The Silo that Inspired Oxygen House

 

Silo, Liberty State Park, New Jersey, photo by Douglas Darden

On the edge of Liberty State Park in New Jersey is an industrial area of warehouses and various industrial machinery and facilities. One of these structures is a little silo that Darden was infatuated with. I believe somewhere in his various notes he called it "cute" (I'm having a hard time finding that note, and am starting to wonder if it was dream incubation revelations).

Update: I have now found where he wrote this: it was found with a photocopy of the self-portrait of Condemned Building. It might be useful to quote the whole handwritten note, which I have transcribed here:

In 1987 I took a photograph of a little industrial building cast out on an open field in the country, just north of Oxford, Mississippi. I don’t usually use the word, but I have to say that the building nearly looked “cute.” It was very appealing to me.

I started thinking about this little building and what it was that had prompted me to photograph it. I wanted to use the building; to graft it; to turn it into something which could reveal why I was attracted to it in the first place.

As I said, the building sat alone on an open field. Even so, when I began to think about going inside, I became claustrophobic. This sensation haunted me as the opposite of my initial attraction. From the outside I felt free, open, and light. Inside, I felt a deep dull pressure. The sensations were like there I imagined I might feel if I had trouble, on occasion breathing.

I began to wonder what would happen if a house no longer just only simply accomodate [sic] a person’s life, but was actually crucial for life’s sustenance. It seemed to me then that the idea of house would not only have to anticipate the longevity of a the person living there, but the house but it would without also have to accounting for the inhabitants death. The house would be a sort of contest which could literally be described literally as the capacity to hold one’s breath.

Update cont.: obviously, Darden is already thinking of Oxygen House and given the timeframe of 1987, this is around the time he was beginning to hash out some ideas for Oxygen House while he was working on Clinic for Sleep Disorders.

I was initially informed and led to believe that this silo was outside of Baton Rouge and given most of the photos Darden took of this silo, it looks like it could be in Louisiana [see update above]. However, I was recently looking at Darden's photos and noticed something I had not previously noticed. It seems obvious now — like, how could you miss this? But in one photo it is abundantly clear that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are in the background. I've looked at these photos dozens of times and never noticed them in that one photos. But alas, there they are. And in front of them is clearly a few buildings in Battery Park City, so this photo is definitely taken from the New Jersey side of the river in Liberty State Park.

I am willing to bet that this photo was taken while Darden was developing Clinic for Sleep Disorders circa 1988, as it is sited in Liberty State Park. If I recall correctly from the notes, Darden noticed the silo across a field and was drawn to it. Looking at the photo, I suppose one could notice it all the way across Liberty State Park, as there do not appear to be a lot of trees at the time, so he may have noticed it all the way across the park from the marina (Morris Canal).

It took me a minute to find it, but I did, and it is still kind of cute. Everything has grown up around it. A great deal of tall weeds surround it and mature trees separate it from the rest of the park now. I believe the powerlines and poles have been replaced, and it has been repainted with a mural, and of course the Twin Towers are now gone. But that is the silo. I actually got super excited when I found it and told my wife that we have to go to New Jersey.

Ultimately this little silo would inspire Oxygen House. One of the the most important works of visionary and theoretical architecture was inspired by this little silo, and one can still visit it today.

The silo today

Location: 40°42'12.0"N 74°03'45.4"W

The Mines of Colorado and Douglas Darden

 

Paris Mill mining structure, Colorado

I grew up in South Carolina. You don't grow up in South Carolina without having spent time hanging out in Confederate cemeteries. They're everywhere, so at some point in high school, you're going to end up loitering in a random, overgrown cemetery in the middle of the woods. Heck, right behind my house was a section of woods that had not been developed because there were numerous graves on that lot. I hung out there a lot.

Now, Douglas Darden grew up in Colorado. I imagine he liked to explore all the old mining buildings scattered throughout the Rocky Mountains. I mean, when I moved to Colorado a third of my life ago, I spent a great deal of that summer before classes traveling with my buddy Scott to various mining camps and derelicts, &c. I have a hard time imagining Darden not doing this. I think about Ben Ledbetter's blog post about being out in derelict industrial buildings and "being in heaven." I think of the way he describes the "cute" industrial building outside of Baton Rouge that he describes in his notes for Oxygen House and Condemned Building. I have a hard time imagining Darden not behaving like this amongst the abandoned mines of Colorado.

And let's be real, these abandoned mining structures are everywhere. Take a drive through the Rockies and look up into the peaks and one will see derelict structures, yellow mine dumps, &c. It is its own form of picturesque.

These must have had some impact on him, as mining and industry feature heavily into his work. Saloon for Jesse James is a bar for the miners that work at the Kennecott open-pit copper mine, and is located on the salt flats of the Great Salt Lake, the area of which is used to mine salt. Lessons learned and themes explored in Saloon for Jesse James would carry over into Museum of Impostors. For instance, "Black Rock" features in both projects, and both projects are situated starting on land and move into water and ending on an isolated feature in the water (fresh water well on an island in the Saloon and a silo in the Museum). The Museum also features mining. In some of Darden's early writings for the Museum, he speaks about Lazaretto Point being leased for strip mining for iron. Mining is just a feature of industrial themes that fascinated Darden throughout his short life, and likely started in his youth.

Beyond this alone, there is something inherent in the construction of these mining structures — industrial structures in general — that are spatially confusing, ambiguous, and even apparently contradictory. Photographing the interior of these structures can be quite odd. I have a minor collection of my own photos inside some of these structures that I take because the view and how I capture it are spatially ambiguous. Am I looking up? Down? Left? Upside-down? Did an architecture student turn the model on its side? Is this zoomed in on something small or zoomed out on something huge? Where do those beams run? It's very exciting to be inside these places, albeit incredibly dangerous.

