las puertas para la experimentación y la libertad creativa. Esta vez, el cierre o enmascaramiento se hizo desde posiciones seculares, y de manera oblicua: mediante prácticas y usos antes que con enseñanzas, admoniciones y doctrinas. Estas prácticas modernas no niegan la inherente e irremediable mortalidad de todo lo humano, pero como todo lo que se escapa al control de la razón, esta cuestión ha sido “desencantada”, relegada, diseccionada y disuelta en un mar de minucias cotidianas que absorben nuestra atención y nuestras energías. Ocupados en lidiar con las innumerables pequeñas amenazas que acechan nuestra salud y nuestro bienestar, ¿nos sobra tiempo para meditar sobre la vanidad de nuestras tribulaciones? Si la endé- mica vulnerabilidad de la existencia humana fue en el 3
pasado una cuestión metafísica que imperaba sobre todo lo humano, ahora se ha convertido en un problema técnico: un problema de tantos. Evitar que la humanidad olvide su propia mortalidad, es decir, su propia naturaleza −evitar que se olvide a sí misma− es tarea que compete hoy en día, justa y abiertamente, al arte. Para el arte la muerte no es ni un problema técnico ni un problema cualquiera. La mortalidad humana es la raison d’être del arte, su causa y su objeto. El arte nació y perdura desde la conciencia, una conciencia que sólo los seres humanos tenemos: que la muerte es un hecho que viene dado y que la inmortalidad ha de fabricarse, y una vez fabricada debe ser preservada día tras día. La historia del arte nos indica que arte y conciencia de la mortalidad vinieron al mundo de la mano y que, quizá, el arte morirá cuando la muerte pase al olvido o deje de interesar. La íntima relación entre el arte y la cuestión de la muerte/inmortalidad se ha explicado de dos maneras en la teoría del arte. El psicólogo Otto Rank atribuía el origen y persistencia del arte al deseo individual de inmortalidad del artista. “El impulso creativo del artista nace de su afán por inmortalizarse a sí mismo [...] es una apuesta por convertir lo efímero de la vida en una inmortalidad per- sonal”. “En todos los individuos creativos se da ese deseo de sustituir la inmortalidad colectiva −tal y como se manifiesta en la reproducción sexual de la especie− por la inmortalidad individual de la intencionada auto-perpetuación”. Para Rank, la creación artística nace, en definitiva, del afán, consciente o no, del artista por superar la transitoriedad de su vida y perpetuarse. El artista crea porque desea ele- varse por encima de la impersonal inmortalidad del género humano (una vulgar y ordinaria perpetuación colectiva, según él) y lograr acceder individualmente a la existencia eterna: dejando huella indeleble de su paso por la tierra, ganándose un lugar duradero en la memoria de la especie. Sin embargo, ¿explica esta obcecación del artista la presencia del arte incluso milenios antes de que el primer pintor firmara su cuadro? Este tipo de explicación, ¿no atribuye los rasgos propios del artista moderno a un fenómeno presente en todas las épocas históricas? La concepción del arte de Hannah Arendt no da, por el contrario, ninguna cabida a la ambición del artista. Arendt no entiende el misterio del arte como una apuesta por la inmortalidad individual. La inmortalidad de la obra de arte se revela sólo retrospectivamente, y confirma no las intenciones del artista sino la calidad de la obra: su capacidad para seguir suscitando en el espectador emociones estéticas y disfrute intelectual, un espectador muy distinto al que podía estar dirigiéndose (si lo hacía) el artista que, en su época, pudiera andar buscando reconocimiento y aplauso. Inmortal es la obra que perdura, pero, y Arendt insiste en esto, una obra durará sólo si no está al servicio de alguna función práctica y mundana, si no se convierte en una herramienta o en un recurso para la supervivencia individual hasta consumirse cumpliendo esa función. La inmortalidad de la obra de arte nada puede ofrecer a quien busca la supervivencia. Una obra de arte es algo radicalmente distinto a algo útil, 4
talidad que fenece, una inmortalidad temporal y mortal como todo lo demás en la vida, ¿anuncia la decadencia e incluso la muerte de la función tradicional del arte? Instalaciones montadas mientras dure la exposición y desmontadas el día que acaban, happenings que duran lo que dure la atención de los viandantes, envolver con plásticos el puente de Brooklyn sólo por unas horas... este tipo de obra de arte nace, como todo en el mundo postmoderno, para morir inmediatamente. Y los buscadores de sensaciones las aprecian por lo familiar y reconfortante que les resulta el carácter pasajero e inconsecuente de estas obras y ciertamente no porque les inciten a pensar en cosas más elevadas y duraderas que sus tribulaciones cotidianas. Con el barro de las emociones pasajeras, ¿se pueden esculpir valores eternos? ¿Puede el arte convertir lo efímero en un tema eterno? A mi entender, la obra de Damien Hirst va por ahí: cómo hacer que la carne −la encarnación misma de lo mortal-, escape a la cruel secuencia de la senilidad, la desintegración y la desaparición. Malcolm Morley, por ejemplo, pretende transformar la destrucción en un acto creativo y arrebatarle así a la destrucción su siniestro aguijón, su monopolio de lo irrevocable. Su cuadro “Desastre” representa una destrucción íntimamente ligada a una creación: la visión de una obra de arte parcialmente destruida pero en parte reconstruida después de su destrucción, todo de una forma que no se distinguen la obra original, los desechos, lo reconstruido y el olvido de lo recons- truido. La obra de Braco Dimitrijevic “Passant que j’ai rencontré à 11h09, Paris 1971” es una instalación de enormes paneles que reproducen el retrato de un peatón que el autor encontró casualmente en las calles de París: el accidente de colgar los retratos saca al accidental viandante y al accidental encuentro del mar de los anónimos peatones sin cara y de los acontecimientos desapercibidos, olvidos, intrascendentes. Pero esos retratos quedan colgados solo un momento antes de regresar al abismo de lo inexistente. A finales de los años 1960, Sol Lewitt introdujo en el lenguaje común la expresión “arte conceptual” para referirse al esfuerzo de preservar la extra-temporalidad del arte del torbellino de lo breve y efímero. Para Lewitt, “arte conceptual” significaba lograr ese milagro separando y aislando completamente lo que el arte tiene de potencialmente eterno −por cuanto inmune al paso del tiempo y a las leyes de la física o la biología-, de la forma material −y por ello perecedera-, de expresión, de todo aquello que perciben los sentidos y que, por ello, queda contaminado por lo contingente, frágil y pasajero. La esencia del arte estaría en la idea no en su realización, una realización que podrá ser plural y variada pero siempre inconcluyente y mortal. La inevitabilidad de la muerte queda asociada con la realización material, tangible, sensual de la idea, pero no con la idea misma. Lawrence Wiener sacó la conclusión lógica de las reflexiones de Lewitt: el arte pertenece al proceso verbal del pensamiento, mientras que sus manifestaciones o representaciones materiales pertenecen que quienes las miren, para los que el contenido eterno del arte vendrá a ser como una guía o estímulo para muchas, pero siempre momentáneas, experiencias. 9
