A CLINIC FOR THE EXHAUSTED Michael Spooner B.Arch (Honours 1st Class) A project submitted in fulfi lment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy School of Architecture + Design, Program of Architecture, RMIT University Submitted August 2011 Declaration I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis is the result of work which has been carried out since the offi cial commencement date of the approved research program; and, any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged. August 2011. Acknowledgements It goes without saying that this PhD by Project is the result of a myriad of formal and informal conversations and collborations with those willing to listen and those brave enough to share in the prospect of a life underscored by its undertaking. Firstly, I must recognise the support of my supervisor Dr Hélène Frichot. Hélène’s participation in this creative endeavour and friendship over the last three and a half years has leant itself to the stoking of ideas, the opening of thought, and the prospect of a world. Secondly, I would like to acknowledge a series of friendships and fellow patients brought about by this project: Ricarda Bigolin, thank you for mining every insane idea with me, and sharing the journey across every wild possibility. Peter Knight, thank you for your enduring friendship, your way with words, and your silent support of anything that just might tip everyone and everything overboard. Esther Anatolitis, a self-admittance patient, but one who will always fi nd a place in this clinic. To the many others who have provided advice and opinions, I thank you. I must also thank the various critics that have taken the time to comment on the work in progress during the presentation of work at SAHANZ, the Arakawa & Gins International Conference, the Bartlett Symposium Voice and Text, and the exhibiton For What It’s Worth at Craft Victoria, and during the twice yearly Graduate Research Conference held at RMIT. In particular, I thank Professor Jane Rendell, Professor Stephen Loo, and Howard Raggatt whose criticisms extended the promise of this project immeasurably. I am indebted to my examiners, Associate Professor Chris Smith (University of Sydney), Dr Linda Marie Walker (University of South Australia) and William Fox (Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art). This undertaking would not have been possible without the support of RMIT University, and the School of Architecture + Design, who provided a scholarship during the tenure of the PhD candidature, for which I would like to thank Professor Richard Blythe. In particular I want to acknowledge the role of Professor Leon van Schaik who has continuously provoked me to imagine the beyond of this PhD, and Melissa McDonald who made sure I kept a sense of humour about it all, even when I was hard pressed to do so. To Jean and Robert, for their enduring support, even when they had no idea what I was up to and, to my brother Gregory for making sure that I remembered to take stock of what I have done, and why I have done it. To Luke, for making sure that I knew that there was an end. Finally, I have had the greatest and most humbling opportunity to have worked with Professor Peter Corrigan during the latter half of this PhD, undertaking various architectural endeavours, most notably an entry into the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2010. But, it goes without saying that it will be the smallest of gestures that have left a mark. I am unclear of what this has meant for this PhD that circles around him, without ever declaring him the subject.Whether this adjacency has distorted the outcome for better or worse, is of little consequence. I can say that without his generosity I would never have known what exhaustion truely is. It is to Peter that I dedicate this undertaking. Michael Spooner, August 2011 Fig 1 Edmond & Corrigan Building Eight, RMIT University, Melbourne CONTENTS Abstract xi BOOK ONE Preamble 1|20 Prologue 1|60 Introduction 1|10 Invitation 1|17 1. An Epidemiology of Illness 1|21 Plato’s imaginaire or Socrates’ Pharmacy? Molière’s Pharmakon: Le Malade imaginaire Argan’s imaginaire Molière’s imaginaire or Argan’s Pharmacy? A Declaration of Love From the Sickroom to the Street : an Ascent into Lunar Sea A Turn: from periplus to periplum 2. Roussel’s Epigenetic Landscape 1|43 A View from Roussel’s Window Mobilising a Methodical Treatment of Chance Death in Venice A Return to Venice… 3. For What It’s Worth 1|67 A Question of the un/known The Peculiarly Diffi cult Task of Remaining Hidden Not-knowing: how we might know what we don’t yet know how to know… Kairos: an Excursion