In Search of the Sirens' Song by James Feng

A rc h i t ec t u ral

T h eor y

I n Se a rc h of Ly r ic s to t h e S i r e n s ’ S ong The Blanchotian Narrative of One and the Space-time Fabric of Reality and Imagination . J a m e s F e n g .

A B S T RAC T

Early twentieth century Europe saw a concurrence of socio-political paradigms1. In France, escalating sentiments towards rebuilding national and cultural identities were prevalent and permeated themselves into politics, arts and literature.

Maurice Blanchot’s essay ‘Le Chant des sirènes2’ was written in 1954 and published five years later under the opening chapter named ‘La Rencontre de l’imaginaire3’ of an essay collection Le Livre à venir4. While raising the possibility of creative diversity and alternative approaches in thinking, the concept reveals a multifaceted insight into negotiation and approach to irreality5.

The effects of WWI & Nazi occupation had profound impacts of the literary and art world, particularly

evident in Levinas’ ethics philosophy of the Other. 2

‘The Sirens’ song’

‘The Encounter with the Imaginary’

The Book of Events still to Come

Irreality is referred to as imagination occurring in an natural environment, the seductive nature of the song

comes from its reality of the irreal.

The Sirens’ song refers to the story of Ulysses & the Sirens6. The story poses the game that is the negotiation between Ulysses and the song; the paradoxical circumstances and success of their communication and coexistence. Texts including Leslie Hill’s Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary, and Joesph Libertson’s Proximity, Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille and Communication give insight into the context and influence of thoughts at the birth of the concept.

This essay aims to explore the morality behind the story of Sirens’ song, by deconstructing the intricate relationship between writer, persona, writing and the constructs of language. Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsun Centre is then introduced in search of the applications of Sirens’ song in architecture, through exploring the building’s conceptual and phenomenological connection to Hamsun’s surrealist novel Sult.

Where is Sirens’ song?

Perhaps Holl’s phenomenological ideals bring him closer than one might imagine. Perhaps the very search for Sirens’ song is futile, as would Blanchot believe; or perhaps there is no definitive answer, as would Blanchot prefer.

Reference to the Greek myth from Homer’s Odýsseia

ed by the warmth of his mother’s arms, a child walks through a crowded thoroughfare. Through a random tug in direction, he suddenly finds himself

alone - ‘a child in the dark gripped with fear1’, a speck within a sea of formless milieu1, his interiority consumed by his surroundings2. As the child ages, ‘getting lost’ begins to marinate an irresistible sense of attraction, as opportunities of feeling lost become scarcer through acquired knowledge and experiences – the unknown slowly becoming known. At an older age, maturity grants responsibilities; pragmatism and routine. The world around him is definite and formed, nicely placed into the categories and hierarchies of capitalism. Now, perhaps by accident this man encounters a brief moment where these aforementioned constructs suddenly come into dissolution: this moment of an involuntary relinquishing of self-control; an experience that transcends the everyday fabric of spatial and temporal reality. This is an encounter with the irreal; an encounter with the Sirens’ song. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens stems from Homer’s Odyssey. It portrays a tale of a Ulysses’ ‘obstinate, cautious3’ approach to the singing of the Sirens by allowing himself to be imprisoned as they sail through the seductive singing of the Sirens. Blanchot’s presentation of the paradoxical co-existence of these two forces lead to an intellectual discussion on the morality and negotiation of boundaries between the real and the irreal. A ‘heterogeneous’ approach is taken by Blanchot to recognise a blurring of such boundaries in a manner of constant diffusion of the two dimensions. Characteristics of the Sirens’ song can be de-constructed from their intricate ties with one another: the responsible negotiation between norm and ‘the Other4’; the metamorphosis of roman and récit in literature; and the conditional displacement of self – the effect of the Sirens’ song.

Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus:

Capitalism and Schizophrenia describes the origin of spatial partitioning 2

milieu can be understood as undifferentiated, ambient spatial noise

Blanchot’s initial attitude towards Ulysses in Sirens’ Song.

Levinian concept , Other is not a thematic object, rather the pluralism of ‘I’ and “Other’ is presented as a

‘relation of language’, herein used as a broader term to contextualise an alternate approach.

