THEORY | OF PRESENCE
Author | Bailey Json
ABSENCE | THOUGHTS REGARDING…​
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Although our society has long regarded architecture as the practice of designing inert objects, a closer look reveals an important use is actually to map the absence of cultural identity. By using architecture as a mirror, absence can be located and challenged. As a result, architecture as a discourse and practice is able to re-craft the production of space and alter the physical existence of marginalized groups.
My project is not to boycott the discipline called architecture but to make a critical intervention from within. How does one locate the absence of presence in the context of architecture? How does one become an invisible presence? Does nothingness exist that presupposes the locations of meanings? How do architects come to define and re-define such meanings? How do they sponsor the already-assumed theoretical positions, and how do they negotiate their discipline under the constraints of existing social conditions? Architecture as a practice is informed by inquiry seeking to resolve questions regarding how one designs, how social space is produced, and how neutral space is produced that is free from racialized and gender assignments.
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​| BUILDING AS OBJECTS​
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If we claim that a space cannot be neutral since human beings occupy the space, then we are arguing that space is socially charged. Henry Lefebvre contends that in addition to being a product of humans, space is also a complex social construct. Lefebvre argues, “Social space is a social product - the space produced in a certain manner serves as a tool of thought and action. It is not only a means of production but also a means of control, and hence of domination/power.” (Lefebvre p.14). In light of Lefebvre, we might be able to say that buildings are objects that occupy a social status existing as latent entities of/for human use and consumption. The buildings that function within human spatial environments render a condition that is fostered by a presumptive ideology that actively produces cultural meanings.
Adorno contends, “The culture industry claims to serve the consumers’ needs for entertainment, but conceals the way that it standardizes these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what it produces.” (Adorno, p.12) Within the system of cultural production described by Theodor Adorno, buildings become products of mass culture. As defined by Terry Eagleton, ideology embodies a variety of meanings regarding collective thought; hereafter ideology will be used to signify false ideas, which help to legitimate a dominant political power. (Eagleton, p.1)
The presence of biopower based on cultural ideologies, and the related lack of cultural capital are elements of my theoretical argument. Michel Foucault describes biopower as a “technology of power, which is a way of managing people as a group.” (Foucault, p.140). If the lack of capital renders marginalized groups powerless regarding the construction of their identity, its maintenance and/or its reproduction, the lack of power renders racialized and gender presence as invisible. This project examines the 18th Street and Vine District of Kansas City, Missouri, in light of the invisible presence.
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| KANSAS CITY AS THE SITE OF FREEDOM
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While slaves sought Kansas City, Missouri, as an escape from bondage, their descendants have not successfully continued to challenge racism.
Independence, Missouri, was a destination for slaves seeking freedom. During the period surrounding the writing of the emancipation proclamation, slaves and freed slave alike participated in the regions timber and masonry industries. Slave and freed alike garner wealth as merchants and community leaders, forming black communities in the West Bottoms that became known as “Hell’s Half-Acres”. Institutionalized racism was unknown through the late 1800’s in the entire Kansas City
region. The lack of structured separation allowed blacks to form viable residential, business and political communities. In 140 years since the emancipation proclamation, blacks in this area have been unable to maintain the prosperity attained by generations past. The environment that remains today has been neglected and abandoned by former settlers who sought prosperity elsewhere.
Today, Vine Street District that was once a thriving community is merely a shadow of its past. The neighborhood displays the presence of absence this project seeks to illuminate.
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| CULTURAL IDENTITY
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Cultural identity operates through the concept of the self in the unconscious mind, but cultures are also constructed through the use of language formations as a means of re-crafting collective consciousness.
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The legitimacy of meaning derived from cultural ideology within social structures is continually reproduced, reinforced and legitimized by unwitting architectural practitioners. Architecture’s ability as a practice and discourse to deconstruct traditional notions of identity is in
question. The underlying issue is the necessity of challenging the legitimacy of dominant ideology,
but also the operation of architecture as an apparatus of the state.
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For Louis Althusser, the state is a political entity that is repressive and inevitable. Althusser’s conceptual ideological state apparatus along with Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony work to structure the concept of self. The concept of the self is based in the unconscious mind as defined by Jacques Lacan.
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This project aims to locate the terrain of conceptual invisibility within presence by employing the language of Lacan to establish an inter-disciplinary framework. Language along with the physical analysis of the urban site will help construct the conceptual basis for the project. The utilization of specific terms such as desire, demand, and trauma will assist in the establishment of the conceptual notion of moments.
