The Instrument & the Atlas by Jaron Popko

THE INSTRUMENT & THE ATLAS METALEPSIS AS A LENS FOR READING THE CITY

JARON POPKO

THE INSTRUMENT & THE ATLAS METALEPSIS AS A LENS FOR READING THE CITY

JARON POPKO A thesis submitted to the graduate school of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: MASTER of ARCHITECTURE in the School of Architecture and Interior Design of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

first chair

AARATI KANEKAR PH.D

first member

MICHAEL MCINTURF M.ARCH

research advisor

AARON BETSKY M.ARCH

APRIL 2014

THE INSTRUMENT & THE ATLAS METALEPSIS AS A LENS FOR READING THE CITY

JARON POPKO

ABSTRAC T

Architecture is an art of framing and mediating the experience and perception of the world through the activation of latent morphologies. Managing the relationship between the visible and the invisible, architecture performs a level of narrative operations, which share a border with literary theory. Both architecture and literature structure experience through means of spatial and temporal expressions, allowing for cross-disciplinary influence. This thesis seeks to uncover the analogical relationships that occur through inter-medial translation by exploring how the creative processes of reading, re-reading, and thus re-writing, which allow for an imaginative and cognitive pluralism, translate into a meaningful and creative architectural experience. The literary realm of the fantastic employs narrative strategies that blur the boundaries of the visible and invisible, of reality and fiction. The writings of Jorge Luis Borges exist within this complex and dissonant landscape punctuated by constantly constructing and collapsing realities. His stories leave the reader with a feeling of the bizarre uncanny, but more importantly a sense of profound discovery. Looking at Borgesian narrative techniques, this thesis proposes an intervention within the city that provides the user with a similar disjunctive reading of reality, acting as an unstable atlas of the city. The project is a place for inquiry and understanding, an instrument for looking, a position for orientation, and a site for unearthing hidden and unstructured worlds.

CONTENTS

Abstract

Introduction

Translation

A Borgesian Topography

Tlรถn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Metalepsis

Narrative Strategies

An Atlas of the City

Acknowledgements

Bibliographies

Illustrations

vii

INTRODUC TION

All architecture contains a fundmental level of performativity. The performative does not necessarily imply ‘use’ or ‘function’, but rather speaks more toward an inherent sense of potentiality. It is this potential, the potential of ritual or of event, that invigorates architecture and gives it such power over how we experience and understand our cities. It has an ability to manage the relationship between the visible and the invisible and influence our own perceptions beyond its context, which can be achieved partly by the performance of narrative strategies. This concept of narrative -- of reading and influencing understanding -- is bordered by literary theory. This thesis seeks to understand and analyze concepts and strategies used in the narratives of fantasy literature and harness its ability to create rich and stimulating environments that encourage one to wonder. The first chapter of this document provides a foundation of literary translation history by exploring various writings and precedents -- beginning with a history in the practice of translating and then moving toward translation as a theoretical investigation with writings from Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida and ending with more current writings from Jennifer Bloomer and Sophia Psarra. Benjamin and Derrida provide the basis of translation theory, demonstrating how translation is a productive process for both the ‘original’ and the translation. Bloomer and Psarra contribute research about the translation between literature and architecture specifically. Following these reviews, two architectural precedents that utilize methods of translation are analyzed - one from Peter Eisenman and the other by Bernard Tschumi. This chapter illustrates the relevance and opportunity in inter-medial translation practices.

INTRODUCTION

ix 11

The second chapter introduces the Argentinian short story writer Jorge Luis Borges and describes his writing style and overall effect. Borges’ writing exists outside the realm of tradition and order. The initial impression after finishing a Borges story is a sense of bizarre discovery entangled within an insightful confusion. Divided into three sub-chapters, -- dismantle, dislocation, and disjunction -- this chapter positions Borges in a world of dreams, mirrors and paradox, with writings from Michel Foucault, Anthony Vidler, and Bernard Tschumi. Chapter three provides a synopsis of the Borges story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertiuis, which is the generator for this thesis’ design project. Tlön, perhaps Borges’ most complex and ambitious work, tells the story of the take over of perceived reality by a fictitious universe, resulting in an uncanny confusion and skepticism about one’s relationship with reality. The story contains multiple separate ‘levels’ that begin to feed into one another and contaminate each other, resulting in a rich puzzlement. Elements of the story as well as particular narrative strategies employed by Borges will be further discussed and analyzed in the following two chapters. The fourth chapter defines the narratological concept of metalepsis, defined by Gerard Genette as a violation of the frame that sustains diegetic illusion. It is the “deliberate transgression of the threshold of embedding” resulting in “intrusions [that] disturb, to say the least, the distinction between (ontological) levels.”1 Borges uses metalepsis in a clever way that does not only blur the boundaries between levels within the story, but also complicates the border between the story and the reader him/herself. 1 Piers, “The Living Handbook of Narratology”.

