AN ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
ANTHOLOGY BOOK
ZERO
-- Álvaro Fernández Pulpeiro --
AN ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
ANTHOLOGY
[_] “PIDO LA VOZ Y LA P(E)A(S)L(P)A(A)B(D)R(A)A”
An anthology is a collection, a gathered body previously dismembered that strives to be put together in order to be granted a ‘voice and a word’. An idea presented through the optics of many forms. This is an Architectural Association Anthology, the result of five years of thought and evolution condensed into three forms of writing and a film trying to enter into the same conclusive vision, that of an architecture resting on the basin of its birth, looking into the reflective waters our craft was born into. Ultimately, reflecting on the fundamental use of it before fixating onto constructing what was disclosed or discovered.
If one wishes to seek answers developed as theorems, read no more as you will find none. Facts are not what this is trying to uncover, but a kind of ecstatic truth where the form of what is being read aids the understanding as much as what one reads. This are texts where the use of the five senses is necessary, reader, smells and caresses, memories sprouting in a non-linear order, time bends in order to give factual history a glow leaning onto the unclear terrains of fiction... live through the characters, look through their unvanquished eyes, dangerously attracted to delirious perceptions, and foolishness.
There is a claim. The language with which we explore architecture has to be as total and precise as the way we inhabit architecture. Straight, processed answers have led us towards bankruptcy. It is time break through the layer of quasi-transparent ice trapping architecture into frozen waters where only the heart functions without making noise, soft beat, giving all pumped blood away, vanishing into the dark depthless sea just like ink does in water.
* Steps of a wandering pilgrim are these, * the verses my sweet muse dictated to me: * in perplexing solitude * some lost, yet others enlivened and inspired. – THE SOLITUDES, LUIS DE GÓNGORA
{----------------------------∞--------------------------}
[¡] THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
ON SPACE & ARCHITECTURE COMENTARIES & APHORISMS
1
*{that of SPACE}
a) – Martin Heidegger on Space.
Martin Heidegger was a seminal thinker born in rural Meßkirch, Germany in 1889. He was brought up Roman Catholic, son of a sexton, caretaker of the village church dedicated to St, Martin, patron of Soldiers, and born in the Roman province of Pannonia around 315-316. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to imagine that Heidegger was named after the church his father took care of. In 1927 he published Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) a work of incredible depth
and
beautiful
complexity
dealing
with
the
philosophical
field
of
phenomenology his pal and former professor Edmund Husserl had theorized some years back. It is in here where I am founding the idea of space, which guides the thesis into
its
articulation
and
further
expression.
Heidegger
synthesizes
the
complexity of the term in this very important quote from Being and Time:
“Space is not in the subject nor the world is in space. Space is rather ‘in’ the world in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-inthe-world which is constitutive for Dasein*. Space is not to be found in the subject, nor does the subject observe the world ‘as if’ that world were in space; but the subject [Dasein*] is spatial. (…) Unless we go back to the world, space cannot be conceived. Space becomes accessible only if the environment is deprived of its worldhood; and spatially is not discoverable at all except on the basis of the world. Indeed space is still one of the things that is constitutive for the world, just as Dasein’s own spatiality is essential to its basic state of Being-in-the-world. “
*Dasein |ˈdäˌzīn| 1 Human existence. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Read superficially one can sense a deep alienating paradox that does not reconcile with the expectations the reader has after the first word is glanced
over.
Formally,
the
given
quote
seems
purely
repetitive
and
overabundant, however once we start understanding the finer relationships between all of its members there is a very clear idea being presented: that
of space as an entity which operates simultaneously, both as an intricate part of ones being and completely interdependent in its substance from the singularity of a ‘life’. If analysed beat by beat, Heidegger may become more comprehensible.
Space is not in the subject nor the world is in space.
Here
we
are
drawing
a
notion
for
space
which
slaughters
with
striking
conviction the supposition that ‘space’ is found within us or the world we create by being-in-it. Henceforth ‘space’ is not deciduous matter, it does not start nor vanish with the ideas of Being and of World. It’s not IN them as it projects itself beyond them.
Space is rather ‘in’ the world in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-in-the-world which is constitutive* for Dasein*.
*Constitutive |ˈkɒnstɪtjuːtɪv| adjective 1 having the power to establish or give organized existence to something. 2 forming a part or constituent of something. • forming an essential element of something.
Now, first of all, if ‘space’ is disclosed by the act of being-in-the-world, the former, as this sentence states, pre-exists Dasein, however, it appears as a perceptible entity once being-in-the-world exercises its presence. The presence of Space in a life is something to be discovered, not owned or appropriated, as it is interdependent from any human intelligence and desire to affect it by conquest.
Space is not to be found in the subject, nor does the subject observe the world ‘as if’ that world were in space; but the subject [Dasein*] is spatial.
Again we can see how Heidegger reiterates that ‘space’ is not to be found IN us, nor we observe the world as if it were IN ‘space’. What does this mean? And how this thought on the nature of space changes a fundamental assertion the discipline of architecture is so ignorantly proud of? – the arrogance of ‘making/creating space’. Just
to
clear
all
this
toxic
steam,
I
am
acting
as
an
interpreter,
understanding through the filters of my brain the meaning of the given quote, which to my view would be a definitive blow to many of the deep core beliefs architecture has scabbed over a large cut never healed. Henceforth, in
2015,
I
am
confident
enough
to
loudly
state
that
Architecture
is
diseased,
drenched
in
a
hypocritical
negation
coming
directly
from
the
Industrial Revolution of the Mind (Enlightenment) and defining the way we consume and classify life nowadays. As a last beam of sunshine, my wish, will be turning this small minded negation of the beautiful totality of space into an all-affirming ecstasy saying YES! right after the NO! implodes painting the sky orange, then red and finally purple blue... in this tragic sunset we will free Architecture as the craft it ought to be, the craft that once upon a time disclosed space in order to be inhabited without the petty concern of questioning whether it may or may not be labelled as ‘architecture’. We must overcome architecture in order to speak of ourselves as architects.
And we are back. I pick up from where I left, in Heidegger’s Being and Time. What does this mean? To sate that ‘the subject is spatial’ is fully radical. Not a cheap radicality, which is the one we love to devour and expel now, but a true thought that opens the flood gates and makes us look at every single swaying hair on each others skulls. We are spatial, but space is neither in us nor in the world. Then, space is something to be discovered, as it is only disclosed in the basis of being-in-the-world. Furthermost, it is
only
discovered
if
the
environment
is
dispossessed
of
its
worldhood
(worldly possessions), as if ‘space’ is not truly fleeting, pure and total if the baggage pulling it into the world is not unchained. Once its weight is loosened, once it hovers just like hot air balloons do, ‘space’ becomes disclosable always ‘on the basis of the world’, just as we know how high up we are on the basis of the earth standing down below.
Let me try to make this different, try another language for expressing this subtle idea, transmute, you reader, into another from.
Lets
become
a
drop
of
rain
that
condensation of a sea, an ocean.
has
been
formed
during
the
cyclical
Our embryo is formed when we transition
from gas to liquid state, which takes approximately 7 hours. However we are not born yet, as we haven’t communed with ‘reality’, with the world, which here would be the large body of water comprising the ocean. We fall, two thousand metres if you must, over a period of three hundred seconds.
