Paesaggio bas jan ader ♦ benVenUTO CeLLInI FranCesCO COLOnna ♦ jOHn COnsTabLe daMIen FOresT ♦ InTernaTIOnaLe sITUaTIOnnIsTe Tara KandaraKIs ♦ aLLan KaPrOW ♦ PaUL KLee edVard MUnCH ♦ jOrGe PInILLa baÑadOs CaMILLe PIssarrO ♦ arnOLd sCHÖnberG dIeTMar sIMÒn ♦ rOberT sMITHsOn InGVar UMeÅ ♦ naTHaLIa WOLFsOn
edited by Blauer Hase
Dear Reader, what you have in your hands is a special issue, printed in a limited edition. The Paesaggio publication series just turned five years old, and we decided to celebrate its anniversary by organizing a séance – a gathering of artists who are not there, or who are not there anymore. This book thus functions as a Ouija board of sorts. We have hand-picked and arranged a collection of landscapes in form of texts, in the best spirit of the Paesaggio series. They greatly differ in form, temper and aim, and have been written in different epochs by different characters. They are presented here côte à côte, as a bunch of friends sitting on a porch, engaged in a dialogue about how to put the landscape before them into words. With our best wishes, we welcome you to the séance. Blauer Hase
p.s. This issue is kindly dedicated, with great acknowledgement, to all the artists who have contributed to the development of the Paesaggio series during these five years.
paesaggio
Nathalia Wolfson ........................................................................ 7 Jorge Pinilla Bañados .................................................................. 8 Paul Klee .................................................................. 15, 32, 37, 41 Tara Kandarakis ........................................................................ 16 John Constable .......................................................................... 17 Allan Kaprow ............................................................................ 18 Camille Pissarro ......................................................................... 20 Francesco Colonna ..................................................................... 23 Ingvar Umeå .............................................................................. 27 Edvard Munch ........................................................................... 29 Benvenuto Cellini ...................................................................... 33 Bas Jan Ader .............................................................................. 34 Arnold Schönberg ...................................................................... 38 Dietmar Simòn ........................................................................... 39 Internationale Situationniste ...................................................... 42 Robert Smithson ........................................................................ 45 Damien Forest ..................................................................... insert
I have always preferred simple things. I think that everything that concerns us remains tied to our childhood’s landscapes, which stay inside us and influence our lives wherever we are. They twist inside us and suddenly emerge, determining the results of our actions. They come out of us, like mushrooms. Substantial and unexpected nostalgias. We used to enjoy getting lost in the sand. Or running in the desert, where running doesn’t imply the movement of things around you. Sometimes we would lie in the sun. In those moments, I enjoyed trying to forget the aim of the journey I was taking. But it always turned out to be impossible. The aim itself was being there, lying in the sun.
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In einem Zimmer gefangen. Große Gefahr. Kein Ausgang. Da: ein offenes Fenster, hinauf, abstoßen: ich fliege frei, aber es regnet fein, es regnet fein, es regnet, regnet, regnet… regnet…
Caught in a room. Great danger. No exit. There: an open window, upward, jump: I am flying free, but it is drizzling, it is raining gently, it is raining, raining, raining… raining…
~ 15 ~
The Liquid Subsoil of Memory 10 minutes to make, serves 2 people. • 2 regular dark chocolate bars, 75% cocoa • 2 eggs • 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbs butter • 2 cupcake sized baking tins
» Take a large pot and boil the water. » In this pot lay another small pot and melt bain-marie the butter and the chocolate, leaving 4 cube pieces aside. » When melted add your sugar and stir. » When a little warm beat your eggs in throughly. » Butter your cupcake sized baking tins and pour in the mixture equally. » Insert 2 cube pieces of chocolate into the center and let it cool for about 15 mins. Preheat your oven to about 400° C (752° F) and put your mix in. » Let it bake no more than 10 mins (you will see it rise a little). » Remove from oven and let it cook for about 3 mins. » Hold a plate on the open end of the tin and invert it. » You should get a perfect shaped individual cake. » Serve immediately.
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Many of my Hamptstead friends may remember this ‘young lady’ at the entrance to the village. Her fate was distressing, for it is scarcely too much to say that she died of a broken heart. I made this drawing when she was in full health and beauty; on passing some times afterwards, I saw, to my grief, that a wretched board had been nailed to her side, on which was written in large letters: ‘All vagrants and beggars will be dealt with according to law’. The tree seemed to have felt the disgrace, for even then some of the top branches had withered. Two long spike nails had been driven far into her side. In another year one half became paralyzed, and not long after the other shared the same fate, and this beautiful creature was cut down to a stump, just high enough to hold the board.
