The Psychodramatic Scripts of Condemned Building

 

Early draft of the psychodramatic script of Night School

Exploring the works of Douglas Darden in Condemned Building, one will note firstly that Darden does not refer to his architectural designs as "designs," "buildings," "proposals," "projects," or any other term architects might use to denote their projects. Rather he calls them "allegories." The title image illustrates this best, whereupon the guillotine is written: "Plans, Sections, Elevations, Details, Models, Ideograms, Scriptexts, and Letters for Ten [--] Allegorical Works of Architecture." In the Forewards, Darden further states: "The buildings are an admission of rhetoric, not knowledge. Instead of solutions, they offer allegories."

So... what does that even mean?

Firstly, we should acknowledge that Darden is incredibly systematic in the creation of Condemned Building. Each allegory is treated equally, with the exception of Sex Shop. For instance, each project has a Dis/continuous Genealogy, even projects that were created prior to 1987, roughly the time when he first conceived of the idea of creating these Dis/continuous Genealogies. Saloon for Jesse James and Museum of Impostors were created prior to 1987, yet he made sure they also had a Dis/continuous Genealogy. This is because the D/cG was not a generative element to the allegory, but creating a D/cG was essential to its narrative, and ultimately the narrative of Condemned Building.

Thus, each allegory of Condemned Building has the following aspects (Museum of Impostors as an example):

• A Name (e.g. Museum of Impostors)
• A Subtitle (e.g. A Portrait of Last Identity)
• A Canon (e.g. Architecture posits the authentic)
• A Reversa (e.g. Architecture posits the fake)
• A Description (site history and aspects, project aspects)
• An Appendix (e.g. the letter from Sarah Wilson)
• A Dis/continuous Genealogy
• Plans, Sections, Elevations
• Photographs of a model with a telescopic lens
• Quotes from Hamlet
• A Psychodramatic Script (e.g. Identities and Acts)

All the projects in Condemned Building more or less have these elements, sometimes other contributing elements, such as site photos or some other sketches, but these are more the exception than the rule. All these are variously categorized as con-texts, sub-texts, pre-texts, and archi-texts.

Now, most of these aspects listed above are either self-explanatory or I have previously written about them, with the exception of the "pscyhodramatic script." What the hell is that?

Psychodrama is a form of therapy that was developed by Jacob and Zerka Moreno in the early 1900s. Effectively, it was a means for individuals to explore inner issues, relationship disputes, feelings, trauma, et al in a theatrical format, i.e. on a stage with props, character identities, role playing, &c. It is intended to be improvised, and in many ways psychodrama is the mother of improv theater.

Now, Darden does not call attention to his adoption of a "psychodramatic" narrative or script; he never calls it this openly. It is only by perusing the project files that one will find him using this term. The first time I find Darden using this term is in a letter to Kevin Lippert (publisher at Princeton Architectural Press) on 1 November 1988 concerning the materials he is preparing for Condemned Building:

"Each project is comprised of exquisite drawings and with model photographs, a dis/continuous genealogy, and a psychodramatic text script. Taken together, the projects form an architect's Kamasutra with the mock negative. Condemned Building is a treatise on the tragicomedic nature of unfulfilled desire. and of loss."

By using this term "psychodrama" is indicative of a few things. Firstly, it pays tribute to Darden's undergraduate background: he held a bachelors in literature and psychology. Second, it is a clever way for him to explain his project without giving a standard project description one expects in an architectural monograph. It is a means for Darden to render the project description as a narrative — not just a narrative, but a dramatic narrative. In a way, this is compatible with the quotes from Hamlet, a dramatic play.

One can play with the ideas that Darden is exploring by rendering the project description as a drama. The building elements are not just inert, static features in a building, but rather dynamic characters, props, stage sets, &c, and the functional uses and movement through the projects are dramatic scenes and acts, as in a play. Suddenly the architectural elements of each building is no longer just a building element, but something more alive, active, animated, like a ballet, which Darden practiced. The silos in Museum of Impostors are no longer just static building features, but characters that are part of a dramatic narrative, active participants in action with a literary purpose.

Furthermore, a psychodrama is supposed to be improvised; they are supposed to be revealing subconscious feelings and opinions — almost associative, stream-of-conscious revealing of under-conscious feelings. While it is clear that these psychodramatic scripts are edited and undergo several revisions, they give the impression of how Darden subconsciously associated his designs with certain theatrical aspects. For instance, the psychodramatic script for Confessional gives insight into Darden's subconscious perceptions of the act of confession from both the priest's and the confessor's points of view.