We are
becoming, but all is still an echoing dream, looking at the ocean from high up,
harmonious
white
caps
sweep
over
the
dark
mass
of
blue,
creating
contrast, giving no sense of size nor strength. All seems peaceful and at ease, filtered through the soothing distance rapidly coming closer. To your left you can see raindrops that give up their downfall as they disperse back up, the journey downwards is a quest not all will make. All this struggle only to be born in a meaningless impact with another drop more than a billion times larger than you, a drop, the ocean, that welcomes you with
total indifference, as once you commune with it, the ocean becomes the raindrop and the raindrop becomes an ocean. How can we possibly separate the drop from the ocean and vice versa? This is what Saint Teresa of Jesus called a Spiritual Marriage in the 1500s. Here, in this marriage, we may find the key to understand ‘space’ and us. In the tiny ripples caused after the impact the raindrop expresses its watermark,
footprint,
such
a
beautiful
moment
condensed
in
barely
three
seconds. I think this ripple on the ocean caused by the impact of a raindrop is equivalent to the ripples, which I may call emotions, caused by human life on ‘space’. We cannot be separated from space as we are spatial, we are what provide spatiality to space, however we do not constitute its existence as one can say a single raindrop does not constitute the existence of an ocean.
As
‘space’
we
is
but
are a
spatial, large
one
ripple
can
imagine,
formed
by
fictionalize,
every
single
that
ripple
all
that
of
once
disturbed its otherwise firmly still surface. Every single life lived on earth
may
well
be
what
fed
space
into
becoming
liquid,
disclosable,
discoverable, architecturable, and not solid, stagnant and dead. In we being spatial, we allow ‘space’ to flow and move and be used for the benefit of humankind; this phenomena we once called God, which ultimately is nothing but an abbreviation for our personal and collective communion with all that transcends a singular programming, the urge to render oneself as immortal, all-affirming projective light.
Recapitulating, to give Heidegger’s notion of ‘space’ in relation to the ‘subject’
intelligibility,
I
have
used
the
active
image
of
the
birth,
formation and communion of a raindrop with the ocean. Understanding the raindrop as ‘we’ and the ocean as ‘space’. Here we find the most radical part of Heidegger’s quote, and the thought that would widen the window architecture has been set. This grammatically basic sentence, is to my view, one of the great re-discoveries of XX century thought, giving a complete new meaning to the idea of God, surpassing its iconography in order to engage with its real purpose and meaning. Overcome itself -
“God is our will, and
when firm, our will is God” says Cristina Morales using a fictionalized Saint Teresa of Jesus bearing a certain Nietzschean
“Will to Power”.
…but the subject [Dasein – human existence] is spatial.
A final word on the way this thesis uses this poetic discovery of ‘space’ in order to formulate its architecture. The ideas commented above serve as a theoretical,
or
I
would
rather
say
lyrical
foundation
for
the
very
conception of an architecture which is articulated on the basis of life. I, as
an
architect,
am
interested
about
life’s
spatiality.
When
Heidegger
stated that human existence is spatial, he created or re-claimed a field for
architecture, as the craft of disclosing ‘space’ in order to be inhabited, that
was
hitherto
dismissed
and
obscured
by
the
wrong
assertion
that
architecture is only manifested through buildings. Now, I, as an architect that wants to build cinema not buildings, have to take this basic concept to heart
in
order
to
travel
forward.
The
spatiality
of
life
is
expressed
through human forces, which generate emotions. This way we perceive and are able to enter into the invisible shell a life has carved for itself. Every emotion
becomes
reverberating
expression
reaction
relentlessly overwhelms
the
mining
the
miner
of
a
to
the
force.
until
the
rock
and
all
the
force
that
Just
like
opens
into
previously
carves in
the
a
outwards, diamond
skies,
darkened
and
diamonds
a
mine, light
find
an
internal glow. Finally, life becomes the ultimate site for architecture to exercise its powers. Poetry, painting, cinema… all consequences of architecture, never to be recognized as such until today.
b) – The origin of consciousness as the birth of the human notion of ‘space’.
I want to expand some of the thoughts presented in section (a), follow a closer and more concrete narrative, both speculative and strongly grounded on history, science and artistic imagination, fiction. The theme of section (b) finds a defined voice in the question I will be constantly coming back to: Is the origin of feeling a part of a larger whole, of projecting towards the stars, the birth of the human idea of ‘space’, hence of making human beings want to inhabit what is discovered of it? Architecture is the human activity that allows ‘space’ to be discovered.
We travel backwards into the Middle Palaeolithic, the dawn of consciousness, of being a part of a bigger whole, transcending the physicality of the flesh into that of the ‘spirit’. The archaeological signs for this hypothesis are the first burials, dating from 100,000 years back, found in Kaprina, Croatia and
Qafzeh,
Israel.
Those
burials
represent
one
of
the
most
important
discoveries to date, as they clearly show an intentional celebration of death, burring the deceased with a set of objects that had a transcendental value, such as wheat, or shells. Another interesting discovery is the Homo sapiens idaltu, who inhabited the north-eastern regions of Ethiopia, Awash River, 160,000 years ago. Idaltu, meaning “first born” or “elder” in SahoAfar,
was
discovered
by
archaeologist
Tim
White
in
1997.
Behavioural
observations have noted that this early branch of Homo Sapiens contain the first
evidences
of
anatomical
and
behavioural
modernity.
They
actively
practiced mortuary rituals, painted themselves in red ochre and butchered hippos. The found fossils from a six-year-old boy, show cut marks pointing
to
ancient
mortuary
practices.
“The
child’s
skull
bore
marks
indicating
that, after he died, the muscles had been cut from the base of the skull. The rear of the cranial base was broken away and the edges polished, and the entire cranium was worn smooth as if by repeated handling. The mortuary rituals of the Herto people (Homo sapiens idaltu) differ from those of earlier hominids, some of whom cut flesh from skulls but did not polish or decorate them with scratch marks.”
These are evidences from which
we can draw parallels with anthropological studies of New Guinean tribes where the same practices were and are exercised.
Overall, what this adds to
my question is the fact that by plastically manipulating these elements and using them as ritualistic totems, we can deduce they were calling something invisible into presence. Just like architecture calls ‘space’ into presence by discovering it. By crafting the consequence of such disclosure, her in the form of a decorated six-year-old skull we notice that this skull put in the
right
context
is
as
high
and
heavy
as
the
largest
of
cathedrals
dedicated to Jesus Christ. The skull was housing the projective soul of the child so anyone who wanted to enter could travel through. This journey exists thanks to architecture.
“An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak’s thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A Sunflower, four more one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron
scabs
in
granite.
Very
old
land.
Look
around
you.
The
horizon
trembling,
shapeless. We are all of us brothers.” David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
This overview of some early examples we have at hand pretends to draw, objectively, even scientifically a series of facts that have been found. However, I wish to look at the origin of consciousness as the birth of the human
notion
of
‘space’
closer,
just
like
Stanley
Kubrick
did
at
the
beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Terrence Malick does in ‘The Tree of Life’, both the film and the first draft screen play from 2007.
