2005.08.05 14:36
Will Your Work Be Remembered?
Since memory is really a mental reenactment, perhaps the better question is, "Will your work will be reenacted?"
Be careful though, because reenactment without giving credit to the source is plagiarism.
A bit of my work was 'remembered' by David R. Marshall in "Piranesi, Juvarra, and the Triumphal Bridge Tradition" (in The Art Bulletin, June 2003) when in footnote 155 Marshall states, "...but the Area Martis through to the Nympheum Neronis, including the Templum Martis is a hieroglyph of St. Peter's, to which it corresponds topographically." Marshall does not name the 1999 source of this information, however. Furthermore, Marshall's note is misinformation in that the Porticus Neroniani and not the Nympheum Neronis forms part of the 'hieroglyph'. (Note also how 'pagan - christian - triumphal way' follows immediately after the 'hieroglyph' within "Inside the Density of G.B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii.)
Yes, a bit of my work has been reenacted, and I'll now make sure that it is remembered that David R. Marshall did the "reenacting."
2005.08.28 12:43
Hi, Gorgeous. Haven't I Seen You Somewhere?
Reenactionary Architecturism refers to the designs themselves and to the mental design process that is part of the overall design process. This specific process is for the most part always denied, but it exists nonetheless, as the resultant designs themselves prove.
The issue of plagiarism and copyright infringement is related but (legally) distinct from reenactionary architecturism, and even distinct from each other. For example, if Randall Stout had stated that the new building in Roanoke in some ways reenacts Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, then there is no plagiarism because a source has been cited. Furthermore, for there to be copyright infringement, the reenacting has to be virtually identical to the source.
Architect's generally don't like to cite or even admit sources because then the myth of originality collapses.
Reenactment in design is largely inescapable because human memory itself is a processed reenactment.
There are myriad other issues within reenactionary architecturism, and maybe a book on the subject will be already available this time next year.
2005.08.29 18:53
Hi, Gorgeous. Haven't I Seen You Somewhere?
There are old memories and there are new memories, but every memory by default is a reenactment.
2005.10.10 09:30
Phenomenology
"Inside the Density of G.B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii"
It's all about the co-joining of memory (i.e., mental reenactment) and architecture.
I wonder if Robbe-Grillet began Jealousy with a floor plan because that's how the ancient Roman art of mnemonics was taught? The Ichnographia Campus Martius is certainly Piranesi's greatest mnemonic floor plan.
Are people without good memories instinctually jealous of those that have good memories?
Does having a good memory also make for having a better phenomenology?
| |
2005.10.12 07:54
Phenomenology
Daniel Birnbaum, "The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology" in Peter Weibel, Olafur Eliasson: Surroundings Surrounded.
I read Birnbaum's essay last night and it appears that Husserl would have benefited from the realization that all memory (both his 'primary memory' and his 'secondary memory') are by default mental reenactments. That Husserl ultimately saw perception and primary memory (i.e., retention) as the same (i.e., simultaneously present and thus together constituting the nature of presence itself) then unwittingly suggests that perception is also a mental reenactment of the phenomenon being perceived.
2005.11.30 14:45
Consumerism and Monumentality
The entire issue of Oppositions 25 is devoted to Monument/Memory, and a google of 'Oppositions 25' offer an interesting set of links.
2005.11.30 17:33
Consumerism and Monumentality
Monumentality in architecture has a much longer relationship with reenactment than it does with consumerism. According to dictionary.com monument is pretty much synonymous with memorial and thus memory (ie, mental reenactment) is integral to monumentality.
Is one of today's problems (in designing a monument) that there is no longer a collective memory?
I occasionally wonder if the Second Bank of the United States (1818-1820) is the first bank anywhere to reenact a Greek temple. The First Bank (1795) is more Palladian than pure temple. Typology has a long relationship with reenactment as well.
Architects can build allusions and architects can build illusions.
Generic buildings and typical plans have a long history too.
I wish scale in architecture was simply taught more.
2005.11.30 18:06
Consumerism and Monumentality
Monuments seem to be more personal now-a-days; I'm not sure about the "need for introspection," however. As demonstrated by the Vietnam War Memorial, personal interactivity is a key ingredient in what make it a successful monument--the leaving of 'mememtos', the tracing of the name, the literal reflections of the visitors in the wall itself.
Note that memorial interactivity is not a new thing either, it had just been ritualized over centuries, and today's seeming lack of collective memory may be just as much a reaction to now stale rituals. There may be valuable lessons to learn from the spontaneous memorials that occur where car accidents deaths happened.
The Modern Movement in architecture pretty much worked to erase the collective memory of architecture, so the lack of collective memory in architecture, at least, is no longer a new thing.
| |
2005.12.01 10:06
Consumerism and Monumentality
Interesting how Lost is a mixture of being stuck in a void and personal memory.
2006.02.18 13:25
Iconography, or the problem of representation
irony 2 a : incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).
And yes there is a certain irony in utilizing common easily associated images to help execute and promote an architecture that otherwise strives very hard to be original.
What I like most about memory (i.e., remembering, being reminded of) is that it is a seminal manifestation of reenactment.
seminal 2 : highly influential in an original way; constituting or providing a basis for further development: a seminal idea in the creation of a new theory.