Prior to the discussion of approach to Siren’s song; it is important to first introduce the context of the two extremes of interiority and exteriority. Blanchotian writing is often driven by a notion of attraction of the outside5. The quality of this attraction is not necessarily remedial to one’s solitude, nor does it ‘depend on charm’. It simply is omnipresent, and raises the ultimate awareness that one is outside of the outside. The attraction begins at proximity to it, but once arrived, there is nothing but the experience of naked barrenness and intrinsic destitution, ‘as if the birthplace of music were the one place that was totally devoid of music6’. It lacks the certainty of its own existence because it strives to become an absence indifferent to any rational beings. Blanchot places no blame on the fictitious nature of the source of the attraction. Rather, he questions the nature of how one interacts with its powers. The attitude in proximity of the song therefore consists of zeal and negligence 7. Blanchot mentions the complex, almost intangible relationship between attraction and negligence, as susceptibility to the pull of attraction of exteriority heightens with one’s negligence. Ulysses’ ‘successfully unsuccessful’ encounter with the Sirens is ‘successful’ due to his zeal - the calculated, emotionless method of encounter is however sternly criticised by Blanchot, who described his act as ‘smug’ and ‘cowardly’. It is apparent that the total lack of negligence, a zealous attitude, leads to condemnation; while total negligence leads to death at the end of the song, when one is lost within the abyss of its desolation. There is undoubtedly a primal truth in one’s susceptibility to said powers, but there is also a ‘human truth8’ to refuse playing into the hands of divine powers, for zeal can only exist by neglecting negligence. Degrees of resistance to encountering the Sirens are therefore the occupied space of récit.

Foucault & Blanchot’s Maurice Blanchot, The Thought from the Outside.

Blanchot’s description of the ultimate destination of siren’s song

evidence of the stylistic thinking of paradoxes and oppositions of two forces, in this case, attitudes

7 8

The human condition of rebellion, as explored greatly in Greek & Roman mythology, the resistance of a

divine control, the striving for an alternate path

Blanchot applies this moral to the art of literature. Language is essentially a construct in itself, in the most banal yet ideal sense it means no more than what it means. The fundamental quality of language is that it constructs into thoughts to be expressed; while this process would fall apart when reversed. The objectification 9 of it is known as the roman - the event; the novel. Blanchot suggests that good writers experience moments of approach to irreality, the ‘expected unexpected’ encounter with the song, through récit, a literary form that counterposes the roman. In the most literal sense, récit can be thought of as narration. Récit occurs when seductive attraction of the Sirens reaches the heterogeneous consciousness that is both Ulysses and Homer. Sprouting up moments of when writer and persona becomes one ‘plural voice10’, partially lost in the fictitious veil of this said récit, partially lost in its own truth. Literature is ‘language getting as far away from itself as possible11’. The poetry of literature derives from its self-detachment from the constructs of its discourse, ‘to write is to betray the object of discourse12’. This may not be entirely accurate. It is well established in the Odyssey that the consequence of being lost in the song is death; in this literary sense a place ‘devoid of music’. If and once the writer completely detaches from the very constructs and reaches this singularity, the value in writing comes into dissolution. The power of its language reduced to lost words; the work has failed to ‘transcend the reality of the world in which it mirrors’. As with other mythological references, the consequence of ‘overcoming’ the divine is often far greater than the event of his victory. In Ulysses’ case, this consequence is the ultimate objectification of both the Sirens and their song through the erasure of its mysticism13 . Ulysses reveals that the song’s inhumanity is now, and may have always been, human. Likewise, sirens are reduced to objects of reality, they too much die alongside their divinity. The destination of récit is the death of récit, like the sirens and their song, it too returns to literary dust.

Objection can be understood as grammar, the alphabet etc. - the ‘dynasty of representation’. The collapsing of the figures as one as mentioned in Sirens’ song, and critiqued by Lars Iyer’s Blanchot,

Narration & the Event. 11

Foucault’s major essay on Blanchot and the outside.

Literary Communism. Blanchot’s Conversations with Bataille and Levinas,45.

To demystify is almost identical to the concept of converting exteriority to interiority.

It can thus be noted that Blanchot discourages a sustained interaction with the imaginary, instead the writer’s encounter should almost be intermittent, accidental. A subconscious awareness of negotiation between the real and the irreal is needed to resist the attraction of the song. These portals into transcendence and imagination through récit open and close; expand and contract; destabilise and collapse. It is the conditions to access and the effects at proximity to these portals when the art of language is at its most ‘powerful and alluring’. Through this dynamic yet formless; violent yet silent act of a partial ‘crossing over’, a writer is able to create art through language. This form of récit is self-sustained; self justified; it occupied its ‘own time while being relative to another time’14 . The récit is baptised by the song.

