Oz Volume 12 Article 13 1-1-1990 The Negative Mirror and Critical Memory Paul Armstrong Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/oz This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Armstrong, Paul (1990) "The Negative Mirror and Critical Memory," Oz: Vol. 12. https://doi.org/10.4148/ 2378-5853.1201 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Negative Mirror and Critical Memory Paul Armstrong Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The the recently christened Wexner Center for stead, a critiCal reconstruction of the past. of time and place are synthesized into a Traveler recognizes the little that is the Arts of Ohio State University explore In Eisenman's terms, architecture can be more intense reality. An unique telos his, discovering the much he has the process of "excavating the site'' in simultaneously autochthonous and emerges with its own syntactic reading­ not had and will never have. order to rediscover the traces of the past autonomous. a referent to the past serving memory and - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (whether the Mercator grid or the a dislocation in time aspiring to be devoid "reconstructed" foundations of an Ar­ Critical memory is the past reinterpreted of all mnemonic association. Marco Polo's negative mirror is, more or mory). Past and present are brought and reconstructed. Like the negative mir­ less, like one of the concave parabolic sur­ together in simultaneous juxtaposition­ ror, in Eisenman's definition of disloca­ faces used to concentrate the parallel solar not a literal archeology of the site, but in- tion, isolated and undifferentiated facets rays into a unique point, giving them a previously unknown shining. In a similar manner the traveler's gaze will bend the apparently isolated and undifferentiated facets of a place and tie them together in a more intense reality thereby revealing the "genius loci," which is a projection of human conscience. Places which display traces of human action (past or present) become teleonomic, i.e., illustrative of an intention which is always the print of human action. The "human intention" can be discovered · even in the natural landscape, as in the traditional toponymy of mountain peaks, rivers, woods, etc. An­ cient geographical names often refer to characters and events which work accor­ ding to the finalist causality typical of mythical thought. In a sense, the negative mirror reveals the autochthonous or in­ digenous character of place.! In describing his urban architecture, Peter Eisenman uses the term dislocation. Eisenman accepts the mnemonic poten­ cy of architecture, but, at the same time, poses the paradox of architecture as a mnemonic device while presenting itself as dislocated from its continuity with time. Projects such as the housing pro- Figure 1: Peter Ei~nman and Jaquelin Robertson, Restricted International Competition Living and Working in Southern Friedrichstadt, Block 5 , 46 ject at Check Point Charlie in Berlin and Berlin, Site Plan. (Courtesy Rizzoli International Publications). The City and Collective Memory skeleton of history; it becomes an clearest embodiment of the philosophical of history. Eisenman illuminates the ex­ apparatus, an instrument for principles (rooted in the syntactic dialec­ istential condition of "dislocation" The time of each man is limited; analysis and measure ... Memory tics of deconstruction espoused by the through the persona of Rossi's architect. the future, therefore, must be the fuses with history to give type-form semiologists and post-structuralists) Rossi's architect is both a participant present. a significance beyond that of an which have consistently governed his within the context of collective memory - Aldo Rossi, original function. Thus, typology, ouevrefor almost three decades. Thomas and a voyeur positioning himself as an Tbe Arcbitecture of tbe City which previously consisted only of Fisher writes that at almost every turn in "objective" observer beyond the demar­ the classification of the known, the Wexner Center, "Eisenman confronts cations of time and memory. Whereas the In his preface to Tbe Arcbitecture of tbe now can serve as a catalyst for in­ our design conventions and challenges humanist conception attempted an in­ City, Eisenman cites Rossi's description vention. It becomes the essence of our often unexamined assumptions, tegration of subject (the architect) and the of the city as "a collective artifact" which design for the autonomous creating a building that aims not to pro­ object (the city), the modernist concep­ juxtaposes the humanist view of the researcher.3 vide comfort or consolation, but one that tion polemically attempted their separa­ evolution of the city as a sort of accretion tries, successfully, to shake us from the tion. The problematic nature of the prac­ based upon