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Birds
setting: A patch of woods near a lake on the campus. A road leading to a small wooden bridge over a dry brook filled with rocks. On the bridge, a patio table loaded with packages of cheap white bread and strawberry jam, a bright beach umbrella opened over this. Women in trees are widely separated and some can only hear each other. Below each woman is a mass of old furniture hung on ropes. Events: 1. Tree women swing hanging furniture, and bang trees with sticks. Wall men build wall of rocks on edge of bridge. Bread man hawks bread and jam, “Bread! Bread! Bread!,� etc., blows toy pipe whistle. 2. Bread man silent. Wall workers go to tree women, taunt them, bang with sticks and rocks on trees. Tree women drop furniture.
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3. Wall workers carry furniture to pile under edge of bridge. Tree women blow police whistles. Wall workers bomb furniture with rocks from wall. Bread man resumes hawking. 4. Wall workers leave quietly one by one when finished. Bread man continues hawking. Tree women silent after first wall worker leaves. 5. Bread man slowly bombs rubble with bits of bread, leaves when finished. Tree women rhythmically yell in unison “Yah! Yah! Yah!,� like crows, as Bread man does this, and when he leaves they are silent.
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POLIPHILO INCOMINCIA LA SUA HYPNEROTOMACHIA AD DESCRIVERE ET L’HORA, ET IL TEMPO QUANDO GLI APPARVE IN SOMNO DI RITROVARSI IN UNA QUIETA ET SILENTE PIAGIA, DI CULTO DISERTA. D’INDI POSCIA DISAVEDUTO, CON GRANDE TIMORE INTRÒ IN UNA INVIA ET OPACA SILVA. HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILI. AURORAE DESCRIPTIO. HOEBO IN QUEL’HORA manando,
che la fronte di Matuta Leucothea candidava, fora già dalle Oceane unde, le volubile rote sospese non dimonstrava, ma sedulo cum gli sui volucri caballi, Pyroo primo, et Eoo alquanto apparendo, ad dipingere le lycophe quadrige della figliola di vermigliante rose, velocissimo insequentila, non dimorava. Et corruscante già sopra le cerulee et inquiete undule, le sue irradiante come crispulavano. Dal quale adventicio in quel puncto occidua davase la non cornuta Cynthia, solicitando gli dui caballi del vehiculo suo cum il Mulo, lo uno candido et l’altro fusco, trahenti ad l’ultimo Horizonta discriminante gli Hemisperii pervenuta, et dalla praevia stella a ricentare el dì, fugata cedeva. In quel tempo quando che gli Rhiphaei monti erano placidi, né cum tanta rigidecia più l’algente et frigorifico Euro cum el laterale flando quassabondo el mandava gli teneri ramuli, et ad inquietare gli mobili scirpi et pontuti iunci et debili Cypiri et ad vexare gli plichevoli vimini, et agitare gli lenti salici, et proclinare la fragile abiete sotto gli corni di Tauro lascivianti. Quanta nel hyberno tempo spirare solea. Similmente el iactabondo Orione cessando di persequire lachrymoso, l’ornato humero Taurino delle sete sorore. In quella medesima hora che gli colorati fiori dal veniente figliolo di Hyperione, el calore ancora non temeano nocevole. Ma delle fresche lachryme de Aurora irrorati et fluidi erano et gli virenti prati. Et Halcyone sopra le aequate onde della tranquilla Malacia et flustro mare, ad gli sabuleti litori appariano di nidulare. Dunque alhora che 23
la dolente Hero ad gli derosi littori el doloroso et ingrato decessio del natante Leandro caldamente sospirava. Io Poliphilo sopra el lectulo mio iacendo, opportuno amico del corpo lasso, niuno nella conscia camera familiare essendo, se non la mia chara lucubratrice Agrypnia, la quale poscia che meco hebbe facto vario colloquio consolanteme, palese havendoli facta la causa et l’origine degli mei profundi sospiri, pietosamente suadevami al temperamento de tale perturbatione. Et avidutase de l’ora che io già dovesse dormire, dimandò licentia. Diqué negli alti cogitamenti d’amore solo relicto, la longa et taediosa nocte insomne consumando, per la mia sterile fortuna et adversatrice et iniqua stella tutto sconsolato, et sospiroso, per importuno et non prospero amore illachrymando, di puncto in puncto ricogitava, che cosa è inaequale amore. Et come aptamente amare si pole, chi non ama, et cum quale protectione da inusitati et crebri congressi assediata, et circumvenuta da hostile pugna, la fluctuante anima possi tanto inerme resistere, essendo praecipue intestina la seditiosa pugna, et assiduamente irretita di soliciti, instabili et novi pensieri. De cusì facto et tale misero stato, havendome per longo tracto amaramente doluto, et già fessi gli vaghi spiriti de pensare inutilmente, et pabulato d’uno fallace et fincto piacere ma dritamente et sencia fallo d’uno non mortale, ma più praesto divo obiecto di Polia, la cui veneranda Idea in me profundamente impressa, et più intimamente insculpta occupatrice vive. Et già le tremule et micante stelle incohavano de impallidire el suo splendore, che tacendo la lingua, quel nemico desiderato, dal quale procede questo tanto et indesinente certame, impatiente solicitando el core sauciato, et per proficuo et efficace remedio el chiamava indefesso. Il quale altro non era che innovatione del mio tormento, sencia intercalatione, crudele. Cogitabondo et la qualitate degli miselli amatori, per quale conditione per piacere ad altri dolcemente morire optano, et piacendo ad sé malamente vivere. Et el frameo disio pascere, et non altramente, de laboriose et sospirabile imaginatione. Dunque quale homo, che dapò le diuturne fatiche lasso, cusì né più né meno, sedato apena el doloroso pianto exteriore alquanto, et inclaustrato el corso delle irrorante lachryme le guance d’amoroso languore lacunate, desiderava hogimai la naturale et opportuna quiete.
