By
Tom
This is the House that Jack 1 Built
Kendall
out of 10763 words
Department of Architecture
2013
1
Pre-Text
- a note on this edition
Tom
This is the House that Jack Built
out of 10763 words
footnotes 3
red is used to highlight something of import, like a title or an
alteration, addition, or important note on / in the text.
By Thomas Kendall
Blue is used for words that are more personal or explinatory.
Published and bound by Thomas Kendall
Department of Architecture
Royal College of Art
2013
Marginalia.
This essay contains various pieces
of marginalia. They are often
an analysis of the main text, so
should be read only if you want to
interrupt your flow.
First Edition
This space is not just for my
marginalia but for yours also,
please feel free to indulge in the joy
of writing in the margins.
1 ‘Sous Rature is a strategic philosophical device originally developed by Martin
Heidegger. Usually translated as ‘under erasure’, it involves the crossing out of a word
within a text, but allowing it to remain legible and in place. Used extensively by Jaques
Derrida, it signifies that a word is “inadequate yet necessary”.’(ref – Madan Sarup,
An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism p.33). - http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous_rature
3 It is important to note from the outset that footnotes are an important part of this
essay. “I am very fond of footnotes at the bottom of the page, even if I don’t have anything in
particular to clarify there.” (Perec, Species of Space, 11).
2
3
CONTENTS
Cover ............................................................................................ 1
Afterword ................................................................................. 117
Pre-text ......................................................................................... 3
Epilogue ................................................................................... 119
Contents ....................................................................................... 4
Acknowledgement ........................................................................ 8
Pre-amble .................................................................................... 14
Appendices ................................................................................ 125
Forward ....................................................................................... 21
Opening Prologue ....................................................................... 29
Introduction ................................................................................ 30
Glossary of Terms ...................................................... 126
Study: A - Gallery of theory .................................... 130
The Stories .................................................................................. 39
B - Gallery of the Oulipo .............................. 138
Book ............................................................... 41
C - Gallery of other writers .......................... 144
Bed ................................................................. 59
Desk ............................................................... 67
Utility Room: Bedroom ........................................................ 79
Staircase ......................................................... 83
Balcony .......................................................... 91
Landing .......................................................... 95
Estate ............................................................. 97
Kings Cross ................................................... 103
4
A - 9 dot puzzle (solutions) ............. 164
B - Unused text ............................... 166
Bibliography .............................................................................. 173
5
“ W H AT
more
glorious
than to open for one’s
self a new career, — to appear
suddenly before the learned
world with a book of discoveries
in one’s hand, like an unlookedfor comet blazing in the
empyrean!” 3
*
*
*
Dedicated to my Grandpa.
With thanks to my tutor Naomi for sharing and indulging my
interests; to my boyfriend Joseph for his patience and to my mum
Sally, for her keen eye.
3 Xavier De MAistre, A Journey Round My Room, (New York, Hurd and Houghton,
Cambridge Riverside Press, 1871), p.1
6
7
‘WHAT?’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
of you, dear reader
This text and the exploration therein is not written in the traditional
sense (see PREFACE), instead, as you will see, it is more of a
construction, ||ARCHITECTURE|| and this “assemblage of bits
and pieces […] forces an abandonment of the idea of [the] reader
as a passive receptor. The reader must engage, work on, rewrite this
“ We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything: in
the landscape, in the skies, in the faces of others, and, of course, in
the images and words that our species creates. We read our own lives
and those of others, we read the societies we live in and those that lie
beyond our borders, we read pictures and buildings, we read that which
lies between the covers of a book.”
– Alberto Manguel 4
‘WHY?’
It is hard to know if this should have been called an
ACKNOWLEDGMENT; a more precise word could have been a
FOREWARNING, (and forewarned is forearmed). I say this because
the journey, |…and yes, reading a text, any text, is a journey of sorts,
a movement through…| the journey you are about to embark upon
expects you to be not just a reader, but I guess a PATA-reader. (See
the For’w rd for a greater explanation of the term “pata”)
text. The reader must be a writer.”5 & 6
Along this path you will find various textual exercises and
experiments from the physical and visual, to the grammatical
and etymological, seen through the examples of others as well
as TEXT-speriments of my own. This journey of the reader
5 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi (Yale:
Yale University Press, 1995), 13
6 She then quotes Kristeva - “For the Ancients the verb “to read” has a meaning
that is worth recalling and bringing out with a view to an understanding of literary
practice. “To read” was also “to pick up,” “to pluck,” “to keep watch on,” “to recognise
traces,” “to take,” “to steal.” “To read” thus denotes an aggressive participation, an
active appropriation of the other. “To write” would be “to read” become production,
industry: writing-reading, paragrammatic activity, would be the aspiration towards a
total aggressiveness and participation.” - Julia Kristeva, Semiotika, p.181
Sub Note - This aggression put me in mind of this quote by Michel Leiris with regard
to the paintings of Francis Bacon, but I think that it stands up well when talking about
the creation and interaction
“Beauty must have within it an element that plays the motor role of the first sin. What
constitutes beauty is not the confrontation of opposites but the mutual antagonism
of these opposites; and the active and vigorous manner in which they invade one
another and emerge from the conflict marked as if by a wound or depredation.”
- Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon: Full Face and In Profile (New York, Rizzoli)
1983
4 Alberto Manguel, A Reader On Reading, (United States of America, Yale University
Press) 2008, p. ix
8
9
into the world of PATA-modern writing is an unfamiliar adventure.
You are being handed a text, a space to explore, a story-world where
you will find “a struggle between antagonistic”
6
reread subnote to footnote
“realities, inducing an ontological flicker, the fiction’s reality and
the book’s coming into focus by turns, first one, then the other. And
The Written World:
The Tectonic World:
this flicker seems to induce instability.”7 These structures and the
In writing ‘“[v]isual and verbal
oscillation between them causes perspectival shifts, alter-experiences
effects vie for our attention.”
“architecture has the double
and new perceptions of what you, the reader, are reading, actively
And the reader processes the
aspect of
engaging with the text, so that you, “the reader [are] no longer a
language and “becomes the text
observer or voyeur externally,
consumer but a producer of the text,”8 a reader-writer if you will.
without losing himself as he
and then completely “ingesting”
John
9
Hedjuk
stated
that
making one an
reads.”’ Becoming the text is as
one internally. One becomes an
if one is becoming a character
element of the internal system
in the story, navigating the text,
of the organism.” 10 To become
‘WHERE?’
page to page, room to room,
an architectural element is to
This construction will focus on two things, simply put, architecture
comma to comma.
be an inhabitant, someone in
and writing. As the reader, it is important that you are aware of
the constructed space, to go
the space[s] in which these currently occur so that over time, the
through a door and navigate
ontological flickering can deconstruct these worlds and build them
from hall to stair, room to room,
anew.
cellar to attic.
7 Brian McHale, Post-modernist Fiction (Routledge: London, 1987), 180.
8 Roland Barthes, S/Z, (United Kingdom, Blackwell Publishing) 2002. p.4
10
9 Jennifer Bloomer quoting David Haymans, Wake on the Wake (a text about James
Joyce’s, Finnegans Wake) - Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (S)crypts of
Joyce and Piranesi (Yale: Yale University Press, 1995),
10 John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa: Works, 1947-1983. New York: Rizzoli, 1985. Page 90
11
‘WHO?’
So dear PATA-reader, who are you really?
You are to be the reader of this essay, the
receptive writer of it, a character in its story
and an inhabitant of the wor[l]d, For in the
immortal words of Doctor Who, “we’re all
stories, in the end. Just make it a good one,
eh?” 11
11 Doctor Who: The Big Bang, 26 June 2010
12
13
The beginning
PRE-AMBLE12
begins, I guess, with frustration. After four years
of architectural education I am tired, tired of being told that I must
My own ambulation(s) through architecture.
do a drawing, or make a model to explain myself when in my mind a
few well chosen words would do equally well thank you very much.
In the timeless words of the King of Hearts, “[b]egin at the
The notion that one cannot talk or write spatially seemed counter
beginning.” 13 So, in the hope of clarity, I feel the need to enlighten
intuitive to me.
you to my interpretation of what architecture is,14 by which I mean
what it should be or what I hope it could become.
To go back a bit further > I spent most of my childhood (and
adult life too) enveloped by books, in a story-world
15
.
One of
my childhood memories aged approximately 6, has me sat in my
parents sea of a bed, my 4 year old brother and I nestled between
mother and farmer (as I viewed my dad then), whilst Mum (as I
12 Late 14c., from Old French preambule (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin
preambulum, neuter adjective used as a noun, properly “preliminary,” from Late
Latin praeambulus “walking before,” from Latin prae- “before” + ambulare “to walk”
- http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=preamble (accessed 5 September
2013)
Architecture 1 : the art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and
building structures and especially habitable ones
2 a : formation or construction resulting from or as if from a conscious act <the
architecture of the garden>
b : a unifying or coherent form or structure <the novel lacks architecture>
3 : architectural product or work
4 : a method or style of building
5 : the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are
organized and integrated.”
15 Story n (plural stories)
•
1 an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment
an adventure storyI’m going to tell you a story
•
a plot or storyline:the novel has a good story
•
a piece of gossip; a rumour:there have been lots of stories going around,
as you can imagine
•
informal a false statement; a lie:Ellie never told stories—she had always
believed in the truth
•
2 a report of an item of news in a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast
stories in the local papers
•
3 an account of past events in someone’s life or in the development of
something
the story of modern farmingthe film is based on a true story
•
a particular person’s representation of the facts of a matter:during police
interviews, Harper changed his story
•
[in singular] a situation viewed in terms of the information known about
it or its similarity to another:having such information is useful, but it is not the whole
storyUnited kept on trying but it was the same old story—no luck
•
(the story) informal the facts about the present situation:What’s the story
on this man? Is he from around here?
- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/architecture (accessed 12 August
2013)
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/story?q=story
September 2013)
13 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.)
1906. P.182
14 A dictionary definition of architecture stands thus:
14
15
(accessed
7
know her now) would invent stories for us about Mr Spiv Rabbit,
for whom the world seems to be made of stories.” 19
his wife Priscilla, and two children. These were stories of morals to
be learned, of relationships, of home, all wrapped up in adventure,
in life.
16
This essay is the first chapter in the story of WHERE, and how
WHERE (note the turning of WHERE into a character by removing
‘ “and go on[…]” ’ 17
the definite article “the”) could be built || constructed. It/they is/
are the space in which life occurs, from church to home, room to
Life is eating, sleeping, working, etc. IN the world, and the story-
stairwell, door to window, public to private. It/they is/are concerned
world is a reflection of this - our (actual, potential, imagined)
with the production of architecture.
versions of living; how we do it, why we do it, when we do it and
where we do it.18 For “[a]s far as we can tell, we are the only species
16 At the time I distinctly remember enjoying this “telling” of stories to be much
more enjoyable than the reading of them. To read a book when I was young, although
not a trial, was sometimes bothersome. This wasn’t because of long words or a lack
of understanding but due to a plethora of illustrations that seem to deluge childrens
literature. The text was what interested me, the words, my imagination could quite
happily invent the worlds, the characters, the tiger who came to tea etc. To be given
an illustration of it that appeared untrue to the visual in my head was a hindrance. a
a. These days I have conquered this stumbling block, able to separate
the two and appreciate the image for its own sake and let the text-world exist
unbastardized.α
α. HECTOR – ‘“Uncoffined” is a typical Hardy usage. It’s a compound
adjective, formed by putting “un” in front of the noun. Or verb, of
course. Unkissed, unrejoicing, unconfessed, unembraced.’
- Alan Bennet, The History Boys, 2006
17 The King of Hearts continues - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland,
(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) 1906. P.182
18 This put me in mind of a rather eloquent gobbet by Foucault about the places
of mans being:
“sacred places and profane places: protected places and open, exposed places: urban
places and rural places (all these concern the real life of men). In cosmological theory,
there were the supercelestial places as opposed to the celestial, and the celestial place
was in its turn opposed to the terrestrial place. There were places where things had
been put because they had been violently displaced, and then on the contrary places
where things found their natural ground and stability.”
- Michel Foucault, Of other spaces, Heterotopias, http://foucault.info/
documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (accessed 8 August, 2013) p.2
16
Our world || architecture – is made of stories.
This essay is not concerned with how a story itself might be
translated ~ made into a piece of architecture, but how the act of
writing and that of constructing architecture are similar. It is the
idea that architecture and space can be written and conversely that
writing, as a habitable space, can be spatial and constructed…
It is “[…]in the constructive operation upon many possible
relationships at many levels of scale (letter, word, sentence,
paragraph, plot), the literary work not only begins to bear a
resemblance to architecture […], but also becomes a model of what
architecture might be,” 20 i.e. architecture as WOR[L]D
19 Alberto Manguel, The Traveller, The Tower and The Worm, (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press)2013, p.1
20 Jennifer Bloomer, “In the Museyroom,” Assemblage No. 5 (Feb 1988), 63.
17
It is about architecture as text || text as architecture and thus the
intertextual threads that weave between these two constructions
and what, as an architect, can be gleaned from this.
‘ “[…] till you come to the end: then stop.” ’ 21
21 The King of Hearts concludes - Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures In
Wonderland, (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) 1906. P.182
18
19
FOR’W RD
A Note on Pataphysics
– a cento 21
Instead of rewriting a definition of pataphysics I think it more
appropriate to give you the original, from the creator himself, Alfred
Jarry:
“An epiphenomenon is that which is superimposed upon a
phenomenon.
Pataphysics, whose etymological spelling should be ἔπι (μετά
τά φυσικά) and actual orthography ’pataphysics, preceded by an
apostrophe so as to avoid a simple pun, is the science of that which
is superimposed upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the
latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter
extends beyond physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental,
Pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite
the common opinion that the only science is that of the general.
Pataphysics will examine the laws which govern exceptions, and will
explain the universe supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously,
will describe a universe which can be – and perhaps should be –
envisaged in the place of the traditional one, since the laws which
are supposed to have been discovered in the traditional universe are
also correlations of exceptions, albeit more frequent ones, but in any
case accidental data which, reduced to the status of the unexceptional
exceptions, poses no longer even the virtue of originality.