I wish to
find myself as a part of a larger whole, find the moment when I started gazing out of my eyes, borrowed since the first ‘I’ looked out through them. Let me quote Terrence Malick’s screenplay for the Tree of Life. Here he explains how the character, with whom I identify, has to travel, holding hands with an unspoken entity, to the beginning of time in order to answer what he asked the universe.
Very similar to how I approach my question
about the birth of a human concept of ‘space’; spatial awareness, as the moment when architecture as a human activity of revealing and disclosing this invisible spatial awareness and allowing it to form into a communal inhabitation, first appears in its most fundamental form. By going back, we
know how to earnestly go forward not falling into the colossal sticky trap of
the
institutionalized
profession.
I
know
I
am
reduction fighting
a
of
architecture
Dragon,
a
into
Windmill…
a
a
branded
liberal
art
corruption, the system at large. Lotta Continua!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[IN]
VOICE (0.S) Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to eternal life. (…) He must find a way out. He must journey through time, from the outward and external to the heart of creation. (…) At the edge of the city, he sees a tree. He reaches out to touch it. The instant he does, the universe springs up from its source. (…) The soul: the crown and apex of creation: the self, the center and inside of nature. Great not in space and time, but in capacity, in depth and power of apprehension. Where does it come from? When is it first born? How does it advance? Towards what?
How does it happen that I am I, and you are you?
The slow, dark birth of the soul – greater, more mysterious that the birth of worlds.
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life (First Draft, 2007)
-- Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless.
-- We are all of us brothers.
-- She holds her newborn tight in her arms. It is never safe out here; the wind is hauling, cold.
-- The night sky seems to be precipitating into the mountains beyond the plateau.
-- She opens her dark eyes; her pupils are suddenly overwhelmed with this large
mass
of
star
lights
dancing
with
one
another,
rapturing
into
a
wavering ocean projecting from million light years away.
-- The purple and white glow reflects on the surface of her cornea’s viscous tear liquid, protecting her eyes from dust. All the universe is merely reflected
in
her
look,
as
she
is
not
yet
gazing
inwards,
she
hasn’t
journeyed through, right now time only goes forward until nature puts a stop to it.
-- There is no unity with this mass of lights; she cannot see that her face bares the same features as the large nebula that unifies distances and times into one big body. Her body also belongs there. It is too soon for her to tell, she is not yet conscious of ‘space’.
-- Suddenly, her newborn is at unease, nightmarish, helplessly contorting his tiny arms, trying not to fall, reaching for security with a terrified expression on his face.
She serenades him, calms his innocent terror,
triggered by the hostile conditions of the night.
--
The
newborn
arms
stretch
out
and
touch
her
face,
cover
her
eyes,
filtering the gleam coming from the stars through the barely formed fingers, soft texture where time has not made an impact yet.
-- They are framing the immensity of the universe, bringing it closer, familiar. encounters
Her
child’s
a
hitherto
hands
may
unknown
be
the
very
opportunity
to
first gaze
telescope into
the
where
she
condensed
celebration of creation, of her self and the self of others. Through her gaze she becomes conscious.
-- How can something as fragile as newborn fingers bare the same substance that falls from the stars? Where are we coming from, she asks. Where am I going, she ponders further… My child, where do you live? Where are you looking from and what are you looking at? Is all of this nothing but one large whole, intoning the same hymn? I am, one no more, gaze out of my eyes, see all I have made, all but the one face.
-- Finally, evolution reaches a final note in our history on this pale blue dot. In her becoming conscious of the space her life inhabits, she also becomes conscious of an unity shining through all things, both apparent and invisible. There is an imperceptible energy where by the simple act of being, we commune with space, as we, she, are spatial. Time is no more, as the beginning and the end coexist in the same feeling of unity. ‘Space’ is born through communion, this catharsis releasing the consciousness of our species is the reason why two photons decided to rapture in order to create matter, and from fermions to molecules to cells, then aquatic life-forms to crawl out into the land, reproduce, suffer and evolve, and finally find the meaning projecting into eternity, condensed in the mandate “You shall Love”. We disclose ‘space’. Architecture finds its purpose and meaning: to let
human beings discover what makes us what we are and inhabit it as a species. All
transcendentally
inhabited
is
a
consequence
of
this
Architecture
disclosure.
-- Aurora awakens in the glowing east and she awakens with it, peace and sorrow await, her journey must go on.
-- Her newborn is found dead on her arms.
--
All
this
pain
that
is
felt
is
given
solace
by
the
epiphany
she
experienced last night.
-- Her child no longer possesses a shell, however, as ‘space’ is resonant, and filled by all that walks and all that walked, all forces that were and are, she removes all flesh out of her baby, and spends a lifetime crafting his skull into a ‘thing’ that will allow her to enter through a life that no longer lives, an energy that is only heard in its echo.
-- The first time this is done represents the start of architecture, as the crafting of the skull is the very consequence of architecture disclosing and discovering the spatiality the life of this child exercised over the vast entity of ‘space’.
[OUT]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2
*{that of ARCHITECTURE}
“Stupidity is a structure of thought as such: it is not a means of self-deception, it expresses the non-sense in thought by right. Stupidity is not error or a tissue of errors. There are imbecile thoughts, imbecile discourses, that are made up entirely of truths; but these truths are base, they are those of a base, heavy and leaden soul.”
Giles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, pg 98
- - How can we understand the role of architecture in our culture?
After exposing the lie we have been told over and over again about ‘space’ in relation to architecture, I wish to further expose ‘imbecile truths’ feeding the diseased body of Architecture’s profession. If we don’t conquer those fatalistic lies predetermining that we, students of architecture, must fall into a career solely accepted if our expressions fit into the category of
‘office-based architecture’ where ‘designing’ buildings, or academically
studding people that built or proposed brick and mortar buildings, or even further but as imbecile and treacherous, people, which in one way or another were involved with the accepted and established architecture profession; if we don’t conquer this imbecile discourse that has been dominating all of our efforts we will bury ourselves.
That of Architecture is a follow up on that of Space. We can not understand the former without the later. If read in its totality this thesis may seem extremely repetitive, bombastic and over-expressive. My answer to this more than fair perception is that once you are in the depths of the abyss, where all is dark and dull, one must shout outwards, certain bravado is necessary when
what
you
say
only
gets
you
the
same
reaction
every
time
tested
practically. The rhetoric mirror of our profession must be broken.
- - Commentary on Vitruvius De Architectura.
The question posted for this first section was: How can we understand the role of architecture in our culture? – A further rendering of the question might be necessary as what I really wonder is how did we end up here? Of course I won’t go through the whole history of the discipline, instead I wish to tackle the one we are taught to be the architect of architects: Marco Vitruvius Pollio and his work: De Architectura. This seminal work has defined the way architecture is understood socially, and also has put a lid on its possibilities. The books set a specific formal language for architecture as built, exclusively through buildings.
There is
a very thorough exploration on the grammar of form taken from Principles of Proportion, which are, in many forms, a heritage from the Greeks.
