"... ... the Socius as a full body forms a surface where all production is recorded, whereupon the entire process seems to emanate from this recording surface. Society constructs its own delirium be recording the processes of production; but it is not a conscious delirium, or rather is a true consciousness of a false movement, a true perception of an apparent objective movement, a true perception of the movement that is produced on the recording surfaces"
In the last work that Nietzsche published, Twilight of the Idols or, How one Philosophises with a Hammer, which appeared… shortly after Nietzsche had slipped into total madness, he tells the story of “How the ‘True World’ finally became a Fable: The History of an Error.” The story is inserted between two sections that indirectly recall Kant’s division between the theoretical and practical dimensions of life: “Reason in Philosophy” and “Morality as Anti-Nature”. The concluding sections of the two preceding fragments echo throughout Nietzsche’s story.
I am fascinated by spatial arrangements that are endowed with the “curious property of being in relation with … others; but in a way as to suspend, neutralise or invert relations existing; reflected or mirroring themselves”. These spaces create spatial-social constructs that represent, invert or challenge real arrangements with their surroundings. One might call them Other Spaces.
Tourism as an activity, industry and society constructs one such 'other' space; the tourists' domain remains always the outsider to the society he travels within. Using the "tourist" as a register, conducted through and disrupting the systems, always encapsulated in a space of spectacle, with its requisite infrastrucutres. Especially interesting are the Occidental Heritage tourists in South Asia, the cult-travellers, as are the Religious and Ritual (mostly Hindu and Muslim) ) travellers: pilgrims. They Gaze, from their extreme frames of reference, and hetrotopia(s) are actuated by the appratuses designed to facilitate their Gaze.
The projects exhibited here tend to highlight the making of the such a spatial arragngement. Locating themselves in a constant relation to the [in] famous spatial arrangements of the Hauz Khas village in New Delhi : it projects terms of deviation from the established (middle class) aesthetic norms and mores which are coded into the tissue of this 'urban' village. The remnants of the former village are re-constructed into an idealised image.
The project tends to highlight the MAKING of one such spatial arrangement. It puts itself in a constant relation to the [in]famous spatial arrangements of the Hauz Khas village in New Delhi: it projects the terms of Deviation from the established middle class tastes which are coded into the tissue of this ‘urban’ village.
In real terms, using tourism and shopping as a middle register, the attempt is to think about manners of transition--, the remnants of the former village, now almost entirely re-configured into a pleasure zone, and a zone of the erotic, of the commodity; if one follows Barthes’ argument about the ‘language’ of the city.
The project succeeds in reduplicating the logic of domains and more importantly, the layering (and in other ways complex intertwining) of domains as observable in the textures of the ‘inner’ city. The very general characteristic that goes to the maintenance of Socius (and of habit[s]), preserving as it would, the traditional architectural imageologies. Retaining, for instance, the historical structuration of the Ocular (or the Gaze) within the public place. Registering it into the spatial system, and through this, the INSTITUTIONS of being born, caring, loving, ageing, becoming significant, or, growing feeble within one unit of solidarities—the cluster of houses. Maintaining thus, the principles of sociability, yet changing its manner of functioning. And through this device, making newer statements about the function of surveillance within the domain.
His spatial analysis of the functions (i.e., the architectural drawings) can, given time, find a suitable volumetry—the genius of which is already evitable within the existing dwellings. And the site.
Two questions may be asked to re-situate the project within the context of 21st century India.
What of a critique of medieval habits; the SYSTEM of micro-powers and repression which engender this spatial system? Would the critique yield newer strategies of space? New ‘rituals’ in space? Newer habits, newer pedagogy and ways of learning?
Of the mechanics of surveillance - of inscribing a particular conduct upon the social individual in South Asia constitute a technology radically different from, say, the Panoptical. For the South Asian technology already constitutes a Body without Organs. Onto which, Architecture (i.e., the spatial aspect of Organicity) may ‘automatically’ or, [significantly] may not attach! Distinctions of the architectural (body) and the Social naturally suit a paranoiac – Schizophrenic system such as described by Siddharth’s area of study. Architecture here becomes a mirror of Socius; architecture becomes the ante [or Para] to the BwO?, disturbing its lines. Frustrating its economies, arresting—diagramming—it’s becoming and forcing a degree of completion upon the project.
To draw not buildings but images of buildings. To interrogate the very possibility of buildijng. To disclaim all innocence-especially in the false belief in sanity. To forsake the concrete. This madness itself offers possibilities by which other intentions (Others) justify themselves in front of this narration of process.
Here lies the archaeology of the frivolous. Further madness in front of a mad archive. The (im)possibility of building, and the silent yet frustrating possibility of history.