Such spaces are highly reminiscent of Piranesi's Prisons series. Piranesi would rework his initial drawings and republish them later, in which some of the modifications, while appearing more refined, generate enhanced spatial ambiguity and even impossible geometries. The dark atmosphere, the layering of spaces, machinery, industrial elements with vernacular architecture, perilous and precarious constructions and dilapidations and heights, et al makes these 19th century Colorado mining facilities highly compatible with Piranesi's Carceri. I would go so far to say that one could almost make side-by-side comparisons of the two. Such would be a fun exercise to further illustrate how likely these old mining structures were influential to Darden, given his love and predilection for Piranesi.

Piranesi, Carcer VII, 1761

I recently came across Darden's notes for a faculty seminar on Piranesi. While I was reading these notes, I could not stop imagining these mines I have visited (let's be real, trespassed in). There is no doubt in my mind that Darden visited such places — whether as an aesthetic curiosity or a youth needing a place to trespass — and that they had an impact on him.

Douglas Darden and the Tarot

 

Sketch for Frontispiece of Condemned Building, 1988

Douglas Darden does not strike me as someone who was interested in the occult, and in reality, he likely was not. He was not a practitioner of occult arts nor one engaged in rigorous academic study of the occult ("armchair magicians," as practitioners like to call them). Yet, from time to time I come across something in Darden's work that indicates there were occult subjects that were interesting to him. 

For instance, in Temple Forgetful, there is the memory theater of Camillo. This concept of memory theaters is comparable to memory palaces, which are mnemonic devices, and were considered magical centuries ago. It is a relative of memory magic, such as those spells found in the Greek Magical Papyri, or entire magical experiments, such as in the Ars Notoria. I suspect Darden got this image of the memory theater from Francis Yates's 1966 work The Art of Memory, as I doubt Darden was reading Camillo's work in Italian (still untranslated into English to this day, except in Yates's work).

I digress.

Recently I was going through some materials I have from the project files that are currently in the Avery Archive. I found a scan of an early sketch for the frontispiece in which the tarot was influential, at least for a moment. Darden did a series of sketches for the frontispiece on 12 June 1988, and this is but one. Clearly he was just tossing around an idea. In this sketch there is a rough depiction of The Tower card and the Hanged Man card.

The Hanged Man and The Tower, Smith-Waite-Rider

A few things to note. Darden is clearly looking at the Smith-Waiter-Rider deck. Of the dozens of historical copies of the tarot decks I have looked at, nearly all illustrate the Hanged Man's right leg crossed over, as opposed to his left leg, as is illustrated in the Smith-Waiter-Rider deck. Only one historical deck I have seen has the left leg crossed, and that was a chemical copy, so the entire card was flipped. I am not a tarot expert, so I have only looked at a handful of historical decks, but regardless, the reproduction and distribution of historical decks is something that was not available to Darden at the time, but the Smith-Waite-Rider deck was.

Another thing to note is that Darden has not drawn the Tower as it is usually drawn, i.e. the top of the tower is a crown that has fallen off. We see this trope of "crown" in nearly all Tower cards. Darden simply draws a tower with a crossed gable roof. There is something about the image of the Tower that is intriguing to Darden, but not so much the symbolism, I suppose. At least the crown trope was not important.

The Tower seems to make sense in Darden's philosophy. The Tower is a condemned building — con-damnare — one that is toppling over in catastrophic destruction. Its divinatory meaning is one that is often feared. It signifies a great catastrophe (literally a "turn of events") and change, usually in a horrible or painful way. But the Hanged Man is an unusual choice. The Hanged Man may be an earlier conception of the turtle flipped over — i.e. the turtle in Blade Runner and the turtle shell in his self-portrait and in the Dweller by the Dark Stream prose poem. One may even begin to see the turtle in the self-portrait is hanged on a rope like the Hanged Man, so the hanging turtle may be alluding to this very early conception of the frontispiece.

It stands to reason that Darden is looking at the Smith-Waite-Rider deck, that much is certain. He may have also been looking at Waite's Key to the Tarot, which is pictorial guide to interpreting the cards when doing a reading. The Hanged Man and the Tower have strong divinatory meanings that are applicable to Darden's Underbelly. However, it all feels superficial. It is as if Darden was intrigued by the images, not so much the meaning, and briefly played with them.

Denver and Colorado at large is a strange place of mysticism. Only in Colorado have I met a practicing alchemist (several in fact). I have met great mystics and occult authors. I know several practicing sorcerers and world renowned astrologers here. It is a land that has always had the occult lurking under its belly. Darden must have bumped into one of numerous occultists living in this city and state. Perhaps it even happened in the very brief few months he was residing in Denver before leaving for the American Academy in Rome. One was bound to introduce Darden to the Tarot, even if it was a passing intrigue.

Now, why would Darden not further pursue the Tarot in his frontispiece or at all? The Tarot and the occult is certainly an application of the Underbelly. Magic has long been deemed taboo and forbidden. Some would even say transgressive. Darden certainly was fascinated by meaning and symbolism, even mythologization. As Joe Juhasz once said to me, "[Darden] was Post-Modern taken to the limit." And as Ishmael says repeatedly in Moby-Dick: "These things cannot be without their meaning."

But perhaps tarot was just another set of symbols and meanings that were too far afield, too different from Darden's symbols and meanings. Tarot is certainly an intense study, and maybe Darden just thought it was too much effort to learn a set of symbols that really were not that compatible with the work he had already done. In following Darden's work, seeing it mature and develop up until 1988, purely occult topics were just a bit too much to deliver Condemned Building. Perhaps one day he would have returned to it if he had not passed away, but at the time in 1988 it was a passing intrigue. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I personally find it intriguing to examine these rough drafts to see what Darden was exploring.

