ARCH4007 Petit Objet A by Connie

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Objet Petit a by Connolly Wilkins

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

A Lacanian Map The book titled The Phantom Tollbooth

illustrated inspired

this

Norton

Juster

Jules

Feiffer

map.

Using

the

Sea of Knowledge, the Island of Conclusions and the Mountains of Ignorance, I created my own places related to my essay.1

We find ourselves lost in the middle of nowhere – lost in where we are and lost in who we are. As we wander, we see something begin to emerge on the horizon. As we continue, we see a bustling and busy city. People bump into each other, their paths cross and weave themselves together. The city looks like a new machine running for the first time. We see someone put up a sign: “City of Consciousness”.

Figure 1: Connolly Wilkins, A Lacanian Map, 2020

Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer, The Phantom Tollbooth (New York: Random House, 1961).

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Objet Petit a Often what we consider as desires are what we wish for, aim for or want in our lives. What about the desires we have that we are not aware of? The desires that drive our actions and deepest emotions? Jacques Lacan uses objet petit a to represent and explain the unconscious brain’s desires. The object in Lacan’s objet petit a is not referring to an actual object, the object a represents what The Gaze desires. Objet petit a refers to the feeling of something being missing, something that you are searching and striving for but you aren’t consciously aware of what it is. Objet petit a is about how the gap between the unconscious desires and reality will never be closed. In this essay, I will discuss the source of these highly specific yet hidden desires and how this early moment impacts us for the rest of our lives. I will explain how and when these desires seep through to our conscious brains and the limbo moment they create. Our conscious and unconscious minds create a void where one can briefly recognise the other, yet one does not overrule or dominate. Through art and architecture, the uncanny and anamorphosis show this limbo period. Figure 2: Connolly Wilkins, Beach of Dreams, 2020

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

We wind our way towards the Mountains of Gaze in the distance. Before we reach the path at the base of the mountains, we find ourselves at the edge of a lake. The lake is still and tranquil. The lake appears to be a keyhole into another world very similar to the one we are in right now. We see a stranger looking up at us. We start to reach towards them but

ripples appear, and

they become morphed and distorted. We realise everything we see within the lake is merely a reflection of our world. The person we saw looking up at us was not a stranger but ourselves.

When an infant is born, they rely entirely on their mothers for their survival. When they reach the mirror stage, they begin to understand they are their own person detached from their mothers; this is the birth of the ego.2 They now feel as though they are missing something or that they have lost something.

Figure 3: Connolly Wilkins, Mirror Lake, 2020

When an infant, at around 6 months old, recognises themselves in the mirror and begins to develop their ego.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

As we return to the city that evening, we reflect on our trip to the lake. We notice people beginning to build a wall around the perimeter of the city, punctured by a few gates. We approach one and see a small placard that reads: “Ego Gate”.

In Dr Maria Scott’s article “Deciphering the Gaze in Lacan’s Of the Gaze as Objet Petit A” she says, “the ego is not present while the subject is captivated, but captivation is nevertheless a crucial step in the foundation of the ego… the object a, understood as lack, has the effect of permitting the subject’s renewal of desire and release from captivation.”3 Once we become independent, and therefore in a sense, more complete, we feel incomplete, creating a paradox and disjunction at this moment. Despite having gained something, we feel as though we are missing something. This feeling continues throughout the rest of our lives, when we lose something or feel as though we are missing something, we are reminded subconsciously of when we became separate from our mothers.

Figure 4: Connolly Wilkins, Ego Gate, 2020

Maria Scott, “Deciphering The Gaze In Lacan’s ‘Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a’”, The DS Project (2015): 5.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

The next afternoon we decide that we will go exploring beyond the walls of the City of Consciousness again. As we walk towards Ego Gate, a little spring of water appears beside the path. We ask someone as they pass what it is, and they explain that they come from the Sea of the Unconscious and pop up around the city now and then. We continue out of the city and follow the signs to the Brion Cemetery. There is a perimeter wall around this cemetery like that of the city except this one is slanted inwards. We slide the concrete gate open and enter the cemetery.