All this comes back to the nature of allegory. Darden is making commentary, and is inviting us to look beyond his stunning drawings and contemplate a deeper dynamic in his work. In a way, this how psychodramas work: participants act out and represent feelings and ideas within themselves, which opens up a dynamic interaction/conversation between the participants. Allegories, likewise, are a dynamic representation of deeper ideas which opens up conversation. So for Darden to call his theoretical works of architecture "allegories" is apt and fitting. Such cannot be denied. It is simply worth contemplating further how the psychodramatic scripts contribute to these allegories.

It might be worthwhile to explore one psychodramatic script. Since we used Museum of Impostors above, we will continue that here:

Identities I
Fort McHenry, formerly a pine forest
Channel Marker, buoy with painted stairs and stripes commemorating Francis Scott Key
Naval Barricade, thirteen strategically-placed sunken ships, War of 1812
Bombardment, continual artillery fire, 6 August 1814
Commemoratives, inexpensive souvenirs of local military history
Lazaretto, 19th century quarantine house for immigrants

Identities II
First Silo, encasement for two non-indigenous trees
Second Silo, encasement for windmill-powered music box, playing Key's favorite sonata
Black Rock, sheer wall with 13x4 shipping containers, exhibiting individual impostors
Hall of Stairs, lattice of fire stairs, curtain wall, and untouchable floor
Namesakes, plaster tablets at stair landings, presenting fact of impostors' lives
Wooden Raft, pick-up point from museum, built of quarantine remains

Acts
Act 1    Declaration: descent by narrow path from ravelin of fort onto stair passing under the sea
Act 2    Confirmation: two trees acknowledge central axis
Gap A   Cave diverts axis into hall of stairs
Act 3    Passage: binary travel on either side of rock wall; stair landing with tablets of facts, exhibitions of impostors' lives
Gap B  Second Cave leads underwater to second silo
Act 4    Delivery: ascent by ship's ladder to music box, descent by rope ladder to wood raft

Due to the formatting limits of this platform, I cannot show the Identities side by side, but what one is examining is history participating with architectural elements. The First Silo encases trees while Fort McHenry used to be a forest. The encased trees are non-indigenous, playing further into being impostors. These identities play out their roles in Act 1 by moving from the fort, under the water, and into the First Silo. The Second Silo sits out in the water and plays Francis Scott Key's favorite sonata on a giant music box, while out in the water is buoy painted with stars and stripes to commemorate Key himself (shown in the D/cG). These identities interact in an intermission (Gap B, though an early draft calls this an intermission) into the Second Silo. Then into Act 4, ascending a ship ladder through the music box, only to descend a rope ladder into a raft (and Identity) sitting out in the harbor, which is made from wood remains of the quarantine facility that used to be at Lazaretto Point (another Identity) across the harbor. Et cetera.

Darden makes specific use of the term "gap." The harbor itself he calls the "Water Gap." He makes extensive use of concepts of reaching and desiring (across gaps), but also being denied and falling short. The Museum of Impostors does not bridge the harbor, it does not bridge the history between Fort McHenry to Lazaretto Point. It desires to bridge the Gap, but fails to do so. These concepts, brilliantly explored here in the Museum of Impostors, are ultimately laid out in Darden's Six Aphorisms that conclude Condemned Building.

In short, the building designs of Condemned Building are allegories, and the psychodramtic scripts create a dynamic narrative to enact this. The allegories are a play of history, site, architectural elements, and concepts (such as identity, impersonation). Other designs of Darden's have very different psychodramatic scripts. For instance, Night School is just Lessons, whereas Melvilla utilizes Characters and Plot Lines. These obviously play into the narrative of his allegories, and I encourage Darden enthusiasts to explore them more.

Darden in the Age of Spatial Dissolution

Untitled, 100 Building Nights, charcoal and graphite on paper, Douglas Darden, 1985

For some time I noticed that Darden barely does site plans. As I have previously noted, Temple Forgetful is the only one with a very large site plan with a north arrow. Actually there are a lot of things architects usually put in their drawings that Darden omits. He only does a north arrow for Temple Forgetful and Oxygen House. He never provides a scale of any sort, except for a human figure. I have even tried to scale Oxygen House based on the size of the people and either these were arbitrary or he does not use standard CMU blocks for the house; in fact, they are very weird sizes. Sometimes Darden does not even draw the plan north-south, such as Saloon for Jesse James, which is completely flipped around: the site is along the western shore of the Great Salt Lake along the Great Salt Flats. However, Darden rotates the orientation, and even moves a little island closer to the peninsula.

Temple Forgetful is a great example. If you overlay the site plan on a real map of the Roman Forum, it becomes clear that he has distorted the plan, probably to set Temple Forgetful at the center, making it the hinge everything else. Buildings are made more orthogonal in the Forum in Temple Forgetful than they really are. The wall that Temple Forgetful hinges about is not laid exactly as Darden draws it. As I have previously noted, the Danteum was never built, but it is shown on the Temple Forgetful site plan. Direction is distorted, scale is relative, space and history are distorted.

