October 24, 2006

On Program…

Other than a late night conversation with Brian Jones in the sanctuary of the Higgins Hall South Tower, this is the first time I’ve put my ideas about program in words, so it is probably lacking the elegance with which I try to write, but I felt the need to put it out there well in advance of the midterm in case I have just jumped completely off the deep end on this one. Though getting to the program in the following words will be a bit of a journey so please read on.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the subway for the following reasons:

1. Assuming that space is understood through input gathered by the senses, if one argues that memory is also essential to the understanding of space, could memory also be considered one of the senses? Is it synaesthetic to cross the experience of for example, sound and memory? Or is memory distinguished from the senses because it is internal input versus the external input of the physical senses? On the other hand, maybe I have to look for synaesthesia elsewhere, because it is perhaps memory that is the instrument that enables the crossing of the senses.
2. In my sketch problem, one of the key ideas was that while in the sanctuary space one would be adjacent to the fountain courtyard, but unable to directly experience the space, however, the sounds of the courtyard push upon the space of the sanctuary. These sounds can then remind the occupant of the sanctuary of other places, stored in his memory, and thus the understanding of the courtyard space becomes a fiction written between memories. Consequently the experience of the sanctuary space itself becomes part of an extended “landscape,” my word for the experiential inhabitation of place, which exists somewhere between physical sense, memory, and fiction/narrative. A parallel experience can be readily found in and around the New York subway system, an extended underground network of phantom space, space the recedes into the darkness and lives in the imagination. Think of a subway stop where a train, though not the one you are waiting for, passes in an adjacent tunnel that can neither be seen nor touched. The sound of the train passing through that mystery tunnel makes one space push against the other, giving the possibility for the observant to dream about the mysteries of that phantom space, which could be only a few feet away, but still so unreachable in any purely physical sense.
3. In documenting my sketch problem, aspects of it have taken on new meaning. When I first designed it, the idea was that when my proposed intervention, the door/pivoting wall, was closed, to create the sanctuary, the space would be completely closed in that closing the pivot wall would also close the wrought iron gate. Now I have considered the possibility that in the “sanctuary position” that space is only %75 percent closed (the entire pivot wall and one half of the wrought iron gate). This allows for other people to enter the sanctuary, setting up the possibility of chance encounters (or planned encounters). Sanctuary does not necessarily have to be in solitude. Going back to the subway, I have this fascination with the experience of being on the train, often in complete solitude despite the extreme public condition, and staring out into the darkness of the tunnel only to have my gaze broken by a passing train and seeing someone whom I will likely never see again gaze back at me for a mere fleeting moment. I like this particularly when one train is ascending and the other is descending because it adds to the mystery of the phantom space of the tunnel.
4. I am also fascinated by the phantom infrastructure that supports this unseen world. A sort of iconic example of this, for me, is the crane train. Out of the darkness, a lumbering industrial beast emerges, passes, and returns again, possibly not to be seen again for months.
5. Akin to the possibility of fleeting chance encounters in the subway, there is the experience of forgetting something on the subway, and realizing it just as the train pulls out of the station. The sinking feeling that you will never see the thing you left on the seat next to you as it is drawn into the realm of “phantom space.” It begins to question the significance of ownership in the highly public realm of the subway. Imagine a homeless person in the subway who smells so foul that no one will ride in the same car, and it, in a sense, becomes his own car. What do the objects left in the subway tell the other riders about the people in the train before them? As our possessions are extensions of ourselves, what does it mean to leave something on the subway, and have something that is in a sense part of us become forever part of the narrative of the phantom world of the subway system?

Finally, to propose a potential program I am considering a Repository for Lost Objects for the subway system, in other words the MTA Lost and Found. But what is that really? Could it also be a museum, or a cemetery for personal objects? What if there was a library made of books people lost on the subway? Where is it, and what is the narrative of entering this phantom world on a journey to search for your lost possessions? Arguably, it is not just a search for what you lost, but also a search for yourself. In this journey, could one find sanctuary?

Am I completely insane? Should I consider a different program?