Transpiercing

“Transpierce the mountains instead of scaling them, excavating the land instead of striating it, bore holes in space instead of keeping it smooth, turn the earth into Swiss cheese.” G. Deleuze + F. Guattari

Text inspired from “Machines are digging” (chapter of Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia)

[Poro.mechanics]

Poromechanics is a term widely used by H.P. Lovecraft in order to talk about the conditioning of what he calls “the inner field”. Negarestani on the other hand takes on this term and uses it in an way that adds not only to its meaning but also to its productive effect as a (w)hole. Therefore he turns it into a system, a way to talk about the relationship of the solid and the void and the subsequent results that they provide. In his essay titled “Poromechanics: archeology of psychoanalysis and militarization of archeology” he states:

“Deleuze and Guattari’s holey space can be addressed both as an event and entity. As an event it demarcates the limitropic degeneration of a whole which never effectuates full annihilation or complete effacement (hence the nomenclature ( )hole complex) and for this reason it perpetuates a poromechanical decay whose incessant dynamism is maintained by differentiation between solid and void. As an entity, the holey space is characterized by its anomalous distribution of consistencies through the poromechanical space.

The politics of the holey space is defiant toward the existing models of harvesting power, manipulating and analyzing events on the surface. For the world order, inconsistent events around the world are failures or setbacks since they resist the contemporary dominant political models. According to the politics of poromechanical earth, however, inconsistencies, regional disparities and insidious non uniformities across the globe constitute the body of the ultimate politics. The emergence of two entities (political formation, military, economic, etc.) from two different locations on the ground is inconsistent, but according to the logic of ( )hole complex they are terminally inter-connected and consistent. In terms of emergence, consistency or connectivity should not be measured by the ground or the body of solid as a whole but according to a degenerate model of whole and the poromechanical entity. “

Following these ideas, a few years later he adds up to the previous passage that void might exclude the solid, but solid must include void in order to architectonically survive. In addition to this, according to Negarestani, solid needs void to engineer its composition in case and under every circumstance.

If we get back to basic Deleuzian analysis, it is quite obvious that the solid/void contradiction as expressed by the previous excerpts, can be easily translated into a striation/smoothing condition, where the solid takes the place of the smooth space and the void the place of the striated topography.

As an analogy, but as a real life condition, this relativity is stunning. As we will try to show later on, the Deleuzian line of emergence can penetrate all the vast field of possibilities that lie in the materialized substance of the solid. This reminds us of the indeterminacy factor that came as a conclusion when Koolhaas was addressing the congestion element. All of this is necessary in our effort to provide our project with a systematic approach that will not only be able to metabolize itself but facilitate the transition to new social forms, that we are not yet capable to grasp or even foresee.

Continuing with the text, Negarestani claims that in terms of Earth “the holocaust of freedom can be attained by engineering the corpse of solidus through installing underground machines at molecular levels that exhume (ex + humus: un-ground) the earth from within and without, turning it into a vermicular and holey composition whose strata is not dismantled but convoluted in every level of its composition.[…] By correcting its consolidating processes, the solid sells its integrity to the abysmal convolutions inspired by the void, through which the pathological survival of the solid becomes the most basic factor in its irreversible lysis and degeneration.”

This exhumation process is the key to understanding the interaction between the solid and the void. We may not be able to predict the exact way that the future generations will try to direct their experiments, but what we can do is provide them the tools to start with. Even in terms of pure materiality, it is way easier, given the correct tools to carve your way into something, than try to construct it around you.

“In any composition, the solid narrates the anomalies created by the void […] It is a short analytical step to witness that the solid works mainly as two different entities overlapping each other and functioning concurrently:

1. As a compositional entity whose behavior, can induce changes to the compositional side of the void through Surface Dynamics.