These things are characteristic with Darden in his drawings: they have a scale, but not scalable — of course there is a scale, but you the viewer are not privy to that. They have an orientation, but you have to take Darden's word for which direction is which based on him calling an elevation the "east elevation" or "north elevations." The history of the site is a composite or possibly a palimpsest, but never accurate in our reality.

The history of a site is an interesting distortion in Darden's projects. He obviously is fascinated by the history of a place. Do you think he picked the McMillan Water Filtration Plant for Night School for absolutely no reason? Do you think Fort McHenry for Museum of Impostors was selected regardless of its history? Confessional is placed in a deconsecrated church and had several secular uses, and this is not without meaning. History is of immense interest in the selection of a site for a building, but Darden is always distorting the history as much as the scale and orientation.

For instance, did you ever notice that Mevilla is sited right where a post office is? His history of the site focuses on Melville living there, but never mind any history after that. It isn't essential to the narrative Darden is building. And this is part of the essence of Darden's distortions of space and history: it must serve the narrative he is creating for the project; the project is not subservient to reality, but rather to Darden's imagination.

Museum of Impostors is an interesting example: the letter from Sarah Wilson is a total contrivance. Of all the appendices (architexts) of any of his projects, Museum of Impostors might be one of the most refined, having undergone several iterations and drafts. In reality (according to one biography), Sarah stole a dress, but Darden will describe lace gloves and various other lace garments in his drafts, but he finally lands back on the historical dress. Likely it was meant to justify why he uses lace-like patterns on the exterior of the Museum, but it illustrates his willingness to distort history to serve his narrative and design.

Oxygen House might have the most distorted and contrived space and history: it is fictional. Frenchman's Bend is not a real place, but rather the fictional setting of Faulkner's The Hamlet. The entire site is made up, or at least is derived from a fictional site: Faulkner's map of Yoknapatawpha County. And even here, not only is space and history a fiction, but its scale is distorted, because Darden takes the map of an entire county and scales it down to lay out the site of a little industrial structure to die in: Oxygen House is a microcosm/simulacrum of Yoknapatawpha County.

Night School is interesting here as well, namely in how one enters the theater: from the middle of a field. He doesn't even sketch a path to the center of the field, like the paths of Temple Forgetful. [Update: in reexamining the final drawings for Night School, there is something of path, though it is more like a drainage ditch than a path... which might be more appropriate, seeing how water plays into this project. The visitor/student drains into Night School.] Darden actually made a few sketches of converting the eastern field into a parking lot, but opted to remove the parking lot and just show where one begins their journey into the school. Never mind how one gets to the tail of the trilobite; that is not important to the narrative. The rest of the outside world is not a consequence here in Darden's imagination.

I believe this trend of spatial and historical distortion are early symptoms of Darden's later fascination with abstraction, such as in Sex Shop and Laughing Girls.

All this I believe is Darden's execution of Baudrillard's theories on spatial dissolution and the breakdown of reality. From early on, Baudrillard was impactful on Darden, especially in the strangeness of our constructed reality. Baudrillard's theories of simulacra and simulations, his theories of losing sense of reality, what is real, what is fake. To quote Darden (and Darden quoting Baudrillard) in his essay "Architecture in the Age of Spatial Dissolution":

Jean Baudrillard has observed that our countryside appears to be an 'immense deserted body whose expanse and dimensions seem arbitrary': both time and space collapse under the 'ecstasy of communication.'

This is kind of the point with Baudrillard's theories of simulation: what is reality anymore? All too often Baudrillard's theories are described using The Matrix as an analogy, though Baudrillard hated it, because there is always a clear distinction between the Matrix and the real world; one is never confused when you are in the Matrix or not. Unlike, say Mulholland Drive, in which one is unsure where the dream begins and ends and transitions between, or if one even realizes they are in a dream. Similarly, Inception, in which one gets lost in the levels of dreamscapes, to the point that one of the biggest debates around the film is whether they were still in a dream at the end. This is Baudrillard's concepts of dissolving reality and uncertainty of reality altogether.

Darden is embracing this totally by removing traditional elements of architectural drawing that ground the building in reality: north arrow, graphic scale, accurate history, field verified measurements, &c. Darden wants us to feel a little uncertain about the project's reality. Darden wants us to be a little lost spatially and historically. Darden wants us to explore his projects (or rather analogies) through his narrative. His narrative is "based on a true story" but obviously distorted to fit his agenda. There is no other reality outside of his narrative.

You can imagine being in Darden's buildings, but you can't quite make it real. It's kind of ironic: as real as these projects feel, they can never be built. Darden is not an architect. He is an architext.

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.