Notes On The Hybrid Spaces of Antonio Muntadas
Aras Ozgun
In his wonderful essay, "Bridge and Door", Georg
Simmel elaborates a metaphor on the spatial patterns of human mental activity.
Bridges connect two naturally separate volumes of space together; two mountainsides
or two sides of a river. Two distant spaces are linked together by building
a bridge, two separate things / two solitude bodies / two endless territories.
On the other hand doors bind two human-made separate spaces, two volumes which
were unified once but than divided by walls. Doors open passages in between
spaces which are close to each other but at the same time "closed"
to each other. Simmel argues that human mind works like this; it connects
distant spaces to each other, and then divides them and then re-connects them
again. Such metaphor seems to be important in the sense that it signifies
an escape from linguistic formulation of human mental activity to a spatial
one. Once the human mental activity is defined in spatial terms, it has to
move! Movement occurs in space and time.
Foucault's notion of heterotopia can be taken as another "strategic idea"
in the sense that it enables a certain kind of conceptual plurality and multiplicity
about thinking in/on space. Heterotopia stands as a notion against the idea
of utopia that which inherited to modern times from the early idealism/humanism
of enlightenment. First of all, heterotopia stands for "actual spaces"
opposite to utopia which refers to "non-existent spaces". While
utopia appears as an "ideal space", heterotopia signifies a "material
space". As a result of being an ideal construction, utopia is a uniform
space; it is a spatial projection of a certain ideology as far as it is shaped,
defined and limited by the premises of the ideology. The notion of heterotopia
breaks such a projection; heterotopia is the space in which functional and
qualitative multiplicities exist. Heterotopia is the space of heterarchy,
while utopia is inhibited by hierarchy.
At this point, we can think of the history of modern spatial organizations
in such a tension. On one hand the utopic element of modern architecture and
city planning which designed "metropolis" under the ideological
premises of modern disciplinary society (1) , on the other hand such superimpositions
over the space are continuously being broken in the course of urban everyday
life which is constituted by a dominant heterotopic element (2) . We can place
Foucault's abstractions into a solid opposition between spatial practices
of modernity -architecture and city planning; teleological, calculative, uniform,
utopic considerations for designing predefined spatial organizations-, and
actual space of modern metropolis -a cosmopolitan, multiple, unpredictable
heterotopic space-.
In this context, the idea of heterotopia redeems the notion of space by introducing
a certain degree of materiality in which we can find the possibility of multiplicity
of spaces within the plurality of them. Heterotopia also "locates"
the possibility of change and transformation "into" the very nature
of the place, and "places" space itself into a historical context.
This is another revolutionary moment in considering space.
Among the many different aspects of heterotopia, what Foucault reflects in
his example of pirate ship is the most striking one. A place which "...
is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself,
that is closed in on itself and at the same time given over to the infinity...".
What we found here is a conception of space with a certain degree of autonomy;
a space which can be defined within its own limits; a space which does not
only move in endlessness but also carries endless movements in it. Here Foucault
establishes a necessary Spinozist passage between the idea of "space"
and the idea of "body". The pirate ship, as a container of other
spaces and movement regimes, is an autonomous body at the same time.
A third step in the conception of space comes from another French scholar
Michel De Certau. In "Spatial Stories" chapter of his famous work
"The Practice of Everyday Life" Certau goes to a distinction between
the concepts of "place" (lieu) and "space" (espace). For
him "a place is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements
are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the coexistence
of two things being in the same location (place). The law of the `proper'
rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another,
each situated in its own 'proper' and distinct location, a location it defines.
A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an
indication of stability." On the other hand "A space exists when
one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables.
Thus space is composed of intersection of mobile elements. It is in a sense
actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it. Space occurs as
the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize
it,...On this view, in relation to place, space is like the word when it is
spoken...In contradistinction to the place, it has thus none of the univocity
or stability of a 'proper'...In short, space is the practiced place. Thus
the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space
by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the
practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted
by a system of signs."
The works of Antonio Muntadas works can be taken within the possible paths
derived from such considerations on space. The title of the internet/CD-ROM
project can be taken as an attempt to reach a kind of heterotopic conception
of electronic space. Hybrid spaces are spaces devoid of identity and genealogy.
It is an electronic space without a certain place. It is an electronic place
which inhabits different forms of spatial organizations within itself, and
it becomes a space within the experience of electronic "passing by".
The project forces its "spectator" (its passenger in better words)
into a nomadic form of relationship. The spectator experiences the "Hybrid
Spaces", leaves an electronic trace there -a kind of footstep- and passes
by. S/he builds a temporary relationship with a space which is temporary itself.
The electronic space of hybridity force the spectator to move further.