2. The solid as an entity is inherently possessed by the void.”

So to conclude this early setting up, the solid and the void will be the main element that we are going to have to implement into our system of solutions. As previously exemplified the solid plays the role of the infinite possibilities and the eternal phasing of evolution. Anything can happen when the material of creation is already present. Another important fact would be the use of the surface in the “game”. That could give us the necessary background actualization, because after all, the surface has been the main habitat of the human kind so far… Lastly but most importantly, the void… That is the real protagonist, in every aspect of this matter. All of the experimentations, the trials and even the figurative ideas, can be address through and with the void. The exact results may never emerge to be what we nowadays expect them to be, but this is the ultimate beauty of providing the material elements that can be indeterminately utilized in the future, near or far…

The next stage is to try to define the aggregators of the interactions. The element that will ignite the void creation, by addressing the process of exhumation. Again, Negarestani in his text has a very interesting suggestion to make about these elements. As he states, by using the foreword of Lovecraft’s work, he introduces the idea of the Rats as exhumation machines...

[Rats]

Negarestani uses Lovecraft’s poromechanical cosmology where exhumation is “undertaken and exercised by units called Rats.”

“Rats are exhuming machines: Not only fully fledged vectors of epidemic, but also ferociously lines of un-grounding. They germinate two kinds of surface cataclysm as they travel and span different zones. Firstly, static damage in the form of ruptures rendered by internal schisms, uplifts, dislocations, jumps and thrusts which expose the surface to paroxysmal convolutions and distortions; and secondly the dynamic anomaly of seismic waves dissipating as the rats flow in the form of tele-compositions (ferocious packs).”

There is a lot of interesting facts about the use of Rats as the acting proprietors. First of all, even if we take the term literally, as every action taken in nature rats act like that to fulfill a basic chain of demands. Either they are digging to create the passage way that will lead them to a food source, or they are digging in order to escape, or even to hide their newborns. In any and every case the action of digging not only has a more specified goal, but also the literal exhuming comes as a consequence, that has neither been though about nor been calculated.

In the same type of actors, where the creation of void refers mainly to the meeting of basic necessities, we could easily put a more manageable element, the ant. For thousands of years the ants have roamed the earth, literally exhuming gigatons of soil in an effort to sustain their way of living. Every corridor, every chamber they have ever created had to fulfill a specific function. There is a very strict hierarchy included in the very being of the ant colony. As we learn from Steven Johnson’s “Emergence”, everything starts to be created around the queen ant.

The queen being the main aggregator is also the key provider of the colony. All the ants are being born from her. So in a not so strained analogy, she is the literal Rat. Everything begins to fall into place around her, the main corridor are created, the chambers, the storage and the circulation compartment. Still following the most basic rule of nature, that of survival. The same adheres to the structures made by termites.

On the other hand, if we decide to see the rat term metaphorically then we have a totally new problem in our hands. This is the way that we are willing to use the rat term, so we will try to maneuver through the delicate metaphorical structure consisting of humans and our life structure.

The basic idea behind this research is to be able to provide an experimentation zone. As we said before, we are not willing to return to the misfortunes of the past, where architecture was expected to create single handedly a brave new world. But on the other hand we definitely don’t want to fall victims of today’s indifferent stance towards the experimentation of the social structure.

The ideal balance has to be researched.

In our case, we are mainly trying not to direct, but only provide and influence experimentation. As with most cases in human history, only when we have the appropriate tools, we can start the testing runs…

So what if, instead of providing old retrofits or failed utopian predicaments, we actually provide the appropriate tools? Then maybe people can transform themselves to Rats, in order to address themselves, according to their own necessities, the basic evolutions that they want to pursue.

[The five elements]

Following up on the previous research on what the void could really specify, we come across the Japanese religious theory of the five elements. Those elements in ascending order of power are earth, fire, air, water and void.

Void is referred to as Ku and is the strongest among elements because it represents spirit, thought and unrestrained creation. It is also associated with power, creativity and inventiveness.

We can easily understand the importance of the void as the ultimate functioning layer of all importance, since it is what exists before anything becomes.

[The presence of Void as an event]

Here we would like to involve ourselves we the idea of the Void as an event. Negarestani himself tried to give this functionality to the Void but instead he preferred to talk about it as an entity.

“The world is everything which happens” Wittgenstein

First of all, in order to prove the eventful nature of the void, we must understand and define what an event really is. To do this we will mention and refer to an extensive array of excerpts in Deleuze’s work especially from the book The logic of Sense.

“Axiom 1: ‘Unlimited becoming becomes the event itself “

The Void, with its unlimited possibilities and endless boundaries, clearly constitutes what Deleuze refers to here as unlimited becoming. The position, the role or even the function of the engulfed space is ever – changing and therefore eternally becoming. In a peculiar turn of terms it could ideally constitute the materialization of what Trotsky called “constant revolution”.