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THE CONCRETE TEMPLE He opened the door and stood still in front of the sight of the mountain. This was the day he was stepping in and he felt nervous. All around him a small crowd was gathering to wish him good luck and goodbye. The village was so small that anybody noticed immediately the door’s sound of his family hut. Everyone was smiling at him as if what he was going to do was establish a strong connection between the Place and their village.
the concrete was not as uniform as it seemed from a distance, and showed the signs of being exposed to the hard weather of the mountain for so many years.
***
But next to the door, the concrete was shining in the sunlight, polished and smoothed by the hands of the ones who had entered the Place before him, and gave a symbolic goodbyeto exterior surface. Unwilling to interrupt such a long tradition, he put one hand on the cold, smooth wall surface and one on the door knob. He entered the Place.
From the outside the Place looked like a monolith of concrete about the size of two basket ball courts, a game he had learnt when visiting the City on the Selection tour. No windows, one door. He approached the building by crossing the bushes and the grass in front of his way. Once he arrived close to the building, he decided to give himself a minute to take a closer look at its surface. In some areas
Surprisingly, he entered a very small room made of wood, it seemed the entrance of a mine with tree trunks supporting the ceiling, also covered with plywood. The room, that was indeed too small for serving as an entrance for such a building, became a hallway hosting cold damp air and electric bulbs. He felt heavy and wet, remembering the sunlight he had just left for his path downwards. 27
His footsteps echoed as he entered a new space. The hall was circular and great concrete columns structured the space, forging it in the eyes of the guest. There, in the middle of the hall, waiting for him, a small Bell hanging from the tall cupola, and a wooden mallet left on a little circular table.
*** He sat on the concrete ground, waiting for somebody to show up. He had been told that he would be welcomed by the monks of the Temple, which were going to initiate him to the Path that night. But nobody was there. The Concrete was all over the place, the floor was brush polished, clean and cold, but it would still make anyone welcomed in the silence. He gazed at the twelve columns that sustained the cupola above him. Each column had a light, making the Hall bright. While he was looking round, one light went off. He found himself looking at another light, and that went off, too. Nervous, he decided not to look at the lights anymore. He was sincerely bored with waiting. He took the mallet and hit the Bell. A small sound echoed over and over, becoming, stronger in the reflections of its own harmony. All the lights went off. A great heat spread out of the Bell. Frightened to the bone, he ran away from the Bell, trying to get away from the heat in the complete darkness of the Hall. The heat was all over him. His heart beating in his throat, the Bell note constantly beating in his ears. In the darkness, it was impossible to find the exit if it was still there. Suddenly he feels the heat getting inside his body. His flesh starts to radiate a yellow light from inside.
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Radioactive, frightened, overheated, he faints on the cold concrete ground. Outside, the gathered villagers, were waiting for the signal. In the cold night, the silence was forced by the freezing air and by the long wait. A great beam of yellow light, came out of the Place, piercing the night and the cold. The heat of the beam awoke the waiting villagers who cheered for the event with great joy. The yellow beam reached the stars and disappeared. The silence was back and so the cold. The great beam bounced back from the stars to the Place producing a long clap of thunder inside the Concrete Temple.
Traum Ich finde mein Haus: leer, ausgetrunken den Wein, abgegraben den Strom, entwendet mein Nacktes, – gelöscht die Grabschrift. Weiß in weiß.
Dream I find my house : empty, gone all the wine, the river diverted stolen my naked joy, – eradicated the epitaph. White in white.