DEFINITION. Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions,
which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described
by their virtuality, to their lineaments” – Alfred Jarry, Exploits and
Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician, (Boston, Exact Change)
p.21-22 a
To ‘clarify matters further it has been said that “[t]o understand
pataphysics is to fail to understand pataphysics. To define it is merely
to indicate a possible meaning, which will always be the opposite of
another equally possible meaning, which, when diurnally interpolated
with the first meaning, will point toward a third meaning which will
in turn elude definition because of the fourth element that is missing”
: “for how can one ever make sense of, or truly define an imaginary
science, and why should you when it exits purely because of its
invention. Jarry said that ‘all meanings that can be discovered in a text
are equally legitimate. There is no single true meaning, banishing all
other faulty ones.’ ” b
Dear reader,
My name is Norman D.E Guerre, aspiring writer and
apprentice Oulipian. We have not met before and we will not meet
again in this space, but I feel an introduction only polite.
Thomas has invited me to broach the topic of the OuLiPo from
the perspective of an Oulipian writer. The full title is Ouvroir de
Littérature Potentielle (workshop of potential literature), and this
order22 of literature is a branch of the College of ’Pataphysics…
That literature and a physical science, all be it an obscure one, are
eternally linked is already a key to what lies ahead.
a Andrew Hugill, Pataphysics, A Useless Guide, (Cambridge, Massachusetts,
The MIT Press 2012, p.1-2
b R Shattuck, The Banquet Years, (London, Faber and Faber Ltd)1958, P.23
21 Cento. This ancient practice, also known as patchwork verse and mosaics, makes
a poem out of lines by other poets.” HarryMathews, & Alastair Brotchie, editors.
Oulipo Compendium. (London: Atlas Press) 1998. p.120
22 The word ‘order’ is used here to hint at the idea of structure by making
reference to the classical order of columns, ionic, Doric etc.
20
21
The notion of a foreword is a text written by someone other than
the author: as the author of the foreword I have decided the rest
shall be written by other Oulipeans. I shall appear as the joints: the
bits of welding between beams and columns of quotation: and the
embellishments, the acanthus leaves, that help define the order in
its new context of writing as a spatial practice. To quote Walter
Benjamin, “[t]o write history thus means to cite history. It belongs
to the concept of citation, however, that the historical object in each
case is torn from its context.” 23 & 24
“
Oulipo: a group which proposes to examine in what
manner and by what means, given a scientific theory ultimately concerning
language (therefore anthropology) one can introduce aesthetic pleasure
(affectivity and fancy) therein. We will never know exactly who came up
with this definition, the definitive secretary having generously attributed it
to all in his minutes of the 5 April 1961 meeting.
Things could only get worse. And the same day, the Oulipian ‘slyly’ followed
this definition with another: Oulipians: rats who must build the labyrinth
from which they propose to escape. 25
NOTE
A certain amount of liberty has been taken with the formatting of the text
below, the words themselves, and their order remains unchanged.
Their words
My words
Oulipo merely follows, then extends, the clinamen already present in the
numerical sophistry of Jarry[,]26 The idea of clinamen is a fine example
of an imaginary solution, since Epicurus had little or no experimental
evidence on which to base his theorising. The Epicurean universe consists
of atoms in continuous descent from an absolute high to an absolute low.
During their descent, for reasons we cannot know or understand, some of
the atoms happen to make a slight swerve of bias (the clinamen) in their
trajectory, causing them to collide with other atoms. The chain reactions
create matter.
23 Walter Benjamin, The Arcade Project, (United States of America, Harvard
University Press) 1999. P.476
24 This charming quote was explored and illuminated by Hannah Arendt when
discussing his work as “tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them
afresh in such a way that they illustrated one another and were able to prove their
raison d’être in a free-floating state, as it were. […] Benjamin’s ideal [was] of producing
work consisting entirely of quotations, one that was mounted so masterfully that it
could dispense with any accompanying text.” – Hannah Arendt, “Walter Benjamin:
1892-1940”, Introduction to Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (London, Pimlico) 1999,
p.51
22
25 Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of
America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998, p.37
26 Christian Bök, ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science, (United States
of America, Northwestern University Press) 2002, p.68
23
series of constraints and procedures (rules and structures) that fit
inside each other like Chinese boxes.
29
Even when a writer accords
“The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
the principal importance to the message he intends to deliver (that is,
Plumb through the void, at scarce determinate times,
what a text and its translation have in common), he cannot be wholly
In scare determined places, from their course
insensitive to the structures he uses[.] 30 Indeed, the creative effort in these
Decline a little – call it, so to speak,
works is principally brought to bear on the formal aspects of literature:
Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
alphabetical, consonantal, vocalic, syllabic, phonetic, graphic, prosodic,
Thuswise to swerve, down they would fall, each one,
rhymic, rhythmic, and numerical constraints, structures, or programs.
Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
(On the other hand, semantic aspects were not dealt with, meaning having
And then collisions ne’er could be nor blows
been left to the discretion of each author and excluded from our structural
Among the primal elements; and thus
preoccupations.)
Nature would never have created aught.” (Lucretius 2007, 50)
27
31
To explore the rule is to be emancipated from it by
becoming the master of its potential for surprise. 32
The word “potential” concerns the very nature of literature; that is,
The overwhelming majority of Oulipian works thus far produced inscribe
fundamentally it’s less a question of literature strictly speaking than
themselves in a SYNTACTIC structurElist perspective, 33 of which there
of supplying forms for the good use one can make of literature. We call
are two principle tendencies of the workshop, analysis and synthesis,
potential literature the search for new forms and structures that may be
the discovery and exploration of rules (structures), Anoulipism is
used by writers in any way they see fit.
28
devoted to discovery, Synthoulipism to invention. From one to the other
Every literary work begins with an inspiration (at least that’s what its
author suggests) which must accommodate itself as well as possible to a
27 Andrew Hugill, Pataphysics, A Useless Guide, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT
Press 2012, p.15
28 Quenaeu in conversation with Charbonnier : Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a Primer
of Potential Literature, (United States of America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998, p.38
29 François Le Lionnais – “Lipo, First Manifesto”, in Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a
Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998,
p.26
30 Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of
America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998, p.30
31 François Le Lionnais – “Second Manifesto”, in Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a
Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998,
p.29
32 Christian Bök, ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science, (United States of
America, Northwestern University Press) 2002, p.71
33 François Le Lionnais – “Second Manifesto”, in Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a
Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998,
p.29
24
25
there exist many subtle channels. 34 It has been said of pataphysics that
the rule itself is the exception, 35 in the world of the Oulipo it would
be better to say the rule creates exceptions. It is the swerve of the
”
clinamen that weaves its way around the rules, through cracks and
sparking collisions that give the text its
potentielle.
To illustrate examples of the OULIPO, for it is only through READING
that one can really examine the potential present in each text, please refer
to the STUDY: Appendix 1.
34 François Le Lionnais – “Lipo, First Manifesto”, in Warren F. Motte, Jr. , Oulipo: a
Primer of Potential Literature, (United States of America, Dalkey Archive Press) 1998,
p.28
35 Christian Bök, ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science, (United States of
America, Northwestern University Press) 2002, p.39
26
27
PROLOGUE
GAMBIT
OPENING GOBBET
{4 x 4}
Where the Author introduces some themes.
This is the story that rites what is read,
This is the story that takes you to bed,
This is the story that moves down the hall,
This is the story of book space et al.
This is the view to the room ’cross the way,
This is the train that left the next day,
This is the bed where the children are boggled,
This is the flat where you saw her hobbled.
This is the writing of
This is the writing of
This is the writing of
This is the writing of
This is the story that pit-‘pata-phors
This is the story that wonders through doors
This is the story that knows not where to start
This is the story that’s falling apart.
bricks blocks and mortar,
an urban quarter,
worlds yet to come,
worlds that are done.
|This is [the story of] how space begins,
with words only, signs traced on the blank page.|
36 pro·logue n.
1. An introduction or preface, especially a poem recited to introduce a play.
- http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prologue (accessed 6 July 2013)
As is fitting with the nature of a prologue, this one begins to hint at certain things one
will discover in the main body of the story.
37 HECTOR: “what did you call them? Gobbets? is that what you think they are?
Gobbets? Handy little quotes that can be trotted out to make a point? GOB BITS?
Codes, runes, spells, call them what you like. Do not call them Gobbets!”
- Alan Bennett. The History Boys, 2006
38 The Author’s play on nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons –
“Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”
From http://www.childhoodheritage.org/oranges_and_lemons.html, (accessed 12
August 2013) although I originally found this quote whilst watching an episode of
Doctor Who called The God Complex.
39. Georges Perec, Species of Space. (London, Penguin Group 2008) p.13
This quote has been altered structurally, it is presented differently to its original
context where it forms a single line.
28
29
SUBJECT
The subject of these pages is, in essence: space; in reality: words; in
fiction: architecture.
It is not strictly about architecture, and it is certainly not
concerned with writing about architecture, but rather, writing in
INTRODUCTION
an architectural manner; to write architecture; the plane (or page)
where architecture and the written wor[l]d coalesce. It is not strictly
“CLARA - I’m not sweet on the inside and I’m certainly not…. (TARDIS
interior revealed) little
about writing either, but rather, spatial writing; writing that is less
written than it is constructed or built. 42
DOCTOR - It’s called the TARDIS, it can travel anywhere in time and
space. And it’s mine.
It is about space, for this is the place where the two others are
CLARA runs goes out the door, around the TARDIS and comes back inside.
mutually entangled: the ontological arena for their coexistence.
CLARA - Well it’s… look at it, it’s
DOCTOR - Go on, say it, most people do.
Up until this moment, you have read about my expectations of you,
CLARA - It’s smaller on the outside.” 40
the reader; a brief understanding of my approach to architecture,
my belief in what it is and what it could become; and you have heard
from their own mouths what it is to be an Oulipian. But it is here, in
“[T]here is nothing outside the text” [Il n’y a pas de hors-texte] 41
the introduction, that these previous pages begin to come together
as a new space.
42 Jennifer Bloomer writes of the same phenomenon in her book, Architecture and
the Text, first on writing as a tectonic act:
“[w]hen I use the word writing in this text (and I use it a lot), I do not refer simply
to that concept of writing as a mirror or documentation of speech, but to writing
as a constructing, nonlinear enterprise that works across culture in networks of
signification.” P.6
40 Doctor Who: The Snowmen, 2012.
This quote is a comical take on the normal scripting of Doctor Who where the
Doctors Companion would say “it’s bigger on the inside!”
41 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976), 158.
30
And then on the text as a whole:
“The text is less a narrative to be apprehended than an object to be entered, less
narrated than constructed.” P.15 - Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (S)
crypts of Joyce and Piranesi (Yale: Yale University Press) 1995
31
opening of this sentence is mimicry
of Perec’s Foreword, (Perec, Species
of Space, 5)
It is the construction of a small world, the story-world of my flat,
PLACE: MY FLAT
where truth & structure and fiction & language can inhabit the same
The location in which this story takes place is my flat in Mornington
plane, and the use of this setting as a means for exploring the realm of
Crescent and the surrounding area of King’s Cross. The nine plot
archi[text]ure This exploration takes some of the ideas that Jennifer
points vary from my bedside book tower to the street outside,
Bloomer lays down: how text can be constructed like architecture,
engaging with various scales and types of space along the way. This
how it is not just words but a physical form, how it is spatial, how the
is WHERE, that I spoke of earlier, and it/they are our world from
reader engages with the text in an architectural manner: and it uses
here on.
This mimics Perec again, here
though in creating a hypertrophic
journey through space, (Perec,
Species of Space)
the operations that governed the Oulipo to construct a space that is
both written and built || read and inhabited. This world is written
I chose WHERE for a particular reason, it/they, are currently under
as an exploration of Oulipian Creationism.
going a change, experiencing a spatiotemporal fluctuation. I have
lived here for the last seven years. It has, until now been what they
The Oulipo’s methods were devised with a dual intent. The first; a
term, a student flat. It has no sitting room and a very communal
way of fuelling the ingenuity and vision of the writing, while the
kitchen and bathroom, thus all other rooms are rentable bedrooms,
second a means of cre;ating/forcing interaction with the text being
(after all, there is a mortgage to pay). Something else of note is its
read thus engaging the reader with both the space of the page/book
upstairs, or rather that it has one. The difference that this engenders
and the story-world contained within it. The combination of rules/
in the space, for me at least, is intoxicating. The staircase, its mere
structures and the clinamen designed by the writer that build its
existence makes it a home, a dwelling without one is just NOT.
potential, are what cause the ontological flicker, those perspective
“What is the objective of our work? To
propose new “structures” to writers,
mathematical in nature, or to invent
new artificial or mechanical procedures
that will contribute to literary activity:
props for inspiration as it were, or
rather, in a way, aids for creativity.” –
Raymond Queneau
(Motte, Jr. Potential Literature, 512)
shifts between fiction, the page and reality, that make us question the
reading of the worlds and the spaces they exist in. The shape of the
writing becomes the shape of the reading.
The change that it is undergoing involves the ingress of my
boyfriend, Joseph. His moving in has sparked a move upstairs
thus facilitating the creation of a sitting room, a new place in
This is a gerrund.
this flat-space; or more correctly, maisonette-space; or more
emotionally, home-space. Currently though we exist in a
middle-space, waiting for one person to move
that we
up
might move up , and thus there is a large pile of boxes under, in
and around my desk; piles of books and clothes where before
there was order; three more blankets on my bed and Fritz,
Joe’s cuddly Hedgehog, keeping me company at my computer.
32
33
out
WHERE is swerving into a new spatial trajectory, its own
clinamen, and this pata-movement, this ontological flicker between
1. The nine spaces are listed as follows
HERE and THERE, so with realities perception of it is shifting like a
reader with a piece of post modern fiction, now would seem a good
1 Book
2 Desk
3 Bed
time to explore it in a written world.
4 Bedroom 5 Stairs 6 Balcony
7 Landing 8 Estate 9 Kings Cross
And now, my own patáinstructions for exploring space comme
Perec.
Complimenting the Perec figure, these are laid out over a GræcoLatin bi-square to eventtually create a series of constraints for each
RULES: MY STRUCTURE
The rules to create this story are in fact a re-writing45 of George
individual square.
known as the four figures, see the STUDY. For a brief summary please
2. The schedule of obligations is a series of paired thematic lists,
each containing three items that the texts will have to respond to
based on the permutations generated by the bi-square. The themes
45 In the structural sense.
46 One of the most famous Oulipians was Georges Perec, and one of his most
famous novels was Life, A User’s Manual…
chosen (unlike Perec’s who focused mainly on the physical attributes
PEREC: “I have imagined a building that has its façade removed so that all its rooms
on the street side are visible”
of the story to be told:
This was written using three rules:
Styles of writing
A Constraint
1. The apartment block he conceived consisted of a 10 x 10 grid which he laid over
a Græco-Latin bi-square, thus enabling him to generate endless permutations of
possible number sequences to apply to rule number two, his “schedule of obligations”
2. The “schedule of obligations” he created consisted of 42 lists or themes, in pairs,
each containing 10 “things”. These items were then selected using the bi-square,
creating 100 completely unique and individual sets that for all permutations of the
original lists. Each chapter would then have to contain every item set out on the
corresponding list.
