these other spaces...

I would like to share with you some thoughts about t h e s e o t h e r s p a c e s…

First of all I feel especially lucky that I had the opportunity to read that text, because it is just like a new window was opened.

Foucault’s thoughts, made me think of the spaces that we exist in them as alive. Spaces have life, that’s why they change over the time according to our needs. Heterotopia, that mythic and in the same time real space, transforms. It is a f l o a t i n g p i e c e o f s p a c e that d e s i g n a t e s, m i r r o r s and r e f l e c t s the society and the individual. It is heterogeneous, because it is consisted from many different relations between culture and society through time….

Heterotopia: medical definition

I would like to take a moment to relate Foucault's philosophies and terminologies to outside sources. Foucault's concept of heterotopia is difficult to grasp at first, but he does a wonderful job of explaining all aspects of how he views the word. Today heterotopia is used in the medical field. Medical Webster defines Heterotopia as such: misplacement or displacement, as of an organ; displacement of an organ or other body part to an abnormal location. I had a pre-med friend help me to understand this idea. Suppose a liver is displaced within the body, but is still able to function with the other organs. The liver is still a liver and has a concrete place, however it's function is projected within that space. The other organs interact with the projected liver, as if it was in its proper place. The body may reject the current concrete placing of the liver, sending out cells to attack the "intruder", but the projected place, where the liver should be, is left alone. The cells within that area interact as if the liver was in its proper place.

throughout all of Foucault's words, i find myself going back to the basic principal descriptions and examples of spaces. i am completely fascinated by the way the two main spaces are described.

'first is the utopia' Foucault speaks about these sites that have 'no real place' these places of viewed perfection. the other are heterotopias, or at least named that by Foucault. he speaks of these heterotopias as places that do exist, yet counteract and contradict the representation of the real space.

when he goes into his description of the mirror as a 'placeless place'. he begins to reveal just how he thinks. this virtual place, that does not exist, is the only way to witness his own existence, removed. his example in this section (3rd page second paragraph) is jarring, to that it flawlessly relates your experience to your reflection, both in a point of view personal, and removed.

to relate this, the mirror is the technology of the past. everyday we are so used to video cameras, televisions, computers and interaction with such things. our reflection and image are nothing new to us. we are so immersed in such imagery, that we don't stop to examine it. this 'placeless place' is in front of us more often than not, yet we don't realize the affect technology and access have on our reaction. this 'virtual point' that Foucault dwells on, we see simply as an image, a screen... and no longer a place or space of experience or position of counteraction.

-Z

Places with a present

This article was interesting, in that most of it the author spent ranting and degrading artists that create site-specific local art. She had some very pointed views on artists who make art for money, stating "...a profoundly local public art has not caught on in the mainstream because in order to attract sufficient buyers in the current system of distribution, art must be relatively generalized, detachable from politics and pain (not to mention ugliness)." Lippard believes that place specific art should be created by local artists not out-of-town artists that are paid to come in and create a place specific piece. I think in general she is annoyed with place specific art that does not take into account the people who live in this place and the history from their point of view. Which to a point is understandable, but there should avenues of exception. Suzanne Lacy describes a spectrum of artist's roles from private to public as experiencer, reporter, analyst, and activist. But to make an effective art of place, an artist must be all of these things (Lippard pg. 278).
-images of Suzanny Lacy's 'underground' and 'doing time'
I found this writing to be interesting, especially since Lippard obviously feels so passionately about this topic. It is a nice change from the relatively objective writing from before.

Claws and Gnaws at Us...

“The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space.”

In thinking about Foucault and Of Other Spaces, I have begun to realize the importance of the many spaces I have occupied. These six principles have in a way created relevance to my past and formed an understanding and an inquiry of who I have become.

Foucault gives us many examples; I will share like wise from a personal point of view. I grew up in a dysfunctional family, which in return made it possible to move more than 25 times before I left permantly at the age of 17. Never had I experienced “home” or “place.” Constantly I was directed to uproot which gave me the sense and desire of travel. It enabled me to never direct myself to call a “place” or “space” home. When the opportunity came to leave, I moved once again to a temporal space, in habiting a small bedroom. I paid 200 dollars a month. The constant recycling of ideas about movement made me unpleasant in one place. Before long, I was traveling, living out of my car and moving from one place to another. I had no set destination I had no set rules. I was, in fact, placeless. And the moment it became a place, became the moment I left.

I have continued throughout my life to live this way, and yet at a very constant I carried a desire to have “place.” To be able to create home and something I could possibly root myself in. I married a few years back and can now see the desires coming to life; however, my constant to move is still within me.