x12

Chapter five identifies four narrative strategies that Borges uses in order to achieve metalepsis - the double, displacement, mise-en-abyme, and contamination. These four strategies work together to provide new points of view and unfamiliar associations. After analyzing how each of the four strategies works in a literary setting, architectural operations are then identified. These operations and concepts will be translated and integrated into the final design proposal. The sixth and final chapter presents the project from site and program to design and form. The site, located in the abandoned subway tunnels below Cincinnati, provides for a Borgesian-like atmosphere. The program is divided into three separate interventions along the unused subway track -- a welcome center, an observation tower, and an archive. Referred to as an Atlas of the City, the interventions provide the user with a new and unfamiliar understanding of the city.

INTRODUCTION

13 xi

TRANSLATION

HISTORY IN TRANSL ATION An enduring and influential relationship has existed between literature and the visual arts based on the unified perception of experience and reality. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing points out in Laocoön that each art form has its own particular technique and structure, resulting in a variance of ability to express meaning. Literature and the visual arts share particular expressive elements and composition such as tone, theme, and structure. It is these similarities that allow for trans-medial influence, facilitating a dialogue between disciplines. These art forms have the capability of removing the reader/viewer from the current spatial constructs and realities that surround them – allowing the occurrence of wonder. Defined as “a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar” and also “a feeling of puzzlement”,1 wonder provides for a creative and stimulating cognitive experience. Architecture constructs an immersive spatial and temporal environment that can engage all sensory perceptions. It is the physical construct of our every day reality and has the opportunity to benefit from what literature and the visual arts do so well. Interpretation was born along with the emergence of the spoken language and it was not until the development of the written word and transition toward an ocularcentric society that the practice of translation emerged. Through translation, the understanding of the multifaceted construct of language became 1 “wonder, n., and v.” The Oxford English Dictionary.

TRANSLATION

apparent. This polyvalent nature inherent in all language allows for a colorful and rich interpretation of its linguistic formation. Translation aims to exploit the polysemous condition inherent in language and literature. Stemming from the root word transfer, translation implies a crossing of boundaries, a carrying over – resulting in a juxtaposition of differences and new interpretations. In The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin outlines the process of translation as a productive exercise that can illuminate new meaning. For Benjamin, a translation should not be a literal process, but a reciprocal and mutually enriching relationship. “While all individual elements of foreign languages – words, sentences, structure – are mutually exclusive, these languages supplement each other in their intentions.”2 It is the differences inherent in each language that work together to bring forth new interpretations and understandings of the work and its concepts. This carrying over and decontextualization – “deformation” – of the ‘original’ illuminates meanings and interpretations otherwise hidden. Jacques Derrida, in Des Tours de Babel, and Mark Wigley, in The Architecture of Deconstruction, expand on Benjamin’s work through the lens of deconstruction, which is focused on the dismantling of texts, signs, and networks of established relations. Derrida draws on the concepts of plurality and how the multiplicity of languages and interpretations can enhance a work. This notion of the intersection of différent languages, one language and an other language, is carried across much of Derrida’s theories. Without translation, a conversation between the two is not possible – there is no dialogue. Providing a place for the event of the interaction between ‘us’ and the ‘other’ allows for a beneficial relationship to develop. For Derrida, “the work does not simply live longer, it lives more and better, beyond the

2 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 74.

means of its author.”3 Wigley echoes the writings of Benjamin and Derrida in his book The Architecture of Deconstruction. Through a Derridean lens, Wigley discusses the structure of a translation of deconstruction.

“Just as the translator must break open the language of the text to ‘liberate’ what is ‘imprisoned’ within it, the translation must equally ‘break through the decayed barriers’ of its own language. What is liberated from the text is not some fixed meaning, but a ‘state of flux’ as ‘alien’ to the language of the translation that releases it as to the text that concealed it.” 4 The linguistic deconstructive possibilities can be translated architecturally by way of a transformative reproduction. This interpretive reproductive process allows the translation to transgress a mere image or copy into an autonomous work of its own right.