3. The Knights Tour was his way of navigating the apartment great. He imagined a
night from the chessboard travelling across the great touching each square only once
and this generated a pattern allowing him to explore the apartment block room by
room in a manner that was not random, but a greater exploration of the space than
could have been conceived otherwise.
A second set of styles
Structures of writing
A movement
A Time
A perspective
A tense
34
Bβ Cα Aγ
Cγ Aβ Bα
Perecs, Life, A User’s Manual. For full information on his rules,
see this footnote. 46
Aα Bγ Cβ
of the flat such as furniture, colour, style etc.) reflect the ambitions
A senseA faux
A senseA manqué
35
3.
Thinking outside the box: this references a spatial approach
to the 9 point puzzle. I have written these chapters based on a
THE LISTS: MY BLOCKS
The terminology in this list is further explained in the glossary.
solution to the puzzle below. (SEE UTILITY ROOM) Whilst they are
Style of writing
Displacement
Substitution
Pataphor
presented back in scale order, the pages have bee perforated so that
Second style
Subtraction
Addition
Multiplication
Word
Sentence
Text space
Image text
you might complete the puzzle also, and rearrange the texts based
on your solution to create a re-reading of the story.
A constraint
Letter
Structure
Grammar space
A movement
Around
Into
Through
A perspective
On/in
Adjacency
vista
A time
Morning
Afternoon
Night
A tense
Past
Present
Future
A sense
Taste
Touch
Hear
A sense
See
Smell
Proprioception
There is a separate 5x5 magic square to produce a set of
PATAconstraints, inducing a sense of clinamen and antinomy
among the lists. The fuax applied to the 1st in the pair, means you
can freely substitute it: the manqué as applied to the second, means
you don’t use it therefore you should consider the opposite. As Perec
put it in an interview, any “system of constraints” must contain “an
anti-constraint built into it,” giving the system “some free play, as
the phrase goes . . . one needs a clinamen” 47
Whilst each item must be used in the text, it does not have to apply
Using four straight lines, join all nine dots
together without taking your pencil off the paper.
You cannot retrace over a line or use the same dot
twice.
36
to the whole text. The use of other structures can also be introduced
if there is a relevant link.
47 Paul A. Harris, ‘The Invention of Forms: Perec’s “Life A User’s Manual” and a
Virtual Sense of the Real”, SubStance, Vol. 23, No. 2, Issue 74: Special Issue: Between
Science & Literature (1994) p.63
37
story time
References in this section shall be contained in the marginalia and
shall include (authors surname, title, possibly shortened, page number).
They shall be indicated not by number but graphically by a line.
The marginalia here is an
exploratory analysis of the
writing and its structures. It is
filled with thoughts, assumptions,
and gobbets or quotes that help
illuminate Kendall’s original text.
The marginalia is in itself one
of the structures of the essay,
designed to pull you out of the
original page space allowing you to
look back on it with an alter-gaze.
The marginalia does not have to
be read, and you are free to add
your own, for only by writing can
you truly have been reading. (see
FORW RD).
38
39
BOOK
(for terms unknown, see GLOSSARY for full list of definitions and examples)
Displacement : spoonerism, Rrose Sélavy, Matthew’s algorithm.
Subtraction : abreviat’, syncope, elision, lipogram, belle absent.
As applied to the Letter
Spatial Grammar
Movement – Around (the house)
Space grammar – where space is
defined by grammar and grammar
is defined by space.
At no point is the text shaped or
formed by anything other than
the keyboard or symbols inserted
into the text. The only way space
is shaped is through the use of the
space bar on the keyboard.
Perspective – in/on
Morning - night
Past - future
Taste
See
A written account of the reading of House Of Leaves,
a novel by Mark Z Danielewski.
“I write: I inhabit my sheet of paper, I invest it, I travel across it.”
VASHTA NERADA: We did not come here.
THE DOCTOR: Well of course you did. ‘Course you came here.
VASHTA NERADA: We come from here.
THE DOCTOR: From here?
VASHTA NERADA: We hatched here.
THE DOCTOR: But you hatch from trees— from spores in trees.
VASHTA NERADA: These. Are. Our. Forests.
THE DOCTOR: You’re nowhere near a forest. Look around here.
VASHTA NERADA: These are our forests.
THE DOCTOR: You’re not in a forest. You’re in a library. There’s are no
trees in a— Library. Books. You came in the books.
40
41
This is a journey that occurs
through the physical experiences
found in and through a book.
(Perec, Species of Space, 11)
(Doctor Who, Series 4, Forest of the
Dead)
Subtraction and displacement
(strange lipogram too): The
plural s’s have been displaced by
apostrophes but remember their
presence allowing the reader to
place them in themselves and feel a
sense of the alter-text.
BOOKS
Chronograph: A sequence of words
that give you a temporal result
based on Roman numerals. This
particular one tells you what time it
is that morning. 7.14 a.m.
About seven fourteen is the nights expiration into the bright a.m.
well various pile’ actually of fluctuating size and description
with
spine’ pacing forward while others face .sdrawkcab
and a mountain range of babel tower’
a
Minpin’
or
Borrower’
so that one could feel like
fills my view with sedimentary layer’ of flat
squeezed paper mulch
horizontal — angled \ some attempting
The missing plural on fingers here
is particularly good as it implies
the use of one finger returning our
sense of scale from mountain range
to real book
the vertical ⎞ ⎛ and full of gap’ || to sque-----ze one’s finger’ into
‘Every house is an architecturally
structured “path”: the specific
possibilities of movement and the
drives toward movement as one
proceeds from the entrance through
the sequence of spatial entities have
been predetermined by the architectural
structuring of backspace and one
experiences the space accordingly –
Dragobert Frey, Grundlegung zu einer
vergleichenden Kunstwissenscgaft.’
(Danielewski, House, 153)
Eye’ and finger’ are moving steadily upward and along searching this
|| and embark upon a climb to find a new text
last nights finished
and left at the bedside.
nesting ground of world’
with Polaroid’ and ease it out
My tip’ touch a spine lined
careful to not let the rest topple on
me.
My hand’ pull the cover open and without pausing to think I walk,
on to the page and in to the House Of Leaves
and it is bigger on the inside
42
43
Kendall’s adaptation of the word
‘and’ to ‘nd could be a reference to
Perec’s rules for writing the word
“and” in The Exeter Texts, his
story only containing the vowel “e”
(Perec, Three, 59)
to page
it gets w i
d
e r and
and I move
from font to font || voice to voice and yet always the same story,
‘nd as I stroll from page
this house with walls that are longer on the inside
where doors
appear from nowhere.
1.
Although solo it is not solitary this journey → across pages → I
am surrounded by the foices of vonts
The use of arrows here make it
unsure if a comma or full stop
would have been used, thus
giving the sentence two ways to
be read. The use of a bold letter
“a” suggests it could become
capitalized?
the character of characters
chattering to me across the soft cream pageα walking with me
The change in the CH phoneme.
down corridors past familiar words and mo_ _ _ ts through this
Sous rature section is a spelling of
the French word for words, mot
& a hangman game of the words
moments
T.A.R.D.I.S blue house till I came upon a plain, white door with a glass
knob. [it opens] into a space resembling a walk-in closet that I hadn’t
noticed before
I turn the evanescent handle and
step forward into the blue edged
frame of this white door
α There is something about the paper that infests the way the book is read. Is it
smooth or rough? Is this easier to turn? Does that make you read at a different pace?
Is the book so bent you can see the binding in the gutter? Is the paper bumped and
cockled from long hot baths? Is the paper diaphanous, with words of the past and
those yet to be read almost visible through the page? Has it been thumbed by other
wandering fingers who dog-eared corners of the faded and foxed? And is it gilded or
gnawed by time along its edge? Are pages loose from ancient horse bones, stained
with the taste of red wine and sunned through creases? Or unbound, underlined, and
unpaginated; water stained and wormed; yellow by the sweat of past palms.
44
The displacement from reality to
inside the book sees the return of
pure plurals. Thus suggesting that
any constraints used here on will
be purely based on the book being
walked through.
45
Italics are a quote from the book,
(Danielewski, House, 30)
“The spatiality of English texts
as physical objects is normally
backgrounded, but that does not
negate the significance of this aspect
of their existence. What might we
learn, for instance, about the history
of Chaucer’s reception if we paid
more attention to the development
of typography in Chaucerian texts
printed from the Renaissance to the
nineteenth century? How do the
physical details of publication (style of
type, size of page, locations of glosses,
presence or absence of illustrations,
even texture of paper) reflect the
cultural status of the text, and how
do they affect the reader’s experience?”
(Mitchell, Spatial Form in Literature,
550)
“See, the irony is it makes no difference
that the documentary at the heart of
above, this book is fiction. Zampanò knew
from the get go that what’s real or
isn’t real doesn’t matter here. The
consequences are the same.”
(Danielewski, House, xx)
from falling in||to the words This could be rewritten with
Kendall’s name in the place of
Zampanòs. He knows that the
particular text he is walking
through is not of consequence
but that each book written has the
same outcomes, even if not written
in such an avant-garde manner as
House Of Leaves.
Derrida explores this spatial
grammar rather succinctly,
although he did not know his
words would be applied to it when
he wrote them.
the gaps between these coats are getting wider now
Unsure if this sentence is carrying
on from the previous or if the ‘
denotes a subtraction of letters
unknown.
The is a notable displacement of
capital letters, except with the
nouns he uses causing ambiguity
with the grammar, the spaces
inserted still imply a pause but one
is almost unsure if one has time to
breath or carry on
Despite the notion of the Alice in
Wonderland whole, he chooses the
Narnian metaphor as a space that is
walked through rather than fallen.
higher
leaving stretches of ‘lackness all around following the complex
‘s insides
‘here footnotes slide to the side in vertical stacks
upside down
down as
as if
if gravity
gravity worked
worked another
another way
way for
for
with words slung upside
aa time
time
lists and temperatures and stories and other books
lining this hole
fur coats in a Lewisian wardrobe
‘here the
footnotes, have footnotes, inserted, on their side, to support the text
46
holes path
I will confess to feeling ill at ease here
the descent into the
minotaur’s labyrinth
has found me not at the end of the hole
or even the
centre but the bottom of the page stuck
on this low path, the shortening sentences hastening my pace till the
pages flicker by like film stills
47
“This fissure is not one among others.
It is the fissure: the necessity of
interval, the harsh law of spacing.
It could not endanger song except by
being inscribed in it from its birth
below and in its essence. Spacing is not the
accident of song. Or rather, as accident
and accessory, fall and supplement,
it is also that without which, strictly
speaking, the song would not have
come into being. In the Dictionary,
the interval is a part of the definition
of song. It is therefore, so to speak, an
original accessory and an essential
accident. Like writing.” (Derrida, Of
Grammatology, 290)
The deliberate subtraction of
b from “blackness” implies that
whilst the pages cannot be filled
with it, it is somehow inherently
there, whilst synchronously
creating an alter word to describe
the page itself.
Mimicking the original text gives
us a sense of the space that MZD
constructed in HOL, (Danielewski,
House, 220-224)
one
after
48
49
another.
after
50
51
another
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
projecting newspaper columns
and written transcripts of radio conversations and written transcripts
of radio conversations and written transcripts of radio conversations
and written transcripts of radio conversations and written transcripts
of radio conversations and written transcripts of radio conversations
and written transcripts of radio conversations and written transcripts
of radio conversations and written transcripts of radio conversations
and written transcripts of radio conversations and written transcripts
of radio conversations and written transcripts of radio conversations
and written transcripts of radio conversations.
52
53
all of a sudden it lurches
and I’m sliding down the gutter
bumping
off
le t
te
and the lurch
into
a new corner
and the top
again
before the pages sp
-l-
it and the I suppose
inevitable fall through
the leaves. A descent through blacks marks and each one wounds.
______________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
r s
on
my
______________________________
way
______________________
to the
top
upside
the
down
___________
_______
_____
of
_____
___
and
t h e
lurch
into a new
corner and the
_
and as the structure di sin
te gr
pages tumble on to their sides and over
t
e
s around us
even the footnotes that pin
down each page topple and finally caught on the edge of a precipice
an ignis fatuus flickers, a will-o-the-wisp, the false end in sight
bottom again
54
a
55
“In less time than it takes for
a single frame of film to flash
upon a screen, the linoleum floor
dissolves, turning the kitchen into
a vertical shaft. Tom tumbles into
the blackness, not even a scream
long up behind him to mark his
fall,” – (Danielewski, House, 346)
Italics are a quote form the end of
HOL, (Danielewski, House, 525)
Q:
How did you get him out of the house?
Karen: It just dissolved
Q:
Dissolved? What do you mean?
Karen: Like a bad dream. We were in pitch blackness and then I saw,
no… actually my eyes were closed. I felt this warm, sweet air on my face,
and then I opened my eyes and I could see trees and grass. I thought to
myself, “We’ve died. We’ve died and this is where you go after you die.” But
it turned out to be just our front yard.
Q:
You’re saying the house dissolved?
Karen: [No response]
Q:
A play on the quote from Alice
Through The Looking Glass by
Lewis Carroll. The original quote
stands thus:
How is that possible? It’s still there, isn’t it?
— and it really was a book, after all.
“— and it really was a kitten, after
all.”
(Carroll, Through The Looking Glass,
196
56
57
BED
Pataphor – see glossary of terms
Addition –pleonasm, syntagm interpolation, echolalia, encasement
As applied to Words
Text space
Movement - into
Perspective - vista
Afternoon Present
‘The American writer Pablo Lopez has
coined the term ‘pataphor to describe
“a figure of speech that exists as far
from metaphor as metaphor exists
from non figurative language. Whereas
metaphor is the comparison of a
real object or event with a seemingly
unrelated subject in order to emphasise
the similarities between the two, the
‘pataphor uses the newly created
metaphorical similarity as a reality
with which to base itself. In going
beyond the mere ornamentation of the
original idea, the ‘pataphor seems to
describe a new and separate world, in
which an idea or aspect has taken on a
life of its own.”’ (Hugill, Pataphysics,
A Useless Guide, 51)
Pataphor (noun):
- An extended metaphor that creates its
own context.