Muntadas's "The Control Room" cultivates the main problematic of
modern urban spaces which is outlined above. On one hand the city is planned
and governed in the modern ideological patterns of "management of place",
but on the other hand it becomes an urban space within personal experience,
within inhabiting that "place". What Muntadas shows us is the construction
and organization of spaces within the governmentality of modern architectural
disciplines. In the age of electronic space, such governmentality dwells within
electronic media, and architectural practices starts to shape electronic spaces
as well. The urban space is not only controlled by the geometry of buildings
and streets but also by the electronic optical control systems provided by
surveillance cameras. "The Control Room" reflects the passage from
disciplinary societies to societies of control, which Gilles Deleuze wonderfully
elaborates in his famous article titled "Postscript to Societies of Control".
While explaining some of his works, Muntadas makes a distinction between galleries
and museums and other places at which he exhibits his work. He calls museums/galleries
as "protected spaces" and uses the common term "public spaces"
for other places. What kind of a spatial protection does the museum possess?
A variety of different spatial protection systems are known to our existing
cultural practice; a medieval form of protection within city-walls by closing
itself to outside world, modern spatio-optical mechanism of surveillance -panopticon,
etc. But the gallery space reminds us a rather ancient mode of spatial protection;
the Hititian urban defense system. Hititians used a system similar to the
mixture of medieval city walls and a maze. Hititian city walls were a series
of circular walls/hills around the city, all of which had a slope on the side
facing outside direction and perpendicular on the side facing the city itself.
Among these hills/walls there were passages, resembling a system of maze.
The main idea was not defending the city by closing it to the outside world,
in fact the whole system can be considered as a counter-attack system rather
than defense mechanism. Hititian soldiers waited in these walls, the attacking
army had to climb on the walls and jump in the middle of Hititian soldiers,
or they had to go into the corridors where, again, the Hititans waited them.
Hititian defense system based on controlling other party's organization of
movement. By this way they could control the conditions of combat and the
possible directions of attack. Today's western civilization owes a lot to
Hititians -even the word burg/bourg/burgh comes from the Hititian word "birkh"
which stand for settlement/city. The space of galleries/museums are similar
"protected spaces"; the gallery space dominates the spectators organization
of movement and controls the physical and mental conditions at the moment
in which the spectator faces with the work of art and exhibition takes place.
In which moment the act of communication becomes more than a mutual exchange
of information and turns into transmission of knowledge? A language is a system
that is closed in itself -it only has references to itself (3). So as a system
of internal references, as soon as we speak in the words that we know, the
language only works for exchanging and reconfiguring the information that
we already know. "Only at the moment that one faces with a piece of language
that s/he does not know", states Ulus Baker, "the act of communication
becomes a transmission of knowledge. A new word, an unknown concept comes
into our realm constituted by our language and broadens the limits of it".
Muntadas's work "Translations" makes sense in this sense; translation
stands as an opposition to learning. The act of translation converts the knowledge
from one form of language to another, as if the content of language is something
autonomous from the overall structure of language. Mutandas's work reminds
us that the content of the language is only possible within the internal referential
system of itself. Every language constructs its own fictious world, and elements
of these worlds are unique to them.
Notes:
1) The most outstanding example in this sense is the case of Hausmann's re-design
of Paris after Paris Commune; during the commune period the organic texture
of the city supplied revolutionaries with narrow passages and hideouts that
could be turned into frontiers with barricades and allowed them to resist
the army for a long time. Hausmann's re-design of the city was made with the
order that "there will not be any place left in the city to which the
soldiers will not have an access". Paris was re-built with this idea;
eight straight grand avenues (the main arteries) dividing the city crosses
each other at the center, so a battery placed in the center can virtually
hit any barricade attempting to block these main arteries. Hausmann's urban
design became so popular that it was applied to almost all major European
cities afterwards. The possibility of an urban revolt is prevented by the
urbanism itself from the beginning, modern urban life has been shaped by the
modern military ideology.
2) As an example we can take the destruction of Pruitt-Igor mass housing complex
near Paris. This complex was built under the basic ideological framework of
the modern urbanism in order to supply housing and welfare facilities to people
of lower income levels. Gradually the place became a center of urban poverty,
a cancerous part of urban life, and municipality took the decision of destroying
the complex in the end of sixties (?). For some scholars this is considered
as a turning point of in the history of urbanism, signifying the end of modernist
era.
3) Here Derrida's conception of language as a "chain of signifiers" must be taken into consideration. According to Derrida, (unlike the supposition of previous structuralist linguistics) language is not constructed through a relationship between signifiers and signifieds. The only reference that signifiers possess is to other signifiers, so the language is a system reference among the signifiers. Still it is not a close system as long as new signifiers can be produced and articulate to this chain.