~ 32 ~
The Simplon Pass (2,005 m) is a high mountain pass between the Pennine Alps and the Lepontine Alps in Switzerland. It connects Brig in the canton of Valais with Domodossola in Piedmont (Italy).
Probably the Diveria in the Val Divedro, an Alpine river which flows through Switzerland and Italy.
On the state road of the Simplon, just beyond San Giovanni’s tunnel, stands the Roman bridge over the Diveria. It is called the “new� bridge, because it was built in 1300 a.C. to replace the Augustan bridge destroyed by a flood of the river, the remains of which are still visible. The bridge forms a perfectly round arch with cobbled paving.
From its source at an elevation of 2,005 metres (6,578 ft) in Swiss territory near the Simplon Pass, the river flows through the hamlet Egga to the village of Simplon. From here it follows a south-easterly course through the Gondo gorge to the municipality of Zwischbergen. Turning to the east it enters Italy; it passes Ricegno, Mognata, Campeglia and Crevoladossola where it enters the Toce.
Crystalline hoarfrost is of two classes, one of which assumes columnar forms and the other of which assumes tabular, or platelike, forms. Generally, the crystals of these two classes do not occur together on a single night; rather, one or the other will greatly predominate. Columnar or needlelike forms are found at the higher subfreezing temperatures, whereas plate crystals predominate under colder conditions. In their pristine state, both forms are hexagonal crystals.
The Boy Who Plunged Over Niagara
1. Just after 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 9, 1960, James Honeycutt came off the night shift at a Niagara Falls hydro-electric project. Sleep, though, was not on his mind – not on a fine summer morning with a trim new outboard motorboat tied to the dock at Lynch’s Trailer Court, where he lived. Honeycutt was 40, an affable man who had had to leave his family in Raleigh, N.C., when he’d gone north to work on the power project. He found the week-ends long and lonely. so, after breakfast, he drove to the home of Frank Woodward, one of the carpenters on his crew. Over coffee Honeycutt sprang his surprise; How would the Woodward youngsters, 17-year-old Deanne, and her 7-year-old brother, Roger, like to go for a boat ride? Deanne, awed by the tumultuous river, which she had seen only once, was reluctant. But with little Roger jumping with glee, and her mother urging her to go along – “You’ll have a chance for a swim at Lynch’s later – Deanne changed into a bathing suit, and the three set out. Soon Honeycutt was easing his green aluminum runabout away from the Lynch dock, his pride and inexperience both obvious in the cautious way he maneuvered clear of other boats around the landing. At midstream he turned the sleek 4¼-meter craft down-river and offered the tiller to Roger. His face grinning above the brilliant orange life jacket he wore, the boy took hold. Deanne, in the bow, relaxed: if Mr. Honeycutt was confident enough to let Roger steer, what was she worried about? When they passed under the Grand Island Bridge, gateway to the American 34
side of the falls, she waved gaily at the cars passing far overhead. John R. Hayes, a trucker and special police officer on a holiday tour, had crossed the bridge an hour earlier. He and his wife had come to Niagara Falls for the week-end and now, like the thousands of other tourists, were snapping pictures and marveling at the incredible power of the famous cataracts. 2. Past noon, they crossed the foot-bridge to Goat Island, which splits the Niagara into two sets of leaping rapids, its sheer northern end overlooking the awesome cleft into which both the American and the Horseshoe falls plunge. Down-river from the falls, so far below him that it looked like a toy in a bathtub, Hayes could see a vessel docked under the Canadian cliffs. It was one of the two Maids of the Mist, ships that take turns cruising up into the “Shoe.” There, within 45 meters of the wet-black rocks at the very foot of the Horse-shoe Falls, surrounded by wild-flying spray and deafened by the roar of the torrent, tourists come face to face with one of nature’s great extravagances. Now, at not quite 12:30, Capt. Clifford Keech, of Maid of the Mist II, was loading up for his seventh cruise of the day. From the wheelhouse he watched as Mate Murray Hartling collected tickets from the 65 passengers. Captain Keech couldn’t know it, but what would soon be hailed as “the Miracle of Niagara” was in the making. The Niagara River is, in effect, an ever-narrowing trough, draining the North American
mid-continent. Plunging north with the overflow from Lake Erie and the three Great Lakes to the west, it drops a precipitous 99 meters in its 58-kilometer length, flings 3,117,787 liters of water a second over the 49-meter falls and swirls through the world’s most treacherous rapids before spending its fury in the vastness of Lake Ontario. Its violence has always attracted daredevils. In steel drums or padded barrels, at least seven stunters have gone over the Horseshoe. Only four survived. Suicides find in the falls the savage end they crave. Scarcely a month passes that one isn’t whisked over the brink. Dashed to the rocks below, thrust into wild eddies and currents, their broken bodies have almost invariably been cast to the surface at the Maid of the Mist landing exactly four days later. James Honeycutt, again at the tiller, seemed unconcerned as the little outboard, now 6½ kilometers downstream from Lynch’s and