- That which occurs when a lizard’s
tail has grown so long it breaks off and
grows a new lizard.
Touch - hear
Smell - Proprioception
From - http://www.pataphor.
com/whatisapataphor.html
“ ‘For a long time I went to bed in writing’
Parcel Mroust”
“A bed sees us born, and sees us die. It is the ever changing scene upon
which the human race play by turns interesting dramas, laughable farces,
and fearful tragedies. It is a cradle decked with flowers. A throne of love. A
sepulchre.”
– Xavier de Maistre
Note from the author All books mentioned I have read in the same bed I sleep in now, and all
beds mentioned are the same bed, this bed.
58
59
The opening words to Perec’s
chapter in Species of Space,
according to Perec it was “a play
on the first sentence of Proust’s great
novel, A la recherché du temps perdu,
which reads: ‘for a long time I went to
bed early.’ ” (Perec, Space, 16)
His alternative has wonderful
pataphorical connotations for
instead of saying “as if in writing”
the metaphorical version, he
actually went to bed IN IT, and this
is what Kendall plays with in this
chapter.
(De Maistre, Journey Round My
Room, 16)
So today sees us taking a whistle-stop tour through some of her
favourite stories beginning with the Hundred-acre Wood, although
∞ The symbol for infinity
And like the opening words of
Perec’s chapter, Kendall begins
his with a re-writing of Neil
Gaimen’s, Stardust . The original
sentence read: “The tale started, as
many tales have started, in Wall.”
(Gaimen, Stardust, 1)
apparently there was no time to stay for tea or honey, and at the
2. Bed = ∞ Books
mention
The tale started, as many tales have started, in Bed.
I have lived in B¬ed for the last 26 years. It is a strange place of ever
changing worlds, shifting phantasmagoria of spatial disturbances, as
if rifts in the story world were opening up and merging with the
real. Its finite edge keeps reality at bay.
“The books transported her into new
worlds and introduced her to amazing
people who lived exciting lives. She
went on olden-day sailing ships with
Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa
with Ernest Hemingway and to India
with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all
over the world while sitting in her little
room in an English village.”
(Roald Dahl, Matilda, p.15)
The telling of stories creates the
real world. - (Manguel, http://
www.brainyquote.com/quotes/
quotes/a/albertoman521749.html)
I have seen some extraordinary things in Bed. In fact it was here
I first stumbled across a little girl called Matilda, a particularly
a lust for revenge over the slightest of insults (even Miss Honey fell
Christopher
In
Robin’s name the
every culture, in
every civilization, there are real
wood
blinked
places - places that do exist and that
and
was
are formed in the very founding of society which are something like counter- sites, a kind
replaced by
of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites,
all the other real sites that can be found within the
a Grimm
culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and
country.
inverted. Places of this kind become spaces outside of
all places, even though it may be possible to indicate
their location in reality. Because these places are
— It should
absolutely different from all the sites that they
be noted that
create and speak about, and yet are undoubtedly
woven into reality through cognitive and
the physics in
spatial similarities, I shall call them,
this part of Bed
by way of contrast to utopias,
are
not those of
textopias.
ordinary space. It is, after
all, a textopia.
vindictive little cow, but one whose knowledge of Story World is
unsurpassed. She is now 25, and her slavish affection for books and
of
Here, space doesn’t exist topographically but rather temporally, based on
units of time known as Books, Chapters, Sentences and Words. The space
victim in the end), has left her single, bitter and almost alone, but for
around you exists only for the length of time that you are cognitively
a cat she had neutered.
processing the Chapters, Sentences and Words that make up whole Books.
This is what makes Bed such an intriguing place.
Despite this slightly unappealing side to her nature, this literary
despot makes an excellent guide through the story world of Bed.
We climb up towers using golden rope made of hair, which takes
us in through the window of a ginger bread cottage filled with the
death rattle of infants on a roasting spit. This cottage sits in a wood
filled with little girls in red cloaks that carry shotguns to keep away
perverted wolves. At the edge of the wood we find a sleep ridden
wasteland where towers of thorns climb up to the sky and turn into
60
61
This definition of a textopia is a
bastardisation through syntagm
interpolation of
Michel Foucaults definition of
Heterotopias(Foucault, Of other
spaces, Heterotopias. 6)
“A spatial structure is easiest to think
of as an assemblage of
elements, each with its separate
meaning, all arranged in a fixed
pattern to establish a total significance.
This conception of form falsifies the
actual mode of existence of a novel,
the way in which it is a temporal
structure constantly creating its own
meaning.” (Miller, The Form of
Victorian Fiction, 46)
pile of mattresses. At the top of this pile
Bed: Where unformulated
dangers threatened[…]
we
are the bottom of an ocean, walking
through a garden made of
seaweeds as red as the sun.
Once the tide had
ebbed we began again,
following Milo through
the
tollbooth
in
his
little car, through the
Foothills of
Confusion,
the island of Conclusions,
Dictionopolis, Digitopolis,
via
Expectations
and
The green text is a quote from
Perec’s chapter on The Bed (Perec,
Space, 17). It has been split up in
this text to form conceptual titles
for each of the text inserts. The
stacking of three worlds causes
shifts in a readers awareness of the
page, what is on it, around it and
outside it.
Ignorance to climb to the Castle in the Air. Then into the hunting
grounds of mobile cities who one day rose up on gigantic caterpillar
tracks and began to prey on the smaller suburb. As one gets mawled
by tearing urban jaws a door gets left behind.
We open the door
to Paul Dentons bedroom,
filled with the smell of
“Each change of narrative level in
a recursive structure also involves a
change of ontological level, a change
of world.” These
nested worlds can be continuous or
subtly different, or even radically
different from the parent world. The
“recursive structure serves as a tool
for exploring issues of narrative
authority, reliability and unreliability,
the circulation of knowledge, and so
forth.” (Brian McHale, Postmodernist
Fiction, 114).
Absolute, pot and something
male. As the fug clears you
see strange bed fellows only
in the window we climb
out of on the wrong side,
[…] the space of the solitary body encumbered
by it ephemeral harems, […]
“The sex urge is very powerful, when a boy
is excited he is likely to have sexual thoughts
about all manner of things which ordinarily
he wouldn’t think of at all. The memory of
some of them may horrify him, may make
him guilty or afraid, when he remembers
them after he ejaculates. […] That’s the way it
is with whatever fantasy a boy has when he is
masturbating. The chances are astronomical
that any of those fantasies would ever come
true, but they’re exciting to think about while
masturbating. Then he comes back to the real
world and deals with it in a realistic way.”
Boys And Sex, P.46-49
and into Doctor Finches
Masturbatorium, a dark
calm room lined with books
on psychiatric theory, a box of tissues by a long leather couch with
a blonde woman curled on it. We try the door and walk into a new
room via the same door with every turning of the handle till through
62
[…] the improbable place where I had my roots, […]
into the mountains Of
the spy hole we see Tomas as he fucks Sabina in her studio whilst she
still wears her bowler hat, feeling the sensation of lentils as it passes
between my fingers, thrusting my
hand deeper into the sack being used we sat on the bed after dinner on
for a bed in Shepheard’s Hotel where the floor, at right angles to each
there is plenty of red plush and red other me leaning against the
wall, him against the bed head
Morocco and innumerable wedding conversing through a mix of
presents of the ‘80s; in particular many Miranda Hart quotes and book
of those massive, mechanical devices theories while his socked foot
covered with crest and monograms, and my bare one inched closer
and associated in some way with cigars, over the covers till they closed
like a jigsaw.
[…] the foreclosed
and out onto a racetrack speeding with
desire, […]
automobiles of shiny green and glass
which crashes off through the countryside poop poop and into an
asylum where the those who crazy see the truth.
And as golden dust falls through an abyss rent in all the
skies onto two lovers below, we see what must be unseen of cross
hatched streets, foreign alter spaces and topologangers who unsense each other till we eventually see all 55 of the invisible cities at
once and times arrow is released into Alices looking glass and time
begins to go backwards..sdrawkcab og ot sni geb emit dna ssalg
si wor ra semit
d n a
e c n o
gni kool secilA So hard, so high, so sterile, the main o t n i
d e s a e l er
ew
llit
rehto
h c a e
ees yllautneve feature of this utilitarian room;
elbisivni eht the connection was immediate. f o
55
lla
ta seitic
ngierof ,steerts Here I was to change the course of
dehctah
dna
secaps
r e t l a
s regna golopot my life by giving life, on this cool
o h w
metal and plastic structure which
esnesnu
srevol
owt was to become a disinfected sterile o t n o
sei ks
tahw
ees place of retreat; of safety; of fear; e w
,w o l e b
fo
neesnu
e b
t s u m
s s o r c
of pain; of support; of tearing
n
e
d
l
o
g
s
a
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n
A
n
a
h
g
u
o
r
h
t
t
battle; exhaustion; umbilicus and s l l a f
eht lla ni tner
s ss yub da
desperate love.
d
n
a
poop
po o.thtonu rpti
eemshot hut l y seeheast Oh Bed keep me alive to see this ynz a r ac
e r eh h w
o
dcnaarteca r,sragiac
h
t ni w
yt u
a w
w
kh
o
t
o
o
child. Hold us all as we push and
t
i
w
g
n
i
d
e
e
p
s
sde el i br oemvo tou ac gasp and strain against your rails.
s
e
c
i
v
e
a a r g o ntsoem
rc
h t i wd
,dsnm
You, Bed, are my world – we are
d n a
ni detaicossa welded. I fear any movement from
estnmeseorps
n
i
;
s
0
8
‘
e
h
t
f
o
r a l u c i tersoahpt here, I will not be parted from you. f o
yn a m
l,deaevrcisisdnanm
a hhcseum
lp Silent support in my final scream; der fo
ytnelp si
de nl baa roeacm
cournonM
g n i d d e wi my son, placenta – Bed you take k c a s
edl heebtt ootnHai
sreo’ df rrdaeeseuh pghneihebSt the mess and hear the relief and the n
i
sg,sernsesgai nptfis u r yhm
tti
s
a
senleirtenewehltefw
ob
rlites ephs etsleihwd tears. I lie on you so grateful.
dnah
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hoirerthlaw
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y
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D ns,snunihaotiensu
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place of
This is a combination of Pleonasm
and echolalia. The pleonasm
that occurs is showed backwards
though as a response to the words
in the texts in a mirrored echolalia.
This mirroring establishes a sense
of infinitely generative story
worlds between its beginning and
end.
The densification of words
also serves to create a written
encasement of the other worlds
embedded within them.
eessshontreclslnafuoninoethnew
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g siat ldlintdArneahto ehccnaoe
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unneisodhnta foocycnoarm
oM der dna hsulp der fo ytnelp si
ereht erehw letoH s’draehpehS ni deb a rof desu gnieb kcas eht otni
repeed dnah ym gnitsu rht ,sregnfi ym neewteb sessap ti sa slitnel fo
noitasnes eht gnileef ,tah relwob reh sraew llits ehs tslihw oiduts reh
ni anibaS s kcu f eh sa samoT ees ew eloh yps eht hguorht llit eldnah
eht fo gnin rut y reve htiw rood emas eht aiv moor wen a otni klaw
dna rood eht y rt eW .ti no delruc namow ednolb a htiw hcuoc rehtael
gnol a yb seussit fo xob a ,y roeht cirtaihcysp no s koob htiw denil moor
mlac krad a ,muirotabrutsaM sehcniF rotcoD otni dna ,edis gnorw
eht no fo tuo bmilc ew wodniw eht ni ylno swollef deb egna rts ees
uoy sraelc gu f eht sA .elam gnihtemos dna top ,etulosbA fo llems
eht htiw dellfi ,moordeb snotneD luaP ot rood eht nepo eW
.dniheb tfel steg rood
a swaj nabru gniraet yb delwam steg eno sA .brubus rellams eht no
yerp ot nageb dna s kca rt rallip retac citnagi g no pu esor yad eno ohw
seitic elibom fo sdnuor g gnitnuh eht otni nehT .riA eht ni eltsaC
eht ot bmilc ot ecna rongI fO sniatnuom eht otni dna snoitatcepxE
aiv ,silopoti giD ,siloponoitciD ,snoisulcnoC fo dnalsi eht ,noisu fnoC
fo sllihtooF eht hguorht ,rac elttil sih ni htoobllot eht hguorht
oliM gniwollof ,niaga nageb ew debbe dah edit eht ecnO
.nus
eht sa der sa sdeewaes fo edam nedrag a hguorht gni klaw ,naeco
na fo mottob eht era ew elip siht fo pot eht tA .sesserttam fo elip
otni n rut dna yks eht ot pu bmilc sn roht fo srewot erehw dnaletsaw
neddir peels a dnfi ew doow eht fo egde eht tA .sevlow det rev rep
yawa peek ot snugtohs y r rac taht s kaolc der ni slri g elttil htiw dellfi
doow a ni stis egattoc sihT .tips gnitsaor a no stnafni fo eltta r htaed
eht htiw dellfi egattoc daerb regni g a fo wodniw eht hguorht ni su
sekat hcihw ,riah fo edam epor nedlog gnisu srewot pu bmilc eW
.ecalp gniugirtni
na hcus deB sekam tahw si sihT .s kooB elohw pu ekam taht sdroW
dna secnetneS ,sretpahC eht gnissecorp ylevitingoc era uoy taht
yltnerappa
hguohtla
,dooW
erca
etiruovaf reh fo emos hguorht ruot
[…] where all his kinsfolk were
born and where they died.[…]
It should have been huge but it
wasn’t, more like a valise. He
had shrunk. Maybe it had been
after he shaved his moustache
off by mistake that he looked
smaller... Now though you
knew it wasn’t. On a conveyor
belt disguised by velvet and
braided trim was the casket.
Above,
the curtains waiting to descend.
In the wall, at the caskets head,
was a matt grey mechanized
pair of what looked like
miniaturised lift doors, the only
real reminder of the
procedure waiting to happen
once the curtains closed.
Climbed
between something
and 30 steps past the stench of
three lilies into the pulpit. The
dark of the wood arose out of
the carpet and came out of the
magnolia walls simultaneously.
