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| https://pauladkin.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/a-new-heterotopia/ |
ever since Zoë suggested for me to read more about heterotopias it's been on my mind, and on this post I'm reading through Foucault's Of Other Spaces.
(the spaces I've been thinking about, are they all in some ways, heterotopias... even like the movie set of parasite, large windows, dioramas, video games, the 'room', the garden, the zoo, the digital space, the digital archive, the museum... etc)
there's a really brief summary on wiki.. but I also found a video outlining the principles by an artist which I will transcribe below this part.
- In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time. Time probably appears to us only as one of the various distributive operations that are possible for the elements that are spread out in space,
-And perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred.
-The space of our primary perception, the space of our dreams and that of our passions hold within themselves qualities that seem intrinsic: there is a light, ethereal, transparent space, or again a dark, rough, encumbered space; a space from above, of summits, or on the contrary a space from below of mud; or again a space that can be flowing like sparkling water, or space that is fixed, congealed, like stone or crystal. Yet these analyses, while fundamental for reflection in our time, primarily concern internal space. I should like to speak now of external space...
-The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.
-Of course one might attempt to describe these different sites by looking for the set of relations by which a given site can be defined. For example, describing the set of relations that define the sites of transportation, streets, trains (a train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by). One could describe, via the cluster of relations that allows them to be defined, the sites of temporary relaxation—cafes, cinemas, beaches. Likewise one could describe, via its network of relations, the closed or semi-closed sites of rest—the house, the bedroom, the bed, et cetera. But among all these sites, I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect. These spaces, as it were, which are linked with all the others, which however contradict all the other sites, are of two main types.
-HETEROTOPIAS: First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.
-There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places—places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society— which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror.
-The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.
(the mirror is a utopia [because it is a placeless place behind the surface], but also a heterotopia [because the mirror exists in reality - and the mirror enables you to see that the place you are at in that moment is real - seen in that placeless/unreal/virtual place - so it is simultaneously absolutely unreal and real, to see that real place you are in you must see that unreal place which passes through the virtual point of the mirror) ???
*this reminds me of that quote from dorothrea tanning (that I referenced in my second year essay, I'm realising I was basically thinking about unreal places in the realm of surrealism at that point, and perception..) 'I was painting our side of the mirror - the mirror for me is a door - but I think that I've gone over, to a place where one no longer faces identities at all.' - I think I'll make a separate blog post on 'unreal places'...*
Heterotopias are real, physical, or mental spaces that act as other spaces alongside existing spaces. Foucault created six principles in order to explain this.
1) Firstly, heterotopic spaces are where norms of behaviour are suspended. Foucaut devised this principle into two: heterotopias of crisis and heterotopias of deviation.
- heterotopias of crisis: privileged, sacred, or forbidden spaces reserved for individuals who are, in relation to their society, in crisis. By that he means, adolescence, pregnant women, the elderly.
- heterotopias of deviation: places where behaviours outside the norm can be exercised, e.g. psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and care homes.
2) the second principle is that they have a precise and determined function and are reflective of the society in which they exist. Foucault offers the very concrete example of the western cemetery.
3) they have the power to juxtapose several real spaces simultaneously. A garden is a good example of that, where plants from all over the world are juxtaposed together.
4)they are linked to slices of time, and truly work when people are given a break from their traditional time.
- time can accumulate, in the manner of libraries and museums, or
- time can be transitory, like a temporary fairground at the edge of a town.
5) always have a system of opening and closing, and are not freely accessible. They require some sort of permission to enter, either with a ticket, a gesture, or some sort of ritual.
6) have a function in relation to other spaces that exist. they are either
- spaces of illusion, Foucault offers the example of the brothel
- spaces of compensation, such as the nineteenth-century English colonies in the new world
Finally, Foucault offers us the boat as the perfect example of a heterotopia. It is a floating piece of space, not fixed to any other place, except the infinity of the sea.
the artist also did a more recent video applying foucault's principles to the festival tent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)