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The moment, as a response to notions of collective engagement in space, is derived from the cursive/recursive as defined by Barbara Johnson, in The Feminist Difference. Established by Johnson, the cursive or figure embodies the independent figure. The other within this framework is the re-cursive or ground that constitutes the complementary dependent figure. Even though the recursive figure is complementary, the figure represents a doubling or twice cursive figure that is both dependent and independent. The otherness Barbara Johnson introduces establishes the visual by defining figure/ground as analogous to cursive/re-cursive.
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| MIMETIC OBJECTS
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Buildings occupy physical space as inert objects while maintaining the status of social entities as objects mimicking their human occupants. Buildings are inert objects that operate within the social realm. Societies are governed by codes that continually re-craft how humans read other humans as objects. Buildings are read and re-read as system of objects, thus humans and buildings operate within social networks defined by language.
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Through the use of common language (positive/ negative or figure/ground in visual studies) the conceptual framework of this project merges psychoanalysis, literature and architecture. The use of figure/ground as a concept draws on literary theory while simultaneously referencing visual studies and also as a visual art. The critical understanding of language will guide this project from the literary to the visual, ultimately framing it within architectural discourse and practice.
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| MAPPING ABSENCE
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The absence of presence locates territories occupied by groups with substantial economic power; nevertheless, the existence of these moments reveals the density of space simultaneously by the occupied and the occupier by way of conceptual mirroring.
The focus on language will infuse a measure of density into architectural dialogue. Jean Baudrillard speaks of conceptual density as a product of time in space, that allows beings to locate themselves through objects, Baudrillard claims, “Human beings and objects are indeed bound together in collusion in which the objects take on a certain density, an emotional value – what might be called a ‘Presence.’” (Baudrillard, 14) While conceptual density is being established, a discourse promoting this architecture as a product of the physical, social and psychological site can be generated. The density this project seeks to discover will hopefully locate moments crucial to architecture as an operation mapping time, space, and traumas.
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The development of this language will inform architecture as a discourse as well as a practice, producing objects as derivatives of governing cultural ideology. The by-products of dominant groups are not independent objects in that they are forced to assimilate that which is valued by the subject group. According to Adorno, culture not only mirrors society, but also takes an important role in shaping society through the processes of standardization and commodification, creating objects rather than subjects. (Adorno) The shaping and mirroring effect of culture prevents societies from constructing, maintaining or reproducing an autonomous culture. Through the use of biopower, subject groups force weaker groups to erase many vestiges of the re-cursive or dependent culture.
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| THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE
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Even though the body is the primary site regarding the production of space, it is possible to focus on hair as a medium to investigate the multiplicity of dualities occurring in space.
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If we assume architecture is a product/object of culture, then its constructs mirror the occupants. The mirroring of the occupant happens through time as the occupants locate themselves in objects of culture marking space. If products of society (including architecture) mirror society then these objects of society mirror those who dwell within and also the group projecting their cultural ideology. In this regard the concept of mimesis, informs our understanding of cultural
assimilation through imitation. If independent/dependent cultures are forced to imitate other cultures through the use of objects of the culture industry, then the very bodies of the dwellers may also be regarded as the initial site of the mimetic process. Therefore, any investigation of cultural mimesis should consider the body of marginal figures as the primary site of Absence.
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| DWELLING OBJECTS
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Since the existence of objects reveals multiplicity within singularity, it is not possible for dwelling objects to incorporate the social practice of locating difference. Accordingly, the analysis of social categories collapsed the beauty salon and the barbershop into a singular object of culture. Everything that is known exists in multiplicity because all things are known to man and exist prior to the reality of man. If all existence presupposes the actuality of humans then multiple forms
of reality already exist.
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Because humans understand objects and give objects meaning through language systems, both objects and man are bound to the systems that sponsor the various means projected upon objects. Since various meanings are transferred to objects signifying a multiplicity of potentialities, then the objects in question cannot maintain a fixed meaning. If difference is the category in question, and the location of difference is never fixed, stable, or concrete, then the location of
difference as a relevant social category cannot be possible.
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Although a singular object of culture inherently maintains a multiplicity of dualities, categories of difference attempt to re-craft singularities. The singularity of social objects render them unstable because the social systems that construct the realm of objects rely on a lack of fixity. The absence of fixity allows for evolution of language systems. As language systems that sponsor social systems change, the objects that are defined and re-defined continually evolve along side meaning.
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If the analysis of the category of difference is not possible, the social practice of gender difference begins to collapse. The hair salon and barbershop as gender specific architectural objects must collapse into a singular object of culture in order to maintain any social viability. This can be argued based on the fact that the gender objects (hair salon and barber shop) attempt to maintain viability within the realm of social objects sponsoring institutional separation. If this practice is
institutionally based on biology and not a social necessity, then the ability of the state to maintain the fixity and stability of the practice is required. Because practices sponsored by the state continually evolve, it is possible to suggest that the category does not and cannot maintain a reliable existence. The nonexistence of the category leads to the conclusion that the hair salon and barbershop must collapse into one entity that dismisses gender categorization as a worthwhile social practice.