I wish to
stress my critique, or to be more precise, rethinking or reimagining of this De Architectura in two particular elements: [1] The first book two first sections, which are ‘The education of the Architect’ and ‘The fundamental principles of Architecture’. [2] The remaining books, solely concerned with a
physical,
and
building
oriented
understanding
and
appreciation
of
Architecture. In
all
previously
written
here,
I
am
constantly
giving
hints
of
the
Architecture I so eagerly seek. A quest undertaken for the sole purpose of freeing
myself
from
a
predetermined
professional
outcome,
accepted
by
society and academic circles. Architecture, for me, appears as intense and pure, in a building, in a poem or in cinema. Please, don’t be confused here as by appearing I don’t mean it can be reduced, just like these books which go
by
titles
Architecture’
such or
as:
‘Architecture
‘Filmmakers
in
Ridley
architectural
Scott’
Plans’.
or
All
‘Cinematic those
are
deformations, and appropriations of something that is not quantifiable as a brand.
It
should
not
be
used
in
order
to
sell
pseudo-academic
sensationalism. Architecture is ultimate and total. architecture |ˈɑːkɪtɛktʃə| noun [ mass noun ] 1 the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings. 2 the complex or carefully designed structure of something. 3 the disclosure of the entity of ‘space’.
- -
‘The Education of the Architect’ & ‘The fundamental principles of Architecture’
In ‘The Education of the Architect’ we read:
“3. In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points: the
thing
signified
signified, is
the
and
subject
that of
which which
gives we
may
it be
its
significance.
speaking;
and
That that
which
which
is
gives
significance is a demonstration…”
This first section outlines what it means to be an architect. In the entire Ten Books he never mentions what is the action of ‘architecture’. However, by looking at his words, which stress on the ‘inhabitable thing’ consequence of an architecture disclosure, we can build upon an idea for architecture Vitruvius never wrote about, yet he intended.
Focusing on the aforementioned quote, he gives us two points: the thing signified and that which gives it its significance. Simple enough, the thing signified is an abstract element that once able to articulated and express it, it carries this meaning through a form which, if the expression is transparent, one can access its abstraction through a concrete, communal entity that offers its ‘body’ to all, yet its meaning is for the ones that looking through it. This ‘demonstration of architecture’, I also call a ‘consequence
of
architecture’
is
the
building,
the
poem,
the
film,
the
painting and even the oral legend. It is a form that all can see, but not all can inhabit, meaning is retrieved out of them by connecting further in. In ‘The Education of the Architect’ sets the tone for the entire book, which searches for rules of proportion in order to back up this ‘demonstration’. Defines the person who does architecture as having an all-around knowledge, aware of many fields of thought, from the banal to the cultivated, in touch with the many layers of society and life. An artist with the rigorous basis of a technician.
We find in the second section of Book One, a very interesting and concrete reduction of Architecture into six elements its physical conception depends on. Again, Vitruvius doesn’t go all the way in, he stays on the surface, where it’s safe and known. Architecture only becomes something that appears a posteriori, however, I always ask: what happens a priori of Architecture?, What is this discovery we architects make of the spatiality we inhabit and are a part of? First
things
first,
according
to
‘The
fundamental
Principles
of
Architecture’: “Architecture
depends
on
Order,
Arrangement,
Eurhythmy,
Symmetry,
Propriety
and
Economy.” “Eurhythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breadth suited to their length, and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically.”
Order,
Arrangement,
Principles
applying
Eurhythmy, to
the
Symmetry,
demonstration
Propriety of
and
Economy
architecture,
are
which
all
is
a
product, a thing, however they do not apply to questions we may ask about Architecture. I see the closest ‘fundamental principle’ relating back the action
of
architecture
to
be
Eurhythmy,
as
a
direct
residue
of
this
discovery that in its form bares certain harmony deriving from how masterful the transition from an intuited abstraction to an enterable demonstration might
have
been
done.
Here
the
Fundamental
Principles
of
Architecture
barely touch or refer back to architecture, as Vitruvius eloquently deviates into what he feels at ease, which has nothing to do with the human struggle of finding and retrieving in some form a portion of the ‘space’ we belong to
(we don’t belong into) in order to be articulated in a demonstration of such discovery. He never mentions anything else about the ‘thing signified’, he takes it for granted, forgets about it, or leaves it to the mystique of the Greeks. I cannot believe he never asks: How did they create the Doric order? Even though he goes through explaining the legend of the Caryatids, as the women supporting the weight of their people, he never ponders in depth on how architecture affects and retrieves this ‘thing signified’, or how the ‘thing’
becomes
a
‘thing’
in
the
first
place,
or
even
how
it
gains
‘significance’. If he had asked, we wouldn’t be stuck in believing that architecture equals buildings. We have been wasting our time for millennia, only because Book One is not preceded by Book Zero, a book that should have dealt
with
discovered
the by
many
ways
the
‘thing
signified’
architecture
and
demonstrated
with
could the
be
many
retrieved
or
Principles
of
Proportion belonging to different forms of construction. This is my claim.
- - What do I mean by Principles of Proportion?
In De Architectura a series of mathematical Principles for the making of harmonious building relations are explained in a very coherent form. These Principles are then re-assessed and expanded through the ages by people like Sebastiano Serlio or Alberti, and lets not forget about Villalpando and Juan de Toledo who mixed pagan proportions to a Christian ideal, following a logic borrowed from Saint Thomas de Aquinas Aristotelic theology and Saint Agustin’s Platonism. Principles of Proportion apply to every single craft that gains a physical appearance, in spoken words or musical notes, through brushstrokes or frames per second, or, the widely accepted, stone on stone construction. They are all constructions subjected to a series of axioms, which change depending on its medium, however they all share a basic denominator, which is to give form what hitherto was only thought. I want to claim that Vitruvius could have written a dozen Principles of Proportion for Architecture. He chose to disseminate the one found in mass buildings,
hence
it
should
be
called:
Principles
of
Proportion
Buildings, not for Architecture, as it precedes the principle.
Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Buildings Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Poetry Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Prose Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Sculpture Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Painting Architecture: Principles of Proportion for Filmmaking
for
As we are meant to inhabit what all these crafts produce, we are also subjected to the principles of proportion of each if our choice is to build with them. Furthermore, we could even classify them in two groups: on the one
side
the
(Physical),
on
Principles the
other
meant
to
be
Principles
exercised
meant
to
under
fall
Natural
under
Forces
Human
Forces
(Metaphysical).
In order to summarize that of Architecture, I will introduce a condensed idea of how Architecture is understood in twelve points drafted with the help
of
Chris
Johnson.
The
document
is
titled:
Declaration
towards
an
Architecture Secession. Its twelve points will be commented one by one in order to come closer to the overall meaning of the Declaration, striving to be recognized as a potential Book Zero to Vitruvius Ten Books, setting foundations which overcome the misconception that Architecture=Building.
DECLARATION TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE SECESSION
1. ARCHITECTURE PRECEDES THE FORCE BY WHICH IS LATER MADE A SUBJECT OF. This
starting
statement
sets
the
tone
for
the
rest
of
the
points.
