Paul Bai — A brief introduction to the concept of Third Spatial Position

A Brief Introduction to the Concept of Third Spatial Position

Paul Bai

Australia, an island continent, surrounded by the sea, is often regarded as the “bottom” of the world. Distanced from the majority of countries, the geographical isolation and the country’s vast open space gave rise to my awareness of spatiality and the meaning it represents. As a Chinese migrant, the physical and psychological distances between “old home” and “new country” were the primary factors in my adjustment to Australia, and this re-adjustment has been an ongoing process that keeps me from committing to the dichotomised concepts of ‘here’ or ‘there’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’.

For some years I have found myself in a position that is between China and Australia, relating to both places, but also not belonging to either. To this extent, national boundary and spatial identity are secondary to my interpretation of space and its meaning. The personal adaptation of a spatial independence has assisted in my maintaining certain non-conformist and critical attitudes towards general and conventional spatial interpretations and representations. I view my spatial position as a constant process of defning and redefning, and the result of my migrant experience has affected the notions such as in-between and ‘otherness’ in my conscious self-positioning. This aspect of my ‘position’ has developed into the investigation of the Third Spatial Position in my art practice. This essay briefy discusses the notion of Third Spatial Position that is critically open to other spatial interpretations and not solely adherent to the binary debates. Unlike artists driven by the postcolonial political motivations, I do not desire to reverse the values of a dichotomy or to supplant one of its terms. I use the term ‘third’ because I identify with a spatial position that is entirely alternative to the conventional dichotomised spatial terms such as here/there, inside/outside, central/marginal, physical/conceptual etc.

In his essay Thirdspace: Towards a New Consciousness of Space and Spatiality (2009), American political geographer Edward Soja states:

The spatial dimension of our lives has never been of greater practical and political relevance than it is today. Whether we are attempting to deal with the increasing intervention of electronic media in our daily routines; seeking ways to act politically to deal with the growing problems of poverty, racism, sexual discrimination, and environmental degradation; or trying to understand the multiplying geopolitical conficts around the globe, we are becoming increasingly aware that we are, and always have been, intrinsically spatial beings, active participants in the social constructions of our embracing spatialities. Perhaps more than ever before, a strategic awareness of this collectively created spatiality and its social consequences has become a vital part of making both theoretical and practical sense of our contemporary life worlds at all scales, from the most intimate to the most global. 1

If art should refect the social and political conditions of our time, and space is becoming more than ever crucial to the contemporary social and political changes, then it is equally important the focus on spatiality is particularly relevant to contemporary art practice. From the fundamental level, the focuses on spatiality offers an insertion point that allows us to rationally examine the relationship between representation and the audience occupied reality. As for much needed art criticism in our contemporary times, the understanding of spatiality in art practice can certainly indicate the level of communication between the artwork’s conceptual ambition, physical realisation and its contextualisation with the actual environment.

To explain the concept of Third Spatial Position, frst I will briefy introduce a couple of important fndings by the French theorist Henri Lefebvre on the notion of space and its representation. In his seminal book The Production of Space (1991), Lefebvre proposes the space we perceive is the product of social development, designed to meet the needs of political dominance, institutional requirement, economical demand and religious belief. To Lefebvre, space is not a natural entity, but a concept that is realised through the artifcial constructions in nature. These constructions, i.e. building, city, map or painting, allow spatiality to manifest through lines, boundaries and perspectives, while we are viewing and perceiving the dimensionalities of the constructs, we are also sensing the existence of space.

Though Lefebvre does not satisfy with such a conclusion, as the conceptual and physical aspects of space together form a binary relationship, such dichotomy is not suffcient to explain the spatial construction to its full extent. Rather it confnes spatiality to the abstract representations, on both conceptual and physical levels. Lefebvre criticises such binary logic as the ‘double illusion’ in spatial recognition.

If it is true (social) space is a (social) product, how is this fact concealed? The answer is: by a double illusion, each side of which refers back to the other, reinforces the other, and hides behind the other. These two aspects are the illusion of transparency on the one hand and the illusion of opacity, or ‘realistic’ illusion, on the other. 2

According to Lefebvre:

The illusion of transparency goes hand in hand with a view of space as innocent, as free of traps or secret places. Anything hidden or dissimulated – and hence dangerous – is antagonistic to transparency, under whose rein everything can be taken in by a single glance from that mental eye which illuminates whatever it contemplates … an encrypted reality becomes readily decipherable thanks to the intervention frst of speech and then of writing. 3

To this extent, a spatial reality is supported through visibility, language and writing, thus the mental overwrites the actual. On the other hand the “realistic illusion’ is “the illusion of natural simplicity … the mistaken belief that ‘things’ have more of an existence than the ‘subject’, his thought and his desires.” 4 Edward Soja also sees the ‘realistic illusion’ as one that ‘ … Reduces spatial reality to empirically defnable spatial practices, material or natural objects, to the geometry of things in themselves.’ 5

This powerful critique on spatial double illusion has demonstrated the deceptive nature of both conceptual space and physical space in spatial interpretation, and initiates the introduction of a third option into the study of spatiality that would steer spatial interpretation away from the pitfall of double illusion.

To break out of the deadlock of double illusion, Lefebvre introduces the spatial triad that encompasses both physical and conceptual spaces and also includes a third element – ‘lived space’, the space that is actually experienced by the inhabitants.