Decapitating Darden - Ritual, Magic, Human Sacrifice, and Secret Societies

 

Acéphale, by André Masson

I have previously said and I will continue to reiterate that Douglas Darden was likely more influenced by Georges Bataille than the Marquis de Sade or any other author of transgressive literature.

In my first post on Darden ever, I discussed in some measure the guillotine and decapitation in the self-portrait of Darden in Condemned Building. I would explore the guillotine further in my post on the title image of same treatise (Darden calls his Condemned Building a treatise in in 1995 resume).

To recap, there is some machination above Darden's head, accompanied by ropes and pulleys that imply that this device is a guillotine. This is reinforced in the title image, which indeed is a guillotine. The broken concrete foundation at the base of the guillotine has a curvature that is appropriate to lay a neck upon and a metal bowl on the other side to catch the decapitated head. Along the side of the guillotine's frame are the words from Moby-Dick: "How many think ye have fallen into Plato's honey head and sweetly perished [t]here?" (Neveu believes Darden has deliberately covered the "t" in "there" with a shadow to render it as "here," and I personally like this interpretation). This is in reference to the sperm whale that is decapitated in Moby-Dick, which Ishmael calls Plato, and the right whale head on the other side of the ship he names "Aristotle." We see at the top of the guillotine an object that looks like a beehive sitting upon a branch, but it also looks a bit like a whale head, with the blow-hole appearing quite like a vulva.

Returning to the self-portrait, in a way, Darden has decapitated LeQueu's nun and recapitulated her body with his own head. I am inclined to challenge my previous interpretation that Darden is exploring transgenderism, that he is part woman or becoming female, that he has tits. Rather, we should probably see it, not as Darden having breasts, but rather Darden has placed his head on a decapitated woman. This is obviously very different than exploring gender, and rather is exploring violence. (I will still stand by my statement that Darden was indeed exploring transgenderism, as that should be obvious, but also because I was recently looking at some materials that indicate Darden was absolutely fascinated with Joel-Peter Witkin, who explores transgenderality in his photography).

Title image (left) and self-portrait (right), Condemned Building

We know Darden was influenced by Bataille, and in fact he cites Eroticism: Death and Sensuality in his essay "The Architecture of Exhaustion." How much Bataille truly influenced Darden is speculative. Obviously he had an early introduction to Bataille, but how much of it stuck is uncertain. Darden could have read Story of the Eye and then said, "Hmmm... what a depraved fuck. I would rather read the Divine Marquis." True, the Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille wrote smut, but they also wrote philosophy. Sure, you have to wade through endless and tedious paragraphs of pornography to get to the philosophy, but it is there.

Regardless, it is worth exploring a little further the nature of decapitation in Darden's work as it pertains to Bataille. Namely, let us look at Acéphale, the five issues of a periodical produced by Bataille, as well as a secret society formed by Bataille. It was largely created to explore Nietzsche and transgression in society and religion. Bataille was fascinated by sacrifice, such as in The Accursed Share, in which he explores how society is founded upon excess that must be sacrificed. If Freud thought society was inherently neurotic, then he would have had a field day with Bataille. Bataille was also fascinated by human sacrifice, and even offered himself as a sacrifice for his secret society, going so far as to write a legal document protecting anyone willing to be his executioner. Many of his followers wanted to be the sacrifice, but none wanted to be the executioner.

Hence, acéphale, from the Greek ακέφαλος akephalos or "headless." Bataille's fascination with headlessness likely has several sources of inspiration and point to several things. Firstly, there is human sacrifice. Next, one is reminded of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution and the extensive use of the guillotine. But then there is one other thing: the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM).

Of particular interest in the PGM is the so-called Headless Rite (PGM V.96-172 "The Stele of Jeu"), as well as several mentionings of the "headless god" or "headless one." This is a god that is peculiar to Egypt, though there are examples of headless gods in other texts and other regions. Plutarch tells us of a headless "Molos" in Crete, and Pausanias tells of a headless "Triton" at the Temple of Dionysus at Tanagra. It should not be surprising that PGM III was acquired by the Bibliotheque Nationale in the 19th century, and it is exactly here at this library that Bataille worked in the medallions collection. It is possible Bataille had seen the peculiar image of a headless entity in PGM III.170. I have personally asked a few other occult scholars, and several have stated that in looking at the imago magica below and the Acéphale image by Masson, that they believe there must be some connection; too many similarities in ideas and adjacencies in chronology make it unlikely that someone like Bataille would not have glanced at PGM III in the BNF archive.

Magical image/charm, PGM III.170

One should not be remissed either in noting the similarity of ke-phalos (head) and phallos (penis). Perhaps this is why Masson illustrates the Acéphale Man (modeled on da Vinci's Vitruviuan Man) without a penis, but instead has a face or skull on his privy parts. One will note that the Headless One in the PGM is likewise depicted without a penis, and in fact its crotch is entirely absent, there being a whole gap in the linework between the legs.

Let us explore these concepts further. The act of decapitation is an act of dismembering. Darden plays with the Latin membrum ("limb") in his lectures as well as the production of Temple Forgetful. Remus was murdered by his brother Romulus, and Romulus is memorialized in Rome while Remus is forgotten. Darden frequently uses terms like "re-membering" to describe Temple Forgetful in some of his talks. It is curious that to recall a memory we remember, but to forget something we do not call it dismembering. Etymologically, when we remember, we are reforming a dismembered body of thought. Memories are limbs, and the act of reassembling these limbs we are remembering. So the concepts and ideas behind forgetting and re-membering/dis-membering is equally a part of Darden's body of work as the decapitation of LeQueu's nun and the image of the guillotine.