3 Jacques Derrida, Des Tours de Babel, 179. 4 Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction, 4.

TRANSLATION

TRANSL ATION AND ARCHITEC TURE The intersection of literature and architecture is thoroughly explored by Jennifer Bloomer in Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi. Bloomer investigates and analyses the works of Piranesi in direct comparison to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, identifying linguistic tropes and strategies and how similar methodologies are exemplified within an architectural work. She also expands on the writings of Walter Benjamin, distinguishing his construction of allegory as the “slippage of the boundary between visual and verbal criteria.”5 As opposed to the limitations of prescribed symbolism inherent with semiotics, allegory is ambiguous in nature – a thought provoking canvas for the viewer to project different perceptions and meanings. In regards to the translation (or perhaps manifestation) of a text into a spatial assemblage, Bloomer outlines the linguistic strategies employed in Joyce’s novels, such as: splitting, repetition, collision, portmanteau, superimposition, and fragmentation. It is not very difficult to conceptualize these rhetorical tropes being translated into a three-dimensional experience or design methodology. In regards to Joyce, (but also applicable to Borges), Bloomer writes that “the text is less a narrative to be apprehended than an object to be entered, less narrated than constructed.” 6 Sophia Psarra, in her comprehensive text, Architecture and Narrative, maps out the spatial and geometric structure of the narrative in several of Borges’ short stories. She acknowledges the fundamental difference between literature and architecture as being that literature “employs geometry and symmetry to entice the reader into the plot,” whereas with architecture, “[the] reader-viewer is already captive inside its spaces.”7 Psarra goes on to note that the symmetries of the spaces described in certain stories parallel the symmetry of the narrative structure itself. “It suggests that although the reality of space separates architecture from literature, the mode in which they are experienced and certain tools of construction, concerning temporal sequence and the organizing framework of geometry, can be fundamentally similar.” 8

5 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text, 11. 6 Ibid., 15. 7 Sophia Psarra, Architecture and Narrative, 85. 8 Ibid., 85.

physical ARCHITECTURE

rational : irrational

conscious : unconscious

ANALOGICAL OPERATION

reality

concrete construction

fiction

abstract construction

FANTASY LITERATURE mental

This diagram illustrates the location of this thesisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; methodology, situated between architecture and literature. Architecture represents the concrete physical reality that structures our experience of our cities. Fantasy literature provides an abstract and purely cognitive experience that blurs the reality established by the concrete with the abstract and fictional realm of fantasy. This thesis works within the analogical operation of architecture and literature, feeding off of one another and providing for a stimulating experience.

TRANSLATION

PRECEDENTS OF TRANSL ATION Peter Eisenman’s project Moving Arrows, Eros and Other Errors: An Architecture of Absence, referred to simply as Romeo and Juliet, is a precedent that uses the concept of translation of a text into an architectural proposition. The project was completed for the 1986 Venice Biennale, curated by Aldo Rossi. Inspired partly by Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author, as well as Derrida’s deconstruction, Eisenman’s project sought to destabilize the established concepts of site, program, and representation. He utilized the process of scaling to achieve this destabilization. Eisenman’s conception of scaling is manifested in three ways: discontinuity (site), recursivity (program), and self-similarity (representation). Opposite page: Select plates from Peter Eisenman’s “Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors” project for the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Eisenman treats the city as a palimpsest, an urban fabric with traces of memory. The fictional text is what provides the program for the project, which in turn destabilizes the established value on program and function. After identifying three dominant themes within the story of Romeo and Juliet, Eisenman then translates these themes directly onto the map of the city. The themes consist of: division (the separation of the lovers – the balcony), union (the marriage of the lovers – the church), and their dialectical relationship (the togetherness and apartness of the lovers – Juliet’s tomb). Eisenman describes how the cardo and decumanus, the old city walls, is what divides the city and separates the lovers, whereas the old Roman grid is what unites them. The Adige River is representative of the dialectical condition of togetherness and apartness between Romeo and Juliet.

TRANSLATION

The Romeo and Juliet project is a text. It is a re-write. New associations are brought forward by the superimposition of varying scales of real and fictional places. By creating an architecture that is to be read, that has a literary narrative ingrained within its structure, Eisenman challenges the convention of architectural representation. The strategy of scaling provides Romeo and Juliet with an inarticulate origin. It was not Eisenman’s goal to literally represent the text through architecture, but rather to present an architecture as text – an architecture that would allow for new possible readings and meaning through spatial expression. While maintaining the salient themes and relationships of Romeo and Juliet, Eisenman is able to create a new reading of the legendary tale.9 Bernard Tschumi also provides an example of translation from literature to architecture with Joyce’s Garden in London, 1976. The Garden uses the infamously distorted and ambiguous text of Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce as a provocation for design. By denying the traditional conception of architectural ‘program’ and employing the text itself in its place, Tschumi sought to manipulate spatial and contextual relationships, similar to how Joyce manipulated language. The project identified a singular axis from the Covent Garden to the Thames River, which was then superimposed by a surveyor’s grid that marked the locations for the architectural interventions along the path. Tschumi writes, “the point grid functions as a mediator between two mutually exclusive systems of words and stones, between the literary program and the architectural text.”10 The grid provides for a regular system of organization that is then disrupted and manipulated by the architectural interventions. Tschumi sought to create an experience using architecture and sequence that would be comparable to that of reading the book. Contextual site forces also were taken into account and represented in the project. Through these new juxtapositions and associations, the Garden provided for a new reading of both the text and the city. “Joyce’s Garden in no way attempted to reconcile the disparities resulting from the superimposition of one text on another; it avoided synthesis, instead encouraging the opposed and often conflicting logics of the different systems.” 11

9 Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors, plate 6. 10 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 194. 11 Ibid., 194.

