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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Re: ducked around ?
Date: 2004.05.11 15:03
Patrice, you say "I would say history is already written , no way to reenact it," but written history is itself a reenactment in that those that write history either 'recollect' events that they themselves already experienced or it is written by people that never even experienced the events they write about.
The whole premise of Collingwood's The Idea of History is that for historians to more accurately write history they have (at least mentally) reenact the past events.
[A few years ago Otto learned that the first psychiatric hospital of the USA, Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, is situated in 'ancient' parkland along Tacony Creek and that, although now-a-days surrounded by dense urbanism, there are still deer in the park. This immediately reminded Otto of his many years of confinement at Schloss Fürstenried and the deer in the park there. Otto visited Friends Hospital for the first time in 1999, and that is when he first met Gordon Matta-Clark who lived "across the street." Gordon subsequently introduced Otto to Eva--in the years immediately after his death Gordon lived at the dilapidating Whitemarsh Hall. Otto thereafter introduced Eva to Ludwig, knowing that they would immediately like each other since they both reenacted Versailles. And from these modest beginnings emerged the Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club.]
Also Patrice, the galaxies, etc. that we see in the night sky are all very much a view of the past (as in light years ago), and strictly speaking not at all the future.
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