Furthermore, there is an element of ritualization in these concepts of decapitation, human sacrifice, Temple Forgetful, the Headless One, magic, Acéphale, LeQueu, et al.

The Headless Rite (or Stele of Jeu) is a magical ritual, and one that is quite popular to perform among many ceremonial magicians looking to get into working from the PGM, at least what I have observed. This rite in particular was first popularized by Aliester Crowley when he published a translation of it as the "Bornless Rite." Nearly all the magical operations in the PGM are rituals, and those that are not specified as having a ritual component likely still have some element of ritualization.

The acts of decapitation and human sacrifice oftentimes invoke images of ritual. Temple Forgetful, where we re-member a dismembered corpse, has an element of ritual to it, and furthermore when we think of temples we think of rituals. And to bring this back to ritual magic, Darden bases the layout of the sunken theater upon the Memory Theater by Giulio Camillo, which was a form of magic. It is likely he got this image from Francis Yates's The Art of Memory, and Yates was a very influential occult scholar and writer. Before the concept of the memory palace there was memory magic, particularly in grimoires like the Ars Notoria, which is an extensive ritual unto itself. Even the PGM has magical rituals for re-membering dream prognostications or just better memory in general.

Next, there is the fact that Bataille had created a secret society he called Acéphale, Headless, in which he sought to be sacrificed. Secret societies do not inherently have to have ritual components, such as the Freemasons or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or whatever, but they frequently do. Depending on what definitions and criteria you follow for what can be called a "secret society," anything from realtors associations to universities can be secret societies. That being acknowledge, Bataille wanted to create a secret society and so he called Acéphale a secret society.

The impacts secret societies and rituals had on Darden may be considerable, albeit it is doubtful he ever joined a secret society (I certainly have never found his name in the registers of the Grand Lodge of Colorado, and I actually looked for his name in Masonic rolls). I think when we look at Darden's work, the movement through the buildings are ritualized. Night School and Clinic for Sleep Disorders probably have the strongest ritual procession.

One image that influential to Darden was a rendering by LeQueu called "Gothic House." This image is a cross-section through a temple space, and follows a ritual procession (from left the right) through the elements of earth (descending down the well), fire (smoking furnace chamber), water (descending into waters past a water deity statue), and air (dangling above a pit) before being admitted into the Temple of Isis and drinking of the waters Lethe and Mnemosyne. This entire image is a sort of "fan art" for Abbé Terrasson's The Life of Sethos. This was a popular novel at its time and was influential to Mozart's Magic Flute and this image by LeQueu.

Terrasson's novel was of course fiction, but conspiracy theorists and Freemasons and "scholars" of religion have taken this novel as source material for what went on in the actual Cult of Isis. Of course, we have no idea what went on in the Cult of Isis, as it is a mystery religion, and it is therefore a mystery. Unlike the cults of Mithras, that of Isis is a big question mark. We have artifacts, but what rituals and venerations were conducted is unknown. Yet somehow Terrasson's novel became taken seriously and taken as fact by many who want this fictional ritual to be real (usually Freemasons). Take for instance, the trials by the elements, which likely comes from Apuleius's Golden Ass, 11.23, in which Lucius says "per omnia vectus elementa" ("I was ravished throughout all the elements" — Addington translates it as ravished, and Hanson translates it as travelled, and various spurious websites may translate it as purified). This ritual trial by the elements has been adopted, based on Terrasson's inspiration from Apuleius, among Freemasons. I remember getting the rare opportunity to observe a Red Lodge (Scottish Rite Lodge) from Louisiana perform the Entered Apprentice Degree, and even got to assist with the earth, water, and air (not the fire) in the portion of the ritual for the trial by the elements. This is, of course, totally spurious and a late introduction into Freemasonry, but nonetheless, is a curious item in ritual. I digress.

I do know that Anthony Vidler's The Writing of the Walls was influential to Darden, and in that work is, not only explorations of Sade and Bataille, but also ritual architecture and Freemasonry. I do not agree with Vidler's explorations of Freemasonry — I think he relies too heavily on Abbé Larudan's exposé, so much so that I deliberately included a portion of Vidler's analysis on Larudan in my Wikipedia entry on Larudan, just to illustrate that Vidler is not always relying on best information. Regardless, Darden was familiar with Vidler and through Vidler had a basic introduction to Freemasonry and ritual in architecture. I digress again.

LeQueu has effectively rendered the entire initiation of Prince Sethos into the Cult of Isis into this image.

Gothic House, Jean-Jacques LeQueu

This image was highly influential to Darden. It illustrates not only narrative in architecture, but is one of very few examples of visionary architecture that is in-formed by literature. In fact, as far as I am aware, this drawing by LeQueu and Terragni's Danteum are the only two examples of architecture in-formed by literature (with the exception of Darden's work).

There we have it. A schizoanalysis of Darden's fascination with decapitation, dismemberment, re-membering, ritual, secret societies, the occult, and transgression through the lens of Bataille, the PGM, memory magic, LeQueu, Terrason, &c.

Is any of this out of line? Perhaps, but then again so was Duboy's comparison on LeQueu's work with Duchamp's work. There is absolutely no evidence that Duchamp was familiar with LeQueu whatsoever, and yet, many scholars and theorists in architecture, including Darden, buy into Duboy's analysis. Furthermore, who care? If we truly are embracing Deleuze and Guattari's concept of schizoanalysis, then such comparisons of Darden with Bataille and Acéphale and the PGM and the Headless One ought to be welcomed.