The writings of Benjamin, Derrida, Bloomer, and Psarra, as well as the precedents of Romeo and Juliet and Joyce’s Garden, substantiate the claim that architecture can benefit from the process of translation and that it is a valuable exploration. The study and implementation of linguistic strategies that allow literature to be so successful at creating rich and meaningful experiences can shed some light on the construction of meaning and understanding that can then be harnessed and translated into an architectural experience. Sophia Psarra asks the question, “How do we understand buildings as sets of conceptual properties and perceptual experience?”12 This question suggests an exploration of not only architecture and its understanding, but also of language and representation at its very foundation. Joyce’s Garden by Bernard Tschumi. London, 1976.

12 Sophia Psarra, Architecture and Narrative, 107.

TRANSLATION

A BORGESIAN TOPOGRAPHY

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story most well-known for his fantasies that disturb our understanding of reality. The concepts of time, infinity, mirrors, and labyrinths are the most common themes explored by Borges. His work focused on the inherent ‘unreality’ that exists within the literary realm. Often integrating real people and information within the false realities that he constructs, Borges is able to blur the boundaries between reality and unreality. He fuses the familiar and the unfamiliar in a complex web that creates for an uncanny and dynamic composition. It is for these reasons that I believe the study of Borges to be a beneficial endeavor in the field of architecture.

DISMANTLE Jorge Luis Borges exists in a complex world of dreams, mirrors, and paradox. Most noted for his short stories and essays, his writing blurs established boundaries and shatters categorical delineations. Forecasting the deconstruction of the post-structuralists, Borges dismantles traditional syntax, constructing oddly familiar realities with the detritus of its own degeneration. The first impression after reading a Borges’ story is an overwhelming sense of uncanny but perhaps more importantly, a feeling of intense illumination. He does not write within the established principles of formal composition or structure, but rather seeks to throw them into question. Michel Foucault, in The Order of Things, describes the concept of tradition and established order within our culture and the dual nature that it performs. “Order is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the

A BORGESIAN TOPOGRAPHY

hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language.” 1 In the famous preface of the same work, Foucault celebrates Borges’ ability to ‘disturb’ and ‘threaten’ our preconceived perceptions between the ‘Same’ and the ‘Other’. In reference to Borges’ Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, a fictitious account of a curious taxonomy for animals that outlines incompatible categories that have been flattened and projected onto a shared surface. With categories such as ‘belonging to the Emperor’, ‘stray dogs’, ‘having just broken the water pitcher’, and ‘that from a long way off look like flies’, Foucault describes how “the thing that we apprehend in one great leap... is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought and the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.” 2 After the established and traditional components have been dismantled, it is important to note that Borges does not regress back toward traditional formal composition. The resulting narrative structure contains facts and components that do not quite connect, resulting in blurred and indefinite boundaries and a rejection of unity and synthesis. Images taken from Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, originally published in 1981.

1 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, xx. 2 Ibid., xv.

DISLOCATION The dislocation of site is an important part of Borges’ writing. He disconnects the narrative from the ground and surrounding context. The pure novelty and thoroughness of the text provides its own environment, for which we have no recourse for explanation. Borges constructs his stories in this abyss, a blank ground, where it is possible to juxtapose the incongruous elements that he presents to the reader. The displacing of context by fragments of traces and differences, prevents any sense of origin and familiar points of reference. Foucault identifies Borges’ constructions as heterotopias, describing them as ‘disturbing’ environments that “desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences.”3 Heterotopias are sites of otherness, places that are neither here nor there. Foucault outlines six principles of heterotopology:

1. Heterotopias may be born from moments of crisis or deviance. “There is probably not a single culture in the world that is not made up of heterotopias.” 2. The function of a heterotopia is adaptable and may change over time. “Over the course of history, a society may take an existing heterotopia, which has never vanished, and make it function in a very different way.” 3 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, xviii.

A BORGESIAN TOPOGRAPHY

3. Various types of spaces and elements may be juxtaposed in a single heterotopia. It has the “power of juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other.”

4. “Heterotopias are linked for the most part to bits and pieces of time.” 5. “Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that isolates them and makes them penetrable at one and the same time.”