A child’s mind is filled with song, almost as if the child is a child of the Sirens. Opening the portals to memories into one’s childhood would result in a state similar to the experience of récit, dimensions that are justified only by their own existence, while maintaining the aforementioned relativity to the everyday time. Time did exist, place did exist, but these realities have been detached and they dissolve into a void lit by raw experience and emotions. If this is valid, a safe assumption can thus be made that the effects and disturbance of the Siren’s song can be found by experiencing the irreal with the curiosity of a child and the simultaneous reservation of an adult; to view in this lens art; literature and architecture.

Blanchot stresses the temporal relativity of récit to human time in Sirens’ song, the ‘everyday time’.

amed by writer Charles Bukowski as the ‘greatest author who ever lived15’ and often referred to as the ‘Soul of Norway’, Knut Hamsun’s outstanding,

psychologically-driven works led to his award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun’s first ever surrealist novel Sult, written and published in 1890 opened the gates for a canon of modernist writers of the twentieth Century. 150 years later, near Hamsun’s place of upbringing- Presteid of Hamarøy, Knut Hamsun Centre was conceived and built by Steven Holl Architects. An enigmatic tower that looms against the silhouette of the landscape. A poetic metamorphosis16 from the darkness and unsettling tone of Hamsun’s literature to the architectural reality of Holl’s building is evident. Sult (Hunger) is a novel exploring the banal, raw essence of hunger in morality;

religious faith; romance; politics and most of all in the physiological and psychological response to deprivation. Its plot is primarily driven by the protagonist’s negotiation with moral and ego baselines as he moves in and out of starvation. This is a reflection of Hamsun’s struggles prior to his breakthrough17. In particular, the awareness of an aberrated state of mind extensively explored in Hunger echoes throughout the display spaces. This state of flux and constant search for stability is recognised by Holl who based his concept on many extracts of Hamsun’s works. ‘I was nothing but a battleground of invisible forces18’ drove Holl’s design process. This tension in polarity permeates the experience of the climb. The experience of the climb is as a technical uncertainty as it is a phenomenological one. The stairways runs up the five floors irregularly, woven in and out of the architecture with distinctive episodes, reminding one of Borge’s inconceivable staircase that ‘sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances19’. An active exploration is provoked within the visitor to delve further and further into the

Bukowski, Charles, WOMEN, (New York: Ecco Books, 2002), 67

Pallasmaa, Juhani, and Peter B. MacKeith. “Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsun Center” in Encounters II: Architectural Essays. (Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2012), 176-185

Kolloen, Ingar, Knut Hamsun: Dreamer & Dissenter, 43

Hamsun, Knut, and George Egerton. Hunger (London: Duckworth,1921)

Borges, Jorge Luis, The Library of Babel

writer’s past as they ascend through the climb. The questioning of a current state, and the desperate effort to maintain equilibrium in Hunger is expressed through the protagonist’s stream of consciousness: ‘I am walking on air, my head is spinning. It is not easy to be myself right now’. The acute, systematic recording of experiences as symptoms 20 induces a constant drive to reposition, justify and critique one’s self. Consistent implementation of slight geometrical offsets in Holl’s building may have been an attempt to introduce the veil of spatial displacement. (Fig. i) A four degree skew in both the horizontal and vertical planes strikes subtle uncertainty while a body moves within its confines 21 invoking a sense of subconscious confusion 22 . There is a constant need, as did the Hamsun’s protagonist, to re-position; reevaluate and re identify.

Fig. i

S.Penkevich in his review of Hamsun’s Hunger.

The phenomenological influences of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Steven Holl is evident, in

particular the his notion of Primacy of Perception. 22

The experience of Rallasmaa and Mackeith in “Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsun Center”

Knut Hamsun speaks of a ‘presence of the invisible’. A presence that is everlasting, has always been there, and will always be there- it is an embodiment of ambience. In Hunger, the persona’s recognition of such an ‘everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent’ - is an experience of the tangible and intangible in both sensory or non-sensory ways 23 . In a similar manner, the presence of the climb is accentuated through its experience of the ascend as these said planes become in relative motion, divided by sharp blades of light. Moreover, the dis-alignment of the windows (or apertures) and floor planes ‘accentuates the notion of moving up’. Pockets of opportunities for stillness is provided through the careful positioning of landings to provide views both into the interior and the exterior panoramic Norwegian landscape. This perhaps serves as both a literal and philosophical plateau for reflection as one realises the context of oneself within the architecture. (Fig. ii)

Fig. ii

definition of ‘presence’, in this case the experience of presence.