Schizoanalysis & Schizoschedio - Deleuze and Guattari's Influence on Douglas Darden

 

Charlie Day, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

While recently revisiting Darden's essay "Architecture of Exhaustion" (Pratt Journal of Architecture, Vol. 2, 1988, p. 88-94), it becomes abundantly obvious that Darden is all over the place — shifting from one thing to another, fluidly moving from idea to idea, inspiration to inspiration, without any segue. He jumps from eroticism and death in Bataille's work, inspiration from Tschumi, on to Herman Melville and Moby-Dick, Edgar Allen Poe, then on to Deleuze and Guattari, a mention of Faust, on to Baudelaire, a bunch of quotes from Barthes, et al. Not only is the essay itself confusing, but it is almost as if Darden wants us to misinterpret him, or at least find our own meaning in his ideas of the Architecture of Exhaustion (i.e. the Underbelly).

The fact that one of Darden's citations in this essay is Deleuze and Guattari is telling. I don't doubt for a minute that Darden read far more from Deleuze and Guattari than just some commentary on Kafka. Oedipus Rex was a work of immense interest to Darden — in Looking After the Underbelly he claims it to be one of the quintessential tales that illustrates the Underbelly — so I imagine Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus would have been in his hands at one time or another.

The following is the passage from "The Architecture of Exhaustion" that D&G inspired Darden:

In the elaboration of the sublime through the representation of pain and danger, the architecture of exhaustion emerges to enhance and counterpoise fact. By situation itself beyond the pleasure of utility, it registers the utility of desire. "Desire" is not form, but a procedure, a process. Desire, rather than its accommodation, represents an intention to signify life on a perilous edge, prompting us to peer into the pumping chambers of the chest and perceive the virtue of confronting our world as an exceptional yet exhilarating ordeal, by which we make our way through our lives and possibly to an "other" world.
(Bold: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Kafka: Toward A Minor Literature, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1986, p. 8)

Yeah... this passage does not make any more sense in context than out of context. I mean, you get what he's driving at, but it is just so badly worded. How did an English major (at CU Boulder) end up writing like this?

I don't think it is essential to prove or fully analyze how far Deleuze and Guattari, or even Bataille, were influences on Darden. We know they had some influence on him and that is enough. Whether it is founded or unfounded to dive deep into D&G and Bataille and then look back at Darden through their work and ideas, ultimately is not of much concerned. If Darden truly understood D&G or even Bataille, he would not find such interpretations to be out of bounds. If Darden were alive today, he might have given some clarification, but would not consider it unfounded.

On the other hand, I have found no evidence that Darden read William S. Burroughs, or really anything written by the Beat writers. Beat culture was big in Denver (where Darden was from and died), and yet there is no evidence that Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, et al were influential to his work. He likely read their work, maybe, but there is no evidence they were influential to him. Thus, if I were to try and bring any Beat ideology into interpretations of Darden's work on the Underbelly, Sex Shop, transgression, &c, I would be out of line.

So what? What's the big deal?

Deleuze and Guattari propose the idea of "schizoanalysis," which might be best described as trying to put together a modern day conspiracy theory. Whether or not Jim Garrison actually read D&G, his conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination is very much in line with schizoanalysis. It looks for patterns, similarities, dispersed across the vast range of history and humanity. It is an analysis that is not linear, but clumps of genres and categories. It tends to be all over the place. Think of the image of Charlie Day in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. 

This is kind of how D&G propose we analyze things, in a sort of "split," disjointed manner. Their writings are very schizo (split, shattered). So when they analyze, it should be equally split and shattered.

So now I am going to do what I said was out of bounds: interpret Darden with the Beats. Brion Gysin and Bill Burroughs pioneered a technique called "cut-up." This is where they would write a poem or song or novel, whatever, and then cut it up and rearrange it. You may be familiar with this, as this was how David Bowie composed a lot of his songs. Burroughs would use the technique to conduction divination, magical prognostications (Dr. Alexander Cummins gets into this in his incredible essay in Mandragora, published by Scarlet Imprint). For Burroughs, the cut-up technique was just as valid for divination as tarot or geomancy. In fact, all divination techniques are a form of cut-up: we shuffle and cut the deck; we cut up the Mother figures in geomancy to create the Daughter figures; dream divination is interesting as our own dreams are cut-up, oftentimes non-linear and broken, and our own thinking tends to be cut-up (Dr. Cummins actually answered this question for me on the Glitch Bottle podcast, at the 1:35:29 mark... and yeah, now you know one of my aliases). Burroughs was deeply into the occult, and even helped pioneer chaos magic. In many ways, this is what is going on with schizoanalysis: cutting up and interpreting, even intuitively, and following mental patterns and conspiratorial connections. Psychoanalysis is dead. Let's explore the shattering of our own minds.

Now put all this in reverse: a shattered world, pulling from all directions, looking for patterns and ideas across the whole of human history and knowledge, exploring the wild and the dark side of things human, all too human, and creating something from it. This is schizoschedio. This is what Darden was doing. This is why schizoanalysis is not out of bounds to explore or discuss Darden's works.

Curiously, my first introduction to Darden was while I was taking some classes at the Boston Architectural College. I was designing a space for a schizophrenic that I named Abraham. My instructor told me to look at Oxygen House. Love at first sight.

Can one discuss Temple Forgetful without getting into memory magic, memory palaces, Romulus and Remus, bird divination, Roman archaeology, Hugo's Notre Dame of Paris, Terragni's Danteum, Basilica of Constantine, the Colosseum and the Capitoline Hill Plaza, the Temple of Roma-Amor, Janus, opposites of dry and wet, high and low, &c...? So many things to explore and discuss and play with. Or consider Oxygen House: how many works by Faulkner must one read to properly explore Oxygen House? How deep into Faulkner must one go to get a good handle on Oxygen House? And do we just stop with Faulkner? No. Faulkner is just the beginning. Darden's work truly is ergodic: he makes you work to understand him.