de divertir” con esas magnas y únicas retrospectivas: acontecimientos muy anunciados, festivos, casi car- navalescos, de los que todos hablan y hacia los que peregrinan masas de personas. Y compárese el entusiasmo suscitado por esas exposiciones excepcionales con el discreto interés que muestran los visitantes “normales” de esos museos en los que, todos los días, pueden contemplarse obras maestras. Para llegar a ser un objeto de deseo, convertirse en una fuente de sensaciones, poder tener, en otras palabras, relevancia para los que viven en la postmoderna sociedad de consumidores, el fenómeno del arte debe manifestarse ahora como acontecimiento. La “experiencia artística” nace, ante todo, de la temporalidad del acontecimiento y, sólo en un segundo momento (en el supuesto de haya segundo momento) del valor extra-temporal de la obra de arte. En estos acontecimientos únicos y muy cacareados, la obra de arte se acerca a los requerimientos propios del objeto de consumo: puede maximizar el choque y evitar el aburrimiento, el ennui, que le arrebataría toda capacidad de despertar deseos, de divertir. Es en esta modalidad del acontecimiento excepcional, en la sensación única y perecedera, donde los coleccionistas de sensaciones postmodernos sitúan los objetos a los que prestan atención. Todo en el mundo de la experiencia puede ser una fuente potencial de emoción, y todo se sopesa y considera según la importancia de ese potencial. La postmodernidad es una época de deconstrucción de la inmortalidad: el tiempo eterno decompuesto en un sucederse de episodios que se valoran y justifican en función de su capacidad para proporcionar una satisfacción momentánea. Una época que sustituye el patrón oro de la fama por la circulación fiduciaria de la notoriedad. Nada distingue el trato que reciben los objetos de arte: comparten la misma suerte que todas las otras cosas que mueblan nuestro mundo vital, nuestro Lebenswelt. No obstante, esta actitud postmoderna incide sobre las condiciones del arte de manera más decisiva, profunda y extensa que sobre cualquier otro objeto de la experiencia. La endémica propensión del coleccionista de sensaciones a consumir (gastar, agotar) con avidez las cualidades excitantes de los objetos y de los acontecimientos acelera la devaluación y envejecimiento esos objetos. Esta propensión difícilmente puede logra satisfacción en el ámbito de los objetos extra-temporales, de los objetos inmutables como la eternidad que evocan. Atraída por el cambio y el movimiento, busca objetos que se ajusten a sí misma, que sean como ella: impacientes, siempre cambiantes, camaleónicos. La cuestión es dilucidar si el arte que se acomoda a esta exigencia, que satisface la necesidad de acumular sensaciones sigue siendo fiel a su función, a la función que tuvo en tiempos pre-modernos y modernos: revelar la dimensión trascendental del estar-en-el-mundo, traer al mundo de lo pasajero y lo temporal elementos que resisten al paso del tiempo y desafían la norma universal del envejecimiento, el olvido y la desaparición. O quizá se trate de lo contrario: quizá la versión postmoderna de la “inmortalidad momentánea”, una inmor- talidad experimentada como un instante de sensaciones, una inmor8
funcional. La funcionalidad, por así decir, disuelve los objetos y los hace desvanecerse del mundo fenoménico en virtud del propio uso y consumo. Las obras de arte “existen, no para la gente sino para el mundo”, dice Arendt. Y no es la única. Hans-Georg Gadamer en “Die Aktualität des Schönen” sostiene que “la obra de arte aumenta el ser”. Ortega y Gasset en La deshumanización del arte señala que el poeta agranda el mundo al añadir a la realidad nuevos continentes de imaginación (la palabra “autor”, viene de auctor −el que aumenta. Los antiguos romanos daban este título a los generales que conquistaban nuevos territorios para el imperio). Las obras de arte no son ‘útiles’, ‘funcionales’; no sirven para asegurar la supervivencia del individuo. Antes al contrario, su inmortalidad radica en que se alejan del metabolismo de la vida. El arte trasciende la mortalidad humana sólo en la medida en que logra escapar del celo acaparador de los mortales. La obra de arte, dice Arendt, es una aparición, “pura apariencia”, y la apariencia se juzga no por su utilidad sino por su belleza. Cuanta más importancia se de a este criterio mayor será su superioridad sobre todos los demás: cuanto más dependa de su apariencia la esencia de un objeto, “mayor será la dis- tancia necesaria para poder apreciarlo”. La distancia se logra “mediante el olvido de uno mismo, el olvido de las propias tribulaciones, intereses y exigencias”. Renunciando al deseo de atrapar, apropiarse, asimilar, imbuirse del objeto admirado, podremos querer que siga siendo sí-mismo, lo que es, “pura apariencia”. Precisamente por estar por encima y alejado del ajetreo de la lucha diaria por la supervivencia, el arte porta el mensaje de aquello que puede durar e ir más allá de la vida de cualquier individuo, por pode- roso y brillante que sea. Y por esta razón el arte anima a hacer visi- ble lo que de duradero pueda tener lo pasajero: recuerda con insis- tencia que el milagro alquímico (o ¿un simple truco de magia?) es posible. El arte respira eternidad. Gracias al arte, una y otra vez la muerte queda reducida a su verdadera dimensión: es el fin de la vida, pero no el límite de lo humano. Sin duda, el artista moderno (especialmente el modernista) pretendía una asociación con lo extra-temporal, con la inmortalidad. Pero, en esto, el arte moderno no era revolucionario sino que hacía lo mismo que habían hecho las artes en tiempos pre-modernos: cuando los artistas contaban una y otra vez las mismas y universales his- torias sacadas de las mitologías cristiana y griega, historias de acontecimientos que ocurrían siempre y nunca, de unos acontecimientos que se repetían inmunes, como la eternidad, al paso del tiempo. El mensaje de la eternidad era fácilmente legible en esos relatos. Pero a medida que las tradiciones compartidas fueron perdiendo vigor, los relatos fueron perdiendo legibilidad. Es más, cuando el tiempo histórico acabó sustituyendo a la intemporal eternidad, los personajes míticos empezaron a contar relatos de finitud antes que de eternidad. Recordaban acontecimientos antiguos, situados en el tiempo, en el pasado −algo parecido a las experiencias únicas e irrepetibles de nuestro pasado individual. Historias que ocurrían “érase una vez”, pero sólo una vez. La tarea de volver a unir el pasado, el presente y 5