6. On the one hand they perform the task of creating a space of illusion that reveals how all of real space is more illusory, all the locations within which life is fragmented. On the other, they have the function of forming another space, another real space, as perfect, meticulous and well-arranged as ours is disordered, ill-conceived and in a sketchy state.” Heterotopias function in direct relation to all remaining space.4 Foucault uses the example of a mirror to effectively describe his concept of heterotopias. A mirror provides a reflection of reality onto a real surface but results in an unreal or false image. It exists in two places at once. It is a part of its context while also extending beyond that context, creating an illusory, or false, space. These heterotopic environments are also sites of exception, of non-conformity, as described by Donald Kunze. They connect things that should not be connected. They are the intersections of the unthinkable. 5 The very nature of heterotopias and dislocation in general is a kind of illicit or unfamiliar experience, resulting in a sense of anxious awareness. In The Architectural Uncanny, Anthony Vidler stresses the body’s need to partake in creative and stimulating experience. Expanding on Freud’s essays on the uncanny, Vidler discusses the terms heimlich and the opposing unheimlich. The former, meaning homelike, familiar, and comforting, also implies protection from the unknown, keeping the Other out. Unheimlich, or uncanny, represents the unknown and the unfamiliar. It is Vidler’s assertion that this dividing boundary of inside/outside, known/unknown, same/other, be flattened, allowing for a blending of different and unexpected events to occur. 6

4 Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. 5 Donald Kunze, “Metalepsis of the Site of Exception.” 6 Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny.

Opposite page: Two images of Diller & Scofidio’s Blur Building from the Swiss EXPO in 2002.

A BORGESIAN TOPOGRAPHY

DIS JUNC TION The dismantling and dislocating of traditional components of order results in a disjunctive composition, full of fractures and estrangements that lead to new structures and relationships. Bernard Tschumi, in Architecture and Disjunction, outlines the foundation for a disjunctive architecture. “In architecture, such disjunction implies that at no moment can any part become a synthesis or selfsufficient totality; each part leads to another, and every construction is off-balance, constituted by the traces of another construction [or event (program)].”7 The disjunction indicates a constant and mechanical slippage and dissociation in space and time. Through the resulting disjunction, these new structural and compositional relationships lead to new readings of the city and of architecture in general. They do not unite to form independent and autonomous structures; rather, they are fragments that lead the reader away from the text itself. Tschumi goes on to outline the common denominators that would constitute an architecture of disjunction. For him, a disjunctive architecture, (and also a Borgesian architecture), would place emphasis “on dissociation, superposition, and combination, which trigger dynamic forces that expand into the whole architectural system, exploding its limits while suggesting a new definition.”8 Similar to how Borges extends beyond traditional syntax and boundaries in order to encourage new possible readings, architecture can break through its own tradition and limitation to suggest new structural experiences and understandings. Opposite page: Collages from Ben Nicholson’s Appliance House, originally published in 1990.

Ben Nicholson’s Appliance House explores methodologies that overlap with these concepts. By using collage, Nicholson is able to create multi-layered maps and complex compositions with dissimilar parts. With collage, these multiple parts create numerous layers and fields, which are additive or subtractive in nature to the final composition, and utilize Tschumi’s dissociation, superposition, and combination.

7 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 212. 8 Ibid., 212.

A BORGESIAN TOPOGRAPHY

TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius was chosen because it is a story about the take over of our world by a fictitious and fabricated ‘other’ that transforms our own systems of thought and understanding. The topics and themes explored in Tlön deal with concepts of search and discovery, of our perceptions of our context, and how those perceptions might change by use of a new system of thought.

SYNOPSIS The opening sentence of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, “I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia,” foreshadows the duplicitous transposition of ‘reality’ that is about to unfold. Considered one of Borges’ most complex and ambitious works, Tlön is a world that is constructed with all of the quintessential Borgesian elements discussed in the previous chapter. Through a casual conversation with a friend, the narrator discovers the exotic land of Uqbar, conveniently contained in a copy of the Anglo-American Encyclopedia, when his friend memorably “recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.”1 Following the discovery of Uqbar, the narrator begins on the journey of uncovering an elaborate conspiracy devised by a secret society over many generations with the intention to create an alternate universe. Years later, a First Encyclopedia of Tlön is discovered, which thoroughly describes the history, language, literature, and science of the fictitious planet. The world of Tlön is a translation of Berkeleian idealism, a universe composed solely of empirical perceptions and mental projections. What is ‘real’ only exists within one’s mind. 1 Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, 17.

TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS

The specific oddities of Tlön are elucidated in the encyclopedia, beginning with the language itself. Ursprache, the mother tongue of Tlön, contains no nouns (as a result of the declination of material existence). The dialect of the southern hemisphere consists of verbs and adverbs, resulting in an active linguistic composition depicting constantly shifting images. Borges provides the example of the translation of the sentence “the moon rose over the sea,” which, in the south, would read, “upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned.” The language of the northern hemisphere is composed of mono-syllabic adjectives, resulting in a passive linguistic structure depicting static images. In the north, the same sentence would read, “airy-clear over dark-round,” or “orange-faint-of-sky.”2 These descriptions are beautiful examples of how Borges places familiar ideas in unfamiliar settings, providing a different vantage point from which to draw observations and understandings. Jorge Luis Borges in Central Park, NY, photographed by Diane Arbus in 1969.