In analyzing Darden's work, one will inevitably be all over the place, connecting weird pins in a conspiracy board.

And I think it is hard to discuss Darden's designs without schizoanalysis. One does not so much create a linear narrative, but rather picks elements of his architecture to dig into, and then may (optional) connect those analyses loosely to other elements of the designs. One cannot necessarily say there is a "system" at hand to analyze Darden or his works. It feels more like Nietzsche's aphorisms — a bunch of loosely categorized thoughts — than a system.

I think the approach of schizoanalysis as outlined by Deleuze and Guattari would be beneficial, and perhaps a more appropriate way to discuss and analyze Darden's work. Is Darden not Post-Structural? Further, I think this approach is necessary, as in many ways this is how he designed: schizoschedio or schizo-design. I like "schizoschedio." It's got a nice ring to it.

Postscript:
As I am pulling together the materials I need for this post, I stumbled across a book by Chris L. Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis. Turns out he uses examples and has some discussion on Oxygen House in it. I guess I need to get this book. I don't know what Smith discusses yet, but I think it validates that I am not out of line here when I endeavor to illustrate the influence D&G had on Darden.

What does Darden mean by "Underbelly"?

Detail of self-portrait in Condemned Building.

An iconic term used by Darden to express his interest and fascination with taboo, transgression, the unusual, the obscene, the unorthodox, the inverted, the weird, et al is "Underbelly." He derives this term from the film Blade Runner, in which the replicant Leon is asked an emotionally provocative hypothetical question, namely a scenario where Leon has flipped a turtle over on its back, it's belly facing up and cannot turn itself back over. Darden analyzes this scene in the 1992 interview with Rob Miller, Looking After the Underbelly. He is alluding to this turtle in his self-portrait of Condemned Building, and further alludes to this turtle in the prose piece at the front of the book:

I am inclined while watching the
turtle to turn it over and study its
underbelly. From this unnatural
position I see how this platonically
solid creature makes its way
through the world.

Dweller by the Dark Stream

As fascinating at all this is — i.e. exploring the source of the term and allusions to that source — it is never entirely clear what Darden means by "Underbelly." Darden certain did not want to define the term, nor did he feel it could be defined. As he states in Looking After the Underbelly:

Rob Miller: Can you define the Underbelly?

Douglas Darden: No and if I could, I’d be ashamed of myself and I’d be ashamed of it [the Underbelly]. Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees and if you name the Underbelly, you have not given yourself the opportunity to explore the substratum of unnamed emotions in a pit of our stomach that force us to seek shelter in the first place.

I think we have a greater need to identify the Underbelly, which may be the source of this whole symposium [referring to Miller’s film project], than we do [with] what we would consider “that other stuff,” the good stuff, the stuff that promotes the way that we want to see ourselves. And because the Underbelly is not the way we want to see ourselves, then what we go about doing is naming it, is giving it characteristics so that we can be done with it, so that it will ostensibly go away, we’ve taken care of it.

In many ways, Darden's concept of Underbelly is the opposite, or at least is the dark twin of Christopher Alexander's concept of Quality Without A Name (Timeless Way of Building, 1979). Where Alexander expresses something numinous and sublime, Darden is expressing something subversive. Alexander cannot name his Quality Without A Name in the same way we cannot name the Divine, much less measure it (Shi'ur Qomah excepted). Similarly, Darden cannot define this Underbelly, which is less a name as it is a cute nickname. The Underbelly is as much a name for Darden's concept as "Tetragrammaton" and "Eloy" and "Olam" and "Adonai" and "AGLA" are names of God. These are names of God, but they are not the Name of God. They still possess power, hence their abundant use in old grimoires, but they are not the Name of God, if God even has a name. Similarly, the term Underbelly is evocative and certainly possesses a power to get our imaginations going the moment we hear it, yet it is no more the name of Darden's concept for the Underbelly than The Quality Without A Name was the actual name of Alexander's concept.

Darden actually had an early working title for this concept, which first appears in his essay "The Architecture of Exhaustion" (Pratt Journal of Architecture, Vol. 2, 1988, p. 88-94). The Architecture of Exhaustion appears to be an early working nickname for the Underbelly. He uses similar language and even phrases to describe his notion of the Architecture of Exhaustion as he does the Underbelly. For instance, one readily available based on Darden's words quoted above in 1992, we find him using a similar phrase in 1988: "Comfort is appreciated only insofar as the architecture objectifies the fear that sits in our stomachs and prompts us to struggle for shelter."

These words are essential later, especially in the canons and reversa of Condemned Building. For instance, Sex Shop's reversa is "Architecture objectifies desire" and Clinic For Sleep Disorders is "Architecture locates our fears." These reversa are essential in understanding how Darden formulates, not just his building designs, but also how he formulates his Six Aphorisms for Envisioning Architecture at the end of Condemned Building.

Think of Darden's Underbelly as something akin to RNA: it a virus's DNA that merged into our own DNA eons ago; an ancient plague that now resides within ourselves, is a part of ourselves. The Underbelly is to the Quality Without A Name as RNA is to DNA. They move together, replicate together, they need each other. They are separate, but not separable. They are distinct, but merged and inherently reliant of each other for propagation.