el futuro con lo intemporal, es decir, con lo eterno, recayó entonces sobre los artistas, que tuvieron que hacerlo sin poder contar ya con los ingredientes que habían garantizado hasta entonces la unión entre arte e inmortalidad. Ya no se trataba de representar bellamente temas inmortales, sino de conseguir que la belleza misma fuera inmortal: elevar la forma artística a la categoría de lo inmortal. Hasta entonces, la inmortalidad había sido el material bruto en el que el artista esculpía sus obras, ahora le tocaba al artista esculpir una forma inmortal con un material tan frágil, efímero y perecedero como cualquier otra cosa del mundo de lo humano. La inmortalidad dependía ahora de la obra no de su tema. Fenecida la tradición de lo sagrado, cualquier objeto que se repre- sentara era mortal y representarlo significaba reflejar su carácter efí- mero. Las obras de los antiguos maestros expresaban la inmortalidad pero no porque representaran objetos supra-temporales sino gracias al hecho contingente de que, permaneciendo ahí durante mucho tiempo, acababan emergiendo victoriosas ante el poder destructivo de la historia. Era fácil suponer que estas obras maestras poseían cualidades que les permitían resistir el paso del tiempo: la capacidad de seguir suscitando emociones, no obstante el voraz apetito de la historia. El arte modernista, en definitiva, cambió el enfoque de la eternidad, pero, al igual que sus antepasados −el arte medieval o el renacentista-, siguió ocupándose de la inmortalidad. Tenga razón Otto Rank o Hannah Arendt a la hora de explicar el origen de este cambio, lo cierto es que la historia del arte es un esfuerzo continuado por ir más allá del breve tiempo que concede la vida biológica. Un esfuerzo por añadir al universo frágil y efímero de lo humano otras entidades, inmunes a la erosión del tiempo, entidades que puedan seguir estando en el mundo cuando nada más quede en él. Un esfuerzo desesperado por eliminar las consecuencias más inhumanas de la mortalidad del hombre. Pero si el arte ha venido siendo así, lo cierto es que el modo en que nuestra cultura aborda ahora la cuestión de la muerte y de lo inmortal le plantea al arte un desafío totalmente nuevo. La idea de la muerte no suele ser agradable, no lo es hoy ni lo fue hace cien años, pero a nosotros, los hombres y mujeres que vivimos en un mundo tardomoderno o postmoderno, nos agrada lo duradero y lo repetitivo tan poco, o quizá menos aún, que lo perecedero y el cambio. Tenemos la intuición de que, en la carrera hacia la realización personal, “viajar esperanzado es mejor que llegar”. Deseamos y buscamos una realización que suele consistir en un perpetuo devenir, en una disposición permanente a cambiar. No somos constructores- de-identidades sino −aunque no siempre totalmente libres− electores-de-identidades: de muchas y variadas identidades, identidades cada vez más agradables y flexibles. Dicho de otro modo, nuestras vidas, la de los hombres y mujeres postmodernos, giran no tanto en torno al hacer cosas como al buscar y experimentar sensaciones. Nuestro deseo no desea satisfacción, desea seguir deseando. La mayor amenaza contra el deseo es una satisfacción completa, fija, estable: como si el anhelo de Fausto de congelar el tiempo se realizara, como en un 6
cuadro de Mondrian en el que nada puede cambiarse porque todo cambio sería a peor. La idea de un estado fijo, inmóvil, final, permanente nos parece tan extraña y absurda como la imagen de un viento que no sopla, un río que no fluye, una lluvia que no cae... En la vida feliz en la postmodernidad, cada uno de sus momentos dura sólo un rato hasta que llegue el pró- ximo; y ningún umbral debería quedar cerrado una vez cruzado. Para los que buscan experiencias y coleccionan sensaciones, inmersos como están en un mundo de tentaciones y seducciones, la conciencia de la mortalidad universal entristece, sí, pero también da esperanza. Sin duda, la idea de congelar el tiempo sigue atrayendo a los hombres y mujeres postmodernos igual que atrajo a nuestros antepasados: piénsese en esas postmodernas “inmortalidades momentáneas” del éxtasis, del orgasmo y otras populares y muy deseadas “experiencias totales”. Pero a diferencia de nuestros antepasados, a los hombres y mujeres postmodernos les aterra la idea de que el tiempo se quede parado para siempre. La eternidad parece haber perdido mucho de su antiguo encanto y atractivo. Para el yo postmoderno “ser hacia la muerte” late con la vida, mientras que la eternidad seduce tanto como una tumba. Uno puede asociarse con las cosas inmortales. Pero las cosas diver- tidas, las cosas creadas para proporcionar sensaciones agradables, son cosas que se consumen. El consumo es exactamente lo contrario de la inmortalidad. La asociación no mengua ni erosiona lo inmortal, antes al contrario, lo supretemporal se perpetúa gracias a la duración y continuidad de los contactos temporales, de no ser así estaríamos ante la muerte de la obra de arte, el fin de su inmortalidad. Los objetos de consumos, por su parte, se gastan al consumirse, pierden toda o parte de su sustancia, menguan o desaparecen. Los usos del consumo atribuyen al arte una función totalmente distinta a la que solía tener: la de compensar y equilibrar lo perecedero y mortal de las cosas propias de lo cotidiano. Por ser refractario al consumo, el arte supo preservar su vínculo con lo perpetuo. Pero esta resistencia resulta inútil en un mundo donde los objetos culturales surgen, como dice George Steiner, para generar “un impacto máximo y una obsolescencia instantánea”. Pasar a formar parte del consumo puede suponer una enorme transformación para la obra de arte. Cuando decía que el objeto se gasta por el consumo no me refiero a que se destruya físicamente (como sí ocurre con el best-seller que compramos antes de subir al tren y tiramos a bajar del tren). Estoy apuntando a otra cosa: al inevitable decaer del interés, a la pérdida de “capacidad de divertir”, de suscitar deseo y emociones placenteras. La obra de arte considerada como motivo de diversión acaba resultando tediosamente familiar, pierde su capacidad inicial de provocar sensaciones, de chocar, sorprender: acaba prometiendo la pesada sensación del déjà vu en lugar de la aventura. Para recuperar (aunque sea sólo por un momento) su capacidad de excitar, la obra de arte debe ser rescatada de la grisácea cotidianeidad y convertida en un acontecimiento único, es decir, en lo contrario de lo eterno. Recordemos cómo las obras de Matisse, Vermeer, Picasso y otros han recobrado su “capacidad 7
In spiritual disciplines, a suspension of judgment and expectation is sought in order to encounter unity with the cosmos. In more secular contexts, mystical insights have often accompanied intense contemplation of nature, to which art that employs the light and space of the world is analogous. It is clear that this art can give us, in addition to aesthetic pleasure, direct and practical ways to understand and embrace some of the most profound and perplexing realms of our existence. For Turrell, a major motivation toward the art act is his desire to express the coexistence of the dream and the conscious, awake state.