Architecture, from now on, will be understood a priori of its demonstration, its consequence, which is born into the world thanks to an impulse, an urge to breathe… this urge comes into being subjected to a ‘force’. The force may be gravity, or may be ‘emotion’, either way Architecture comes before them.
“Its is important in a basic study to give due weight to the psychological origin of the creative act and to test the belief that in this art, as in all others, what is truly essential can only start in the mind of the artist and end in the mind of the observer” pg283, The Essence of Architectural Creation, August Schmarsow
What is truly essential can only start in the mind of the artist and end in the mind of the observer. I like this, however one must beware of a romantic reduction of something as quantifiable and identifiable as Architecture.
2.OUT OF THE MANY FORCES FOUND IN NATURE, GRAVITY HAS DOMINATED ALL OUR EFFORTS. WHICH FORCES ARE ACCOUNTED FOR IS THE ARCHITECT’S CHOICE. In Nature we find 4 forces: The strong interaction: is very strong, but very short-ranged. It acts only over ranges of order 10-13 centimetres and is responsible for holding the nuclei of atoms together. It is basically attractive, but can be effectively repulsive in some circumstances.
The electromagnetic force: causes electric and magnetic effects such as the repulsion between like electrical charges or the interaction of bar magnets. It is long-ranged, but much weaker than the strong force. It can be attractive or repulsive, and acts only between pieces of matter carrying electrical charge.
The weak force: is responsible for radioactive decay and neutrino interactions. It has a very short range and, as its name indicates, it is very weak.
The gravitational force: is weak, but very long ranged. Furthermore, it is always attractive, and acts between any two pieces of matter in the Universe since mass is its source.
In Human Nature we find 2 forces (all emotional expressions may well be understood as two main conflicting forces and the dance between the two.) Dionysian: intoxication.” Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son…” Apollinian: dream – “Apollo, the deity of light, ruler over the beautiful illusion of the inner world of fantasy. The higher truth, the perfection of this states in contrast to the completely intelligible everyday world, this deep consciousness of nature, healing and helping in sleep and dreams,… His eye must be ‘sunlike’.”
Here I wonder, why hasn’t Architecture taken on board or even acknowledge all
these
forces
in
order
to
guide
its
construction?
Why
legitimate
Architecture only falls under the rules of gravity? Why have we, historians and academics, obscured and dismissed many of the examples, edifices of Architecture, built under other set of forces? In my work, apart from the technicalities of filmmaking, I take into account those two Human forces, those define the form of the spatial disclosure I achieved thanks to the action of architecture.
3. ARCHITECTURE IS THE NOUN WE’VE GIVEN TO SPACE UNBOUND OR DISCLOSED, THEREFORE READY TO BE ENTERED AND INHABITED. This is a practical point. This noun is not to be understood as a label, just like the name John does not simply label the person, only embodies an impossible complexity, and makes it accessible. This may seem contradictory, however I see a label as a simulacra, where there is nothing behind it. Space unbound is just like a diamond, where light can break through it and disperse within it.
4. WE HAVE TO REDISCOVER OTHER PRINCIPLES OF PROPORTION IN ORDER TO FABRICATE AND CONSTRUCT UNDER OTHER FORCES.
Or reclaim, as those principles of proportion exist already, however the discipline of Architecture must accept them as a form of articulating what it has discovered.
5. HOW DO WE GIVE FORM AND INHABIT THE UNDISCLOSED? A
fascinating
question,
which
Architecture’s
reason
of
being.
Without
Architecture, inhabitation does not exist, as to inhabit something does not mean to be sheltered, but to live in it.
6. ARCHITECTURE IS INTERDEPENDENT OF AN ENTITY THAT WAS BORN BECAUSE OF IT. ARCHITECTURE IS NOT A FUNCTION OR A LABEL! YOU CANNOT CLAIM ARCHITECTURE! This may seem a paradox in relation to point 3; however what we mean here is that Architecture is not trapped in ‘thing’, it is not consumable, it is more like a skill, like being able to bend spoons. This criticizes the established idea that you can open an Architecture Practice, or Office, and you sell Architecture. In those cases you sell buildings.
7. THE CONSEQUENCE OF ARCHITECTURE MUST BE CONSTRUCTED, BUT NOT NECESSARILY BUILT. Construction
is
much
more
articulate,
and
profound.
Building
is
just
erection, construction communion.
8. WHEN WAS THE FIRST ARCHITECTURE? IS THE PROJECTION OF OUR MORTAL SELF INTO AN OMNIPRESENT ENTITY THE FIRST SPACE DISCLOSURE TO BE INHABITED? OR WAS IT THE
UNDERSTANDING
OF
A
LACUNA
BETWEEN
BEINGS
(EITHER
ABSTRACT
OR
CONCRETE)? Wondering on the birth for the necessity of Architecture. What form did it elevate into being? The birth of an idea of God could be considered as the first time Architecture exercised its power, by revealing the transcendental nature of our spatial being and constructing God in order to be inhabited by all.
9. THE OUTCOME OF ARCHITECTURE IS SIMULTANEOUSLY COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL. Inhabitation, which is the purpose of Architecture, allows being within us and at the same time without us, experiencing all that surrounds our bodies. The outcome of Architecture must be presented to all equally, it gives no favours, and it is unavoidable.
10. ULTIMATELY THE SOLE PURPOSE OF ARCHITECTURE IS TO BE IN. To live inside of it, for 100 years or 100 seconds.
11. ENTERING ALWAYS LEADS TOWARD WHAT IS TO COME, NEVER BACK TO A SUPPOSED EXISTING AND ACCEPTED ORIGIN.
This
was
told
to
me
by
Charles,
and
I
think
this
consequence
of
an
Architecture disclosure, may lead the one that inhabits it forward, into a further expression of the self‌ into beauty, even if it mean death.
12. AND YET IT MOVES. To the many sceptics, Galileo once said: eppur si muove.
The earth turned to bring us closer, it spun on itself and within us, and finally joined us together in this dream.
[¡¡] VISUALIZING WHERE MY ARCHITECTURE MAY REST WITH THE HELP OF LYRICAL FICTIONS
THE LIMITS OF THE WORLD. TWO SHORT STORIES
#1 KNIGHT OF THE RUEFUL COUNTENANCE – THE RIVER OF FORGETFULNESS –
The blinding abyss of time softly fades into green pastures sprinkled by the morning dew, the early riser; saliva of mute stars. I recall its smell, freshening the first rays of morning sun finding their way into every of the tiny
water
drops
dressing
all
life;
all
that
stretches
once
brightness
caresses its shrunken cellular body. I can now feel the tips of my fingers. I let my palm hoover over the grass which soaks in the thick woollen socks protecting caligae.
the
nakedness
Voices
start
of
my
tired
feet
building
their
way
from up
the
towards
worn
leather
me,
yet
of
they
my are
suddenly muted by the fecund caudal of a crystalline river. All stops, the grass stays still, unmoved, frozen under the incessant flow of water making its way down to the Atlantic Ocean, end of the world. If you only knew how many lands have been crossed, how many seas have been sailed, how many loves left behind. Mile after mile, mountain after mountain, desert after desert. And now a river whose flow is muting it all, even the necessity to pursue the voyage embarked while still a young man is silenced. The river runs oblivious of memories, refusing to revere in front of men willing to touch the same cyclical eternity those waters were cursed into by Nature on the day of its birth.