2 Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, 23.

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TLÖN Science: As a result of reality only existing within the constructs of the mind, psychology is the most important field of science and everything else is subordinate to it. However, these sciences are not truth-seeking endeavors, they are explorations in fiction with the goal of astonishment. Literature: All books are written by a single author who is timeless and anonymous. There is no concept of plagiarism. All fictional works follow the same plot and all philosophical works must include the thesis and antithesis or it is considered incomplete. Geometry: Tlön has two systems of geometric understanding, a visual one and a tactile one. The latter of which corresponds to our own system. The visual geometry is founded on surfaces as opposed to points. “This system rejects the principle of parallelism, and states that, as man moves about, he alters the forms which surround him.” Cause and Effect: As a result of the Tlönians’ declination of the space and objects as existing throughout time, they have no sense of cause and effect. The example of a cloud of smoke on the horizon, a forest fire, and a half-extinguished cigar would only be considered as an association of ideas. Sameness and Identity: Objects are constantly duplicated. These copies are called hrönir. “Things disappear and are duplicated according to the vicissitudes of consciousness, memory, and the imagination.” This illustrates the obliteration of the established signified and signifier. These bizarre Tlönian concepts have a sense of familiarity but a stronger sense of uneasiness – uncanny. The framework between the different story lines of the mîse en abyme begins to disintegrate when objects from Tlön appear within (contaminate) the real world. The fictitious and unsettling universe of Tlön has begun overtaking our own. Like in Tlön, reality is being affected by thought.

TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS

αA 1

RE RR

RL D

ÖN TL

Discovery of handwritten letter Discovery of mysterious objects

Discovery of Encyclopedia XI

IV AT

’S

Discovery of Encyclopedia XLVI

Mirror triggers memory of Uqbar

The diagram above illustrates the organization of the narrative. The four circles represent the four different and distinct ontological worlds: our world as a reader, the narrative world of the book, and within that book exists two more worlds Uqbar and Tlon. The horizontal ticks along the left hand side mark out the major turning points in the story and line up with other elements in the diagram. At these major turning points is usually when one enters or exits a ‘level’ of the narrative into another one. The diagram on the right, that is connected to the one above, displays the objects found in the ‘real world’ above the horizontal line. Below the line are the worlds of Tlon and Uqbar, as well as the concepts that are discovered within it.

α CREATORS

A. Borges B. Orbis Tertius CONCEPTS a. time b. language c. matter

TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS

PEOPLE C. narrator D. reader OBJECTS 1. story 2. encyclopedia XLVI 3. encyclopedia XI 4. compass 5. cone 6. encyclopedia

INCOMPATIBLE RE ALITIE S The four narrative strategies identified (double, displacement, mise-en-abyme, and contamination) are clearly evident in the story of Tlön. From the very beginning, with the introduction of the “unnerving mirror” that “troubled the depths of the corridor,” the concepts of mirroring, reflecting, doubling, and ‘other’ are already presented. The strategy of displacement and defamiliarization is exhibited through the extremely odd and uncanny environment that Borges constructs that is inhabited by familiar, everyday objects and situations. The mîse en abyme is present in the layering of narrative levels and ontological worlds. Similar to how Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas bizarrely extends beyond the frame to include the viewer and forces them to question their position within the work, Tlön has a similar reflexive effect on its readers. Contamination occurs when objects from one narrative world appear within another. The result is metalepsis - the collapse, or flattening, of the ontological levels, creating a single dimensionality contaminated by worlds previously separate. Borges’ writing is constructed with a network of allegory, paradox, and empty signifiers. In Tlön, the hrönir, with its provocation of repetitive, incessant and inexhaustible signs, alludes to Barthes’ concept of the scriptible as well as Derrida’s trace. These empty signs and symbols are representative of volatile and unstable structures. The structure is in constant alteration based on the concepts of reading, mis-reading, and re-writing. The re-writing, a notion Borges encouraged, is what destroys the possibility of any fixed signification. Jennifer Bloomer comments on this concept of re-writing, saying that “reading [Finnegans Wake] must be a rewriting, or misreading, for Joyce has waived any rights to authority with respect to meaning and representation. Ambiguity not only runs rampant; it is the rule.” This obscurity and absence of fixed structure results in a narrative that is continuously guiding the reader away. It is a circumlocution – a labyrinth. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius presents a world where everything, including culture, is a construction of the imagination. As illustrated by the description of the hrönir, the repetitively reproduced and duplicated objects that furnish the landscape of Tlön, nothing exists without some conditional, temporal, or perceptual distortion.

TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS

METALEPSIS

NARRATOLOGY Metalepsis is a narratological term first defined by Gérard Genette as a violation of the frame that sustains diegetic illusion. A “deliberate transgression of the threshold of embedding” resulting in “intrusions [that] disturb, to say the least, the distinction between (ontological) levels.” 1A very basic and simple example of metalepsis is when a narrator or character in a story directly addresses the reader or viewer. It breaks down the boundary between the narrative world of diegesis and the reader’s own reality, creating a direct connection and link between the two worlds. Werner Wolf, in his chapter “Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon: A Case Study of the Possibilities of ‘Exporting’ Narratological Concepts” in the book Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism, identifies four typical features of metalepsis. 1.) “The occurrence of metalepsis within artifacts, or performances that represent possible worlds.” 2.) “The existence of, or reference to, recognizable, logically distinct levels or possible (sub)worlds within these artifacts or performances.” These separate and distinct levels are typically ontologically differing from one another and thus have clearly distinguishable boundaries. Dualities such as ‘reality vs. fiction’ and ‘actual present vs. evoked past’ are examples. 1 Piers, “The Living Handbook of Narratology”.

METALEPSIS

“Master of the Revels” by Rene Magritte, 1926.

“Print Gallery” by M.C. Escher, 1956.

3.) “An actual transgression between, or a confusion and contamination of, the (sub)worlds involved.” 4.) “The paradoxical nature of this transgression or confusion with reference to a ‘natural’ or conventional belief in the inviolability, in ‘normal’ life and ‘normal’ fiction, of the (sub)worlds or levels involved.” 2 This ontological transgression of possible worlds results in a shocking and confusing understanding of the relationship between specific elements in the diegetic structure and also the spectator’s own relationship with the structure itself.

The examples to the left illustrate the concept of metalepsis. The top, a painting from French surrealist René Magritte depicts a figure walking along a rope that spans across separate realms. The beginning of the path exists within a framed painting hung on a wall and extends beyond the frame of the painting, allowing the figure to transgress from one place to another. MC Escher’s Print Gallery is another example of visual metalepsis. Though more complex than Magritte’s, Escher’s work is very similar. Set in a gallery-like setting, there is a framed image in a space, but this image warps and twists and overturns the familiar gallery space and results in a confusing understanding of what is actually happening. The world within the frame extends beyond its boundaries and begins to inhabit the space outside of it. 2 Wolf, “Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon”, 88.

METALEPSIS

“Las Meninas” by Diego Velazquez, 1656.

Las Meninas, painted by Diego Velazquez in 1656, is a fascinating depiction of humanity. It combines elements of classic portrait, with reality and illusion. The image, despite its level of realism in which it is painted, contains a conspicuous level of unreality. As a viewer, one is uncertain of one’s own vantage point. The mirror in the back suggests that we are viewing from the eyes of the king and queen, though its off-centered nature suggests that it might be false. It is this intentional confusion that gives the painting the strong sense of uncanny.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Ambassadorsâ&#x20AC;? by Hans Holbein, 1533.

The Ambassadors, painted by Hans Holbein in 1533, also contains some metaleptic qualities. It is a portrait of two ambassadors among a still life of thoughtful items, but the focus of the painting is drawn to the anamorphic skull in the bottom center of the composition. After the initial shock of the skull, one is guided to a separate vantage point, displacing the observer. The painting contains two separate realms, shared on a single plane.

METALEPSIS

COLL APSE Borges is a master of disintegrating narrative levels and mimetic horizontality. In his essay “Metalepsis of the Site of Exception,” Donald Kunze expands on the concept of metalepsis in regards to its use in various art forms and the potential for a metaleptic architecture. “Metalepsis is not simply an abstract condition; it is a staged collapse of spatial and temporal protocols that normally hold the audience on one side of a line and the show on the other. Violating this boundary requires the special engineering supplied by the literary forms of the fantastic, the genre peculiar to violations of normal causality, as a means of developing its specific architecture of detached virtuality.” 3 According to Donald Kunze, Borges accomplishes this ‘special engineering’ by the implementation of four recurrent narrative strategies: the double, displacement, story within a story, and contamination. The double sets up a reflection of our own reality. Displacement provides oblique views and new relationships and interpretations of our reality, while the story within a story results in a reflexivity, becoming self-conscious of one’s movements and relationship with the work. This provides the set up for contamination, the blurring of these previously separate levels, flattening everything onto a shared plane. Through these four narrative strategies, Borges is able to achieve metalepsis in his writing. It is the presence of metalepsis that gives his stories the powerful feeling of strangeness as well as the compelling sense of discovery. This thesis seeks to translate these narrative strategies into a methodology for developing an architectural experience that will provide a new and different understanding of the Borgesian world, which exists somewhere between our own and the other – between reality and virtuality. 3

Donald Kunze, “Metalepsis of the Site of Exception,” 6.