Notes 1 . Bernard d’Espagnat, “The Quantum Theory and Reality,” Scientific American, 241 (November 1979), pp. 158-81 2 Morse Peckham, Man’s Rage for Chaos (New York: Schocken Books, Inc , 1967), especially pp. 74-83 3. In 1968 E. C Goossen organized an exhibition based on this premise which he entitled “The Art of the Real.” See The Art of the Real, exhibition catalogue (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968) 4. Daisetz Teitano Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd , 1930), pp. 98-99 5. James Turrell, interview by Melinda Wortz, October 1979. 6. H P. Roffwarg, et al., “Dream Imagery: Relationship to Rapid Eye Movements of Sleep,” Archives of General Psychiatry, no. 7 (1962), pp. 235-58, and A. Richardson, Mental Imagery (New York: Springer Publishing Co , 1969), p. 31, quoted in Mike Samuels, M.D., and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization (New York and Berkeley: Random House, Inc., and Bookworks, 1975), p. 57. 7. Turrell, interview by Wortz. 8. John Coplans, Los Angeles 6, exhibition catalogue (Vancouver, B.C.. The Vancouver Art Gallery, 1968), p. 9. 9. Quoted in Sedona Life, Sedona, Arizona, 4, no. 1 (1979), p. 20 10 Ibid.
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
26 ‘Light and Space’, James Turrell introduction by MELINDA WORTZ available in https://archive.org/stream/jamesrellligh00turr/jamesrellligh00turr_djvu.txt
Perhaps the most pervasive characteristic of twentieth century thought and experience has been a disruption of absolute concepts and the consequent need to confront the uncertainty of existence. In virtually all areas of human experience, from science to religion, from the family to the state, psychology to ecology, we have seen traditional structures break down without the establishment of a new order. In fact, through models of the universe as diverse as those portrayed in the new physics and Eastern mysticism, we have come to understand the nature of existence as ephemeral — relative to time, place and mind-set — and in a continuous process of interchange between what we can variously call matter and energy, form and emptiness,or observer and observed. The physicist Bernard d’Espagnat recently noted that the attitude of the experimenter influences not only the outcome of the experiment, but also, in some cases, the physical behavior of the particles involved. 1 In other circles these occurrences would be called parapsychological, and thus highly suspect to hard science. For centuries the Hindus have referred to the essence of our lives and the physical world as maya (illusion), pointing to the ephemeral or unfixed conditions of existence. With admirable succinctness, the Buddhist Heart Sutra expresses the simultaneous interchangeability of concepts or experiences that are in polar opposition: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” If we are really to come to terms with these views of the world — that nothing we
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know is permanent, that all exists only in shifting relationships with everything else — we have little to fall back on except ourselves, our own processes of being. Without the comfort of fixed concepts regarding what is good or bad, true or false, real or illusory, how can we proceed in life? It is exactly this confrontation with chaos which Morse Peckham has suggested should be a determining criterion in judging the validity of contemporary art. 2 With so much chaos in the world, it is not accidental that the best artists continue to present us with perceptual unknowns. Whether this new aesthetic vision reflects or predicts the insights of other disciplines is an unanswered question, but invariably art does embody the world views of the historical period in which it is produced. James Turrell uses the properties of the environment, specifically light and space, to effect a disorientation of our customary experience of seeing the world. In this exhibition he employs two different formats — two rooms with light projections and two with Space Division Constructions — to create the illusion that we are seeing particular entities when in fact “nothing” is actually present, at least that we can verify by touching, holding or measuring. For physicists, too, the actual nature of light is difficult to describe and measure. They can choose to describe it as a particle or as a wave, but not both at the same time. In other words, how we perceive the world is largely determined by how we choose to approach it, a fact that Marcel Duchamp understood as well as the scientists. Both Turrell’s installations and the study of physics point toward the illusive manner in which we normally choose to perceive the world. Through the study of perspective we learn that our eyes create the illusion of things that are not physically present, such as the meeting of two parallel lines at a vanishing point, and that this perceptual experience can be translated into a conceptual, mathematical system. For hundreds of years, artists have employed systems of linear and atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of deep space on the flat surface of a canvas. And although depicting what looks like soft fur or shiny metal on canvas has been called realistic painting, in fact it is the height of trickery, asking us to believe we are seeing something which is not actually present. By contrast, the development of non-representational or non-objective art in the twentieth century has been predicated largely on the desire to free art from the need to create illusions of objects in the world, and let it exist on its own terms. We can logically argue that non-objective art is more “realistic” than representational painting because it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is. 3 Turrell’s use of illusionism differs from that of the traditional artist, who suggests the presence of recognizable forms which are not in fact there, such as a drop of water on a bunch of grapes or vast distance on a two-dimensional piece of canvas. Instead of using materials like paint and canvas or carved marble 2