Throughout Steven Holl’s practice, the poetic phenomenology of materials becomes a striking quality to his works. “I thought that light, texture, detail and overlapping space constituted a meaning that is silent and stronger than any textual manipulation 24 .” Balancing the unease in the Knut Hamsun Centre, qualities of both the material and the immaterial, ‘the fusion of matter and spirit 25’ are explored. The experience of the climb accompanies a cinematic exposure of filtered light projecting onto wood-board pattern formed surfaces of white concrete, reminding of a similar visually encompassing, ‘time-accordion’ experience with his Palazzo Del Cinema project 26 . Square-perforated brass plates against the vertical shaft of space and light becomes a shining spine to the interior, defining an accented axis of travel, one could easily draw connection to Holl’s good friend Lebbeus Woods’ Einstein Tomb, travelling through the space-time continuum along a single ray of light. The contrast in texture, specular reflection of the materials, in-conjunction to the interior detailing and joineries seen in the stairs contribute to Holl’s ‘pretheoretical ground’- the realm of spatial perception as affected by transparency of opaque glass, dullness of concrete and their relationship with the projected light beam. Holl’s agenda to ‘bring architecture back to what we really feel when we apprehend it’ is an encouragement to return to first principles of phenomenology, ‘the fluid time of phenomena and movement – rather than the fixed time of form 27.’ The transience and temporary nature of phenomena exists also in the placement of an aperture to capture the last rays of winter light before the sun disappears behind horizon for a fortnight. This embracing of seasonal time compliments his practice’s notion of ‘luminous porosity28’.

Alejandro Zaera’s interview with Steven Holl, 1996.

Steven Holl, Luminosity / Porosity

Holl, Steven, Drawing as Thought, Lecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of architecture, referring to the seven times of architecture in his book Safont-Tria, Jordi, Sanford Kwinter, and Steven Holl. Steven Holl: Color, Light, Time. (Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2012)

Another indication of Holl’s philosophical influence from Maurice Merleau-Ponty in terms of the

phenomenology involving a moving body in space. Holl, Steven, Brian Carter, and Annette W. LeCuyer. Experiments in Porosity: Steven Holl. Buffalo, NY: School of Architecture and Planning, (University at Buffalo, 2005)

Hamsun’s Hunger speaks of a similarly transient sense of phenomena: the phenomenology of consciousness29. Hunger is removed from any forms of psychoanalysis: like a canvas, it simply records and monitors the protagonist’s pulse of thought in a perhaps discontinuous, but linear time line. In the Hamsun Centre, the way in which a certain light shines and interact with the interior materiality on a certain day, in certain weather would be a unique phenomenon. The same holds true for Hunger, the human psyche speaks at many levels, it reunites, dissolves, develops along with the novel’s ‘markedly programmatic aspect. 30’ (Fig. iii) Body and mind are projected, as if onto the interior white concrete walls of the Centre, capturing frames of flux, chaos and deprivation. Hamsun’s belief of truth as ‘neither objectivity nor the balanced view’ but a ‘selfless subjectivity31’ give insight into the mode of his thinking. The interpretation for this notion of truth as a ‘selfless subjectivity’ is significant in the literary world. It is not merely a reminder to perceive one’s writing as a production of consciousness removed from its roots, but also an inspiration to create truth, to voice truth; to negotiate with truth. Holl’s creative process has been critiqued to ‘emerge from a desired phenomenological effect of the work in potential users 32’, or from an ‘internal logic of material’ or ‘programmatic organisation’. Holl responds with his notion to fit appropriate phenomenal properties to a conceptual framework.

Fig. iii

Lyngstard’s Knut Hamsun, Novelist: “A Critical Assessment”, 18

Parallel between the narration of a stream of consciousness and the program of architecture

Truth as defined by the one who experiences, indifferent to how one is perceived

Alejandro Zaera’s interview with Steven Holl, 1996.