Alexander describes his Quality Without A Name as that sublime something, some quality that is replicated in architecture and anything good. An example he gives is a barn: someone builds a barn and their neighbor sees this barn and decides they want their own barn, then copies those conditions that suit their liking and needs. Next, another neighbor sees these barns and builds their own barn, barrowing those qualities they like and suit their needs in their own barn. And so on. These replication of features can be pointed to as distinct architectural elements, but there is something inherent in them, something nameless, formless, some numinous quality that is being propagated, and that is what Alexander is describing. (Such is elaborated upon in Pattern Language, which is kind of the practical side to Timeless Way). This is in line with what Leon Alberti says about beauty: it cannot be defined, but we know it when we see it.

Darden is similar, but the underside of this Quality Without A Name. If Alexander's concept is like beauty (I know it when I see it), then Darden is like pornography, to quote Chief Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it." The different between smut and art, eroticism and porn, beauty and the obscene, is thin and wiggly and strange, but we seem to know the difference when shown examples. Yet Darden is not pornography. Nor is Alexander divine. This is just an analogies to understand the concept.

Just as Darden describes in his prose of the turtle as a Platonic solid, the Underbelly is a part of everything. All things have an underbelly, just as the turtle does. I have an underbelly. I have sins, fetishes, faults, failures, scars, immoralities, prejudices, et al. So do you, and so does your pet fish, and so does your car, and the US government (no shit), and your preacher, and Buddhism, and... name it. If it exists, it has an underbelly. Darden was interested in this Underbelly and sought to flip everything over, but more particularly architecture in general.

Thus, when we examine the canons and reversa of Condemned Building, we are not looking at Darden simply taking a canon and inverting it. No, it is not like doing the opposite of the Ten Commandments (e.g. thou shall commit adultery; thou shall have other gods before me, &c). Rather, it is looking at the existing underside of something. If a house is to live in, then by consequence of living, we must also die, so Darden examines and designs a house to die in (Oxygen House). If architecture gives us a place for shelter, then by the very fact there are refugees and world events that result in migrations, Darden becomes interested in architecture's role as something that displaces us (Hostel). Et cetera. Thus, the reversa are not inversions of Commandments, unchangeable laws, but rather it is the natural underside of principles in architecture that are already existent. Darden did not create the reversa. They were already there. Darden just flipped over the turtle to reveal the reversa.

And Darden recognizes that this act of flipping over is obscene. We are not used to looking at the underside of something. That's where all the private parts are. That's where pissing and shitting and fucking comes from. We're not suppose to look at that. We're suppose to see the pretty side, the top side, the side that usually is shown to the world, and the underside, well that's for whatever goes on behind closed doors and call them by Latin names for the sake of politeness (urination, defecation, and sexuality). Hence why Darden says, "from this unnatural position."

From a very early time in his career, Darden is looking at the Underbelly, long before he gave it that cute nickname. He is concerned with that which we do not like to look at or examine, because it is rude or makes us uncomfortable, yet, as he describes above, it is part of the reason we sought to build shelter in the first. Initially he calls this drive, this impetus to building "fear," but later broadly calls it "that substratum of emotions." Regardless, he says they come from our stomachs. This may be some form of humoral theory, such as the belief that ennui came from the spleen, or madness from the uterus (hysteria), etc. Whatever the case, Darden clearly believes it is not some grand and noble ideal or concept for why we began to build in the first place, but rather something that we would like to ignore, not discuss at all. That's because the drive to build comes from the Underbelly. Hence his motive to uncover and explore the Underbelly in Architecture or the Architecture of Exhaustion.

It is curious to see how Darden's ideas evolve over a few years from this utterly pompous and unreadable essay to something more digestible.

Clemens Court or Ifadeum - Douglas Darden's Precursor to the Melvilla

 

Samuel Langhorne Clemen, Mark Twain, Greatest American Author?

The Danteum by Giuseppe Terragni was a work of architecture so admired by Darden that he sought to make his own work of architecture in dedication of a great American author. The only problem was... who? Today we know that person to be Herman Melville, and thus the Melvilla was in-formed by his magnum opus, Moby-Dick; just as the Danteum was in-formed by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. However, this is not the original author Darden had in mind when he first began conceiving of doing an American Danteum. No, he originally considered using Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and the building would be called Clemens Court.

The Danteum, as it were, was so central of a structure to Darden that it in-forms Temple Forgetful and is included in the site plan. He would write a book review for Thomas Schumacher's book The Danteum in the periodical Sites (January 1986, p. 107-108). The fact he wanted to do an American equivalent is not surprising in the least, especially given his immense interest in literature and architecture inspired by literature. As Darden writes:

In 1938 amid the highly charged political climate of Fascist Italy, Mussolini commissioned the architect, Giuseppe Terragni, to design a building for the planned exposition of 1942 that would honor the greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri and his monumental allegory, The Divine Comedy. The exposition was canceled at the beginning of World War II, and the Danteum, as it was called, was never built. However, through the architect's drawings, model, and texts, the Danteum stands as one of the most compelling architectural projects of this century.