is often referred to in the Old and New Testaments? Can we penetrate this veil? When completed, Turrell envisions the Roden Crater creating an environment where one can “see that he’s already in the cosmos, that he doesn’t have to go out into it to experience it.” 9 He compares the crater project to Japanese gardens: Of all the gardens in the Japanese culture, the kind that I like very much is the kind where you do not see the hand of man. There are the traditional rock gardens with the raked sand and rock, and then there are those where you can’t tell they’re man-made. That is very fascinating to me, because you cannot tell where the piece of “art” ends. This is where the ego of the artist begins to dissolve into the grand scale of things, and there’s no signature. This is the kind of effort I am seeking with Roden Crater — a piece that does not end. My other works were contained within a space, and as soon as you left the space, the thing was not occurring. 10 The incorporation in art of a direct response to the perceptual phenomena of the universe is rare. Even though we assume that representational painting is based on direct observation of its subject, more often than not its presentation has more to do with learned convention — the Renaissance use of perspective, or the Baroque stage, for example — than with acute perception. Painting directly from nature is uncommon in the history of art, as most work is ultimately executed in the studio according to preconceived ideas. Artists who did work directly from nature include the American Luminist painters, whose depiction of light in the American landscape was symbolic of the presence of God in nature, and several nineteenth-century English and French painters: Constable, Turner, the Barbizon School artists, and the French Impressionists. The California artists who have sought to incorporate the light and space of the environment as their media, rather than translate them into paint, share the Impressionists’ desire to make the visual sensations of light and color experienced out-ofdoors the content of their work. Since artists invariably develop their aesthetic structures at least in part as a response to their environment, it is logical that the incorporation of light and space themselves would occur in California, where the experience of light and space is more pervasive in everyday life than it is in New York and other major cities. The art of light and space installations heightens our awareness of our own perceptual processes so that we can discover both the richness and the mystery of our self-created illusions. When light and space are presented to us, as in Turrell’s art, in such a way that we see them without reference to objects or boundaries — the perceptual cues by which we have learned to orient ourselves — we must come to terms with uncertainty, that dominant characteristic of twentieth-century life. When we can experience disorientation in a non-threatening, sensorially enriching context such as art, we may find the means to deal more positively with unfamiliar situations in everyday life. 7
The exposure of site-specific installations continues to be problematic within the art establishment, although various alternative spaces and university and college art galleries have attempted to fill the void during the last decade. It is encouraging now to see the Whitney Museum supporting this exhibition, as well as the Robert Irwin show in 1977, perhaps setting an example which other institutions will follow. The current exhibition is Turrell’s first museum exposure in the United States since 1967, and only his fourth public exhibition here. During the late sixties and early seventies, Turrell had virtually no financial support, although other artists, particularly Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis and Jasper Johns, provided important moral support. In 1970 Turrell was selected by Maurice Tuchman to participate in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art and Technology Program. For several months he collaborated with Edward Wortz of Garrett Aireseach and Robert Irwin on a series of intense and intimate experimental explorations into the nature of perception. In conducting these experiments, they made use of technological resources such as the anechoic chamber at the University of California, Los Angeles, biofeedback devices to enhance the production of alpha brain-wave frequencies, and ganzfelds, originally used by perceptual psychologists to train pilots to orient themselves in heavy weather without reference to accustomed perceptual clues of the horizon. These activities tied in both to Turrell’s undergraduate major in psychology and to his subsequent use of ganzfeld effects. Turrell’s avocation is flying small aircraft and buying and selling antique planes. He is fascinated by all aspects of flight, including space flight and flying dreams. He speaks of the blackness found by those who have flown to the outer limits of our atmosphere — where there is no air to be lit, so that a progressive darkening of color as one ascends away from the earth prevents us from perceiving the limitlessness of space. Phenomena such as these have partly influenced the artist’s creation of sky pieces, openings in interior spaces to the outside. Two of these have been completed at Villa Panza, and others are in execution. The blackness closing up space occurs in the night aspect of Panza’s sky pieces. Turrell also likens this phenomenon to the change that takes place when he moves from instrument flight rules (IFR) to visual flight rules, at the moment on top, before breaking out of the IFR weather conditions. A “sun and moon viewing room” is in process at the Roden Crater, near Sedona, Arizona, thanks to the support of the Dia Art Foundation, which is dedicated to realizing visionary works of art that would not otherwise be produced, and subsequently maintaining them for the public. Another of the artist’s sky pieces is being constructed at PS. 1 in Long Island City, New York. These sky pieces, like the Space Division Constructions in the Whitney exhibition, create the illusion of a skin or screen existing between the interior and exterior space, when in actuality we know that the two are continuous. Is this the illusionistic veil we put up between ourselves and the universe, which 6
to create the illusion of other objects, Turrell presents the materials that are present in any situation — light (even in darkness we see some light) and space. Rather than paint the illusion of light as it falls across the surface of objects, Turrell asks us to look at light in and of itself. This emphasis on the thing-in-itself, looking at what is actually present instead of illusions of other things, has affinities with the Minimal Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. However, most Minimal artists disavowed illusionism in pursuit of the literal, while Turrell heartily embraces illusion as inherent in our perceptual process, even though we are largely unaware of the illusions we are continually creating. We think, for example, that we are perceiving solid objects when in fact all we ever see is light reflecting in different wavelengths from the surfaces of things. When Turrell presents light without the context of an object, he allows us more direct access to understanding the illusory nature of perception. We see that his projections on the wall do not articulate the wall’s surface. On the contrary, they act to deny the physicality of the wall as a boundary, creating instead the illusion of an object made of light, hovering in space, like some mysterious vision. Our persistence in identifying the light projection as substance, even when we know none is there, confirms the tenacity of our perceptual biases. By carefully controlling the