2006.06.15 13:30
UPenn M.Arch Summer Reading List
Using the Kwinter quotation, "the effect of unforeseeable complexity that arises from multiple interfering structures blindly pursuing their own clockwork logic," as a case in point, one only has to compare it to the following Tafuri quotation, "The clash of the formal organisms, immersed in a sea of formal fragments, dissolves even the remotest memory of the city as a place of Form, and the whole organism seems to be a clockwork mechanism."
2006.07.12 08:57
Are my eyes deceiving me?
After reading "...and while some talked of hot air balloons soaring over summer skies, others talked of golf balls and fungi...," I thought of something I'd forgotten. wqc/39/3868.htm
Last night, Artistic Reinvention in Architecture became the lastest addition to the Working Title Museum. It's about the workings of reenactment and memory in architecture--there will be a chapter on how architects are often most inspired by that which they likewise choose to most ignore, for sure.
Remember this? wqc/39/3877.htm
2007.06.26 11:55
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
I love being inspired, thus the new working title of my next book project is The Faux Failing Memory.
The interesting thing about the written word is that you can almost always tell when the author isn't being completely honest. At least I can.
2007.06.26 14:29
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
A plain old lie is for sure less honest than memory. Memories are mental reenactments, and, for sure, a reenactment can never be the original. Those are givens.
Yes, one can certainly tell an unwitting falsehood, and that's usually due to not knowing all pertinent information, or some such circumstance. Whereas to actually tell a lie means that indeed the liar does know the honest truth, but chooses not to express it. In which case the memory is indeed truthful, although the expression of the memory isn't truthful.
| |
2007.11.09 10:56
It rocked Eisenman on his chair...
Giovanni Battista Piranesi died today in 1778, on the feast of the dedication of the Basilica Constantiniani (known today as the Basilica of St. John Lateran), the first Christian basilica in Rome.
"Piranesi uses the Rome that was extent in the eighteenth century as a starting point, but that possesses no original value; it is merely a being in the present. From this existential moment of being, he takes buildings that existed in the first and second centuries, in Imperial Rome, and places them in the same framework of time and space as the eighteenth-century city."
--Peter Eisenman, "Notations of Affect. An Architecture of Memory" in Pathos, Affect, Gefühl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2004), pp.504-11.
If you actually study the Campo Marzio you'll find the starting point, framework and the millennium's worth of buildings that Piranesi utilized. First there are the altar and race course dedicated to Mars by Romulus in the mid-eighth century BC. Incidentally, this is how the Campo Marzio received its name--the fields of Mars. And to manifest the framework there is the last Imperial artifact of the Campo Marzio, the sepulcher of Empress Maria, wife of Honorius, from the early 5th century AD. Indeed the sarcophagus of Empress Maria] holds a key position within the Il Campo Marzio publication. And to complete the framework, the last page of Il Campo Marzio depicts a double theater.
"reenacting forgetfulness"
how ironic
right?
and there's
more more more
Nolli Schmolli
and windless
Tafuri fury
2007.11.11 17:08
It rocked Eisenman on his chair...
"Equally, the Campo Marzio would not function as an urban entity. There are no streets as such; rather, the ground is filled with what can be called interstitial figures."
Peter Eisenman, "Notations of Affect. An Architecture of Memory" in Pathos, Affect, Gefühl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2004), pp.504-11.
"The level plain of the campus Martius was particularly well adapted to this characteristic form of Roman architecture—the porticus—which conformed to a general model, while varying in proportions and details. The porticus consisted of a covered colonnade, formed by two or more rows of columns, or a wall on one side and columns on the other. lts chief purpose was to provide a place for walking and lounging which should be sheltered from storm and sun, and for this reason the intercolumnar spaces were sometimes filled with glass or hedges of box. Within the porticoes or in apartments connected closely with them, were collections of statuary, paintings, and works of art of all kinds, as well as shops and bazaars. In some cases the porticus took its name from some famous statue or painting, as the porticus Argonautarum.
While the erection of the first porticus in the campus Martius dates from the early part of the second century B.C., the period of rapid development in their numbers and use did not begin until the Augustan era. The earliest of these structures seem to have been devoted exclusively to business purposes. By the time of the Antonines, there were upwards of a dozen in region IX, some of them of great size, and it was possible to walk from the forum of Trajan to the pons Aelius under a continuous shelter. They were usually magnificently decorated and embellished, and provided with beautiful gardens.
Samuel Ball Platner, The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome (1904).
Although written over 140 years after the Ichnographia Campus Martius, Platner's text nonetheless describes perfectly Piranesi's delineation, particulary between the forum of Trajan and the pons Aelius. Indeed, the porticus is the most abundant building type throughout the Ichnographia Campus Martius.
2007.11.29 11:30
practical Delanda
Reenactment is (in the discussion here) much more of a process than an end product. "Reflection" (like memory itself) is by its very nature a(n only often vague) reenactionary process.
2007.12.01 08:31
Consumerism and Monumentality
canon : the body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art
axiom : a self-evident truth that requires no proof
That memory, whether it be lucid or vague, functions primarily as a reenactment is axiomatic.
The operative word/notion within the definiton of canon is "accepted," which adds substantial subjectivity. Thus canons, in and of themselves, are not axiomatic.
Canons emerge via power play.
power play : an action, stratagem, or maneuver, as in politics or business, by which power is concentrated or manipulated in order to subdue a rival or gain control of a situation.
That canons emerge via power play may well be axiomatic.
Is it axiomatic then too that novel canons emerge via novel power plays?
[Did you just read a novel axiom?]
|