The riverbank is a fortress protecting me and the fearful voices from the passing
waters.
Relentlessly
eroding
away
the
solidity
of
shores,
transforming the hardest rock into the finer sand, destined for a dispersive Oceanic errantry.
All that was one becomes powder, the unity of time clouds
up into the skies; therefore the futile corpse of these mesmerized men will be gone without memorial and only embraced by gusts of wind and the fall of autumn leaves. Such a brooding display of natural delicacy sparks in me a fear of mythological dimensions. Where has this primordial vital desire to rise up, look out through my eyes and reach beyond lead me? What price shall I pay for such an honest human sin? Is the pilgrimage, the self imposed exodus, the awakening from the dream, some kind of doomed search into the purest depths of life? The poison of romance:
Put this in any liquid thing you will
And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight. –––ROMEO & JULIET, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
This is river Lethe, innocently flowing by the green pastures of Gallaecia. One of the five rivers born in the underworld, dominion of old Hades. The river of unmindfulness, of oblivion, of forgetfulness. I can now look back at my eyes and recognize my features. A dark haired figure
guarded
by
a
tanned
leather
coat
and
tightly
holding
onto
the
handgrip of his Gladius Hispaniensis. Gaze fixated into the waters of the river, hypnotized by fear. Behind his back a legion of confused soldiers awaits
for
an
order
that
seems
now
obliterated
by
the
magnetism
these
untouched waters exercise over the consciousness of all these men. It is 135 before the birth of Christ, Year of the Consulship of Flaccus and Piso. The dark haired figure, which I departed from, goes by the name of Decimus
Junius
Brutus,
Roman
General
of
this
legion
of
soldiers.
Their
destination appears to be Finis Terrae, the end of the world, last frontier, final earthly horizon. However, all determination has been put at stake by a fear, a superstition that outlives a Roman Empire now under the tight hand of Emperor Antoninus Pius. River Lethe, anyone that bathes into its waters will have his life reset and memory erased. This river of forgetfulness confronts
these
pilgrims
as
if
a
monster
displaying
all
kinds
of
overpowering violence it was. What would be the voyager without the port he departed from? Without the scents of his fields, the morning kisses of his love, the sounds of his herds during the night… All these memories, diamond bullets, transform into emotions that fuel super human passions that allow the flickering flame of discovery to keep on guiding the footsteps of the pilgrim. Tears in rain. Without the image of home there is no destination. Without loss there is no movement forward, there is no sense of direction or ambition. Hence, river Lethe is a threat of colossal dimensions for all these homesick men. Its water carries the sedative poison that would, once again, put to sleep these sleepwalkers yearning for the eye-opening mana of awakening. Such a mana lies ahead, dreaming on top of the line the horizon appears to be.
A rushed flash of brightness and I can look out through my eyes again. Feel the body I fleeted from and looked from the outside. Feet tipping over the edge of the riverbank. The silence is now broken.
Retire now to your tents and to your dreams Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth I want to be ready –––CELEBRATION OF THE LIZARD, JIM MORRISON (THE DOORS)
The monstrous myth is now being battled. My body precipitates into the rushing waters. I shall look back fearing this is the last time I will see it all. My home, my past. Why did I leave?
Was it so I could chase where
the sun dips after a long day arching over the heavens? I had to wake up from it all, the dream of monotony, of time and banality… of mortality. I came
searching
for
the
crystalline
purity
promised
by
a
unidirectional
emotion that thirsts, piercing like an arrow through all logic. How ironic if all the journey has ever been is a thirst, since now, once my lips kiss the water, I will have plenty to drink. My nakedness is being clothed over by this cold fluid, and my eyes, wide open, struggle to define the obstacles sunk at the bottom of the river. Once I ascend to gasp, time is restored and all previously felt rushes in confirming my victory over Lethe and his threat of oblivion. One look up, I see known faces; one look in, I keep on traveling having the obstacle of doubt weakened my blind faith. And while rejoicing into victory, a shy voice walking below my waist cynically expires the unforgiving words that will follow me until the final awakening into darkness is reached: Look behind you! Remember you are man. And I can tell you The names of the Kingdom I can tell you The things that you know Listening for a fistful of silence Climbing valleys into the shade. –––CELEBRATION OF THE LIZARD, JIM MORRISON (THE DOORS)
#2 KNIGHT OF THE RUEFUL COUNTENANCE – DEATH BED –
The true life is on high beyond the earthly lie. Until this life does die its full savour is not night. Death from me do not fly! I live meanwhile and sigh dying because I do not die. –––SANTA TERESA DE JESUS
Exhausted,
moribund
Knight,
now
only
reduced
to
a
fading
essence,
has
listened to a fistful of silence and climbed valleys into a shade casted by the moonlight of early autumn, shining in through the eight openings of a dome topping at 92 metres over Mount Abantos. Looked up into a mass of granite miraculously resting over his head. White light on grey stone, may the heavens be monochrome? Such heart-sinking greyness is suddenly broken by a golden glow emitted by four figures dressed in golden garments. All seem to be grieving over the undressed starving body which appears crucified onto a mahogany cross, labelled under Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeaorum. Darkness is subdued by the lustre radiating from the body on the cross and all resting below his impaled feet. The tragic portrayal of living a life pulling itself towards the abyss of decay, this altar is nothing but the depiction of the mirror-gate locking away eternity from the one that yearns for it in the form
of
prayer
or
action.
These
figures
whose
faces
clearly
show
an
irreconcilable discomfort with the finite space they inhabit, broadcast an emotion
shared
by
he
who
looks
up
and
wonders
while
succumbing
to
the
lamenting urge of lying down and taking a rest. What it used to be a thick fog blurring any definite solidity and propelling the linearity of the journey forward is now a mirror where the Knight can clearly perceive himself as an aging body soon to be deceased and forgotten. No eternal fame will be begotten, no love conquered, no goal achieved… only the journey is to be rejoiced, a dream of madness diverting from the apathy of a sterile life where days passed by, weightless and poisoned by the passive aggressions of social order. Where has this diversion led the purehearted Knight? It has led the voyager into him returning back to the bosom of
nature
where
he
was
once
engendered.
