LAGI Proposal – Hardcopy Publication

POSTULATE I : COSMOGONY

The chronological order that led this project, and which defines the discourse between humans and their surroundings looks like this:

cosmos-city-human/thought

All three can be said to be complicated entities, as well as ontological beings; however, contrary to the cosmos, which represents infinite space, and a human, which represents infinite complexity, the city remains the only one that can be sensibly cognizable, and as such will be used as modus operandi of the heuristic game of cognition.

It should be noted that the city is not viewed as the existence of separate, specific representations, but as a sub-existence of abstract thoughts. In this context, the city becomes a miniature symbol of the cosmos and a colossal representation of a human. In order to reduce this hypothetical cosmos to the level of a city representation, we had to articulate the ideogram of the cosmos as a manifestation of a conceptual idea. Since the composition of this idea is of irregular shape, archaic formulas and urban mythologems that are still evident in the area of architectural contemplation had to be used. The dodecahedron, as one of the most suggestive symbolical representations of the cosmos, found its place in the phenomenology of the cosmos and remained, as such, deeply rooted in history. In order to restore the glory of the dodecahedron, but also move it to the context of modern thought, we decomposed/deconstructed its formal shape and left it for the human logical/pre-logical (observational) apparatus, led by the innate human need to put things back into their initial (harmonic) order, to compose it back to its original shape. These tendencies towards unfinished, suggestive sculptural forms have always driven the need for upgrading, developing and reworking, which is needed for understanding anything, including the understanding of the cosmos/city. However, although there is awareness about the magnitude of the cosmos, there is no awareness about the effort and the persistence of the cosmos which has been working for 13.8 billion years to create what we today call a conscious being. This is why we decided to represent the concept of the Cosmic Calendar via the only medium that is big enough to express it and explain it – via architectural work. We did this through 12 ideograms which represent the time distance between the Big Bang and modern man, and the changes that marked the stages of this long journey. We hope this constellation of various cosmic morphemes sends a moral and ethical message but also demonstrates a strong analogy between the maturation of the cosmos, city, and a human.

POSTULATE II SALUTATION OF A CITY

I have always liked the idea of the same edifice in two cities (The Statue of Liberty, Arc de Triomphe, etc.) It is a strong poetic image of two cities saluting each other, of their mutual respect and joint perseverance through years and centuries. I have never, however, heard of one city saluting all the others through symbolic respect for their existence, perseverance, and, ultimately, their shared ideas. The realization of this idea would be, naturally, almost impossible to conduct due to the fact that the edifice to represent the salutation and symbolic respect would be infinitely complex. We have, however, developed an idea of one city saluting all the others through something that exists everywhere, but is still authentic. This “something” is Constellation Orion one of the most famous constellations that can be seen from almost everywhere in the World. Our installation is the reflection of this constellation on Earth the same reflection that exists in the Sky and thus in every city. Copenhagen, through this representation of nature, opens, through a big, hieratic salutation, a new mono-dialogue with its brothers, neighbours and other ontological and mythical beings that compose the essences, but also the physical constitutions of other cities.

POSTULATE III INVERSE ARCHITECTURE

Modern architecture is mostly based on an architectural piece of work and an accompanying text, which is, in most cases, just a technicality or formal didactics of architectural composition’s functional parts. A smaller, but more valuable part of architectural work is based on the principle that promotes architectural work as a physical manifestation of either an idea or a concept with a theoretical explanation which serves to explain the idea and make it clearer for an observer. However, we have turned the process from the architectural work theoretical explanation observer model to the theoretical concept observer-architectural work model, in which architecture is used as an instrument for a description of the textual concept.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF Metalinguistics

Language, as a complex system, has come to the moment of introspective analysis and parsing via paralanguage constructions in hypothetical situations. It is a known fact that every science, especially science that is completely abstract and has exclusively an instrumental role out of which it can’t expand such linguistics, can’t allow itself to get to the moment in which it uses itself for defining itself as these patterns lead to the meaninglessness and to the creation of new undefined patterns. In order to expand these mostly limited experimental frameworks, we came up with the idea of introducing, or transposing, architecture as an instrument for describing language. When we speak about language, we refer to it in both its narrow (linguistic) sense and its idiomatic sense which is used for understanding, explaining and creating any (artistic) piecework. If we start off with a canonical pragmatic language expression and turn it into a formal shape, we would get something like this…