quality of light — fluorescent, tungsten and daylight in various combinations — that reflects from his Space Division Constructions, Turrell sets up the illusion of a visual screen through which we see into a space whose boundaries of walls and floor appear to have dissolved. As a result, we seem to be looking into an atmosphere. In everyday life we virtually never have this perceptual experience unless we can look straight up into a cloudless sky, without seeing a horizon, or perhaps if we are lost in fog. But fog at least has some tactile qualities, feeling cold or wet to our skin, whereas Turrell’s atmospheric illusions in the Space Division Constructions do not present us with tactile information, like the condensed moisture of the fog, to indicate that the particular substance we see within has any physical existence. We cannot verify this illusive visual phenomenon as palpably different from the space in which we are standing. If we reach into the recessed space in an attempt to touch the substance that we see within, we immediately realize that in a physical sense nothing is there. Yet the visual experience is vividly real. How can we reconcile what we are seeing — density, substance, fullness — with what our intellect tells us — that the space is empty, not full? Oriental mystics have less difficulty reconciling contradictory opposites. Indeed, a major goal of Zen training is to bring about a direct experience that fuses dualistic concepts such as form and emptiness: The highest stage of Buddhist experience is reached when a man comes to realize that things are devoid of a self-substance [form] or that they are not after all final, irreducible realities. . . . Reality as it is, or Mind in itself, is also called the suchness (tathata) or sameness (samata) of things, as herein are unified all forms of antithesis [i.e., form and formlessness] which constitute our actual world of sense and logic. 4 3
The effect of Turrell’s art, like that of Buddhist teachings (or the new physics), is to provide us access to extraordinary planes of perception, or the actual essence of things, depending upon how we choose to interpret our experience. A sense of boundless, light-filled space, such as we encounter in Turrell’s Space Division Constructions, has been the content described in ecstatic visions throughout history. As Turrell says: Light is often seen as the bearer of revelation rather than the substance of the revelation. It is “something” that “illuminates” other “things.” For example, we speak of hanging a show and then lighting it, revealing the persistence of the way we actually think about light. But light may just as well be the content, the “substance.” 5 Whether we are examining the experiential qualities of Turrell’s light and space installations or the references to light in the context of mystical experiences as diverse as the visualizations practiced by Tibetan Buddhists or the blinding light which accompanied the conversion of St. Paul, we wonder if the perceived phenomena are physically present or self-created. Turrell asks the question, “Where does the light come from in the dream?” In any cognitive sense, the question is probably unanswerable. Scientific experiments have demonstrated that the cortical activity of the brain during visualizations or dreams, when the subject is presumed to be experiencing phenomena that are subjective rather than objective, is identical to the physiological responses to physical objects or events. 6 The more we examine our own perceptual processes, as Turrell’s art encourages us to do, the more we can understand the mystical perspective that reality is illusion, or illusion reality. It is illusion in this sense that Turrell’s art addresses. To use his words: “I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way — I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that ‘we know not to be.’” 7 Turrell is clearly a pioneer among the several artists who have lived on the West Coast and have used light and space to create installations dealing with the illusory nature of perception, and the mysterious sensorial richness of “emptiness.” His first exhibition was curated by John Coplans at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967, and consisted of two Projection Pieces like those currently on exhibition at the Whitney Museum. As noted above, the effect of these works was to break down our perceptual distinctions between matter and energy or substance and emptiness. At that time, 1966-68, there were three other artists in Southern California — Larry Bell, Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler — with similar concerns. Irwin’s first series of discs, incorporating the shadows created by two lights directed on the disc from the ceiling and two from the floor, was first shown publicly in 1968, at the Pasadena Art Museum. Bell, Irwin and Wheeler created a visual synchronicity of thing and nothingness by manipulating the qualities of light and space in relation to objects. Turrell chose instead to present projected light alone as his medium. 4
During the years immediately following his Pasadena show, Turrell turned to the investigation of light and space in his empty studio on the corner of Hill and Main in Santa Monica. During the 1970s a number of other Southern California artists — Maria Nordman, Eric Orr, DeWain Valentine and Hap Tivey — also produced works that used ambient light and space as the media of environmental installations. In the late 1960s, John Coplans described the real medium of artists working in this context as the viewer’s perceptual process. 8 While Turrell’s work is related to this larger context, he is clearly one of the first to move in the direction of incorporating the light and space of the physical world directly into his art. The California artists were not the only ones who were creating light environments during the sixties and seventies. New York artist Dan Flavin was using fluorescent lights, often in an environmental manner. But his work differs from that of the California artists interested in the exploration of light and space per se in his emphasis on the physicality of the light fixtures as objects. This approach contrasts strongly with the visual dissolution of physicality in the work of the California artists. After Turrell’s exhibition in Pasadena, he was invited to exhibit with the Pace Gallery in New York, a major coup for a young California artist after only one show. During the next few years, he stopped making Projection Pieces and began to use the space of the studio itself, and the ambient light and sound of the street corner where it was located, as the materials for his installations. He had finely ground optical glass fabricated for the windows, and with a series of carefully fitted shades and apertures created kinetic paintings of light and shadow. Entitled the Mendota Stoppages, their basic structure was the reflected geometry of the architecture onto which random