Exactly
like
the
ways
this
overwhelming red and gold altar narrates, through oil paintings framed by sculptural forms, the story of the crucified body’s’ life: from a loving
infant
to
a
pilgrim
propelled
by
an
incandescent
love
and
finally
the
brutality of his death. All scenes governed by a child-like purity that reduces any bitter complexity to the mandate: You must love. The nausea of pondering into the depths of life is redeemed through the artistic impulse of loving. This altar, which is nothing but the final mirror, expects the Knight to gaze into his own gaze and as a result return to his fetal state. Climb up twelve marble steps and look to the right. A room, a bed. At the end of the room there is a window facing out into the sky. The night is soon to give way to the sun of the morning and with him the sounds of Natures awakening. bedroom,
Dozens
directly
of
candle
linked
to
lights the
illuminate
previously
the
corridor
described
altar.
into
this
Tenebrous
tunnel, where at the end of it a luscious bed covered by gold and red velvet sheets appears backlit by the blue light preceding the sunrise. Tired, the Knight lies on the four-poster bed. To his left the golden glow of the altar breaks through the corridor and to his right the first signs of the sunrise show themselves accompanied by shy chirpings. Broken in two he looks up into the wavering sea of loomed red and gold threads comprising the tester, which sags low supported by the four wooden posts at the sides of the small bed. The part of the tester facing to the bed is a tapestry depicting a grotesque of Daphne turned into a tree, inside a ferronnerie (artists’ forge); on each side of this there is a depiction of the god Hermes holding snakes in his hands. The decoration is rounded off with isolated vases of flowers and fruits dispersed around the background. In the central part there is a large vase of flowers, beneath a canopy; in its three corners a naked man and woman, sitting on banners, hold ropes from which birds hang. In the lower part, two centaurs are depicted, symbolizing carnal desire. Opposite this, he sees a vase of flowers in the center with a naked child perched on top and in the lower corners, a young man and old man, highlighting the ages of life the bedridden Knight has journeyed through. May this be the prelude to the bucolic dream the Knight will soon fall into? An opulent floral dance where the shipwrecked pilgrim suddenly opened his eyes into:
On the inconstant seacoast –a rough-hewn frame to so large a mirror– dawn discovered our pilgrim –––THE SOLITUDES, LUIS DE GONGORA
Through
each
blink
the
Knight
ages,
weakening
his
body
and
feeding
on
himself. A cadaverous figure suffering the incessant deforming attacks of death reaches up and lays with his bony hand onto mine, hitherto thought as
inexistent. I, his sidekick, squire, the storyteller of his undying fame stretching across time and space, splashing through centuries, landscapes, personages, moments, gestures, looks and emotions; am the witness of his last conscious wish, a tale. A story of sorrowful confessions at a place named Gethsemane, which is a rocky
garden
grieved
by
at
an
the
top
of
overwhelming
Mount sense
Olives of
in
guilt
Jerusalem.
is
A
determined
troubled to
soul
battle
and
overcome temptation. This temptation is nothing but to calm his thirst with a cup of water, however the premonition of a back-stabbing death haunting this
gracefully
wrecked
figure
is
trying
to
create
in
him
an
auto-
destructive desire of negating all future and subduing all signs of hope and ultimately, love. The calming of the thirst would numb the excruciating pain of the envisioned betrayal. And yet, he does want to feel such inhuman pain deep
down
in
the
depths
of
his
heart,
soon
to
sink
and
paralyse.
He,
accompanied by whom he calls Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, kneels down on a rock and looks up into the cloudless sky. The look stoically confronts his fate, which is a violent death facilitated by a friend. Hours pass and once battled his scepticism towards an unalterable destiny he comes down. After such terrible angst, calm, acceptance and readiness transform into a clear beam of light that perforates his body, dispossessing all in him of any dark shades. And to the three men that accompanied him, now sleeping, he awoke by announcing his descend: Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!
–––MATTHEW 26:36-46
… and he left his cave, glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.
–––FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
Indeed the morning sun is now shyly shining over the red brick floor of the waiting room next to the bedroom. Death approaches the bedridden Knight as fast and unforgiving as the sunrise gives way to the awakening of all forms of life, pulling off the blanket of their sleep. However, there is still time for a last battle to be fought, a last look to be taken into the journey overshadowing the Knight’s shattered spirit, violently struggling inside a body that can no longer provide shelter.
And after the last of sleeps he would wake up from, with a burning fit, he rises his head from the sweat soaked pillow propelled by a cry searching to transgress into the ‘unknown’ he feels his self drifting into:
Blessed be Almighty God who has done such great good for me! His mercies have no limit, and the sins of men do not curtail or hinder them. –––MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, DON QUIJOTE
While such words are making their way out of the dance of his tongue, the clock points 5a.m and the preludial Aurora opens up for the morning sun, steadily rising over Sierra de Guadarrama.
The first rays of light now
stretch to touch his pale face and eyes, which remain completely unaware of such a tremendous brightness, revealing the total hollowness of his stare. What is he gazing at and where is he gazing from? He is now balancing between the world from where he was and the tempting abyss promising cosmic dispersion he seems to be going towards. What a vertiginous sway this cry of passage signals.
This
last
ascension
scene where
appearance
of
is
being
its
the
perceived
illuminating
Knight.
His
by
I,
beauty
passing
his
is
body
confessor,
beheld is
the
within live
as
a
painful
the
tortuous
witness
of
the
liminal horizon he has so eagerly sought for while still able to ride on. The pilgrim has become itself the destination, the last celestial room his fight
against
conquering
the
attacks.
impossible Such
a
kept
locked
tragedy,
but
a
far
away
wonderful
from
his
tragedy,
incessant where
the
dreamt awakening has gained a life of its own and turned into decaying flesh,
brittle
bone
and
steaming
pus;
the
invisible
presence,
immovable
destination, has now haunted the ecstatic body and mind of the pilgrim. He is possessed by vertigo, which is nothing but the emotion of transgression, in
this
case,
between
living
and
leaving.
He
is
becoming
the
thing
in
itself. The city of gold, the continent, the hidden route to the Indies, the unknown planet, Dulcinea del Toboso… he is now becoming the architecture of such vision, of the quest.
You are becoming. What is it you think you are becoming? The answer is in the way you use the mirrors. What are the mirrors making you dream of becoming? –
MANHUNTER, MICHAEL MANN
And I am standing by the side of this wicked witness of his own dreamcreature, observing it all and unable to access it. However, as some say,
the eyes are the mirror to the soul, inside all interiority is reflected and it
is
there
where
I
can
appreciate
the
horrific
splendour
of
this
architecture. At last, and with a grace worth of a large ship slowly precipitating into the depths of the darkest of oceans, he lets go and sinks – it is 18th of September 1598 – bells will toll for three days.
All fades into a bright darkness, a day is born while a pilgrim shipwrecks into a room of colossal vastness, yet intimate enclosure where the Sun always shineth up thee.
[¡¡¡] VISUALIZING WHERE MY ARCHITECTURE MAY REST WITH THE HELP OF LYRICAL FICTIONS
SHIPWRECKS (PECIOS)
TWO SHORT FILMS
#1 SOL MIHI SEMPER LUCET 15min FILM
(V.O)
Around us, the valleys bow as the sun goes down. As you grow, helplessly, blindly believing your growth will transform and expand. Useless display of beauty, of harmony, of life.
The last remains of what the day has lighted up are hovering in a kind of blue haze, coating all solidity with a musical spell.
Unconscious you orchestrate all organic tissue to dance around your nucleus and cover you up with warmth and vibrancy.
A sense of direction develops out of this mass of life, destined to chemical erasure. There is no hope for you into reality... don't you see the last hymn is being intoned?
The moon's white glow has replaced the incandescent sun, whose residues are still at sight.
And yet, filled with such an ignorant sense of love, of energy, of faith, you keep on traveling forward into the matrix without questioning where this entire struggle is going towards.