In 1988, fifty years after the conception of the Danteum, I set about without a commission to design a theoretical architectural project which would honor Herman Melville and his great masterpiece, Moby-Dick. At the outset, I wished to accomplish two things. Firstly, I sought to design a building which would be the American equivalent in scope and stature to Terragni's project based on The Divine Comedy. This notion of equivalence was not grounded in an estimation of my work relative to Terragni's, but my belief that Moby-Dick is America's greatest novel. Secondly, I wished to demonstrate that a work of literature could not only be a source of inspiration for an architectural project, but that a novel could more directly in-form architecture; that is, a novel could be the veritable client for a building design. In this manner the project was to be a corresponding, parallel work to Moby-Dick defined in architectural terms, not a set of subservient illustrations. The result was a project entitled Melvilla. (Darden, "Melvilla: An Architect on Moby-Dick," Melville Society Extracts, Vol. 91, 1992, p. 1)

While, yes, he began work on Melvilla in 1988, he actually had been conceiving of an American Danteum since 1986. During this time Darden endeavored to present an exhibition called "2 x 4" which would display eight architectural projects, two projects by four architects. Another note in the file calls it "Architecture and Tragedy," but that is beside the point. The exhibition never occurred, though he exhibited Museum of Impostors and Clinic for Sleep Disorders in several showings in New York City in 1986, where he was residing at the time. In an initial proposition for 2 x 4, Darden indicates that he wishes to exhibit Night School and Clemens Court. The description for Clemens Court is as follows: 

William Gass reminds us that "we should never forget that from the very beginning the word has been one of the important OBJECTS in human experience." We are born into language as into perception and a place. Such a reminder has architectural ramifications.

In 1938 the architect Giuseppe Terragni received a commission under the Fascist regime of Mussolini to design a building that would honor the greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri. The Danteum, as it was called, was never built; however, through the architect's drawings and his text, the Danteum stands — like the DIVINE COMEDY — as a compelling, imaginative work.

To date, no similar work has been designed by an architect in the United States to honor the greatest American writer. Perhaps this is because our country is young, or because our citizens would not agree on who is the greatest writer, but if we can allow a leniency with these matters, we can imagine designing "An American Danteum" that would honor Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise know as Mark Twain."

One will notice a lot of crossover of language between the Melvilla statement and that of Clemens Court. One important thing to note is that Darden views the Danteum as a standing monument. Sure, the physical structure was never built, but through the drawings, model, and texts about the Danteum, it is a real work of architecture that stands, not physically in reality, but in the reality of Architecture itself. This may be why Darden adds the Danteum into the site plan of Temple Forgetful; he believes it is real — it is real. He is not imagining a parallel dimension where the Danteum was constructed, but rather that it already is real.

One will note that in the text of Melvilla, Darden calls the Danteum an "allegory." He doesn't say this about the Danteum in the text of Clemens Court, indicating that Darden had not quite developed his belief, or at least had not yet begun to articulate his perception of his building designs as allegories. I believe this reinforces the perception that the Danteum is real, it stands, it exists. The allegory makes it real, because allegories are reality, or at least a reality. We use metaphors, we use allegories. This is part of our linguistic reality. Like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: the larger the vocabular, the more augmented the reality of perceiving the world. However, I think George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By better captures the concept: that our language, the way we speak is almost always a metaphor; we speak in metaphors almost constantly. By extension, metaphors become our reality; allegories are reality. Really diving into this probably deserves its own post, as I believe there is a great deal of influence from Peter Eisenman, and by extension, Noam Chomsky and other linguistic theories of semantics.

There is something Darden writes in a letter concerning the 2 x 4 exhibition that I think begins to capture what Darden was truly in-visioning: "Words can be very important in the architectonics of perception and the viewer's expecta-shuns."

However, Darden is much more certain in his declaration of Melville being the greatest American author, whereas Mark Twain feels like a placeholder. He is less certain as to whether or not Twain is the greatest. He is more nominating Twain for the title of "Greatest American Author" to the general public, rather than declaring it. He didn't even have a particular work of Twain's in mind to base his design upon, like the Danteum was based on the Divine Comedy, Dante's magnum opus. Did Twain even have a magnum opus? What is Twain's greatest novel? And if that is his greatest work, is it the greatest work of American literature? One can really see why Darden was hesitant to follow through on Clemens Court.

In a letter to his friend Ben Ledbetter, Darden writes the following:

Typewritten statement by Darden to Ledbetter

Darden proceeds to make some commentary on this term and function of Ifadeum in a series of postscripts. He conceives that each architect will form there own program based on "what each of us has learned from designing our Night School." He notes that "deum" is not a real word but is similar to "diem" (day) and "deus" (god). Then notes that "eum" makes him think of institutions (e.g. museum) and "glorification" — "I think from childhood hymns that had the sound 'deum.'"

Basically, Darden didn't know who the Greatest American Author is, nor does he imagine there could be a consensus. It is one big IF. If it is Hemingway, then what about Plath? If it is Woolf, then what about Lovecraft? What if the greatest American author has not even been born yet? Like Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the one who has yet to come. What if the greatest American author is not of the United States, but rather Mexico, or Canada or any number of South American countries? What is meant by "American"?

Further writings on the 2 x 4 exhibition are letters to students at Carleton University, Ben Ledbetter, and a guy named Neil (not sure who he is yet). Darden tosses around ideas, concepts, working theories, &c. It seems the objective to design an American Danteum was something Darden really wanted to do, but in 1986 he just could not formulate the right direction. It would take him two years to finally create Melvilla. Obviously, Mark Twain just wasn't the right client for Darden, nor was any of his work a veritable magnum opus for either Twain or America. 

The fact he was so adamant on doing an American Danteum is telling about Darden's ambitions, but also how incredibly influential the Danteum was on him. One might consider Darden's admiration of Faulkner and the creation of Oxygen House another kind of Danteum. In many ways, Oxygen House and Melvilla compete with each other as being a sort of Danteum, even if conceived differently.

This is not meant to provide any sort of answer to Darden's opinions on "the greatest American author," perceptions, allegories, figuration, &c, but rather to give a glimpse into Darden's process and thoughts. We tend to look at Condemned Building as something that sprang from nothing, ex nihilo, but this is because it is so finalized, and all the work behind the scenes are completely denied to us. As strong and compelling as Darden's process is, he denies us access to any of it via Condemned Building. Process denied.

A little moment like Clemens Court and the Ifadeum gives some insight into that process.