movements of the cars and street lights were choreographed in a highly controlled manner. Much of the wonder this work evoked came through the viewers’ heightened awareness of the perceptual richness that is present in any environment: the subtle softness and multiple shades of light and shadow, the musical tones and rhythms of street noise. Turrell’s site-specific installations were impractical for the Pace Gallery to exhibit. With the agreement of the gallery, he decided not to show his earlier Projection Pieces there. Fortunately, he has received commissions and support during the last decade from two of the major private patrons of contemporary art in the world: Count Dottore Giuseppe Panza di Biumo of Milan and the Dia Art Foundation in the United States. Panza has commissioned works by Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman and Turrell (as well as many others) for his seventeenth-century villa in Varese, Italy, virtually the only place in the world where site-specific installations by these artists are currently maintained on a permanent basis. 5
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
27 Retrace Your Steps: Remember Tomorrow HANS ULRICH OBRIST available in http://www.neromagazine.it/
I was always very stimulated and inspired by the relationships, the interstices in the Soane Museum, the conversations that are happening between various narratives, various objects and these extraordinary vistas that you come upon by accident and then you catch a reflection of yourself. It is an incredibly complex, stimulating place and no one visit is ever the same as the next visit. Cerith Wyn Evans in conversation with Margaret Richardson and Hans Ulrich Obrist, London 1999
Gilbert & George, Photographed by Nigel Shafran having tea in the Museum, 1999
People often say when they come through the Front Door, “which way should I go?”, and you have to say, “Well, you can go there or you can go there, it’s a choice.” Margaret Richardson in conversation with Cerith Wyn Evans and Hans Ulrich Obrist, London 1999 THERE IS A PLACE YOU MUST KNOW At a meeting at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1995, Cerith Wyn Evans told me a lot about Sir John Soane, which inspired me to make a first visit to the Museum of the same name. Cerith and I began to meet regularly in the Museum. After a while, the idea of an imaginary exhibition began to take shape and, in the course of the following two years, it crystallized in
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conversation with Margaret Richardson, the Curator of the Museum. VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake’s original working or living conditions. Much rarer are the museums conceived by artists in their lifetimes as a Gesamtkunstwerk and preserved as such. Sir John Soane’s Museum is a case in point. In 1833, four years before he died, Soane established his house as a museum and negotiated an Act of Parliament to ensure its preservation after his death. His holdings fall into four main categories: antique fragments, paintings from Canaletto to Hogarth and Turner, architectural drawings (such as Piranesi’s) and Soane’s own work in the form of architectural models and drawings. Although Sir John Soane’s Museum has regular opening hours and attracts some 90,000 visitors a year, it has acquired a reputation primarily by word of mouth. The paradox of a well-guarded and yet public secret as well as the permanent pull between visibility and invisibility are the considerations that motivate the coming exhibition. Cerith Wyn Evans questions the distinction between public and private space in a museum by making his intervention on the staircase almost invisible. The work slides into the existing context as it subtly changes the sound of the bells. Seen in a different perspective, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. This oscillation between the familiar and the unfamiliar leads us to Steve McQueen whose work will only reveal itself at a second glance. A table rests on a mirror creating a paradox in the sense that the mirror demands an image. Via the mirror, McQueen puts viewers in a situation where they are sensitive to themselves watching the piece. It is also very physical; it makes you aware of your own presence. LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS – FOURNIER STREET Since the Museum has the dimensions of a home, visitors do not have the same relationship to the works on display as they would in monumental museum architecture. The gulf between the Museum and the world of living experience, criticised by Adorno, has been bridged. Gilbert&George spent an afternoon in the Museum drinking tea out of Soane’s cups. The resulting photograph is framed and placed in the Library – Dining Room. Gilbert&George show a kinship with Soane in the way they investigate the infinite complexity of life in their own organically growing and steadily more compact home in Fournier Street, where things accumulated from the present and from the past are allowed to coexist side by side. Similarly Isaac Julien has painted his studio in a Soanian yellow – as shown in photographs in the South Drawing Room.
Douglas Gordon, Fragile hands collapse under pressure (study for a self-portrait), 1999 Cast of the artist’s hand
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leaflet, conceived by Cerith Wyn Evans, with plans by Christopher H. Woodward. There are no didactic panels or sound guides but visitors will be encouraged to move where they wish through the rooms encountering unexpected works of art in unexpected places.
But do we know exactly where the room stops, where it bends, where it separates and where it joins up again?
Douglas Gordon has created the title of the exhibition, which will be displayed in two parts. Cedric Price has created symbols for the show, which will act as floating signifiers, and will also give a lecture in the Old Kitchen entitled “Time and Food.”
The use of space in the Soane Museum reminds us of Heinrich Kuerz, the young (fictional) painter in Georges Perec’s Un Cabinet D’Amateur, who painted the beer brewer and collector Hermann Raffke over 100 times in over 100 pictures in his collection. Perec speaks of the staggering spirituality of the eternal second coming, of a complex game of authenticity and fraudulence and of the magic charm of smaller and smaller repetitions. The complexity of Perec’s convoluted rooms and images takes us into the Picture Room of Sir John Soane’s Museum. For the duration of this exhibition, there is a new attraction in the Picture Room, a painting by Richard Hamilton, to be premiered here. Visitors can see the painting only when the movable planes of the Picture Room are open. This flexible mode of hanging not only has the advantage of saving space, it also allows paintings to be viewed from different angles. On the way to the Picture Room, in the Colonnade, we also see Marcel Duchamp’s glass model which appears in the painting.