Whether breaks through the gates guarding the guidance of light or the plunging into the warm prison of the mother ship you miraculously came into being from.
You seem not to care; completely oblivious of time, future is a mere coincidence,...
you, a selfless seed, protected from any exposure and sense of position by a thick shell of veins and tissue that cruelly feeds on the hope that tricks you into becoming.
And yet, you hold still... and yet you are one out of two; life of life, crystalline hope... true, profound, Mine
#2 ‘LONGING IS THE AGONY OF THE NEARNESS OF THE DISTANT’ FILM
MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY
INT: MANILA HOUSE – INTERNATIONAL CALLS – SAILOR BAR/BROTHEL
All lighted red. Some soft-core electrotango playing. The atmosphere is foggy and viscous. Smoke clouds up. There is a nice crystal lamp on the ceiling with a pale blue light-bulb.
Close up on an over-made-up lady, big thick red lipstick, black eye-liner. She seems over infatuated, dangerously close, trying to tease, but at the same time the depth of her eyes are in character, like a good salesman, always wanting to please, but at a convenient price. Expensive consumables always
feel
as
if
they
are
effortless
and
out
of
charge.
She
feels
unconditionally his, not sexually, but more like the way a mirror uses the clearest rhetoric to answers impossible questions.
A: ...and, where is home?
The camera moves to a middle-aged man, in his 40s, wearing neutral navy and laying on the counter, sipping a drink out of a glass with a thick glass bottom. He is sweating, his stomach feels uneasy, like there is a big mass of a sticky substance gluing the walls of his intestines together. His mouth
moves
just
like
the
jaw
of
someone
that
has
ingested
some
kind
of
psychoactive drug, he is uneasy but seems weirdly calm. His eyes, everything in the universe its contained in them now. Dull and still, taming a sea of tears that stagnate at the bottom. His eyes remind us of the eyeballs of dead fishes that putrefy under the sun. Silvery, a blurred mirror, looking away into another realm, spectral.
B: I've settled half way. What awaits, the anchor to my earth has sunken. Corroded into oblivion by salt and the relentless attacks of the rough sea coast.
It must be truly painful to be reminded of this gap every time a wave foams out into the rocky shores, punishing all sorrows to whom demands an answer back.
SHE was home, my anchor.
There is a bit of a pause. She looks at him, trying to keep the cool. It is as
if
she
has
seen
it
all,
expertise.
Her
psychology
is
however a
this
physical
might one.
be
Her
beyond face,
her does
field not
of
show
surprise even though she is.
A: Who's that she? A wife, a lover?
He looks into the drink, nearly done.
The camera moves into a tight, radical close-up of the thick glass bottom of the drink, we shine a light through it. It is a distorter.
He says looking at the glass bottom of his drink.
B: In a concave mirror even the most beautiful images become absurd. In the absurd I find a grotesque relief to all this nausea.
She looks at him cheekily. With a half smile on her face.
A: Where is that concave mirror then?
B: At the bottom of this empty glass and deep down the iris of your black eyes.
She smiles. Then the mood shifts completely into a darker tone. B: Who...is she... ...she no longer is.
This unalterable distance ate her away. Consumed in her stoic care for a faint trace, a shadow drawn on water, never still, always finding an excuse to shift form and vanish.
Cowardly.
Sea water does not calm the thirst, nor did my fortnight calls. I could not mourn her loss as I am married to the ship, protector of my tempests, seducing me away into what never commits to a form, never finding comfort in what stays unmoved.
She looks with a comprehensive but forced look. As if confirming the answer she can not dare asking a question for.
B: Yes, she died for me today. My sister-in-law called... I could only look into her face on the screen, constantly shifting, a cascade of pixels redrawing the frame every passing second – I felt as if I wanted to reshape the puzzle of her broken look into something that doesn't remind me of anything, deface her so the distance that keeps me away doesn't become agonizing
in that... closeness,
imposed mirage.
He stops and looks at her eyes searching for approval.
B: Am I already dead for not wanting to feed into my feelings of loss through the nervous pixelations of an image of my time lost? Am I dead for only wanting to look back and not to feel back?
With a serious expression. Cold, breaking her character.
A: Why dead?
He continues.
B: I feel nothing... I do not feel loss – only longing because I sense that distance is drifting closer, tying to catch up and strangle me into what really happens. Home, comfortable stage to the factory of my dreams is gaining weight. Becoming a burden rather that an oasis. Somehow the day to day life I live is making out with that of the ideal
I preserved
untouched and virginal.
They fuck without my consent – now there is a price I have to pay – I feel something that is 10,000km away. I can see her face running through the dry frozen blood of the sharks and swordfish I unload out of the Verde Milho. It disturbs me.
There is a pause to cool off the ambiance.
Completely ignoring all, except the Verde Milho, she tries to soften the tone of the desperating monologue.
A: You people just docked two days ago right? This Peruvian with long black hair that looks a bit like a woman mentioned it...
With a smile on his face.
B: You know he was the first ever to play a gay Indian in this film by some Spanish director!? Didn't he mention that?
She smiles. Then thinks back into all he said, kind of relating to what he expressed before.
A: No...
...So you don’t want to go back home now? Any children left behind?
B: Well, when I return, I will be coming in disguise. Reduced to a mere presence – I will be wearing another man's flesh, looking through another man's eyes... Once back, I can not be me, distance has become this deforming curse. Some kind of fiend I am to the eyes of what is back there.
He stops as if looking back into his child to be able to redraw her features and movements.
I'll hold her hand with another man's palm, my blood will be channeled through another man's veins. I will run through the edge of my own shadow with no final testimony – evanescent, a long midnight.
Her name is Elisa, she is about nine...
I've been absent since the day she was born.
Shows photo of her First Communion on his phone. She is dressed in a traditional bridal garment, pure and crystalline innocence.
A: She looks happy…
B: She is the tempo by which the sounds coming out of this distance find form in the relentless symphony of my life and the sea where all my sorrows have been punished and drowned.
Once someone told me: "I don't need to see what I can touch" in the case of my child, I would give away my eyes without a drop of hesitation... yes –
-- but I can't. I belong where nothing fades nor becomes. I, became a gap, nothingness... I might just be the dream I dreamt in order not to touch, but to see without the consequences of being seen back. I am just a shadow eagerly waiting for dawn, which will draw me limitless... a long final goodnight.
I am sorry – I thought of your eyes... such an abyss.
He looks at her, then nods his head where a broken smile and heavy eyes draw his expression, and leaves into the lonely night.
*
PS: But, his wife, from behind him, looked back and she became a pillar of salt.
We, nothing but SALT on the EARTH, making the wound scorch...
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
AT
THE END
OF EVERYTHING (Eugenio
Montejo)
At the end of everything, if an end exists, there won’t be words, they are inventions of the dreamer, himself invented by the earth; nor anything of earth that was invented by the cosmos as it expanded in cumulus clouds of magma; nor the vast cosmos that was invented by nothingness as it changed itself into ephemeral matter; nor nothingness either that was invented by God nor God himself who is time’s invention.
Nothing will remain of anyone or anything but time circling and circling through itself; time alone, invention of an invention, that was invented also by another invention, that was invented also by another invention, that was...