As Badiou argues, the event “is the ontological realization of the eternal truth of the One, the infinite power of Life, it is in no way separated from what becomes. […] To the contrary it is the concentration of the continuity of life, its intensification, it is what gives the multiplicities of life” and he concludes “The event is the becoming of becoming: the becoming of unlimited becoming”.

Axiom 2: ‘The event is always that which has just happened and that which is about to happen, but never

that which is happening’

The main difference for this second axiom is the introduction of the element of time. Again, we would like to follow Badiou with his analysis where he states :

“The event is a synthesis of past and future. In reality, the expression of the One in becomings is

the eternal identity of the future as a dimension of the past. The ontology of time, for Deleuze as for Bergson, admits no figure of separation. Consequently, the event would not be what takes place ‘between’ a past and a future, between the end of a world and the beginning of another. It is rather encroachment and connection: it realizes the indivisible continuity of Virtuality. It exposes the unity of passage which fuses the one-just-after and the one-just-before. It is not ‘that which happens’, but that which, in what happens, has become and will become. The event as event of time, or time as the continued and eternal procedure of being, introduces no division into time, no intervallic void between two times. ‘Event’ repudiates the present understood as either passage or separation; it is the operative paradox of becoming. This thesis can thus be expressed in two ways: there is no present (the event is re-represented, it is active immanence which co-presents the past and the future); or, everything is present (the event is living or chaotic eternity, as the essence of time).”

The sheer importance of the time element in the event structure is intriguing. We can also attribute this importance to the most basic arguments of the necessary creation of what we call the “spatial experiment realm”. The past is what will help us create and promote an evolved future, but in order to do this present must provide us with the appropriate tooling and resources.

“For Deleuze, the event is the immanent consequence of becoming or Life.” A. Badiou

Although the Void itself would be sufficient into translating the function of becoming, there is here something much more than that. The Void that gets created always has to serve the function that made its existence necessary. In order for this function to arise and to be actualized, through the creation of the Void, there has to be a whole procedure of human interaction in multiple levels. These levels can be from the most basic organizational levels (administration, work force) to the more complex ones of spatial decision making (assembly meetings, proposals etc.) these are exactly the core elements of what Deleuze names becoming, this unitary activity comprising of all levels of intellectual and physical activity, and finally this is what we want to address through our “spatial experiment realm”.

“The outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together make up an inside: they are not something other than the outside, but precisely the inside of the outside.” Deleuze

[The spatial experiment realm]

Apart from the already given justifications that necessitate the creation of such a realm, we have to think in more reactionary terms.

“ In other words, this is the fundamental action of a society: to code the flows and to treat as an enemy anyone who presents himself, in relation to society, as an uncodable flow, because, once again, it challenges [met en question] the entire earth, the whole body of this society. […]There is a fundamental paradox in capitalism as a social formation: if it is true that the terror of all the other social formations was decoded flows, capitalism, for its part, historically constituted itself on an unbelievable thing: namely, that which was the terror of other societies. […]Because it was the ruin of every other social formation.” Deleuze

It will be interesting to turn this weaponry on the system itself. This negation of flows can turn in to a negation in spatial arrangements, capable of producing the elements that will tear it down. The evolution will begin, the (re)volution will ignite its beginning…

[Examples]

Thinking of actualizing our realm, the first thing that comes into mind is soil. The penultimate material that our civilization has relied on, for centuries. Since the end of the hunting – gathering period, soil was used to define the most essential figures of human evolution. Manuel deLanda states that, the differentiation on the use of soil, among a vast amount of elements, led to the final phase of the human settlement. Through his analysis it is easier to understand the significance that the use of the soil can have to the evolution of a given society. The first example would be to investigate the way that ants and termites correlate to it.

There is a vast bibliography on the way that these insects have used the ground since the beginning of their existence. It is not only their hunting ground; they feed, make war and circulate in and through it. They make their nests and passage ways on it. In reality there is no other living organization, more sufficient than the ants and the termites, to witness the use the soil.