Space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’ … It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. 6

The ‘lived space’ is not an actual space but is the actual experience of the space, where participants can make decisions about their interactions in the space and how they perceive the spatial construct. Edward Soja furthers Lefebvre’s analysis and amplifes the concept of ‘lived space’, in doing so Lefebvre’s spatial triad turns into a reconstitution, which Soja termed as the Thirdspace:

Thirdspace epistemologies can now be briefy re-described as arising from the sympathetic deconstruction and heuristic reconstitution of Firstspace (physical) –Secondspace (conceptual) duality, another example of what I have called thirding–as--Othering. Such thirdings is designed not just to critique Firstspace and Secondspace modes of thought but also to reinvigorate their approaches to spatial knowledge with new possibilities heretofore unthought of inside the traditional spatial disciplines. 7

To Soja, the Thirdspace not only includes both physical and conceptual modes of spatial thinking but also opens to the ‘unknowable’, like the ‘lived space’, the Thirdspace is an indeterminate space, a negotiating space, a spatial context that is open and critical, where people make the decisions and changes.

As the ‘lived space’ and Thirdspace both intend to break up the traditional spatial dualism, this is very close to the role of the ‘Third Spatial Position’ that I try to establish and identify in art practice. My proposed term of Third Spatial Position is derived from Edward Soja’s spatial term Thirdspace. To name it Third Spatial Position is because such a notion accentuates the concepts of Thirdspace, to assume a position beyond the traditional spatial dialectics, and offers the ‘other than’ option. As this other is based on neither of the binary options, the third position still paradoxically relates to the binary, together they form an open yet critical trialectical spatial relationship.

The third spatial position will keep the spatial representation alive and also critical to any established defnitions. Being labelled as a ‘position’ refects that the Third Spatial Position doesn’t necessarily have a designated location to operate within, it rather is an intellectual position to recognise the options and possibilities beyond the existing dichotomised spatial defnitions. As the Third Spatial Position in my current research is based on the in-between spatial moment, the characteristics of third spatial position can be described as: tentative, transitional, situational, indeterminate and open.

The turn to spatiality is not a new trend in art, as British art historian Peter Osborne observes, the shift from the time focus to spatial relations has mainly been used as in the 1980s and early 1990s to distinguish postmodernist from the modernist theory. 8 Here I would like to emphasis that the 1960s Minimalism art movement already moved away from the modernist spatial isolations, and initiated spatial relations with the exhibition context. In other words, the postmodernist practice already started along with the artistic developments in the 1960s.

In his book The Return of the Real (1996) Hal Foster claims that minimalism does not mark the end of the modernist art, rather is ‘a paradigm shift toward postmodernist practices.’ 9 Anne Rorimer also in New Art in the 60s and 70s – Redefning Reality (2001) describes the art of late 1960s and 70s as: ‘Crossing the divide between the modernist belief in the self-contained object and postmodernist attention to relational, non-autonomous, multifaceted open-endedness.’ 10

If the modernist artwork can be seen as isolated from the external spatial contexts and becoming the object in space, to break out of the transcendental and isolationist shortcomings of modernist art practice, Minimalism in the 60s made the proactive ‘spatial turn’, directly connecting artwork to its surrounding space. Through spatial juxtaposition and integration, the minimalists created confusion and ambiguity between content and context, which are also the traits of postmodernist art practice until today. Conceptual Art practitioners favour to dematerialise the physical existence of artwork, as the work’s fnal presentation often manifests through language and text, and artwork’s spatial concerns consequentially also become conceptual. At least from the spatial perspective, the Minimalism and Conceptual Art movements of 1960s and 70s that subsequently evolved as the postmodernist art might distinguish their practice by celebrating the tensions between physical and conceptual, abstract and real, onside and offside, yet they still limit their spatial understanding within the spatial dichotomies and double illusions that both Lefebvre and Soja want to break.

By focusing on the in-between space I want to identify a spatial moment as the Third Spatial Position, which is more of a conceptual position than the physical position in space – although in practice it often recourses to a physical context for demonstration purposes. The binary debates are only secondary to the argument of the Third Spatial Position — as it opens the way to the spatial interpretation that is beyond the existing spatial dialectics. The Third Spatial Position holds no determinations, though offers the spatial moment, or a conceptual position beside the established spatial binaries. It is the reminder of the preexisting context that precedes any spatial construction, a non-place that we must have in any spatial interpretations and structures. Through co-existing with the binary elements of a structure, the third spatial position will keep the representation open and critical.

The natural world that precedes human inhabitation is not spatially defned, it doesn’t have up and down, left or right, inside or outside etc. it is a reality that is hidden by the later spatial structures, and it is crucial and fundamental to the spatial construction. Therefore this hidden reality should be remembered in the spatial representation and subsequent analysis. Without acknowledging this precondition of spatial construction, the spatial representation will always be trapped in the binary debates such as physical/ conceptual, inside/outside, centre and peripheral etc. The Third Spatial Position I try to establish uncovers and identifes the precondition of spatial construction. By emphasising its neutral and indeterminate status within the spatial structure, I would argue this precondition should be seen as an entity of its own, and one that can coexist within the spatial structure among other binary elements. The non-committing nature of the Third Spatial Position allows us the time and interval to review the established spatial structure, to consider or contemplate before making a commitment. We should always remember there is ‘no space’ before space.

Notes:

1. Edward Soja, “Thirdspace: Towards a New Consciousness of Space and Spatiality”, in Communicating in the Third Space, Karin Ikas and Gerhard Wagner ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), p.49. 2. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith trans., (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991, p.27. 3.Ibid., p.28. 4.Ibid., p.29. 5. Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p.157. 6. Lefebvre, op. cit., p.39. 7. Peter Osborne, “Non-places and the Spaces of Art”, The Journal of Architecture No.6, 2001 pp.183-192. 8. Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: the avant-garde at the end of the century, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p.36. 9. Anne Rorimer, New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefning Reality, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), p.275.