There was something on the
wall overhead
that bowed over you,pushing
at your back to steer you
lecternwards. I removed the
three sheets of paper from
their silk pocket and unfolded
them with my finger tips across
the horizontal grain of the
wall. I saw the switched off
microphone and
then past it. I saw no empty
seats.
pots-elsihw a gni kat su sees yadot oS
So today sees us taking a whistle-stop
tour through some of her favourite
stories beginning in Mexico City where
we go …into an exhibition of paintings
by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios
Varo: in the central paintings of a triptych,
titled ‘Bordando el Manto Terrestre’, were a
number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces,
huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the
top room of a circular tower, embroidering
a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit
windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly
to fill the void: for all the other buildings and
creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of
the earth were contained in this tapestry,
and the tapestry was the world.”
(Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, 13)
emit fo htgnel eht rof ylno stsixe uoy dnuora ecaps ehT .sdroW
Excerpt from a text Kendall wrote
called Vallise, see UTILITY ROOM.
dna secnetneS ,sretpahC ,s kooB sa nwonk emit fo stinu no desab
,ylla ropmet rehta r tub yllacihpa r gopot tsixe t’nseod ecaps ,ereH
.aipotxet a ,lla retfa ,si tI .ecaps y ranidro fo
esoht ton era deB fo t rap siht ni scisyhp eht taht deton eb dluohs tI —
.y rtnuoc mmirG
decalper
saw
rehpotsirhC
dna
deknilb
64
doow
eht
eman
s’niboR
fo noitnem eht ta dna ,yenoh ro aet rof
65
DESK
Substitution – Displacement - Rrose Sélavy, Matthews algorithm.
Multiplication - nothing
As applied to the Sentence
Image space
Movement - Through
Perspective - Adjacent
Night
Future
Hear
Proprioception
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our
language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
-LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
A series of sentences taken from my desk.
66
67
(Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations, 539)
“A writer’s domestic interior opens a
window onto both author and text,
reminding us that what we may at
first perceive to be the timeless and
universal truth of writing cannot be
so neatly extricated from the complex
particularities of its spatial and
material origins.” (Fuss, The Sense of
an Interior, 2)
7. Then there is the TEMPORARY which consists of my camera for
the purpose of this essay, wet wipes to clean my left hand which is
currently in a blue splint with red Velcro due to my putting a chisel
through the back of my arm… etc.
68
69
Matthews Algorithm has been
applied here displacing each
piece of text out of its originally
intended sequence. The cut in
the page has been applied that we
might locate each piece of text to
help interpret its intended image.
Description of Perec’s desk in his
essay, Notes Concerning the Objects
that are on my Work-table, (Perec,
Species of Space, 144-5
8. WORKING objects such as notebooks and drawing equipment,
a series of half drunk mugs of tea and packets of chocolate biscuits
(not other types, only chocolate), which I would consider neither
temporary nor permanent as they appear for various periods of time
depending on the task at hand.
9. And finally the more sentimental objects of MEMORY, the ones
we wouldn’t be without where we to up and move house; the
photograph pinned to the wall above, the coaster one always thinks
they will put their mug of tea on, and here, Winnie the Pooh would
certainly make a reappearance.
70
71
EACH CAPITALISED WORD
WAS DERIVED FROM THE
SAME ESSAY AND WAS PEREC’S
METHOD OF DEFININGF THE
OBJECTS ON HIS TABLE.
Each piece of text serves to elaborate
on what we can already see in the
image. This repetition being a play
on the earlier Wittgenstein quote,
pulling into question our notions
of picture, internal language and
written language.
2. So let us look at this desk. Much like Perec’s work table it is a
1400mm x 700mm sheet of glass with metal trestles for legs: unlike
his it has a 2500mm set of 1.5” timber ratchet strapped to it: much
like his desk it is usually cluttered, although great pleasure comes
from the tidying and organisation of this, my reading/writing place.
1. Let us look at the writer. What do we see – only a person who sits with a
pen in his hand in front of a sheet of paper? That tells us little or nothing
72
73
Virginia Woolf
(Virginia Woolf, The Moment, and
Other Essays, 128)
4. There are those that exist by CHANCE like Fritz ( Joe’s teddy),
camera films, and a selection of bonbons.
3. Part of this REARRANGEMENT raises the question of what
should stay and what should go and quite often, “how did that get
there¿”, “well where do I put it now¿” or “what does that mean for
74
75
6. PERMANENT residence has been allotted to various others i.e.
hard-drives, pots of pens and Winnie the Pooh – this is focused on
the area around my computer
5. And others from NECESSITY, such as my many piles of books
whose organisations have consisted of, genre, author, format, how
much I like them and research based priority.
76
77
BEDROOM
Substitution – holorhyme, homophony
Addition – accumulation, larding
As applied to the Sentence
Text space
Movement - Through
Perspective - Vista
Night - no time
Present - past/future
Hear
Smell.
These facts are a severely edited version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_
(number) (accessed 09.08.2013)
1. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, in
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
2. This was a joke.
3. It is the average number of lines on an average page of an average paperback
4. The 42 puzzle, is a game devised by Douglas Adams.
5. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has 42 illustrations
6. In the same story, rule 42 is that “all persons more than a mile high to leave the
court”.
7. The combined ages of Lewis Carroll’s red and white queens is 74, 088 days, which
is for 42 x 42 x 42.
8. 42 is the episode of Doctor Who that is set in real time, lasting 42 minutes.
9. The board game Risk has 42 territories.
10. 42 is the number of hits on a pair of standard six-sided dice.
11. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear dead for 42 hours.
12. There are 42 generations in the gospel of Matthew’s version of the genealogy
of Jesus.
13. In Revelations 13:5, it is proper sized that for 42 months the Beast will hold
dominion over the earth.
14. The Gutenberg Bible contains 42 lines per page and is known as the 42-line Bible.
15. The angle rounded to hold degrees for which a rainbow appears, the critical angle.
78
This is a journey around my bedroom, a series of rememberances
and anticipations.
This is a response to Xavier de Maistre’s Journey Round My Room,
who spent 42 very eloquent days pontificating the room he lived in.
This is a set of 42 sentences, written one a day, for 42 days, each
correlating to his original 42 chapters.
Is there any one saintly thing I can do to my room, paint it pink
maybe or instal an elevator from the bed to the floor,
maybe take a bath on the bed?
Whats the use of liveing if I cant make paradise in my own
room-land?
79
(de Maistre, Journey Round My
Room, 539)
Extract from “Second Poem”,
Orlovsky, Clean Asshole Poems &
Smiling Vegetable Songs, 11
(the typos are original)
There is a pleasure and melancholia to this act: there is a treasure,
an élan, eunoia in this fact.//It has cost me nothing and yet I feel
that its result might be the death of my bedroom.//But I have
made myself comfortable here in my ways. //It is located at the coordinates: 51.5369203 N , 0.13562630000001263 W//Here is the bed
I have since I was 13; a low and ugly grey metal frame, with the same
mattress that will have been turned about 52 times: it came from our
B&B so saw many bodies, although none that it owned till mine. //
There was once an occasion in which I was collapsed on the floor
outside my room. //My head and heart were in it, moving across
floor and bed through the smell of his clothes and unused valentines
IOU’s, echoing his words as we stood in the Covent Garden street.//
My body was crumpled outside it against the frame, it rendered
physically incapable of ingress except through those senses unlinked
to motion forwards.//But it betters me.//Pinned to the wall are
mum and dad and me, for safety.//Four steps away from where I
write sits my blue bed.//A padded red silk paisley smoking jacket
with a black collar hangs on the wall.//STOP.//From here I can hear
one of the girls making me tea soporifically.//My eyeless masks
eye up every corner at once.//Bear sits, as usual on the edge of the
blue bed.//He is nearly 80 years old and has a Jack-Russell chewed
ear.//Hannah quietly left after she put me in here.//It was then my
face made my pillow damp.//Now there is a picture of Joes friend
Shonagh on my wall.//His boxes of books and bits sit below my
desk.// It is to him this chapter goes.// His books to soon go on my
shelf.// Fritz will move in beside Bear.//My half finished painting by
the window might get finished.//It is of a woman stood bare with
yellow roses.// Above my desk a child’s drawing of a dog hangs.//At
my desk I have three chairs to sit on depending on the task.//And it is
where I am sat now, in the highest and spiniest of my chairs to ensure
a straight back and mobile procrastination.//Behind me is where
the air bed goes when my room becomes a flop house.//There are
385 books and 432 DVD’s in my room of which 12 are the same
story.//I have not closed my curtains for six years.//So Tigger has
a view of the balcony.//A once tidy Junk Tower filled with drawing
and painterly accoutrements, looms by my desk.//Dry Roses hang
on a string above my head.//Books not included in my bedroom are
mostly: plays, big art books, biographies, unread fiction, children’s
books, the poets, historical texts, and a few to hard to allocate a
specific genre.//I have another library contained on my computer
of audio-books, for to be read to, while lying on the blue bed, is
another world.// Something that has been in all my bedrooms, is
a small china pig with a playmobil black bowler hat, it is familiar,
grounding.// I have a quilt of hot air balloons that fly over me in my
sleep.// His unpacked clothes perch on half a shelf in anticipation
of the whole thing.//His long coat hangs on the same hook as mine
now.// They hang there bodily, on the door, as if contemplating
walking out as if in Mary Norton’s Bedknob and Broomstick.
And thus ends the 42 days of my bedroom voyage to observe my four
walls and all they hold through De Maistre’s eyes.
80
81
S1 – Holorhyme, not only that but
both sentences try to express a
similar meaning not just sounds.
S2 - a dual note - the idea of
confession as destruction – Joe’s
moving in and the anticipation of
what this might change
The addition rule is adhered to
here by the accumulation of the
sentences over time, adding one to
the other
S21 – Joes boxes = half way and a
change
S 32 Antimony of de maistre who
felt misanthropic
S 35 - He also had a dried rose.
S 36 – DM described what WAS
in his.
43rd sentence as aligned with DM’s
43rd chapter entitled Liberty, a
free sentence and his final freedom
from the room.
STAIRCASE
Displacement - pataphor
Multiplication – not actually missing: tautogram, alliteration, rhyme,
homoeuteleuton
As applied to the Letter
Image space
Movement - Around
Perspective - Adjacent
Morning
Future
Taste
Proprioception
A series of observations on the staircase.
82
83
Jennifer Bloomer quoting Becket “Here form is content, content is form.
You complain that this stuff is not
written in English. It is not written at
all. It is not to be read - or rather it is
not only to be read. It is to be looked
at and listened to. His writing is not
about something; it is that something
itself” (Bloomer, Architecture and the
Text, 7)
Here we see Kendall using the text
itself to construct an image, not
just an idea. To physically imbue
the text with a sense of movement
through a constructed space,
literally following his words up and
down stairs.
This particular staircase has various functions: the physical conduit
1. LITERAL / DESCRIPTIVE
of fourteen steps by which one can move between the two floors;
a passing for those ascending and those descending; where you can
Stairs have
A
b a l u s t r a d e
hear the neighbours in their kitchen at breakfast time; a seat on
which to converse with those in the kitchen; a miniature library of
books too big for my book shelves
a top
a step
a step
a step
a step
a middle
a step
a step
a riser
a step
an undera tread
a step
a step
a foot
transitional books
keys
laundry & conversation step
As well as the physical structure
of the text the words themselves
have been used to influence the
experience.
bike paraphernalia
separately they are
a step
a step
a step
a step
a step
The general sense given by the
multiplication rules give a sense
of the repetition of ones footsteps
and the moment one exhibits in
climbing the stairs, such as this
tautogram of repeated a’s
a step
a step
a step
but together they are a staircase, a stairway, flight of stairs, a
companionway, in a stairwell.
84
85
3. MYTH
It is believed that Kendall wrote
this note on the staircase as a
response to the passage below:
A staircase is what I imagine one should find at the heart of
a labyrinth for it would seem a relief to move upwards or downwards;
something other than the horizontal centrifuge that spun you to that
point. The centre of the labyrinth though, is not the goal but merely
“The building is a document of
something that happened. It is a
document of great transparency
(translatability), because it is the
concretisation of what happened.
[…] Architecture in this sense (and
architectural theory) is, to a degree,
“always already” allegorical in
the Benjaminian sense. That is,
architecture contains the instrument for
radical critical operations upon itself
within itself.”
(Bloomer, Architecture and the Text,
22-23
“The Staircase sits as an allegory for
the center of the essay; of the scales
of spaces; of the three levels of scale;
of the grid itself — which is in itself
an allegory of the flat and of an
architecture.”
(Teskey, Allegory and Violence, 119)
This was written as a response to
Giambattista Tiepolo’s painting of
Apollo, and the magnificent hallway
around it.
a portal to elsewhere outside it for a staircase is not a place but a
transition, a movement from here to there.
By sitting at the centre, it is both the locus and the antithesis
of the home, for it pulls all places together by being a non-place, one
of no definable stationary purpose.
Like the Minotaur at the centre of the Labyrinth, there is
something that lurks around stairways; the creek on the stair, step
by wicked step. When I was a child, although that would be a lie, for
2. FORMAL
even now there was and is something that lurked at the bottom of
the stair. At night, when all the other lights were switched off one
I hope that in the future we have stairs. I don’t want
by one, I would be forced to run up the stairs in case a fingered hoof
domestic scale escalators and elevators, or the invention of the
should come through the riser and drag me down. (This fear might
Stannah hover step that floats up upwards, assuming there is an up
have been fed by the rumour of a murderous tunnel from under the
to go to.
stairs to the smugglers coves. Despite my having started this myth,
There is a life around stairs. Harry Potter lived under
I came to believe it so forcibly that all manner of mythical creatures
them, Joan Crawford was pushed down, they ascend to heaven in
could emerge from there.)
Christianity and descend to the underworld in Greek Mythology
There is a certain schizophrenia about them, they create a
world, there exists a mirror. In the day it is no more than the perfect
sense of a home because they sever the up from the down. “There
tool to reflect oneself. But as the day goes on, and light becomes less
is no position from which the entire [flat] is visible at once. It must
sure of itself, so do you. The figures in it become like Peter Pan’s
be experienced in time, like an allegory, and the architecture of the
shadow — flighty, dark and soulless
staircase causes that experience to unfold in a manner that is richly
suggestive, creating a labyrinth of meanings.”
make me feel more at home rather than fearful of being here.