We would get a linear-time system which is composed of the concepts separated by pauses. This formulation has been the main problem of linguistics and cognitive sciences that study it for some time now. In this text, we won’t be dealing with grammar rules that connect these concepts and connect them into a coherent whole. We’ll deal exclusively with ideas that condition and define the existence of these concepts as necessary for the articulation of our thoughts through rhythmic units, e.g. sentences, dialogues, etc. In order to explain modern sub-linguistic models that are used by analysts, and theorists of language (both linguists and art critics), we have to go back to the “Universal grammar” which was studied by the linguists of the 17th and 18th centuries who divided language into deep (non-conceptual) and surface (phonetic) structures. They tried to find the connection between the two and thus create a single linguistic system. Although this theory has been abandoned and replaced with structural linguistic theories whose methodological approach managed to create progress in the systematization of language, the idea of the existence of 2 parallel language systems remained. The remainder of this story can easily be transferred to Freud and his theoretical essay on “slips in speech and writing” which was later used by Derrida in his deconstruction (not deconstructionism), and then in all sub-linguistic models well-known and used. If we would try to turn these modern sub-linguistic systems into a formal shape, they would look something like this…

Concepts are unclear, their continuity isn’t evident, and neither is their genesis (except for the assumption that complexes and neurosis influence their constellation. They exist below the surface of “surface” language and dictate its form and manifestation.

The error in this entire idea is based on the idea that the entire language (spoken, written, idiomatic, etc.) being suggested exclusively by sub-linguistic elements which are, again, defined solely by the personal unconscious and thus relatively individual can’t be a subject to any universalities although universalities were a starting point for Universal grammar. Although the argument stands that a big portion of our personalized language is influenced by personal, unconscious sub-linguistic creations, it seems rather limiting and restrictive, especially with today’s knowledge in psychology, psychiatry, etc. which negates this absolutistic idea to a certain degree.

In order to gain a perspective different from the one that is commonly accepted, we need to free ourselves from a two-dimensional view of the system in which sub-linguistic variables are infinite and hard to understand, and thus difficult to describe. The only solution to offer some kind of explanation is introducing a third modus (inverse sentence model), which has a direct, vertical influence on the previously mentioned linear-time form, whose purpose isn’t a didactical explanation of fragmentary meaning, but a rather pre-articulate-ed disposition of explaining the whole; which is perceived in a single moment with full intensity, is always present, does not have a strict beginning, middle or end and thus does not condition concepts in their linking properties, but is embedded in their pauses and exists in the imagery (non-discursive) form and has the same influence as personal sub-linguistic authorities. This model, as you can conclude, is not based on the personal conscious or personal unconscious (where the number of discursive and non-discursive concepts and other things that influence language is infinite, or where knowledge and understanding of the interlocutor, writer, artist, etc. are required). It is based on the collective unconscious or personal superconscious-ness which is the only sphere that is dominated by generalizations that have a direct influence on every person, and yet, a small number of people are aware of their influence on sentences, dialogues, texts and even epochs. However, this system, as already mentioned, can’t be explained via instruments of language, but has to be projected in three dimensions, especially because of the influence the primordial representations have. It would look like this…

In our case, we decided to select 12 universal primordial representations, although there are many more but still fewer than individual representations. The advantage of using these universalities lies in the fact that people have the same or very similar relationships to them (except in the cases of extremes). Another advantage is the fact that the relationship itself exists and is excluded from many scenarios in which an observer or an interpreter finds himself in the situation to choose affirmation or negation because the representation excludes him. When we relate these three patterns, we get a system that can look like this…

The goal of this text and, at the same time, the goal of this sculptural-archi-tectural piece of work is awakening and enriching language that we use on daily basis, but are still not aware of grand archetypal implications which influence it and which add ethical and esthetic values to even most banal sentences. We have already mentioned the possibility of applying this model to artistic idioms other than language and this would function by means of explaining artists’ aspirations, e.g. their personal tendency towards specific archetypes among those most common in their language system. This would make the analysis of any text, sculpture, or image, as well as of an architectural piece of work much easier and more straightforward.