wade tillett on Wed, 31 Mar 2004 13:18:34 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> The plan abandoned.





The unavoidable theoretical crisis, 
lurking for years as an outline, 
                     a shadow at the edge of a glance, 
                     an uneasy feeling, 
has finally become apparent.  
It is in the face of this spectre that 
I am abandoning the profession of architecture. 
While innumerous evils haunt this profession, 
they are not in the end what has compelled my resignation. 
(I suppose these would have been reasons to reform, 
not abandon.) 

No, in fact, after much consideration and soul-searching, 
I have come to understand there is only one demon 
-- the plan.


The plan can not be separated from belief. 
Belief encloses itself and becomes a system. 
Belief identifies a self and other, 
                  a landscape, 
                  and a space. 
Belief establishes truths and possibilities based on its own parameters. 



The plan is the contract which seals belief,
                               enforces belief. 
The plan is the word written, 
                     staticized, 
                     objectified. 
The plan is the mapping of belief 
-- its completion as a coherent system 
-- its formalization. 
The plan is the enclosure of the belief set 
-- its circular logic turned on itself 
-- the fabrication/enclosure (simultaneously) of possibility. 
The plan produces possibility, 
                    a construct of definable limits. 
The plan allows one to inhabit belief. 
The plan delimits a space and a body. 

Life is delimited, 
        separated, 
        enclosed in a wrapper of the possible: 
                                               identity, 
                                               death. 
Death is the final separation, 
         the final limit, 
         the finite, 
         the form, 
         the past twisted onto, consuming the present. 
The plan invents death, 
         constructs death, 
         allots death. 
The plan manufactures an objective reality, 
                      an other. 

Death is the ultimate other.




In order to be a true believer, 
one must eliminate one's participation 
in the creation of truth (the ultimate other). 


It is only in this way that objects, 
                            others, 
                            spaces 
                                   can be purely objective. 
The other must stem from without. 
The plan must detach the user or architect 
from the creation of the belief system. 
The plan must separate the self from its own modification.
The form-giving of representation must be re-cast as a form-receiving.  
The plan must become the map. 


The process of objectification (the creation of other) therefore must 
erase itself. 

Thus, inherent in the plan is a certain blindness 
that refuses to accept the creation of death, 
but accomplishes it the same.

Architecture is a means to resolve (obfuscate) 
the fundamental paradox of the plan.
The plan can not be theorized as a problem within architecture, 
nor one stemming from without. 
The plan is both architecture's means and it's reason for being.



Architecture's dual purpose is to hide that which it facilitates. 
Utopias are always distractions, decoys.
The self-delusion of the architect is always only partial 
-- there is always the intuitive, semi-conscious fitting, 
                                                 negotiating, 
                                                 constructing
of a plan that bridges and covers what it intends to be 
and what it will be. 
Such is the dual nature, 
the misnomered intuitiveness, 
of the architect.

Those fascists who purport to have accepted their role 
   as creators of death, 		
   as inverse gods, 
in the end place Death as an absolute beyond,
                       as some form of truth outside the self. 
They understand death's comport with belief, 
but mistake death as beyond belief.
The actual manipulations at the molecular level 
are misconstrued 
by a grandiose abstract Death narrative.(1) 
The myriad sin constructions are glossed over, 
                                 hidden under, 
                                 legitimized and justified 
by the holy image and the coming utopia. 
Belief remains in the singular untouchable other.

A construct is created behind an image.



The imperialism of the plan always leaves one absent, 
                             a shell without content. 

The plan or map or image or identity can not be put to good use 
-- even those put together democratically or autonomously 
present only a means to enclose, 
                     to subject the present to the past image, 
                     to create possibility traps.  

The plan can not be separated from the tyranny that employs it 
-- the plan is that tyranny 
-- the subjugation of the present to the past. 




---------- 
Notes: 

1. "Fitting the two types of forms together, segments of content and
segments of expression, requires a whole double-pincered, or rather
double-headed, concrete assemblage taking their real distinction into
account. It requires a whole organization articulating formations of
power and regimes of signs, and operating on the molecular
level..... If this parallelism is replaced by a pyramidal image, then
content (including its form) becomes an economic base of production
displaying all of the characteristics of the Abstract; the assemblages
become the first story of a superstructure that, as such, is
necessarily situated within a State apparatus; the regimes of signs
and forms of expression become the second story of the superstructure,
defined by ideology. It isn't altogether clear where language should
go, since the great Despot decided that it should be reserved a
special place, as the common good of the nation and the vehicles for
information." Thus one MISCONSTRUES the nature of language, signs,
organizations of power and content. (67-68) "the illusion that one can
grasp and shuffle all the strata between one's pincers, can be better
secured through the erection of the signifier than through the
extension of the sign." (65, Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand
Plateaus. Emphasis mine.)

----------
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