only 1500 meters or thereabouts above the falls, came bouncing past the long breakwater that evens the river’s flow. Deanne, though, was getting nervous. This was not the broad, friendly river they’d started out on. It was roiled, leaping turbulently along the pronounced downhill pitch, breaking white against glistening rocks. The thunder of pounding water grew louder in her ears. 3. About this time, a Goat Island sight-seeing guide was telling a group of tourists that the control structure out on the river was the point beyond which nothing could keep being swept over the falls. One tourist gestured at the little green boat and said, “What about that?” The guide ran for a telephone. But it was already too late. While the runabout almost abreast of Goat Island, Honeycutt finally brought the bow around. For one tenuous moment, the 7½-horsepower motor beat against the remorseless current, barely making headway. Then, with a piercing whine, it began to race futilely; the propeller pin had sheared. As the boat swept downstream stern-first, Honeycutt lunged for the oars. Though he pulled frantically, he hardly slowed the boat’s backward rush. He yelled to Deanne, “Put on the life jacket!” The girl’s fingers were stiff as she laced tight the
boat’s only other jacket. In the stern, face suddenly turned white, Roger called, “Deedee, I’m scared.” He began stumbling toward her. “No!” she screamed, terrified that he would tip them over. “Stay there, Roger! We’ll be swimming at Lynch’s soon.” “No, we’re going to drown!” he cried. But he sat down and, clinging to the thwart, began to sob quietly. They were in full rapids now, the water solid white and tearing them toward the falls. Smashing off a rock, then caught by a vicious rip, the stern flew straight up. “Hang on!” Honeycutt cried out, but there was nothing to hang onto. He and Roger were thrown over Deanne’s head. Then the water snatched at her. She grabbed for the overturned hull, but it slid from beneath her fingers. Honeycutt grabbed Roger’s arm, fighting to hold the boy’s head out of the water. But the furious currents tore them apart. The rapids wrenched Roger down, spun him around. Then all at once he was free, thrust out over the edge of the falls, dropping through space. 4. John Hayes saw the boat turn over. He and his wife had walking down the steps toward Terrapin Point, the railed tip of Goat Island that looks out over the lip of the Hoseshoe. “Look!” he shouted, and went racing for the river. As he ran, he spied Deanne Woodward’s vivid life jacket. He dashed upriver, past dozens of stunned tourists, trying to get closer to her. Above the roar of the cataract he heard her crying out for help. He leaned over the guard rail so she could see him. “Here!” he called out. “Hey, girl! Swim over here!” Deanne saw him, but shook her head hopelessly. She was unable to make any real progress. “Try!” Hayes called. He ran downriver to get ahead of her, and leaned farther over the rail. “Try!” The current was sweeping her inexorably closer to the falls’ jagged rim. Hayes stretched his arm out, though the girl was still far beyond reach. Deanne was at the very edge of exhaustion. Her legs ached from being pounded against the rocks. “Help me!” she pleaded with Hayes, the thunder
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of death a bare six meters away. Quickly he climbed over the guard rail. He was only 30 centimeters above the rushing water, clinging to the rail with one hand. he cried out, “You got to try, hear? Try!” The sharpness of his voice stirred a last, hidden resource in Deanne. Doggedly she buried her face in the water and pulled once more against its clutch. When she looked up again, Hayes was almost directly above her. Desperately she cast out as she went sweeping by – and caught his thumb. Hayes’s hand closed around hers. His foot wedged behind the rail, the weight of the girl and the awful force of the rapids tearing on his fingers, Hayes thought they would both go over. He called for help. A man broke out of the cluster of spell-bound sightseers.Vaulting the rail, John A. Quattrochi, another tourist, leaned down and grabbed Deanne’s wrist. For a long moment the three hung on, straining. Then the two men pulled the girl from the rushing water and lifted her over the guard rail. Deanne Woodward had been just three meters from the falls, closer than anyone had ever come before being plucked to safety. As she lay on the ground, she grasped, “My brother! My brother’s still in there. Please save him!” But Quattrochi had seen Roger go over the falls. Softly he said, “Say a prayer for your brother.” 5. Maid of the Mist II, its decks heaving, drenched by spray and surrounded by thunder, was almost to its turning point just below Horseshoe Falls. At the wheel Captain Keech peered into the chaos of white water. When, at 12:52, he spotted a bobbing orange object dead ahead, he craned forward in amazement. He barked into his shipto-shore phone : “This is Keech. There’s a kid in a life jacket floating around up here and – maybe I’m crazy, but I think he’s alive!” Though Roger Woodward was indeed alive – the first human being to survive a drop over Niagara Falls without elaborate protection – his peril was not yet past. He was drifting close to the huge port of an Ontario hydro plant and might yet be dragged into the opening. The Maid came about and bore down on the