natural law versus moder­ The humanist view of the evolutionary complacency of our convictions."5 tice of modern architecture with respect nism's reductive scientism which seeks to process of "accretion" of the city and col­ to the theory of modernism has to do intervene clinically in the city's historical lective memory is exemplified by Rossi's Fisher observes that in the Wexner Center, precisely with its inability to effect this and natural evolution. "In this heroic description of the city of Split in Eisenman challenges historicism and the separation and thus its contamination climate of modernism the city of modern Yugoslavia. Rossi points out that as the belief in the communicative power of with imperatives from the humanist architecture, supposedly born out of a city of Split grew up within the waJls historical styles. The fragments of the conception. rupture with history, was progressively Diocletian's Palace, it gave new uses and armory that form one side of the Wexner propelled by that very history toward the new meanings to unchangeable forms. Center represent an analogy to the A modern example of intervention in the vision of a sanitized utopia."2 Rather than subsuming or obliterating the fragmentation of the past that historicists historic city is cited in Michael Graves' ancient palace, the city accomodated the have, ironically, brought upon themselves "Roma Interrotta" of 19786. As architect­ Hence, Eisenman presents the existing architecture within the context of by asserting that history is a matter for in-residence at the American Academy in dichotomous condition of the city as an its own transformation in a type of organic specialized, scientific study. If history, Rome, Graves invited twelve architects, in­ archeological artifact and of the city as an symbiosis. According to Rossi, this is then, is perceived by most people to be cluding Colin Rowe, James Stirling, and autonomous structure which coexist symbolic of the meaning of the architec­ fragmented, like the armory towers, into Leon Krier, to take one of the twelve within the context of the present. In con­ ture of the city, where "the broadest adap­ disconnected pieces of information, does segments of the Nolli map and redesign trast to the humanist architect of the six­ tability to multiple functions corresponds the use of historic styles any longer have that segment of Rome in any way they teenth century, and the functionalist ar­ to an extreme precision of form." 4 meaning? Eisenman also questions chose. In Tbe Elusive City Jonathan chitect of the twentieth century, Rossi's ar­ Therefore, history, as an accretion of col­ whether a related view of the past is Barnett records that using a collage chitect would seem to be an unheroic, lective memory, exists so long as an ob­ desirable or even possible if language technique advocated by Rowe, the diverse autonomous researcher distanced from ject is in use; that is, so long as a form itself can be used to create false unity and results suggested "interventions in Rome the object of his analysis who no longer relates to its original function. However, to suppress dissention. after a lapse of time." 7 Many of the par­ believes in science or progress. when form and function are severed, and ticipants responded in a predictable, yet only form remains vital, history shifts into Eisenman effects the transition from the highly individualistic, manner. Stirling, Eisenman continues: the realm of memory. Eisenman writes historic, chronological notion of time to for instance, used variants of his own The new time of architecture is ... that the singular form of Split now not on­ the psycbological condition of time with buildings to compose his own sector. that of memory, which replaces ly signifies its individuality, but at the reference to the memory of the city as a Rowe and his associates based their pro­ history. The individual artifact for same time, is a syntactic record of events succession of events. In Eisenman's posals on the Nolli map itself, albeit with the first time is understood within that are part of a collective (urban) parlance, if time in the chronological a more regular and repetitive quality of the the psychological construct of a memory. History, thereby, comes to be sense belonged to a classical context, and new elements. However, it was Leon Krier collective memory. Time as collec­ known through the relationship between in the historicist sense to a modernist con­ who designed perhaps the most unex­ tive memory leads Rossi to his par­ a collective memory of events, the text, then once associated with memory pected interpolations. Modifying St. ticular transformation of the idea singularity of place, and the sign of the rather than history, it moves into a Peter's Square, the Via Corso, the Cam­ of type. With the introduction of place as expressed in form.