86
Back in my current flat, opposite this portal to the nether
Strange though it may seem, these mythological stairs
87
“The function of [a] centre was not
only to orient, balance, and organise
the structure - one cannot in fact
conceive of an unorganised structure
- but above all to make sure that the
organising principle of the structure
would limit what we might call the
clay of the structure. By orienting and
organising the coherence of the system,
the centre of a structure permits the
play of its elements inside the total
form. And even today the notion of a
structure lacking any centre represents
the unthinkable itself. […] This is
why classical thoughts concerning
structure could say that the centre is,
paradoxically, within the structure
and outside it. The centre is at the
centre of the totality, and yet, since the
centre does not belong to the totality
(is not part of the totality), the totality
has its centre elsewhere. The centre is
not the centre.” (Derrida, Writing and
Difference, 352)
Step by Wicked Step is actually a
children’s book by Anne Fine about
having stepparents.
Each of these four sections took
one of the four of Frye’s symbolic
phases to critique the staircase.
The final one was a Anagogic which
he described as being, “the imitation
of infinite social action and infinite
human thought, the mind of a man
who is all men, the universal creative
word which is all wor[l]ds.”
(Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 125)
This links to the pataphor where the
staircase is no longer like something
but has become something else.
4. ANAGOGIC
“bridges you cast toward the outside,
toward the world that interests you so
much that you want to multiply and
extend its dimensions through books.”
(Calvino, Winters Night, 142)
They are the bridges to all other places, like the bridges of Venice
they make a series of floating isles a whole world, or those of
London that make a severed city a single space.
The A Bao A Tu is a reference to
the mythical creature that Borges
wrote about called the A Bao A
Qu, a creature who also lives on
stairs. The substitution of ‘Qu’ for
the French pronoun ‘Tu’ to imply a
creature that follows you!
(Borges, Imaginary Beings, 15)
Homoeuteleuton – the repeated
use of the ending “ing”
Here, in this bridging place, the turbulence of all footsteps forever
treading its timbers, are eddying and coagulating into a creature. It
is called the A Bao A Tu and it is following at your heels, hungrily
snapping up your steps.
It is there always, hiding in the pile of the carpet or knotting in the
wood, waiting to lick the sole of your foot clean. Surprising it is
Like the deaths in the Amber
Spyglass (Pullman, The Amber
Spyglass, 271-276)
never seen, like your death, it is creeping politely behind you just
waiting for the moment. And when two people are passing, it is
feasting.
88
89
BALCONY
Pataphor of “Good prose is like a window pane”
(Orwell, Why I Write, 4)
Subtraction: couper à la ligne, ellipsis, brachylogia, zeugma
As applied to Words - Sentence
Grammar - text
looking - Into
perspective - in/on
Afternoon
Past
Touch
See.
Some window texts about the people who live opposite as seen
from my balcony.
“The eye travels along the paths cut out for it in the work.”
“The story, or narrative, of the book does not unroll along a line of time. Its
units of narrative are assembled in space - in the space of the text. Thus the
text pushes at a privileging of spatiality over temporality.”
90
91
(Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, 33)
(Bloomer, Architecture and the
Text, 12)
Ellipsis – the omission of a word that
described the physical condition of
the curtains leaves the sentence
open to a slight interpretation. Is
the word “open” or “ajar”? how
does this change the reading of the
sentence and therefore the size of
the confession.
I left the curtains
as I took
my clothes off in the hope that
some one was watching me.
Sometimes I think he is looking
and sometimes… well… not.
I only moved the cur’ain a
I love this chair, oooghh,
fraction; just to see. I hung
how great is this chair.
these lacey ones thinkin’
Little bugger! Blood!
they’d make it a bi’ easier
Urgh! I keep saying
for lookin’. Bu’ the holes,
he’s going to have my
they’re too bloody small!
nipples as after dinner
mints.
Who’s he going to pick
today? Pick me! Pick me!
Subtraction of the name preceding
Trollope, could either imply book
envy or disdain depending on which
Trollope you think of first. This
affects the reading of the final two
sentences.
Not the Trollope! Nope….
URGH, Angels and Demons.
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
Of all of us, he had to pick
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
that, another for the charity
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
shop.
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
In this chapter Kendall has given
us an insight into a few windows
in a block of flats allowing us to
construct similar windows in the
space left, as well as the block itself
around them.
“[V]irtuality is synonymous with
“architecture” proper as opposed
to building simple. Through the
use of gesture, the non-present is
made present […] The principle of
our access to the virtual is based
on the act of reading, where the
movement from the actual to the
virtual is simultaneously a spatial
and a philosophical transformation.
Reading is not simply the translation
of phonetic or iconographic characters
into their linguistic equivalents,
but a restructuring of the space
of appearance. The origins and
evolution of this “space of reading”
are characterized by a distinctive
architecture, and the architecture
of inhabitable spaces is conditioned
by this distinctive architecture: the
architecture of reading is the means of
reading architecture.”
(Kunze, Architecture as Reading, 28)
Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!
Zeugma – the word “goes” applies
to all the articles of clothing.
Couper à la ligne – gives us time
to think but as a result of the
characters previous statement this
could also become time to worry
about what happened to them or
what they might do. Asking the
reader to think, pulls them off the
page and into their own memories
to construct a potential filler.
Potatoes! Potatoes!
On
goes
sweater,
socks,
the
purple
No one ever comes to visit
grey
shorts,
me. I blame bed, he’s just
headband
not
and
comfortable
Brachylogia
under
trainers. “I’m going to
strangers, that, and she
learn how to box! Going
keeps leaving crap in me,
to stand up for myself !
oh and I’m magnolia, of
all the colours, council flat
magnolia.
.”
92
93
Heart
Contingent
Wet
Craving
Ordered
At peace
Claustrophobic
Hungry
Organised
Sage
Happy
Trapped
freeloader
Frustrated
Relaxation
Ascendency
En mi salsa
Miracle Worker
LANDING
Comfortable
Cup cakes
“Phantasmagorias of the interior are
constituted by man’s imperious need
to leave the imprint of his private
individual existence on the rooms he
inhabits.”
(Benjamin, The Arcades Project.14)
Maternalistic
Pataphor – substitution: N+7, antonymic translation
Multiplication – nothing
Word
Text image
Movement - Into
Persoective - Adjacent
Afternoon
Future
Touch
Whore
Indecisive
Artist
Unpleasant smell
Surplus
Homicide
Elevated
Donkey
Pressurised
Unwanted
God like
Satiated
Watery
Impatient
Angry
Cramped
Sticky
50’s housewife
PULL
Proprioception.
Chardonnay
Tall
The landings along my block are public walkways that give access to
Grounded
every flat. As you walk down each gangway, you can peek into everyone’s kitchens. To fully comprehend the movement of going into
these kitchens would be to ask each resident how they saw their relationship to the kitchen space.
“Lemme in! Lemme yinnnnn!”
“Gnyaa!” yawns the door without budging an inch. “Go ‘way!” “Who said
that?”
“Me,” groans the door. “An’ you, who are you? Whazya name?”
And so my LANDING of kitchens began: a series of one(ish) word
Foreign
Warm
Inept
In Control
Inspired
At home
Homily
Domesticated
Useless
Self-love
Dirty
Crampt
Safe
Wanting
Productive
Content
Violent
generous
Masterchef
Dancey
Miles away
descriptions of how the people of my block feel about being in their
kitchens.
95
(Gysin, The Last Museum, 9)
ROYAL COLLEGE ESTATE
Substitution – paragram, cryptography
Subtraction - abreviat’, syncope, elision, lipogram, belle absent
As applied to Sentence - Letters
Grammar - Text
Through
in/on
Night
Past
Hear
See
The horrific story of someone who used to live there.
Dwelling is both process and artefact: it is the experience of living at a
specific location and it is the physical expression of doing so.
96
97
(Oliver, Dwellings, 15)
Three years ago someone broke into my flat. While sitting on
commotion had worried her). Looking across the estate at midnight,
he proceeded to tell us of all the past crimes committed here. There
were the Turkish drug lords and Russian pimps who lived opposite;
a few brutal muggings; the crack whores who lurk in the stairways
and finally the tale of the Camden Ripper. While Alan talked I was
quietly taking notes, which I have rediscovered and rewritten here.
His
neighbours
all said
they would
hear power
tools and
a saw at
all times
of day and
night
ast
neighbours son, Alan, arrived to check on his ancient mother ( the
He was caught out by complete chance. It turned
out ’e’d chopped up his next two shin girls, also
prostitutes, and put them in bin
bags. But
because it was Christmas time, the bin men
weren’ as frequent
r m back then so when
ea
r
a homeless guy fo
comes along lookin’
for food, he got
a rather nasty shock. He
t o o k
bits of leg down to the hospital
wh e r e
they phoned the police. They said
a blood trail led them to his flat but the rumour
was he had put his actual rubbish le in with
g
the bodies
and there was
a letter
torso
with
his
address on.
bre
the landing outside my door waiting for the police to arrive, my
THE CAMDEN RIPPER, FROM ALAN’S MOUTH
A more colloquial language is given
to Allen through the use of the first
three substitution rules
Paragraph written as a lipogram of
the ripper’s initials, A & H.
It alters the words used, making the
language used much more inventive
due to neccesity.
It was abou’ eight year ago. They discover’ this girl’s body in one
of the flats on the bo’’om floor. It’s the one that now ’as a solid
me’al door, it’s all locked up, never been sold. They put that door
on during the trial.
He was called Anthony Hardy, in ’n’ out of institutions for years,
ever since tryin’ to drown the wife. Disturbed in ‘is noggin you see.
But the police told everyone…
low ri
s
Mr. Anthony Hardy
k to pu
Before he chopped them up
but after he’d had violent sex with them
and strangled them to death,
sho
he posed
1
2
3
“LOW RISK TO PUBLIC”
The police wen’ in ’n’ found her, lyin’ on the bed, all covered
in bruises n’ bite marks. The problem was they let him go,
they thought she ’ad died of an ‘art attack instead. But because
they let him go, they thought she ’ad died of an ‘art attack
instead. But because they let him go,
, it meant he didn’t stop. It was like
he had got it wrong on her and now he wan’ed to do it right.
bo
die
s
an’ photographed them
The judge said he was “obsessed with pornography,”.
“LOW RISK
TO PUBLIC”
98
blic
thig
h
99
uld
er
He hid the faces with a devil mask and the baseball cap he wore
s
when hin they arrested him. They know this because he sent the
film to
a friend of ‘is who then sent the
police.
sho
But they never
thi
gh pho’os to the
found the heads or hands or feet.
uld
er
But they did
find a note in his flat.
forear m
Sally White RIP
And a headless torso. They used brea her boob implant serial
st
numbers to identify her.
He is now one of those men whose never leavin’ prison. He’ll die in
there
leg
And he chose to live ‘ere so he was close to prozzies at Kings Cross.
low risk to public
tor s
o
100
101
KING’S CROSS
Displacement – anagram, palindrome, metathesis, spoonerism
Addition – prosthesis, epenthesis, paragoge, stuttering.
As applied to the Letter
Text space
Movement Around - Through
Perspective Vista - Adjacent
Morning
Present
Taste
Smell.
A man of scale – a walk back through the spaces previously
encountered, departing from Kings Cross.
“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been
happening inside my head?”
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in
Harry’s ears even though the brightness was descending again, obscuring
his figure.
“Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should
that mean that it is not real?”
“The text is less a narrative to be apprehended than an object to be entered,
less narrated than constructed.”
[S]pace is, after all, a form of representation.
102
103
(Rowling, Deathly Hallows, 579)
(Bloomer, Architecture and the Text,
15)
(Colomina, Sexuality, intro)
It has been noticed that the act of walking alone along a path does
not in all honesty exist. T.S. Elliot wrote in What The Thunder Said;
Who is the third who walks all ways beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the White
Road There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, I did I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
The implication being that someone follows you; maps your
progress; narrates your journey; is a part of your story and you
might never know.
Harry Potter’s path and mine have crossed many times. Via the
mellifluous voice of Stephen Fry, he lulls me to sleep at night and
is my companion during the wee hours of the morning whilst
drawing; he filled my early years of reading with pages of JK’s badus
Latinae punums and sometimes I still find myself saying accio whilst
gesturing at something I want… So earlier this afternoon (a sunny
one in early October), at Kings Cross station, I gravitated towards a
chair next to the imitation of Platorm 9 ¾.
To my right sat a young man in his mid twenties who, like me, had
a notebook and biro, and was diligently making observations. His
demeanour and sense of purpose put him in a different place to all
others present. He was neither waiting for a train, or for someone
on a train, or anyone at all. There was no sense of his killing time,
just his writing,
104
105
(Elliot, Selected Poems, 55)
… Platform 9 ¾. Now I’m sat heres however I find myself distracted by
the line of Fogwartians waiting to be scarrfed in Gryffindor colours and
snapped pushing half a trolley into the wall. To my left, a granny with
a diamante bracelet gets up and waddles off with her daughter in law to
the toilet. LUGGAGE LEFT UNATENDED She leaves her son awkwardly
alone with a handbag of glittery silver letters, I ♥ DUBAI. The queue for
Platform 9 ¾’s is getting loooooonger. The blonde attendant keeps waveing
her
clickclicking
I dnwand,
a ,ffojumpping
s klaw dninto
a pthe
u sair
tegand
nam
gnuoy ehher
t tnheels.
iop sIihwas
t tAonce
34:sat
61
fake Hogwartians
Scarrfed – use of epenthesis and
paragoge on the word scarf to
create a new word meaning, to
have a scarf put on you.
Kendall uses italics here to imply
he is quoting this man, when
actually he is writing his own story.
here
.noitwaiting
utitsorpfor
rofJoes
dootrain.
g os DESTROYED
saw ecalp sihBY
t ySECURITY
hw ees nacSERVICES
uoY .wollHe
of
had
,teerbeen
ts y rto
evsee
e nHelena
o sletohand
ehPete,
t ,gnihis
orfparents.
dna gniThe
ot elure
lpoeof
p fthe
o tnHarry
uomaPotter
ehT
Repeated use of the letters H and P
shop
moorwas
y redrawring
ve ,licnuome
c ein,
ht obviously
yb meht to
ot buy
neviagpresent
rood txfor
enhim,
setatby
se which
eht llaI
mean
n
edmme,
aC .the
evaperfect
h yehtcover.
sdi k eThere
ht rofiseanobakeon
gnidusandwich
lcni moobehind
rdeb a me.
otniStomach
den rut
grrrumbles.
ssssscarf.
fo tuo eno Igcould
ni kciPsee.9that
491 enobody
cnis ytwants
reporpthehgSssslytherin
uorht gnipm
ip ,licnuThe
oC
cleanning
dluow yltelady
iuq pushes
meht gher
nivotrolley
mer daround,
na ,decithe
rperhigh-vis
p nam ajacket
taht dglinting
worc eof
ht
nails.
chick
dher
ew2oinch
llof etalons
vah dlfor
uow
eH .Aydfat
raH
ynotakes
htnA photos
taht rooff hthe
cnicontrast
c a neebinevthe
ah
estainless
uqitna steel
sti htgutter
iw ,yaand
W sthe
a rcstone
naP tpaveing
S pu gnwhile
i kat yher
ltnfriends
er ruc ecomment
r’ew etuon
orhow
eht
Addition of grr to rumbles add to
its aural qualities
Sibilance of the added s’s hints at
the image of the snake assosciated
with Slytherin House in Harry
Potter.
creaaative
said
erehw hcrshe
uhciseand
ht thow
saP .they
sesrowish
h gnthey
i kcohad
r hther
iw “creatiiivity”,
dellfi swodniw
stiin,pthat
ohs
way
sih dthat
na eisnasomehow…
oS erehw Bullshit.