Georges Perec in Espèces d’Espèces
THREE MUSEUMS WITHIN THE MUSEUM The nvisible Museum is a collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, video installations, photography and mixed media, lent out to friends, artists and museums: a museum without walls, a nomadic collection of contemporary art with no home. To this exhibition the nvisible Museum is lending two works – by Katharina Fritsch and Liisa Roberts. The idea of the Russian doll leads us to the Nano Museum whose architecture is a tiny double, silver frame (2” x 3”) where artists present very small diptychlike exhibitions. In the context of the Soane Museum, if functions like a museum within the Museum. Every museum can hide another museum. The exhibitions in the Nano Museum will change on a weekly basis. The first show will be by Hans-Peter Feldmann and further programs will be announced later. The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which has many parallels to the Soane, is also included. SOANE IS LIGHT We boast our light, but if we look not wisely on the Sun itself, it smites us into darkness, the light which we have gained, was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. Milton, Areopagitica Soane achieved his effects not through ornamentation or ornamental reduction 6
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but through space, color and light. Scholarship on Soane has recently begun to recognize the importance of light in the architect’s work, in Arata Isozaki’s book, for instance, which has unleashed a veritable Soane boom in Asia. For example, using common materials and basic construction, the work of the Beijing architect Yung Ho Chang shows us the Chinese belief in an introverted universe mirrored in Soane’s universe. His “view collector boxes” suggest ways in which Soane might have considered the views outside his windows. The Museum reveals various superimposed and merging states of light constructed by Soane. Visitors encounter direct, indirect, reflected, broken, dispersed or refracted light. (I bow to master list-maker Georges Perec). Light also plays an important role for artists in their dealings with the Museum. Richard Hamilton’s response to the complexity of lighting in the Soane Museum is manifest in his poster for the exhibition in which the gaze penetrates several layers of glass and space. Disparate structural elements come together in startlingly unexpected combinations in Soane’s labyrinth of convoluted meanings with links opening up in all directions like the staircases mirrored into infinity in Piranesi’s Carceri. Similar to Hamilton, Rosemarie Trockel’s photograph shows us the participatory dimension of pars pro toto in Soane’s approach so that, surprisingly, no sensory passivity results despite the incredible overload, in contrast to a curio museum. This derives from the fact that the architectural fragments are not closed off, that the direction of the visitor’s tour is not predetermined and that there is room for possible additions to the arrangements, which is emphasized by the placing of Douglas Gordon’s cast of his own hand. Joseph Grigely’s drawings, which are displayed on the small tables in the South Drawing Room, emphasise the Museum as a conversation piece. Grigely’s way of showing text and displacement shows that “a specific text can have many different forms, all of which express a degree or variation. The variation is rarely merely arbitrary but, rather, reflects the possibilities of human intention.” Anish Kapoor has planned a dynamic standstill: a table sculpture with a yellow mirror proves on closer inspection to be a container of colored water revolving at extremely high speed. Koo Jeong-a’s works echoes the density of the Museum. Her crystal vessel is constantly filled to the brim and close to inundation. UNANTICIPATED PERSPECTIVES Bruce Mau projects images onto the existing display, thereby enhancing the associative potential. The Mississippi Museum and the Coca Cola Museum that he and Frank Gehry have proposed are both influenced by Soane. Mau’s installation extends Soane’s practice of ignoring the hierarchy of important and unimportant exhibits by showing significant objects next to worthless “found” items. Mau’s work catapults Soane into today’s internet. The exhibits will be embedded in a material network. Like Bruce Mau, Richard Wentworth 4
reflects upon the Soane Museum from an angle of shifting perspectives. Lucius Burckhardt, a regular visitor to the Soane Museum since the sixties, has come up with an equally unexpected twist. His project deals with John Soane’s little know garden follies, Designs in Architecture, 1778, and why he chose to produce such a modest little volume on garden buildings. Rem Koolhaas exhibits his competition model for a new Museum of Modern Art in Rome, where he uses the Soane Museum as a typology within his museum. Along with the Whitney and the Guggenheim museums, Sir John Soane’s Museum becomes one possibility, one truth among the myriad truths that must be included in undertaking a museum of contemporary art. Within the framework of Koolhaas’s Museum of Typologies the Soane Museum stands for delicacy. Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron are building a new museum for the American private collectors Pam and Dick Kramlich. Like the Soane, it will be a collector’s private house which will become a foundation or museum. As it is a collection of video and new media, there will by many projections, for example, video walls. In the words of Herzog and De Meuron, “The works are bound to the walls and can be seen or not depending on whether you switch the light on or off. So it’s related to Soane’s closets and the aspect of hiding and revealing …nature, people and images will melt together to form a space.” Herzog and De Meuron interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist “DESIRE IS THE MOVEMENT OF MEMORY” from Isaac Julien’s film Frantz Fanon The exhibition brings three film-related works to the Soane. Tom Gidley and Isaac Julien will make short films in the Museum. These works are less nurtured by objects than by events and intensities, which brings us to Patricia Falguières’ comparison between the Soane Museum and the Schwitters Merzbau. Artists find that the Museum is a place where they can work creatively to produce films which in turn will trigger the imaginations of viewers. Christina Mackie’s images are of a ruined European city, post-war and of the American mid-nowhere. As she says, “Recognising someone else’s psychological landscape: what you see there is filtered through your expectations.” THE EXHIBITION AS A MEDIUM To make every element of the exhibition into a cohesive whole all the artists have contributed in the following ways: Richard Hamilton has designed the poster, and every artist has created a postcard which will be on sale in the Museum. The works on view in the exhibition will be numbered but not labelled – to be in keeping with the way Soane displayed his collections. Instead each visitor will be given a fold-out 5