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Exercises In Translation
Critical Visual Essay (abstract)
Sandra Symes
"the frontiers of a book are never clear cut: beyond
the title, the first line and the last full stop, beyond
its internal configuration..it is caught up in a system
of references to other books, other texts, other sentences.The
book is not simply the object that one holds in one’s
hands… its unity is variable and relative."
The Archaeology of Knowledge, p23, (1969, first published
in English in 1972) Michel Foucault
This short study offers an intervention and reference
source to a topology of Henri Lefebvre's philosophy of space
and aims to re-examine the theoretical basis on which The Production
of Space has been defined. The Virtual Book identifies entries
in 'The Production of Space' and takes up on its fixity of 'space'
as bounded. In the Virtual Book related aspects are built up
which establish links to the common theme of 'borders', and
asks when does the shift occur bewteen inside and outside? what
happens to the things that do not quite fit? The reference aspect
is reinforced by a table of footnotes,
a geographical survey of key words from
the body of the text and book references.
Centre to periphery and eternal return
In an attempt to determine the overall shape of
Lefebvre's space and its charting of the evolution of its universe.
The book begins in a geographical centre, a map of the territory
pre-empts the first paragraph
Envoi
Imprisoned by four walls (to the North, the crystal
of non-knowledge a landscape to be invented to the South,
reflective memory to the East, the mirror to the West,
stone and the song of silence)
I wrote
messages, but received no reply
Ocavio Paz
A short geographical survey of the key subjects
in footnotes, the architectural
and cultural spaces within key words
from the body of the text and a close look at the countries
of origin for authors and book references
more firmly locates 'The Production of Space' in a Eurocentric
space. Its territory is built on the various aspects of urban
life, developed from early days of the modern city, its architecture,
spatial practices and the interaction and alienation of human
beings with their environment.
In 'The Production of Space' the mixing of concrete
environments and abstract space inconsistencies and internal
contradictions emerge via the footnotes in the spatial terminology
from finding simple translational equivalents to an interest
in the 'mirror' and 'phallus' in relation to a mental topology
of the body and space perspective. These issues could be seen
to combine and to problemise the relationship between the individual
and the collective. The
Virtual Book is an attempt to address this relationship
and its evolution in terms of the 'global' as in global travel,
global corporations and boundary crossing media. Questions are
raised regarding the gap between space and place and the consensual
and homogenous experience of space, at the expense of complexity,
and power contestations initially through a range of printed,cartographic,photographic
and visual representations, mixing disciplinary practices. The
Virtual Book aims to look at the slippage between transcendence
and liminality in each page through the juxtapostion of image
and text, and the combined effect of key words from the body
of the text in a reverse relationship to footnotes. This Critical
Visual Essay is indebted to 'Deleuze and Guattari's 'A Thousand
Plateaus' which contrasts borderline and the process of bordering,
to the hard edge of the boundary between states of being. Deleuze
and Guattari’s theory of 'deterritorialization' as a connection
of flows helps to bridge the complexities of the modern urban
lifestyle with its emphasis on the fragmentary and fluid nature
of experience.
The
Virtual Book
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