,eerT ydTHIS
raH eIS
htAtsSAFETY
niaga deANNOUNCEMENT
lip era seva r g eht
Two
Potter
shop
o
t deparents
nnalp nrush
iwdooff
G tto
fa rthe
cenHarry
otslloW
y raM
dnleaveing
a gnisoptheir
mocetwo
d erteenage
a efiw
Skull
gboys
ni kabehind,
T .rehtwho
om rIelike
h fotoyimagine
romem are
enosecretly
ts eht rlistening
evo yllehtoS ity ron
aMtheir
emo
ceb
.Candy
ETATheadphones.
SE eht otni WILL
tfel a KEVIN
neht dnLANG
a teerPLEASE
tS egelloUnder
C layotheir
R otIndon’t
o thggive
ir a
ahsfuck
em hmug
tiw shot
degaIcbsee
ir naeyearning
drag a tsfor
ap ,magickal
rood lateparaphernalia
m eht tsap mithat
h woshines
llof I
through the crack between
across
.ytiviheadphone
tpac fo gnand
os a ear.
gni gTwo
nis slittle
drib hboys
tiw run
dellfi
dna
the station with cowboy hats firmly atop their mops, dragging a red suitcase
as big as they are. An unwilling white dog whose paws have no grip on a
smooth stone floor, is skated across it by his mistress. They have repeated the
same message over the tannoy three times at different speeds in case Kevin
Lang does not understand it. HORNSEY AND ALEXANDRA PALACE.
CHANGE AT ALEXANDRA PALACE FOR WELWYN GARDEN CITY.
Earlier I was sat in a coffee shop dreaming of Brief Encounter, although
knowing my luck I would end up more Victoria Wood than Celia Johnson.
106
107
Epenthesis occurs at various points
here, altering the pronunciation of
the word, sometimes so much so
one feels one should read them out
loud to see the difference.
yb detcartsid flesym dnfi I rev ewoh sereh tas m’I woN .¾ 9 m roftalP …
dna sruoloc rodnffiy rG ni defr racs eb ot gnitiaw snait rawgoF fo enil eht
htiw ynnar g a ,tfel ym oT .llaw eht otni yellort a flah gnihsup deppans
ot wal ni rethguad reh htiw ffo selddaw dna pu steg telecarb etnamaid a
yldrawkwa nos reh sevael ehS DEDNETANU TFEL EGAGGUL .teliot eht
Anagram of Camden Ripper
rof eueuq eh T .IABUD ♥ I ,srettel revlis y rettilg fo gabdnah a htiw enola
gnievaw sp eek tnadnetta ednolb eh T .regnooooool gnitteg si s’¾ 9 m roftalP
Anagram of birdcage
t16:43
as ecnoAtsathis
w I .spoint
leeh rethe
h gniyoung
kcilckcilman
c dnagets
ria ehup
t otand
ni gnwalks
ippmujoff,
,dnaand
w rehI
eH SECIYou
VREScan
YTIsee
RUCwhy
ES Ythis
B DEplace
YORTwas
SED so
.niagood
rt seoJfor
rofprostitution.
gnitiaw ereh
follow.
Don Wall: Can you clarify what you
said before about the two systems of
architectural experience?
John Hejduk: You can be in a volumetric
situation which is “encompassing.”
Architecture is the only art where
you can have that experience, which
is very curious. Or else, you can be a
distance away, a block away from a
house on a hill somewhere, and you
can look at that distant thing as an
object, whatever your perspective is.
You approach it, you move toward
it, the object is upon you. There is a
moment—and I am talking not only
about the physical but also the mental
moment—when you cross the threshold
and you are no longer outside the
object. You are in it.
John Hejduk: While you can mentally
“go into” a painting—your mind gets
“caught” in it and you mentally proceed
through—you cannot physically go into
it. Sculpture is similar, it’s external to
you; very seldom can you go in it […]
Architecture has the double aspect
of making one an observer or voyeur
externally, and then completely
“ingesting” one internally. One
becomes an element of the internal
system of the organism.
( John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa, 90)
rThe
ettoPamount
y r raH ehoft fpeople
o erul ehtoing
T .stnand
erapfroing,
sih ,etePthe
dnahotels
aneleH
s ot nestreet,
eb dah
oneeevery
Iallhcthe
ihw estates
yb ,mihnext
rof tndoor
eserpgiven
a yub to
ot them
ylsuoivby
bo the
,ni ecouncil,
m gnirwaevery
rd sawroom
pohs
hcamotSinto
.em adnbedroom
iheb hciwdincluding
nas noekaone
b a sifor
erethe
h T .kids
revocthey
tcefrehave.
p eht ,Camden
em naem
turned
eh T .fracspimping
ssss nirehthrough
tylsssS ehproperty
t stnaw ydsince
obon t1949.
aht eePicking
s dluoc I one
.selbm
u r rof
rg
Council,
out
fo gcrowd
nitnilg that
tekcaaj sman
iv-hgprepriced,
ih eht ,dnuoand
ra yremoving
ellort reh sthem
ehsup quietly
ydal gniwould
nnaelc
the
ehave
ht nibeen
tsartnaocinch
c eht ffor
o sothat
tohp Anthony
sekat kcihHardy.
c taf A He
.sliawould
n rof snhave
olat hfollowed
cni 2 reh
w
ohroute
no tnem
moc scurrently
dneirf reh etaking
lihw gnup
ievaSt
p ePancras
nots eht dWay,
na retwith
tug leeits
ts santique
selniats
the
we’re
taht niits
diawindows
s ,”ytiviiitfilled
aerc“ with
reh darocking
h yeht hshorses.
iw yeht wPast
oh dthe
na schurch
i ehs evitwhere
aaaerc
shop,
T
NEgraves
MECNUare
ONpiled
NA YTagainst
EFAS Athe
SI SHardy
IHT .tihTree,
slluB …
wohem
os si taand
ht yhis
aw
the
where
Soane
eganeare
et ow
t rieht gnievaeand
l pohMary
s rettoWollstonecraft
P y r raH eht ot Godwin
ffo hsu r splanned
tnerap owto
T
wife
decomposing
lbecome
lukS riehMary
t no ti Shelly
ot gninover
etsil ythe
ltercstone
es era memory
enigami oof
t ekher
il I omother.
hw ,dnihTaking
eb syob
ig t’noonto
d I rieRoyal
ht rednCollege
U ESAELStreet
P GNAand
L NIthen
VEK La Lleft
IW into
.senothe
hpdaESTATE.
eh ydnaC
aevright
We turn stairwards and along the landings,
the whiff of four different curries pumping
eht ni sehtolc sih sevomer eH
out of windows whilst the steam from boilers
ereht stis dna nus noon retfa
make the roof sweat drip drip even in the
sbreh fo enil elttil A .dekan
warm afternoon sun. Bikes and hydrangeas
ot thgieh thgir eht ta tsuj tes
line the sides in a colourful processional as
ailatineg sih fo weiv eht erucsbo
we climb higher and higher till the landing
.etisoppo swodniw eht morf
sits in the leafy tops.
yltcefrep ees nac eh hguohT
As he opens his door I creep past
.eno y reve dna hcae otni
him and am inside. The notebook goes down
on his desk and he sits on the little balcony.
nihs tahhim
t ailpast
an rehthe
parmetal
ap lakcdoor,
igam rpast
of gnaingarden
raey a eribcaged
es I tohs with
gum kmesh
cuf a
Isefollow
ssorcfilled
a nu r with
syob birds
elttil osinging
wT .rae adnsong
a enoofhpcaptivity.
daeh neewteb kcarc eht hguorht
and
esactius der a gniggard ,spom rieht pota ylm rfi stah yobwoc htiw noitats eht
a no pir g on evah swap esohw god etihw gnilliwnu nA .era yeht sa gib sa
eht detaep er evah yeh T .ssertsim sih yb ti ssorca detaks si ,roofl enots htooms
niv eK esac ni sdeeps tnereffid ta semit eerht yonnat eht revo egassem emas
.ECALAP ARDNAXELA DNA YESNROH .ti dnatsrednu ton seod gnaL
.YTIC NEDRAG NYWLEW ROF ECALAP ARDNAXELA TA EGNAHC
hguohtla ,retnuocnE feirB fo gnimaerd pohs eeffoc a ni tas saw I reilraE
.nosnhoJ aileC naht dooW airotciV erom pu dne dluow I kcul ym gniwonk
108
109
“[a]t the door there is someone whom
we know and yet who is disquieting.
. . . At the door there is someone with
whom,despite the signs, we have a
contradictory relation” (Rey, Nihilism
and Autobiography. 30)
stairs.
the
climbs
,sgnidnal eht gnola dna sdrawriats n rut eW
gnipmup seir ruc tnereffid ruof fo ffihw eht
He removes his clothes in the
sreliob morf maets eht tslihw swodniw fo tuo
afternoon sun and sits there
eht ni neve pird pird taews foor eht ekam
naked. A little line of herbs
saegna rdyh dna sekiB .nus noon retfa m raw
set just at the right height to
sa lanoissecorp lu fruoloc a ni sedis eht enil
obscure the view of his genitalia
gnidnal eht llit rehgih dna rehgih bmilc ew
from the windows opposite.
.spot yfael eht ni stis
Though he can see perfectly
tsap peerc I rood sih snepo eh sA
into each and every one.
nwod seog koobeton ehT .edisni ma dna mih
mooR yM dnuoR yenhe
ruoJ
tekcop eht tuo as sgnah
no taoc gnilleclean
va rt sih fo
feets
moordeb sih fo rood eht
.ti tfel ebare
vah tsum eh erehw
his
tuo ti kculp yllu fthguoht I
of
.ksed sih ot ti n ruter dna
souls
the
licks
.ynoclab elttil eht no stis eh dna ksed sih no
I
110
111
Paragogic ‘s’ added to certain
words. This makes them sound
more creature-ish, in reference to
the A Bao A Tu.
.sriats
eht
sbmilc
Journey
Round My Room
eh
hangs sa out the pocket
of his ntravelling
coat on
aelc
ef bedroom
the door ofstehis
rab left it.
where he must ehave
ih out
I thoughtfully pluck sit
fo
and return it to his desk.
sluos
There it now
retne
eW
sits amongst the
dna deB otni
piles of books,
sreviled adlitaM
atop a stack of
koob a su
unpacked boxes.
eht
s kcil
I
112
113
Paragoge of ‘st’ to the end of
‘among’ give the sentence syntagm
sibilance.
won ti erehT
We
enter
eht tsgnoma stis
into Bed and
,s koob fo selip
Matilda delivers
fo kcats a pota
us a book
.sexob dekcapnu
But
that’s
a n o t h e r
story
for
another time.
A phrase often used in fiction, most
attributed to the Never Ending
Story.
This final chapter has served as
a rewind back through all other
chapters, giving each a concluding
moment relative to their scale.
[A]ll these forms are, in some sense,
spatial constructs which permeate
experience as well as the analysis of
experience and that the particular
nature of each can best be defined
in the context of a theory which
recognizes what they have in common.
(Mitchell, Spatial Form In Literature,
540)
Each is textual, each has its own
definable space and yet they flow
from one to the other as well as
sitting inside one another like
intertextual Russian dolls with the
smallest sentence but the most
provocative at its heart.
114
115
AFTERWORD
HECTOR: The best moments in reading are when you come across
something, a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things that you’d
thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else,
a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a
hand has come out and taken yours.
116
(Alan Bennet - The history boys)
117
A final note from this reader.
I keep looking at the storyworld around me, I move from
an inwardness and the sense of
the word at my toe-tips, to step
outward to observe the meaning of
what they are in my memory and
the associations between his words
and mine and then beyond into
the real world and I see the words
again, reflected back at me in the
room I sit in, in the world outside
my window.
TEMPORARY EPILOGUE
6
And so dear reader, we find ourselves, you and I, at an end. Not THE
END you understand, for this was if you remember, but the first
chapter on a much longer journey through written space and the
story world. However, the written descent through all nine of the
texts in KINGS CROSS, draws our time together to conclusion and
establishes a perfect moment for reflection on the experience.
Throughout my writing of this story I was trying to understand a
connection, maybe in the hope of one day defining it, between the
world of architecture, and the world that is written.
“No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be
confused with the words that describe it. And yet between the one and the
other there is a connection.”
It was THIS connection. In those few words that Calvino penned, a
seed was planted.
City || Words
Space || Writing
Architecture || Text
48 Epilogue n.
1.
a. A short poem or speech spoken directly to the audience following the
conclusion of a play.
b. The performer who delivers such a short poem or speech.
2. A short addition or concluding section at the end of a literary work,
often dealing with the future of its characters. Also called afterword.
- http://www.thefreedictionary.com/epilogue (accessed September 24th)
49 Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, (London, Vintage Classics) 1997. p.61
118
119
Architexture
On our journey together through the reading and writing of this
story I hope I have been able to build you a world of the flat in
which I live; that you have been inside it and looked out of it; walked
its stairs; slept in my bed or stripped naked and sun bathed on my
Wity Cords
balcony.
From the beginning of this essay I was not aiming towards
discovering a formal conclusion about this connection. If I had, I
might have chosen to look more directly at existing examples of
spatial writing (many of which are included in the STUDY). Instead
I felt it more intriguing to explore these constructions through
building them myself, with you, dear reader, as an active participant
in their architecture through your interaction with the text and all
its constraints. As a result, many of the conclusions are up to you.
Knowing this fact was a reason for choosing to write fictions (or
at least bastardised truths). When picking up a piece of fiction our
brain is in a certain state of acceptance. It is a tabula rasa primed
for exploration, ready to face the unexpected. It is able to follow the
many threads (or cords), and over story-time create an intertextual
weaving of them together into an architexture. Why do we read if
not to fall into a world that we can build around us?