In the Hamsun Centre, Holl’s truth appears as an architectural portraiture in the contextual scale; as a process of light dispersions in the human scale; and in raw tactility of materials in the minute scale. He begins with ‘philosophical natures of ideas as origin’, and explores the potential for phenomenal implementation. Blanchot’s refusal of ‘homogeneous’ philosophy33 would likely place him on the other end of the spectrum, pulling him away from the definitive, categorical nature of philosophy. At this stage it is also logical to propose that the ideology of these men are largely mutually exclusive, but perhaps not entirely, as there exists aspects of complementation. Holl’s ultimate task is to provide for an experience of the environment, the space; while Blanchot’s concept would question the event34 of that same space(s); the experience of event as encapsulated by this very same environment, and perhaps the simultaneous existence of another environment. The Sirens’ song is heard to unsettle interiority, to seduce interiority to its demise, for even Ulysses himself suffered self-torture to live through the song. Blanchot therefore suggests the appropriate way to find value in the Sirens’ song: to embrace the song with courage and level-headedness, to create without fear, at the same instance recognising boundaries and limitations 35 .(Fig. iv)

Fig. iv

Libertson, Joseph. “Approach of the literary Space” in Proximity, Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille, and

Communication. (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982), 148-156. 34 35

possibility of novel and narration to occur in architecture Recognising boundaries in both Levinian and Blanchotian ideologies when interacting with the Other.

The concept of the Sirens’ song therefore is unlikely to lie in the object of the architecture but rather the in the architect and the users. The physical, intellectual, imagined interactions through narrative, the relationship of ‘I’ and ‘the Other’, in the Hamsun Centre are paths to potentially experiencing the song. For Holl, echoes of the sirens’ song lie in his creative process in the form of resistance. Resistance to schedule; budget; the commercial forces of architectural practice, instead to focus on the ‘architecture of architecture 36’. He clearly states his interest in occupying a position of resistance, believing that one of the most valuable aspects of creating architecture is ‘not what you choose to do, but what you choose not to do’. For Holl, there is no room for complacency, ‘if you don’t resist, you will just be consumed.’ This overarching theme of resistance in the story of Ulysses, in Hunger and Holl seems to direct one to the starting point, a story that embeds itself within all humanity - the Story of the child. It is a profound story of resistance, or more accurately, the story of learning how and when to resist. The intellectually controlled resistance of récit and song births the art of art; the art of language and the art of architecture, allowing them to coincide as one, transcending the constructs of their creation in utmost exuberance. Hence this the reason that writers, artist, architects alike - the individuals that risk to hear the Sirens’ song, that resist its seduction and return, will create works that will resonate with humanity for centuries to come.

Ambiguity in whether Holl is referring to the art of architecture or Derrida’s Ethics of Space.

REFERENCE Blanchot, Maurice. “Le Chant des sirènes” as ‘La Rencontre de l’imaginaire’ in Le Livre à venir, (Paris: Les Presses de l’imprimerie Offset Jean Grou-radenez, 1959), 9-17. Blanchot, Maurice. “The Sirens’ song,” in The Siren’s Song: Selected Essays. Edited by Gabriel Josipovici. Translated by Sacha Rabinovitch. (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), 59-65. Blanchot, Maurice. “Introduction,” in The Sirens’ Song: Selected Essays. Edited by Gabriel Josipovici. Translated by Sacha Rabinovitch. (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), 8-10. Foucault, Michel, Michel Foucault, and Maurice Blanchot. Foucault, Blanchot: Maurice Blanchot, the Thought from outside. (New York: Zone Books, 1987.) Hamsun, Knut, and George Egerton. Hunger (London: Duckworth,1921) Hart, Kevin. “The Space Opened by Blanchot” in Nowhere without No: In Memory of Maurice Blanchot. (Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2003), 39. Hill, Leslie. “Transcendence & the Other” in Maurice Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary. (London: Routledge, 1997), 167-171. Holl, Steven, Brian Carter, and Annette W. LeCuyer. Experiments in Porosity: Steven Holl. Buffalo, NY: School of Architecture and Planning, (University at Buffalo, 2005) Holl, Steven, Drawing as Thought, Lecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of architecture, referring to the seven times of architecture in his book Safont-Tria, Jordi, Sanford Kwinter, and Steven Holl. Steven Holl: Color, Light, Time. (Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2012) Holl, Steven, Richard C. Levene, and Fernando Márquez Cecilia. Steven Holl, 1986-1996. (Madrid: El Croquis, 1996.) Kolloen, Ingar Sletten, and Ingar Sletten Kolloen. Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).10-20 Libertson, Joseph. “Approach of the literary Space” in Proximity, Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille, and Communication. (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982), 148-156. Lyngstad, Sverre. Knut Hamsun, Novelist: A Critical Assessment. (New York: P. Lang, 2005). 17-22. O’Leary, Timothy. Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book. (London: Continuum, 2009.) 37-49.