What is particularly interesting to us, regarding this research is the way the ant society defines its structure in the most concrete way, by the presence of specific chambers. These chambers constitute an unwritten pattern and rule book that has to be followed by the entire colony if they were to survive. In some given relaxed perspective, so does the human society structure. The difference here is that we humans mainly elect to construct our edifices instead of using space already provided by the underground. That usually necessitates much more resources and effort, than the excavating process, and also does not give the opportunity for a more direct approach to what is being achieved, since for many years structures were slaves of the technical deficiencies of their contemporary methods.

Imagine, if one day a group of ants, suddenly and unexpectedly, started to dig a completely new chamber structure in the nest. Let us look beyond the reasonable doubt of the fact that in nature nothing ever “just” happens or that there has to be a pretty good explanation for such a move. This new element, would completely throw of the sum of the hierarchical structure of the nest. It would be a time stopping experiment that would most probably lead to the fast extermination of the members that created it.

Imagine if this new chambers where to be implemented in order to constitute a new kind of change in the society figure of the time. Of course the ants are in no such position as to be able to incorporate a drastic change like that under democratic or even experimentation means.

But what about the people?

If only this kind of elaborate experiment surfaced in a human community willing to try it out. Maybe it would actually lead to a complete disaster, or not. Then maybe a new kind of social formation would start to emerge and articulate itself spatially. The least it could actually provide is a kind of playground for though that could only mean that a better chance would be given to the advancement of socializing or even the way we regard any given institution to date.

So if the ant farm provided us with the elemental material, then the next step would be to find an analogy fittingly sufficient to our scales and values. For this particular research timing is all that matters.

In the recent D. Cameron film Avatar there is an unimaginable depiction of what we are looking for. The floating islands.

The floating islands are a formation known, for water use of course, and experimented upon for many years. Even geological formations have been given this name due to their physical resemblance. The islands that we witness in the virtual realm of the movie are air floating structures, that seem like a monstrous force ripped them of the surface and by ignoring every term of basic physics, it left them levitating in mid air.

A small historical background reveals that the idea of the floating islands is not new or profound. The first time that something similar is actually mentioned, is in the ancient Greek epos of Odyssey, written by Homer around 8 century BC. There he talks about a floating island on which the mythical city of Aeolia is situated. Aeolus the god of winds was born in that city according to the text. The next important mentioning of a similar formation is Laputa a city in the book Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726). The writer includes in his description detailed views of this imaginary place and its inhabitants. Also it is very interesting to add that the floating island has a detailed area, in which it can maneuver, that itself is part of the same kingdom. The third example comes much later in 1943 when C.S. Lewis writes his fictional novel Perelandra. In the novel there are a lot of floating islands featured in the surface of Venus. The final example, although these references do not exhaust the vast amount of material available on these formations, is the Cloud Nine project by B.Fuller. Based on the architect’s calculations, a small increase in the internal pressure of the spheres would result to their instant and safe levitation without the use of other technology. It was a utopian project trying to discover the importance of space and time regarding to big communities. In the end it was not favorably recognized, but it did mark the beginning of the first realistic approach to an airborne human settlement.

Apart from the visually stunning imagery, the floating islands create an ideal precedent to the object of our research. It actually redefines all the bad qualities of the underground structures (light, air circulation etc) and keeps all the attributes that we have been arguing about. As a bonus element the surface that remains on these imaginary sightings, can act as an ideal direct analogy to the contemporary way of formatting.

So in order to summarize in the second research level, the floating islands, although unrealistic, are an ideal element to make visibly comprehensible our basic ideas. We will use them as they incorporate the 3 main factors that we have been referring to; the surface (s), the soil (S) and the void (-S).

In another level of thought, these three key players actually fall well into the category that we have started to set up since the first phase of our research, the Lacanian Elements (Symbolic, Real, Imaginary).

In an attempt to clearly state what we are thinking about this comparison, we will try to make a small parenthesis here in order to explain further.

[The surface, The soil, The void]

Using the previous mode of distinction, we will define each element in question as part of the three categories.

The Surface. It has been used to host the constructions of human civilization ever since man came out of the protective womb of the cave. It functions as a level of consistency for everything that has ever been built. During every age of the human history, situations changed, institutions changed even settlements advanced, but the element of the surface retained its pre historical significance. As has been frequently stated in the political thoughts of the 19^th and 20^th century, surface and the notion of ownership over it, gave rise to the presence of capital and its repercussions. It became not only the base that we step on, that we build on but also the measure of our collective value.