“It is […] a three dimensional map of “systems” of ideas, documents,
and configuring diagrams represented as black marks upon a page. It is
not exactly a writing as “writing” is conventionally constituted, nor is it
exactly a “drawing” as such. It oscillates between writing and drawing,
operating in the spaces between. […] that “space between” must be explored,
or built within, in order to construe the relations between the two. […] a
paratheoretical construction of architecture and text.” 8
This text required my own weaving of many, many cords. The warp
of the essay taking the form of its rules leaving the weft free to
“think outside the box”, or as Christian Bök more eloquently 9 terms
it: to explore the rule is to be emancipated from it by becoming the master
of its potential for surprise. 10
I wrote my way through the warp via grammar, text and image;
addition, multiplication, and algorithm and the many other
50 Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: the (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi (Yale:
Yale University Press) 1995, p.20
51 For there is a great difference between being succinct, and being eloquent.
52 Christian Bök, ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science, (United States of
America, Northwestern University Press) 2002, p.71
120
121
[deconstruction is] understood as
an affirmative appropriation of
structures that identifies structural
flaws, cracks in the construction
that have been systematically
disguised, not in order to collapse
those structures but, on the
contrary, to demonstrate the extent
to which the structures depend on
both these flaws and the way in
which they are disguised”
(Wigley, “Domestication of the
House”, 207)
constraints. These rules I created to navigate the construction of this
Space [W]rites
text opened up doors to words via whole sentences that I would have
never otherwise written. Any moment I found myself hesitating or
Every good story is a construction, be it as complex and constrained
floundering, returning to the constraints pushed my shuttle back
as the ones explored here, or as simple as Paddington Bear. They
into motion. Leiris talks about this interaction (see footnote 6) of
are all worlds that you enter and engage with. Good prose, well-
the active antagonism of two beings, author and rules, and their
constructed prose, will serve to shed light on reality. Through the
emergence as something wounded but more beautiful and perfect
fantastical deconstructing, reconstructing, mirroring, mimicking,
for having been so marked.
exaggerating, flipping upside down of, altering the perspective of,
and general questioning of reality, these marks on paper, these
Around the main weave sits the border. Whilst each story could have
archimots, build walls filled with windows from which to look back
been read as is, I invited another reader along the journey in the
on our own reality, reframing the space in which we live.
marginalia allowing my own experience of the ontological flickering
between reality and text, as the writer writing about the writer’s
Having performed the writes of passage as it were to build this essay,
writing.
story-world and all; having begun to explore the connection between
words and worlds, have I learned anything that can be projected into
the realm of what others might term, real architecture? I think so,
but as an Epilogue, even a temporary one, serves not necessarily
to conclude but indicate certain happenings in the future of the
narratives characters, I think it more pertinent to consider a second
chapter where I, having begun to explore writing in an architectural
manner, should next investigate architecture and building something
in a writerly manner…
But that’s
another story
for another
time.
122
123
Appendices:
124
125
Lipogram – the omission of chosen letters
Glossary of terms
Matthew’s Algorithm – see the STUDY’s theory section
Abbreviation – the shortening of a word
Metathesis – the rearranging of letters or sounds between or in
Accumulation - the collecting of letters/words/sentences etc into
words
constructions
Metonymy – when something is called not by its true name but a
Alliteration – the reoccurrence of the same letter of phoneme in a
word associated with it
sentence
N + 7 - where one uses the 7th next noun (or other word type) in
Anagram – the rearrangement of letters to form new words
place of the original
Antonymic Translation – the conversion of a word to its opposite
Palindrome – where a word or sentence reads the same backwards
Aphaeresis – the loss of a letter or phoneme from the beginning of
as forwards
a word
Pataphor – see the marginalia at the beginning of BED
Belle Absent – A passage of text where certain letters are noted by
Paragoge – the addition of a sound at the end of a word
their absence
Paragram – a pun made by changing letters around
Brachylogia – the concision of speech or writing to give greater
Phoneme – a unit of sound in a word that is distinct
effect.
Pleonasm – the use of more words than neccessary
Chronogram – a sentence whose arrangement of letters that also
Portmanteau Word – the combining of other words to create new
refer to numerals can be translated as a time or date
ones
Coupeur à la ligne – the subtraction of lines from a body of text.
Prosthesis – the addition of a letter or sound at the beginning of a
Echolalia – the repetition of sounds or words
word
Elision - speech that lacks certain sounds
Rrose Sèlavy – The invention of words that sound like real ones
Ellipsis – the removal or omission of a word.
(based on the name Marcel Duchamp invented for his female alter
Encasement – being surrounded by something.
ego)
Epenthesis – the addition of a sound or letter to the middle of a
Spoonerism – a play on words by the switching of letters e.g. Multi
word
chlorey star park || Multi story car park
Gemination – the elongation of consonant length
Syncope – the removal of sounds from the middle of a word
Holorhyme – where two whole lines rhyme
Syntagm – a string of words that do not yet make a whole sentence
Homoeuteleuton – the repetition of similar endings
Tautogram – a set of sentences that all start the same way/with the
Homophony – where words have similar sounds
same word
Interpolation – to add or insert new material
Zeugma – where one word applies to two others in a sentence e.g. I
Larding – to insert a whole new sentence
have come to the end of this glossary and my patience.
126
127
Appendix 1:
The study
128
129
a - Gallery of Theory
These pages are taken from: Motte Jr, Warren F,
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. USA: Dalkey
Archive Press; 1998.
130
This is an explination of one of the methods used in
the essay. It is a way of reaaraging everything from
individual letters to whole paragraphs.
131
132
133
These pages are taken from : Mathews, Harry,
& Brotchie Alastair, editors. Oulipo Compendium.
London: Atlas Press; 1998.
134
These pages are an explination of the four figures of
Perec’s, Life A User’s Manual.
135
136
137
b - Gallery of The Oulipo
These pages are taken from : Queneau, Raymond.
Exercises in Style. Gaberbocchus Press Ltd; 1958.
138
Queneau wrote the same story in 99 different styles
of writing, two of which are shown here.
139
This page is taken from : Perec, George. A Void.
London: Vintage Classics; 2008. The whole book is
a lipogram of the letter E.
140
This page is taken from : the story, The Exeter Text
by Perec sourced from: Perec, George. Three. New
Hampshire: Godine Publisher; 2007.
It is a story that only uses the vowel, E.
141
These pages are taken from : Bök, Christian.
Eunoia. First Edition. Edinburgh, London, New York:
Canongate Books Ltd; 2008.
142
This book is a series of poems and paragraphs only
using specific vowels per piece.
143
c - Gallery of Other writers
These pages are taken from : Warwicker, John. The
Floating World : Ukiyo-e. Steidl MACK: Germany,
2009.
144
145
These pages are taken from : Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves. 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon; 2000.
146
147
This is : Danielewski, Mark Z. The Fifty Year
Sword. New York: Pantheon; 2012. Each cover is
individually perforated with a pin by hand.
148
These pages are taken from : Foer, Jonathan S.
editor. Tree of Codes. First Edition. London: Visual
Editions Ltd; 2010. It is a story made by due cutting
sections of text out of another book.
149
These pages are taken from : Sterne L. The Life and
Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. 123rd ed.
London: Visual Editions Ltd; 2010.
150
This is a contemporary reworking of the original
story, using visual interruptions and colour to
explore the text space.
151
These pages are taken from : Saporta, Mark.
Composition No. 1. London: Visual Editions Ltd; 2011
152
Every page in this book is loose allowing the reader
to broach it in any order. The back of each page
contains a topography made of letters.
153
These pages are taken from : Tomasula, Steve.
VAS: An Opera In Flatland. Chicago: University Of
Chicago, 2004
154
This book has been designed as a physical and
illustrated version of the themes contained within
the text.
155
These pages are taken from : Thirlwell, Adam.
KAPOW. London: Visual Editions Ltd, 2012
156
The textin these pages is shaped and formed to
embed paralell stories one inside the other.
157
These pages are taken from : Foer, Jonathan S.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. London: Penguin;
2006.
158
These pages are taken from : Foer, Jonathan S.
Everything is Illuminated. Australia: Penguin Group;
2008.
159
These pages are taken from : Johnson, BS. The
Unfortunates. London: Picador; 1999.
160
This novel has a starting chapter and an end, but all
the middle chapters are free to be arranged as the
reader likes.
161
Appendix 2:
utility room
162
163
a - 9 dot puzzle solutions
1
2
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
4
5
6
7
8
9
7
8
9
1
2
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
4
5
6
7
8
9
7
8
9
164
165
b - un-used text
A short story wriiten as an initial experiment into the world of
spatial writing.
We followed that route we knew so well until those last few
turns. Past Allied Carpets and Homebase, the slaughterhouse a
street away as the car slowed. Granite gate posts and a drive of
suburban flower beds paved a petalled way to the chapel past
the car park full of everyone. The car came to a stop while his
moved on around the back.
tirelessly
work
167
s ta
r
t
a
t th
ee
n
y route to school f
or 15
as m
w
yea
k
rs a
oo
t
nd
e
ye
She slips on the soft leather under her as we inch forward,
mimicking the car in front. It is so slow. The first
one
hundred
meters
up
the
driveway
and
through
the
gate.
Her face is white from the unhurriedness of it all. She
sits there, hands in lap,
the right
delicately folded over the left with a glint through
the wrinkled cracks whilst the air conditioning dries our throats.
time
eceip llam
s A
dnah fo
l
u
g
g
a
.eg
-
s new, it seemed to happen in the
it wa
wro
ow
ng
h
e
ord
m
o
er.
s
t
ink back, it see
en I th
med
Wh
to
ll piece of hand
sma
luggage.
- A
noun
Th
e
r
ou
te
w
166
He walks his
grandmother across the
farmyard to the first car
behind the hearse and
helps her to climb in.
e
sam
the
ut at
db
VALISE
We walked to the car to leave the smell of animal
shit and clean ironing for a few moribund hours.
The smeared concrete below our feet, her black
shoes shuffled one
in front
of the other.
WOBBLE.
She had her arm through mine, it was
a little dumpy. Still, she is perfect with age. Aged 75
she has a silk scarf from M & S knotted at her neck,
her grey suit is soft yet uncrumpled, and her hair is
firm and unrinsed, not like the biddies of other times
and places. They opened the door for her. She held
my hand in one of hers and with the same fluttering
grip she held the rubberised edge of the hole into the
car.
The car itself, black, so she
hesitates in this ||
|| knowing that sitting down
is one step closertohim but at the same time will only
serve to push him one step further away in this
unwavering covalence brought on by a lifetime.
They
travel
through the country
lanes, recognisable to
both but mostly him,
until the last few turns
towards the chapel and
crematorium.
G-dnk went the door handle. The crunch of gravel underfoot
walking around to her side. G-dnk again. Her hand comes out to
greet mine as her foot finds purchase on the ground. We stand in
the doorway to the chapel, framed by varnished timber and stone,
her left arm through my right and holding hands. Her right hand
comes over to meet the two already at prayer and
then
Jeans
body
gives
like one of those toys whose button
you push and the elastic no longer supports and all of a sudden you
find each joint, once so upright has folded. The button is released
slowly, then stone step gave way to dark red carpet, on the carpet
sat a congregation of wooden chairs, and the chairs respectfully
made an aisle guiding us to our seats in the front row.
They get out
of the car and
head into the
chapel
where
she has a funny
turn on at the
entrance. They
go through the
door and down
the aisle.
168
It should have been huge but it wasn’t, more like a valise. He had shrunk. Maybe
it had been after he shaved his moustache off by mistake that he looked smaller…
Now though you knew it wasn’t. On a conveyor belt disguised by velvet and
braided trim was the casket. Above,
the
curtains
waiting
to
descend.
In the wall, at the caskets head, was a matt grey mechanized
pair of what looked like miniaturised lift doors, the only real reminder of the
procedure waiting to happen once the curtains
closed.
The light in the aisle shifts and flickers from the people coming in and taking
their seats. The tops of the chairs cackled together as people sat. The soft strokes
of hgshgshgshhhh as people ran their fingers over the card programs and I ran
mine over the folded papers in mine before returning my hand to the button.
They sit in front
of the coffin, side
by side. People are
coming in behind
them but they don’t
look. They don’t
want to cry.
169
OTHER TEXT
three
between
nds
s frie
ld, a
si ht
a
c tub
issor
t gn
w eh
,dlro
wor
f sa
the
neir
sing
cros
they
n one another
live i
stil
l.”
W
illi
am
Penn
He climbed the pulpit and took out the eulogy, laid it out in front of him and began to speak.
–
–
eas;
na eno ni ev
ehto
il ye
ht ;s
ts r
aes
”.lli
e
he s
do t
d sd
but
ht o
th is
“Dea
* * *
Penn
am
illi
W
Climbed
eD“
something
up
“I AM AN ARCHITEXT” said the book. “No, you are architexture.
I, the author, am the architext.” “BUT YOU ARE NOT A TEXT”
“what am I then if not a sequence of letters that can be told, I could
be AGTTTTTCTCGGGACCTTGCGAA… etc, or I could be what
happened to me last night. Both science and language can confirm
that I am indeed textual. Indeed, it is from my letters that I wrote
you. You were built from my blocks. You are the space in which my
readers walk; you are a space that I made. I filled you full of walls
and staircases, door ways and windows, so that they might be more
aware of the world. They see that world and see their own looking
back or bumping alongside or on top. I put them in you, and you
make them see and feel and sense space.”
and 30 steps past the stench of
lilies into the pulpit. The dark of
the wood arose out of the carpet
and came out of the magnolia
walls simultaneously. There was
something on the wall overhead
that bowed over you,
pushing at your back to steer you lecternwards. I removed
the three sheets of paper from their silk pocket and
unfolded them with my finger tips across the horizontal
grain of the wall. I saw the switched off microphone and
then past it. I saw no empty seats.
He writes and I read . . .
He writes and I read: He writes and I read . . .
He writes and I read: ‘He writes and ‘I read . . .’’
He writes that I read that he writes . . .
He ‘writes and I read-write
This is one of many opportunities that I might have to bring up
another sub narrative to this meandering plot. That of ‘Pataphysics
and the Oulipo. I chose to do so now, not merely that it is early in
the easy but because of the two moments of alteration to the word
“write”:
Homophone – rite
The ‘pataphysical apostrophe – ‘writes
170
171
Bilbliography
& Image Reference
172
173
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