These spaces, and places I have been created my history, it has helped me to gain a larger perspective about my practice as an artist and about the concepts I wish to act upon. My current work is the derivative of this fascination of place, of space that is left behind. Not like the fairgrounds that Foucault speaks of, or the forest that hosts the annual Rainbow family gathering, but the space that wants to be known, a place that I can begin to call home.

Foucault has a wonderful way of examining these intricate ideologies about the heterotopias. “The ship is the heterotopias par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”

manipulating memory/down to earth:Land use

SURFACE & EVENT

Lippart’s
PART II – manipulating memory

Nostalgia is a way of denying the present as well as keeping some people and places in the past, where we can visit them when we fell like taking a leave of absence from modernity.

Why save things and what should be saved?, Kevin Lynch
We need to save things in order to remember to avoid the mistakes of the past and to be proud about what we achieved previously. Saving things makes us live again in our mind something that will never return.

1.Thessaloniki, Arch of Galerius(remains from the Roman Era)

…I would like to share with you what the time decided to save until today in my town in Thessaloniki, Greece.

All these monuments are remains of the most important eras of the history of Thessaloniki. There are there to reminds us of our story and where we are coming from.

During my studies in the Department of Architects’ Engineers, I attended mandatory restoration courses that taught us how to keep alive the monuments of the past. This is something that happens when you give a new use to an old monument so as to make a dialogue with the present. By means, that you shift something to useful, to something
2.The hippodrome at the Roman agora in Thessaloniki.

that answers to the needs of the present.

Below, are sitted the points that I would like to discuss with you during the class…

Poverty is a wonderful preservative of the past. It may let restoration wait as it ought not to wait, but it will keep old things as they are…the living occupy the past. Jonathan Daniels

When does history “start” or “stop”?

How distant the past must be to become valuable? Kevin Lynch

3.Thessaloniki, Byzantine city walls

Time collage: over time, houses become pastiches.

Distinction between history and memory. History is the science of learning about the past, while memory is personal, can create art and it is not being taught from anybody. Memory lives alive in our mind.

While monuments are often sterile pronouncements of the obligation to honor a truly dead past that occupies only a static place in the ongoing present, they can also recall the dead in order to make the survivors responsible to the living.
4.Thessaloniki, Eptapyrgio Entrance (remains from the Byzantine era)

Is it more important to preserve the sites of pleasure or pain?

HOW WE UNDERSTAND SPACE IS AFFECTED BY HOW WE UNDERSTAND TIME

...We need to remember our past but not to forget to live in the present while preparing the future…

and finally, how manipulated is our memory???

5.Street in Thessaloniki ‘s Old Town Ano Poli (remains from the latest Ottoman era)

PART III – down to earth: Land use

Pollution has no boundaries and it doesn’t settle in one place. Johnson

Constance Dejong

Minnesota Gateway Landmark
Collaboration between sculptor Constance DeJong and Antoine Predock Architect
Minneapolis, Minnesota
2005

Planets, stars, in fact all cosmological phenomena visible to the unaided eye in the night sky, are hidden from view in the light of day. Within the monument focused at the day chamber, one is presented with an inversion of the day’s light into stellar constellations. The sun rays, cast upon the overhead Cor-Ten plane, are focused through perforations and form points of light that reproduce and refract the day sky as it appeared on the founding date of the University. This date, February 25, 1851, is contained within the context of a historic human scale and through the expression of the monument’s design, is drawn into the vast scale of celestial time. The position of the represented constellations and its animate nature derives from the sun’s path over the course of the day.

The pattern mapped on the chamber's lid duplicates the founding date’s sky at noon, 45º 7' N, 93º 38' W at 830' above sea level. Aligned to the sun's position, the chamber orients itself to the local Meridian and its peak with the sky’s Zenith, the stars’ Magnitude varying from 12 to –2.

As day becomes night, the exterior Cor-Ten planes project the night sky of the founding date using lighting from within the structure. The West and East Blades juxtapose the night sky of the founding date with the present sky, acknowledging the University of Minnesota’s inception and continuing vitality as an institution of learning. While the Magnitude of the constellations along the blade is slightly greater than that of the vision of the unaided eye, -2 to 6.5, the Milky Way reaches to Magnitudes of 12. Each blade revolves 180º within its planar surface, from Meridian to Meridian, with a maximum local Altitude of 20º, allowing the gaze to change on approach as if to realign with time past.

I have found her work to be extremely interesting, and i thought it related to our readings. She has done many locative media projects as well as things that relate with place and situation. This is just one of her collaborative projects; she is an artist that prefers to collaborate when she creates a work.