Figure 5: Connolly Wilkins, Springs in the City, 2020

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Brion Cemetery The Brion Family Tomb, designed by Carlo Scarpa in 1969–1978, is located in Treviso, Italy, a rural area about an hour from Venice. The client, Onorina Brion, commissioned Scarpa to design a tomb for her late husband, herself, and their family next to the municipal cemetery of San Vito d’Altivole. In “Passages in the Garden: An Iconology of the Brion Tomb”, Michael A. Stern discusses the way the sequence through the Brion Tomb can be divided into three zones or stages, using the Catholic stages of existence: earthly existence, purgatory and heaven. He also describes Arnold Vann Gennep’s ‘Rites of Passage’: separation (preliminal), transition (liminal) and incorporation (post liminal).4

Figure 6: Connolly Wilkins, Brion Cemetery Plan, 2020

Michael A. Stern, “Passages In The Garden: An Iconology Of The Brion Tomb”, Landscape Journal 13 (1994): 37-57, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43324115.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Using this idea of a third, liminal and central space between two defined stages, we can explain the void created between the unconscious and the conscious. Through

the

many

detailed

and

thoughtful

threshold moments in the Brion Cemetery, we can explore this limbo between spaces. During the transitional threshold moments, Scarpa makes each step deliberate and calculated. You must look down and watch where you place your feet every step of the way - encapsulating you in this moment between two places. It feels almost trance-like as your ego slips away momentarily, letting a part of your unconscious seep through the porosities this moment has created.5

Figure 7: Alice Nickell, Photograph of Stairs, 2016

Figure 8: Alice Nickell, Step Diagram, 2016

Alice Nickell, “In The Steps Of Scarpa”, Building Material 20 (2016): 147, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26445106.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Anamorphosis After leaving the Brion Cemetery, we see a path leading to the Anamorphosis Observatory. As we arrive at the Observatory, it begins to get dark. We walk inside and there a painting greets us. There is a strange indistinguishable shape at the bottom of it. We wonder what it is meant to be.

There is a disjunction between the way we all see things. John Berger explains in his book Ways of Seeing that “we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”.6 Lacan uses an example of anamorphosis as a way of explaining a particular way of ‘seeing’ that he calls The Gaze; he refers to it as the “underside of consciousness.”7 Our unconscious selves, absent of egos, have desires that are not tangible, corporeal or substantial.

Figure 9: Connolly Wilkins, Anamorphosis Observatory, 2020

John Berger, Ways Of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corp. and Penguin Books, 1972), 9. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts Of Psychoanalysis (Paris: Le Seuil, 1973), 83.

6 7

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

To understand this relationship between our egos and our unconscious desires, Lacan uses a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger titled The Ambassadors painted in 1533. At the bottom of this painting is a grey and black smudge, we know something is there to be understood yet we can’t understand it. It’s only until we glance back at the painting as we leave the room, that we can see the skull. 8

Figure 10: Hans Holbein The Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533

Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts Of Psychoanalysis, 83.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

The Uncanny After the mention of the water springs from the Sea of the Unconscious, we decide to go and visit it. Along the way, you see a path leading to a bridge. We cross the bridge. The water below looks dark and deep. The island ahead looks familiar; this is peculiar and unsettling as we have never been there before.

Daniel L. Collins links anamorphosis to the uncanny in his article in Leonardo in 1992. He states, “it is not the kind of image one can dwell upon; rather, it is like something seen out of the corner of the eye, glimpsed at high speed or seen through a keyhole. As a result, any content or image buried in the anamorphosis seems (to borrow a word from Freud) ‘uncanny’, perhaps even illicit.”9 The uncanny is the feeling of unease you experience when

something

unfamiliar

feels

familiar

sometimes because of something indeterminate. Carlo Scarpa creates moments of ambiguity in his Brion Cemetery, which allow emotions and thoughts to surface. In Nicholas Royle’s book called The Uncanny he “associated with the experience of the threshold,

Figure 11: Connolly Wilkins, Bridge of the Uncanny, 2020

liminality, margins, borders, frontiers’ and ‘inhabits a peculiar limbo.”10

Daniel L. Collins, “Anamorphosis And The Eccentric Observer: Inverted Perspective And Construction Of The Gaze”, Leonardo 25 (1992): 77. Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003): 7.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

The boundaries and edges throughout the Brion Cemetery are porous and sometimes vague. The mediation space has a roof, but no walls. The perimeter wall is perforated at its corners and slopes inwards to the cemetery. In limbo, it is

Figure 12: Frederik Petersen, La Tomba, 2017

neither here nor there, floating in a state between vertical and horizontal.