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boy from upstream, using the full reverse power of both engines to hold a position against the driving current. From the starboard bow, Mate Hartling and deckhand Jack Hopkins threw a life preserver toward the tiny figure in the water. It fell short. They hauled it in and threw again. On the third try the life preserver bobbed to within an arm’s length of the thrashing boy. He crawled up onto it. A moment later, Roger Woodward lay on the deck of the Maid, shivering under the blankets piled on him. “Please find my sister,” he said. “She and Mr. Honeycutt fell in the water, too.” 6. An emergency launch, responding to Keech’s call, searched the swirling caldron for half an hour, but found only the auxiliary gas tank, all that was ever recovered of Honeycutt’s runabout. Meanwhile, high up on Goat Island, hundreds had seen the boy in the orange life jacket pulled aboard the Maid of the Mist. “They’ve got your brother,” Hayes told Deanne just before she was whisked off to the hospital. “I think he’s okay.” “Thank you, God,” said the girl, and closed her eyes. Roger was taken to a Canadian hospital, where an hour later his mother and father came to tell him that Deanne, too, had been rescued. In a few days both youngsters, incredibly uninjured except for superficial bruises, were released. How did Roger Woodward survive ? River men reason that Roger’s lightness held him atop the water’s surge ; that as he was thrust over the brink, he flew along and down the crest as though going over a slide, thus avoiding the deadly rocks and turbulence at the falls’ base. Though he had dropped 49 meters at an estimated 120 kilometers an hour, his life preserver had forced him back to the surface before he lost consciousness. But the mighty falls did not go completely unappeased. On Wednesday, July 13, the body of James Honeycutt turned up at the Maid of the Mist landing. It was four days, almost to the hour, from the moment he was swept to his death.
Water Waves on the water A boat on the waves On the boat-deck, a woman On the woman, a man.
Wasser darauf Wellen, darauf ein Boot, darauf ein Weib, darauf ein Mann.
~ 37 ~
D To the Wharfs d Everybody in town had relatives on one of the four boats. Everybody, whether he was fearing for the life of a relative, a friend, or only a member of the little community – everybody was waiting with great apprehension for news of the fate of the boats, now missing for ten days. Other boats, smaller and larger ones, which had escaped the terrific storm, sailors and passengers they had picked up, reported about the great tragedy of the ocean that had cost the lives of so great a number of people and had caused enormous losses to ship owners and insurance companies. Hope had almost entirely vanished. Only a few people still believed in the safe return of their relatives. All prayed in churches for the unfortunate victims of the sea. It was late in the afternoon, the sun already half down, when an elderly man, running down Main Street, cried in French with all his power: «The boats, I see them, they are coming home!» In a few seconds the streets were crowded with people, all running in one direction, to the ports, to the wharfs. They all cried aloud in French: «Aux quais! Les vaisseaux sont retournes. Lis se trouvent aux quais!» Or in English: «To the wharfs! The boats are returning. They are already at the wharfs – aux quais!» – O. K.
C 38 c
Weh mir unter dem Druck der wiederkehrenden Stunde, in der Mitte allein, in der Tiefe der schleichende Wurm.
Woe is me weighed down by the hour returning, alone in the centre, the worm prowling down in the deep.
~ 41 ~
formulary for a new urbanism SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY
You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The hacienda must be built.
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That’s lost. We know how to read every promise in faces – the latest stage of morphology. The poetry of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the latest state of humor and poetry:
All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.
Shower Bath of the Patriarchs Meat Cutting Machines Notre Dame Zoo Sports Pharmacy Martyrs Provisions Translucent Concrete Golden Touch Sawmill Center for Functional Recuperation Sainte Anne Ambulance Cafe Fifth Avenue Prolonged Volunteers Street Family Boarding House in the Garden Hotel of Strangers Wild Street
These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them by giving them a new meaning. Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines. The various attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain inadequate. Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary architecture in particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate, storyless, soothes the eye. Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found – while the promised land of syntheses continually recedes into the distance. Everyone wavers between the emotionally still alive past and the already dead future.
And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police station on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free placement center on the Quai des Orfevres. The artificial flowers on Sun Street. The Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going Cafe. The Hotel of the Epoch.
We will not work to prolong the mechanical civilizations and frigid architecture that ultimately lead to boring leisure. We propose to invent new, changeable decors…
And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the insane, in the last evenings of summer. To explore Paris.
Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons by air conditioning; night and summer are losing their charm and dawn is disappearing. The man of the cities thinks he has escaped from cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of his dream life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized in it.
And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. Now that’s finished.
The latest technological developments would make possible the individual’s unbroken contact
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with cosmic reality while eliminating its disagreeable aspects. Stars and rain can be seen through glass ceilings. The mobile house turns with the sun. Its sliding walls enable vegetation to invade life. Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in the morning and return to the forest in the evening. Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality, of engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a modulation producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum of human desires and the progress in realizing them. The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a means of action. The architectural complex will be modifiable. Its aspect will change totally or partially in accordance with the will of its inhabitants… Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and incontrovertable mythical exemplars. The appearance of the notion of relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL aspect of the next civilization (although I’m not satisfied with that word; say, more supple, more “fun”). On the bases of this mobile civilization, architecture will, at least initially, be a means of experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying life, with a view to a mythic synthesis.
A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is hypnotized by production and conveniences sewage system, elevator, bathroom, washing machine. This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has overshot its ultimate goal – the liberation of man from material cares – and become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit. It has become essential to bring about a complete spiritual transformation by bringing
to light forgotten desires and by creating entirely new ones. And by carrying out an intensive propaganda in favor of these desires. We have already pointed out the need of constructing situations as being one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be founded. This need for absolute creation has always been intimately associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space… Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He was grappling with the problems of absences and presences in time and space. We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the time of a first visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits, provoke an indefinable impression: as a result of this sighting backward in time, the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel. More precisely: although the quality of the impression generally remains indefinite, it nevertheless varies with the nature of the removed object and the importance accorded it by the visitor, ranging from serene joy to terror. (It is of no particular significance that in this specific case memory is the vehicle of these feelings; I only selected this example for its convenience.) In Chirico’s paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates a full-filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future possibilities of such architecture and its influence on the masses. Today we can have nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such blueprints to its so-called museums. This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities specifically established for this purpose, cities assembling – in addition to the facilities necessary for a minimum of comfort and security – buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing desires, forces, events past, present and to come. A rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis, into architectural expression becomes more and more urgent as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
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capitals: they symbolized all the evil forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have no need to harbor real dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It would be difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles, alarm bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures, power-driven mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as it is blindinglylit during the day by an intensive use of reflection. At the center, the “Square of the Appalling Mobile.” Saturation of the market with a product causes the product’s market value to fall: thus, as they explored the Sinister Quarter, the child and the adult would learn not to fear the anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by them.
Everyone will live in his own personal “cathedral,” so to speak. There will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to travelers… This project could be compared with the Chinese and Japanese gardens of illusory perspectives [en trompe l’oeil] – with the difference that those gardens are not designed to be lived in all the time – or with the ridiculous labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the entry to which is written (height of absurdity, Ariadne unemployed): Games are forbidden in the labyrinth. This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary assemblage of castles, grottos, lakes, etc. It would be the baroque stage of urbanism considered as a means of knowledge. But this theoretical phase is already outdated. We know that a modern building could be constructed which would have no resemblance to a medieval castle but which could preserve and enhance the Castle poetic power (by the conservation of a strict minimum of lines, the transposition of certain others, the positioning of openings, the topographical location, etc.).
The principal activity of the inhabitants will be the CONTINUOUS DÉRIVE. The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in complete disorientation… Later, as the gestures inevitably grow stale, this dérive will partially leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation… The economic obstacles are only apparent. We know that the more a place is set apart for free play, the more it influences people’s behavior and the greater is its force of attraction. This is demonstrated by the immense prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas – and Reno, that caricature of free love – although they are mere gambling places. Our first experimental city would live largely off tolerated and controlled tourism. Future avant-garde activities and productions would naturally tend to gravitate there. In a few years it would become the intellectual capital of the world and would be universally recognized as such.