Theory and Practice What is a Measure of Not-knowing Not-knowing, Knowing as such. What Worth is is Worth Not-knowing. Interlude A CLINIC The Swimming Pool Library The Landscape Room BOOK TWO 4. The Pathology of Excess 2|10 Our Approach: Cast in the Image of a Boat On the Wayward Movement of an Open Boat An Itinerant Life What is Our Shared Experience of Exhaustion On Exhaustion The Clinic: an Ambiloquy Straddling the Threshold of Not-Knowing 5. An Emerald Sepulchre 2|31 A Tortoise I, Peter Corrigan An Epithet in Verse Of Excess: The Baroque Ship In Excess: The Shell-Bird Epilogue 2|60 Bibliography 2|68 Illustration sources 2|75 Abstract This PhD by project entitled A Clinic for the Exhausted will examine a method of inventing in the present an architectural practice concomitant to the realisation of an architecture grounded in an im- mutable unknown; an architecture that departs from the fi nite architectural object, the imposition of an architect or the illusory status of a fi ctional community. Traversing a fi eld of research comprised of ar- chitectural, cinematic, literary, and philosophic intensities (to name but a few), this project will minister to the open and uncloseable implications of an impersonal architecture that is faithful to a community whose arrival is not simply overlooked, but is preserved without negation. A Clinic for the Exhausted argues that by fostering an architecture without foreclosure and of unfore- seeable eff ect, a community in the present could minister to the practices of an unknowable constituent, thereby entrusting the unknowable with a share in our contemporary condition. By asking after a com- munity that is dispossessed of an accountable presence, this research attempts to ascertain the degree to which one can act on behalf of the unknowable. In establishing the ethical dimensions that the funda- mental question of an unaccountable life proposes, this research engages with an aoristical sense of the question of a life in the univocity of a propositional space that assumes the surfeit of excess: exhaustion. The diffi culty posed by a community without omission appeals to the indelible space of the Clinic, a space that confronts in excess of any particular place or any particular person, the no-where that is par- ticular to no-one. The research submits that the task of those who claim the specularity of the Clinic, that is an audience from whom no-one is exempt, lies in extending the practice and the procedures that the irreducible question of a life harbors. Thus, the realisation of an architecture that claims the ques- tion of a life must also claim the dimensions of the Clinic, a scale that cannot overlook the unevidenced. Hence, the manner in which the project is undertaken is a radical methodology that affi rms the contemporary suffi ciency to abstain from that which is already known. The PhD will propagate the momentum of a single encounter between two architects - a letter from Howard Raggatt to Peter Cor- rigan - displacing the fi eld of thought that gave rise to it in such a way that the interminable persistence of an unevidenced event - a building that takes fl ight in the image of an ocean liner - can never be held to account. Typifying this attempt to admit the unknowable will be an arsenal of lucid moves, uncanny conjunctions and casual assertions that will continually avow the eff usiveness by which the research sets out to meet the unmeetable. This method off ers more than an alleged impractical epistemic impasse, a claim that would fail to realise that the very suggestion of unassailable proof; a demand to explain, ex- cuse or account for instances of interpretive indecipherability, remains untenable and is conditional on withdrawing from the question of a life. It is via the felicitous incisiveness of the prose, drawings, and images that compose this research that an atemporal experience of an unaccountable experience will be perpetuated. A Clinic for the Exhausted is off ered as an exemplary architecture amidst the mass of existence, an enveloping reticence that evokes the relations of those who remain nameless. A CLINIC FOR THE EXHAUSTED book 1 Thinking provokes general indiff erence. It is a dangerous exercise nevertheless. Indeed, it is only when the dangers be- come obvious that indiff erence ceases, but they often remain hidden and barely perceptible, inherent in the enterprise. Pre- cisely because the plane of immanence is prephilosophical and does not immediately take eff ect with concepts, it implies a sort of groping experimentation and its layout resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational, or reasonable.