“The Ambassadors” anamorphic skull detail by Hans Holbein, 1533.

METALEPSIS

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

The narrative strategies work together in order to achieve metalepsis. Analyzing the four strategies identified in Borgesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work and translating them from a literary trope to an architectural experience is the aim of this thesis. The strategies are implemented in different areas - the form, the program, and the site - all of which create the overall experience.

PROGRAM

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

SITE

past vs. present

uncanny

fact vs. fiction

contamination

mise en abyme

the double

displacement

FORM

search/discovery

THEMES

STRATEGIES

EXPERIENCE

as DUPLICATION

as REFLECTION

THE D OUBLE

“The Other at work in our writing, and which makes the writing possible, not only causes a displacement as that necessary temporal possibility of a writing, it also spaces writing and, in doing so, makes it available to another reading.” 1 The Double and the Other are common strategies that are created from the reflection of the self and/or reality into a projected ‘other’. In classic narrative situations, the double can occur through a variety of manifestations, such as mistaken identities, substitutes, replacements, and rivalries.

OPERATIONS: : repetition : multiplication : being in-between

duplication / repetition

: mirroring : positive / negative : figure / ground : imprint / inscription

inversion of figure ground

1 Wolfreys, Readings, 41.

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

as OBLIQUE

as SHIFTING OF ORIGIN

DISPL ACEMENT

“Displacement within literature, displacement from and within itself as a supposedly univocal identity, offers a glimpse of what reading might effect.” 1 Displacement has a parallax-like nature to it, providing new contextual associations and alternative interpretations as the viewpoint is shifted. It implies concepts of defamiliarization and decontextualization as well as shifting and oblique points of view.

OPERATIONS: : parallax relationship : anamorphosis : unusual depth : altering of point of view

: shifting of viewpoint : splitting : de-contextualization

oblique

displaced path

90°

original trajectory

1 Wolfreys, Readings, 91.

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

as OVERLAPPING

as OFFSETTING

MÎSE EN ABYME

“The audience sees its own framing action rotated at 90 degrees, to a ‘lateral view,’ and in rotation the changes between the frame and the framed, the stage and the backstage, are now visible as features in the horizontal mimetic frame.” 1 The mîse en abyme places the work inside the work, allowing it to be viewed as an element composed within the mimetic frame. It facilitates the readers’ skepticism and arousal of their own relationship with the work. It is this feeling of the uncanny that heightens their awareness and perception. “Once the vertical process of spectation is rotated to its horizontal position, contamination freely flows among stories, dreams and represented realities.”

OPERATIONS: : overlap circulation : experiential layering : layers of time / history

layering

overlapping

: offset of structure : residues of process : traces

internal offset

external offset

1 Donald Kunze, “Metalepsis of the Site of Exception,” 6.

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

as DISTORTION OF FORM

as FRAGMENTED DATUM

CONTAMINATION

“Contamination can involve the invasion of reality by a dream, or a story, or competing witnesses’ accounts. It can be about the audience discovering its own forgottenrepressed procedures and presuppositions. It is the mirror in the middle.” 1 According to Kunze, contamination creates a dissensus, a conflict or interruption of the normal flow of activity within a given space. It is the disruption of order.

OPERATIONS: : defamiliarization : altered perceptions : deformation

: destabilization of observations : unreliable references : blurring of boundaries

unreliable reference points

formal distortion

fragmented datum

1 Donald Kunze, “Metalepsis of the Site of Exception,” 6.

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

AN ATLAS OF THE CITY

PROGRAM The story of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius provides the reader with a perspective into an alternate reality, presenting a very unfamiliar way of thinking. The boundaries and distinctions of these fundamentally and ontologically disconnected realities begin to disintegrate, resulting in a rich confusion and cognitive pluralism that feed off the contamination of differing realities and reasoning. The mentally rich experience of reading Tlön is translated onto an urban scale, resulting in an intervention that provides a new understanding and interpretation of the city. The intervention will act as an Atlas of the city. Referencing the narrative strategies identified in Tlön, the Atlas provides a similarly rich and pluralistic experience through an uncanny reading of the city. The Atlas is a machine for the collection and facilitation of knowledge about the world we live in. It seeks to uncover and analyze natural and complex phenomena. Investigating architecture’s role in shaping and enhancing perceptual experience, the program provides tools that allow the user to locate, codify, and interpret his/ her findings and to visualize the complex relationships between them and provide new interpretative views. It is a place for inquiry and understanding, an instrument for looking, a position for orientation, and a site for unearthing hidden and unstructured worlds.

AN ATLAS OF THE CITY

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