Given the foretold arguments, it is easy to understand the central role that the Surface element has played in the evolution of human civilization. In short, not only it has been the plane of our existence but it constitutes the Symbolic since all of the symbolic structures are not only laid upon it but also defined by it.

The Soil. It is the element that first and foremost shapes and supports the surface level. As Negarestani states, the surface merely depicts what the underground (the soil) wants to express. The obvious visualization of this would be the mountain ranges or even the lakes, formations that have been created due to the subsequent manipulation from the soil.

Also apart from being the supporter of all that stands above it, soil also is a vector of change. Not only though centuries of small and almost unnoticeable formations but also sometimes through the use of more violent and abrupt natural incidents (i.e. landslides, quakes, volcanoes). It has been used also to produce a steady flow for material leading to construction or other uses that deal with everyday needs, but its main role was always to be there, because when it went away, in any form, cataclysmic events occurred to the adjacent civilizations.

Due to the characteristics attributed to the Soil, it is quite safe to say that it fits perfectly with what Lacan named the element of the Real.

The Void. The last element of our small parenthetical analysis is what will have to prove itself in the course of this whole research. The void, in various forms during the course of human history and especially in the field of utopian thinking, has always played a key role. Some of the forms it could take where obvious, like the ideas of flying into the void (air), living into the void (underwater or underground) or even living into a void that flies into the void (space).

The first set of ideas, regarding flying structures, where not so utopian in context as they were in terms of how close they came to be realized. From living (flying) into the air for a few seconds during the first human flight (Wright brothers) to the creation of magnificent air levitating cities (Fuller), the airborne structures were not mere figures of imagination but were goals in active pursuit.

Next in line is the underwater and underground realm. There is a vast bibliography on success and failure to build habitable spaces and communities underwater. This research however will not involve itself with this kind of formations, since we believe that there is no particular advantage for new social institutions to be created while in the water due to the fact that there is an immense lack of all that make up a healthy human settlement (i.e. air, light, food) On the other hand there has been more than a simple urban legend surrounding the underground communities. For different reasons every time (production, protection, burial, circulation etc.), there are a handful of constructed underground spaces active even today. Mines might be the first thing that comes into mind, but we are more intrigued by the fictional myth of the inner Earth. Although we are well aware of the fake character of it, the scientific interest of formations being created in such an environment would be immense.

Last but not least is space. No need to mention here the availability of projects in this particular area, and because of this specific over-exploitation we would not prefer to involve ourselves with it.

The extensive list of examples comes to prove that the Void and its features have long ago captured the imagination of artists, politicians, utopian thinkers, authors and many more. The key word in order to define the place of our element in the Lacanian trio is imagination. The void has always had protagonist roles in works of fiction and fantasy. There would be no other ideal definition for it, if not the Imaginary.

[More examples]

This section is reserved for a more specific architectural example. The example in question is the proposal by OMA for the Tres Grande Bibliotheque Jussieu. Despite the fact that the proposal does not adhere to the sum of our intentions, we feel that is a good precedent to look into and analyze.

The first interesting element of the proposal is the initial effort to break the striation of the grid. To achieve this, the architects presented a system of inclinations (most of them operational in the form of theaters, amphitheaters etc) that deals with the gridiron. The next step is even more radical, as they introduced into the core of the building a milieu of voids. These voids where to house specific functions attributed to the building’s program.

One of the feelings left from the proposal, is that the maneuvers did not go all the way. The inclinations were not enough, and most importantly the void formations were not communicating with each other. So the project can be viewed as a really important ancestor to the way we would like to address the building.

[The name of the game]

Now that we have defined the basic players of this research, it will be a bit easier to track down their evolution, as the design and theoretical approach advance. We are interested not only in the juxtaposition of the three elements and the spatial results that they can provide, but also to see if from these provisions there would be any chance for a differentiation in the already established institutional formations of today.

Under no circumstance can we act like a fortuneteller, although for systems sake will try to put our own imagination to the test, what we would like to do is to provide with the appropriate tools a society of people willing to experiment.