The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life. Bizarre Quarter – Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation) – Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children) – Historical Quarter (museums, schools) – Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) – Sinister Quarter, etc. And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in accordance with the relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a planetary garden comparable to that which the astronomer Thomas wants to establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the inhabitants a consciousness of the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to have somewhere to live in peace, and I think here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty in innocence that appeals more to me every day. The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those hellholes that many peoples once possessed in their
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Some Void Thoughts On Museums “Tomb furniture achieved apparently contradictory ends in discarding old things all the while retaining them, much as in our storage warehouses, and museum deposits, and antiquarian storerooms.” George Kubler, The Shape of Time
History is a facsimile of events held together by finally biographical information. Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time. History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody’s own vacancy. The museum undermines one’s confidence in sense data and erodes the impression of textures upon which our sensations exist. Memories of ‘excitement’ seem to promise something, but nothing is always the result. Those with exhausted memories will know the astonishment. Visiting a museum is a matter of going from void to void. Hallways lead the viewer to things once called ‘pictures’ and ‘statues.” Anachronisms hang and protrude from every angle. Themes without meaning press on the eye. Multifarious nothings permute into false windows (frames) that open up into a variety of blanks. Stale images cancel one’s perception and deviate one’s motivation. Blind and senseless, one continues wandering around the remains of Europe, only to end in that massive deception ‘the art history of the recent past’. Brain drain leads to eye drain, as one’s sight defines emptiness by blankness. Sightings fall like heavy objects from one’s eyes. Sight becomes devoid of sense, or the sight is there, but the sense is unavailable. Many try to hide this perceptual falling out by calling it abstract. Abstraction is everybody’s zero but nobody’s nought. Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum. Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues. Art settles into a stupendous inertia. Silence supplies the dominant chord. Bright colors conceal the abyss that holds the museum together. Every solid is a bit of clogged air or space. Things flatten and fade. The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.
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Credits: (p. 7) Excerpt from Substantial and unexpected nostalgias Nathalia Wolfson, 2001. (p. 8) untitled (sigh) Jorge Pinilla Bañados, 2010. (p. 15) Paul Klee, 1926. (p. 16) The Liquid Subsoil of Memory Tara Kandarakis, 1985. (p. 17) excerpt from Memoirs of the life of John Constable, esq., R.A., composed chiefly of his letters, edited by Charles Robert Leslie, London 1845. (p. 18) Birds For participants only. Commissioned by the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale, performed February 16, 1964. Excerpt from Allan Kaprow, Some Recent Happenings, originally published in 1966 as a Great Bear Pamphlet by Something Else Press. (p. 20) Excerpts from Camille Pissarro, Letters to his son Lucien, New York 1943. (p. 23) Excerpts from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse docet. Atque obiter plurima scitu sane quam digna commemorat, first published by Aldus Manutius in Venezia, 1499. (p. 27) The Concrete Temple Ingvar Umeå, 1985. (pp. 29, 30, 31) mm n 29, p. 1-3, from Edvard Munch’s Writings, http://emunch.no/ English translation © Francesca M. Nichols. [p. 29]“On the whole / Art comes / from one human being’s compulsion /
to communicate to / another – / All means are equally / appropriate – / In Painting as in literature one often / confuses the means with / the goal – Nature is the / means not the goal – / If one can achieve / something by changing / nature – then one must / do so – / In an intense state of / mind” [p. 30] “a landscape will make / a certain impression on / one – by depicting / this landscape one / will arrive at an / image of one’s / own mood – / it is this / mood that is the main thing / – Nature is merely / the means – / – Whether the picture / resembles nature is / irrelevant –” [p. 31] “To explain a / picture is impossible / – It is precisely / because one cannot / explain it in any other / way than it has been / painted – / One can / only give a little hint / of what / one was aiming at / – I do not believe in / art which has not been forced / into being by a man’s / compulsion to open his heart/ All art like / music must be created / with one’s lifeblood – / Art is one’s lifeblood” (p. 32) Traum Paul Klee, 1914. (p. 33) Excerpt from Benvenuto Cellini, Vita di Benvenuto di Maestro Giovanni Cellini fiorentino, scritta, per lui medesimo, in Firenze, 1558-1562. (p. 34) Lawrence Elliott, “The Boy Who Plunged Over Niagara”, Reader’s Digest (March 1972). Quoted in Bas Jan Ader’s performance The boy who fell over Niagara Falls, 1972. (p. 37) Paul Klee, 1906. (p. 38) To the Wharfs Excerpt from Arnold Schönberg, Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, New York 1950.
(p. 39) Glücklichen Zufall Dietmar Simòn, 1999. (p. 41) Paul Klee, 1913. (p. 42) Ivan Chtcheglov, Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau, written in 1953 under the name Gilles Ivain. Included in the first issue of Internationale Situationniste, Paris, June 1958. (p. 45) Text excerpted from Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, 2nd Edition, edited by Jack Flam, The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; University of California Press, LTd. London, England; 1996. Text © Holt Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VaGa, New York, NY. (insert) Greetings from/farewell Damien Forest, 2015.
♦♦♦ Editing: Blauer Hase Paesaggio’s graphic blueprint was conceived in 2010 by Giulia Marzin Blauer Hase is: Mario Ciaramitaro Riccardo Giacconi - Giulia Marzin Daniele Zoico © 2015 Blauer Hase for his edition www.blauerhase.com
Paesaggio is a publication series that began in May 2010. Each issue presents a collection of artist works that respond to a request for textual contributions of landscapes that avoid the use of images. A project by Blauer Hase. of 50