PSYCHOSIS THEATRIC
MEMORY AS THE ARCHITECT
Des Baker 2012 [Joint] Gold Medal Winner. AZA Student Congress 2012. Cape Town. South Africa
Film and architecture are simultaneous in character. The succession of scenes in a montage creates a mental space that resists chronological comprehension. The attractive thing about architecture is that it makes space. It is the place of activity and movement. The user is his or her own film director. Architectural space is physical and, a fraction later in thought, like film, simultaneous in character. Film and architecture both make use of sequential movements through space.
These are strung together by memory. This spatial simultaneity is an important property for arriving at reflexivity. With this, we also run into a complication. Our society functions more and more by means not of totalitarian but pluralistic, simultaneous systems. The deregulated capitalism of today makes clever use of reflexivity. Expressions of power work most efficiently by means of subtle mechanisms that give an illusion of tolerance and, especially, of participation. The new multimedia (CD-ROM, etc.) are for instance typical virtual technologies where the user is proactive and thus has the illusion of deciding for himself. Simultaneity is utterly operative, flexible and incomparably powerful.
Simultaneity, ambiguity, schizophrenia and reflexivity are eminently suitable for keeping the present situation incomprehensible. It is essentially an evolved form of the nineteenth-century panopticon. This must not have the consequence that we dispense with the simultaneity of space. We must, rather, make use of this schizophrenic simultaneity in order to develop an open architecture of specificity and indeterminateness with a permanent capacity for bowling over the representations.
Inspired by the music of AMON TOBIN, ATRIUM CARCERI and MASSIVE ATTACK; and the works of BERNARD TSCHUMI and FACTORY FIFTEEN.
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