Figure 13: Frederik Petersen, La Tomba, 2017

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Carlo Scarpa explains the Brion Cemetery as ‘a way to greet one another, after death’.11 These liminal and in-between moments allow for a dialogue to come to light. There is a conversation between life and death that can only be experienced clearly in brief moments where Scarpa has permitted it.

Figure 14: Frederik Petersen, La Tomba, 2017

Our unconscious and conscious thoughts open up to one another for a fleeting moment where the absence of the ego allows it.

Figure 15: Frederik Petersen, La Tomba, 2017

Guido Guidi, R. Nicholas Olsberg, and Carlo Scarpa, Carlo Scarpa Architect ‘Intervening With History’ (Montréal: Canadian Centre For Architecture, 1999): 125.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

We finally feel as though we are getting our bearings in this once unfamiliar place. We begin to understand how these places connect and their relationship to each other and ourselves.

Through the birth of the ego, our unconscious desires are born and yet only once the ego disintegrates and unfolds can we get a glimpse into what those desires are. The ego decomposes through the uncanny and anamorphosis, allowing us to experience the Gaze that guides our emotions and decisions. The unconscious is forever present and functioning, through architecture and art, we can enter into the limbo state where the unconscious permeates. Lacan’s objet petit a helps us to understand the subliminal and immaterial desires that culminate in our unconscious selves.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Bibliography Berger, John. 1972. Ways Of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corp. and Penguin Books. p.9. Collins, Daniel L. 1992. “Anamorphosis And The Eccentric Observer: Inverted Perspective And Construction Of The Gaze”. Leonardo 25. Guidi, Guido, R. Nicholas Olsberg, and Carlo Scarpa. 1999. Carlo Scarpa Architect ‘Intervening

With History’. Montréal: Canadian Centre For Architecture. Juster, Norton, and Jules Fieffer. 1961. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Random House. Lacan, J., 1973. The Four Fundamental Concepts Of

Psychoanalysis. p.83-88. Royle, Nicholas. 2003. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Scott, Maria. 2015. “Deciphering The Gaze In Lacan’s ‘Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a’”. The DS Project: 5. Stern, Michael A. 1994. “Passages In The Garden: An Iconology Of The Brion Tomb”. Landscape Journal 13: 37-57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43324115.

objet petit a | connolly wilkins

Images Figure 1 (pg 3-4): Wilkins, Connolly. 2020. A Lacanian Map. Digital Image. Figure 2 (pg 5): Ibid. Beach of Dreams. Digital Image. Figure 3 (pg 7): Ibid. Mirror Lake. Digital Image. Figure 4 (pg 10): Ibid. Ego Gate. Digital Image. Figure 5 (pg 11): Ibid. Springs in the City. Digital Image. Figure 6 (pg 13): Ibid. Brion Cemetery Plan. Digital Image. Figure 7 (pg 16): Nickell, Alice. 2016. “In The Steps Of Scarpa”. Building Material 20: 146. Accessed 29 April, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/26445106. Photography of Stairs. Figure 8 (pg 16): Ibid. 148. Diagram of Stairs. Figure 9 (pg 17): Wilkins, Connolly. 2020. Anamorphosis Observatory. Digital Image. Figure 10 (pg 19): Holbein the Younger, H., 1533. The Ambassadors. Oil on oak, 2.07 m x 2.1 m. The National Gallery, London. Figure 11 (pg 21): Wilkins, Connolly. 2020. Bridge of the Uncanny. Digital Image. Figure 12 (pg 24): Petersen, Frederik. 2017. La Tomba. Image. Accessed 29 April, 2020. http:// entreentre.org/Ee10.html. Figure 13 (pg 24): Ibid. Figure 14 (pg 25): Ibid. Figure 15 (pg 25): Ibid.