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PRESENCE | THOUGHTS REGARDING…
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What are we to understand by the phrase, “absence of presence”? While addressing the notion of the invisible essence regarding architecture we can expose social and psychological structures that contribute to the development of our physical environments. If these physical environments are not inert and enjoy the status of beings, then how do they operate?
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The notion of presence signals the existence of a perceivable essence. This essence is not always visible or tangible. The essence this project endeavors to discover and expose represents a human desire. Previously in this work I defined desire as that which is beyond or lacking. The ability of the individual to perceive the lack is not being questioned; rather the question concerns what constitutes the psychological concept and how it operates. If built objects function as social entities, then we can use the social realm as a frame of reference when attempting to address how humans relate to them. Humans attach emotional value to objects, so even when an object no longer exists, the subconscious desire for the object persists. The site of the lost object is what this project endeavors to map, then re-craft.
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If the charge of architecture is to question, then the charge of this project is to question why and how we resolve the presence of absence. The notion of presence leads to the recognition of physical and psychological sites that embody loss, and which are manifestations of cultural systems that foster their existence. As a discourse, architecture has a responsibility to locate sites of desire and to formulate alternatives to existing conditions.
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The practice of architecture is obligated to capital; acting as an agent of the state, architecture maintains a position of passivity. Unlike the discourse of architecture, the practice of architecture maintains no obligation to respond to conditions of loss leading to, and fostering, social imbalances. The ability of architects as agent of the state unwittingly operates as tools. As agents of the state, architects unwittingly operate as tools obliged to reinforce the imbalance the discipline should be attempting to overcome. Because architects are not independent agents, it is virtually impossible for them to locate, analyze, and reconstruct sites lacking a viable social presence.
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| ABESENCE
This project endeavors to expose the lack of viable architectural forms in Kansas City, Missouri, as well as to locate the presence of absence.
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If this project claims that Kansas City, Missouri, lacks viable architectural forms, we must be arguing that we understand what determines value regarding architecture. This project analyzed the 18th and Vine Street District in order to expose the existence of invisibility’s relationship to abandonment. The abandonment of the Vine District is not unique to this area of the city, or any city in the United States. What is unique about the Vine District is its history as the destination of
freedom for many.
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Today the Vine District exists as a vacant territory. It is characterized by energy and vibrancy through its history as a jazz quarter; though its present-day condition is less than the notion of jazz and nightlife would suggest. The Vine District is currently occupied by lounges, a museum, a community center, and many small businesses, along with many empty sites. The vacancy is the absence this project seeks to expose. The absence within the sites is not singular because the physical sites can be characterized differently. Some of the sites display a vacancy signified by signage conveying the limit of vacancy consigned by external capital. Other sites within this neighborhood contain a presence of absence consigned by a prior flight of capital from the neighborhood.
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The physical absence is aligned with the social absence within the realm of the conscious, and the two forms work to construct absence within the subconscious mind of occupants of the site. Because the Vine District lacks a thriving social fabric, the inhabitants that have attempted to occupy the site have sought physical, social and psychological presence in other environments.
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| ERASURE
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If to erase is to remove the presence of that which once occupied a site, then physical and/or psychological erasure would require the manipulation of the physical and psychological being of the objects subjected to the removal.
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The removal of beings or bodies is not always a physical action. The passive removal of beings through the exclusion of investment is an example of biopower. In order to develop and redevelop the physical environment there must be access to capital. Because groups lacking collective capital occupy the Vine district, external investors manipulate the physical environment. The external sponsors not only manipulate through the development of the physical environment by the denial of investment. Those seeking to erase the collective capital that had fostered unity within the once thriving environment, as well as by its occupants have devalued the vine district.
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The erasure of the physical environment signifies to the occupants the impending de-evolution of the environment. Not only do the occupants witness the erasure of the physical environment, they internalize the conditions of the deterioration before them.
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| MIMESIS
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Mimesis is the process by which the One becomes the ‘Other’ and the ‘Other’ becomes the One. If the process of becoming the object of desire allows the object to maintain the essence of self, then the process of assimilation can produce a physical and psychological density. The density this project seeks builds upon the terrain of that which is, while developing a sensitivity to that which can be acquired randomly.
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The conditions of poverty that have enveloped the Vine District mirror the existence of the inhabitants of the environment. The occupants of the district have become the site and manifestation of imbalance. The re-cursive figures occupying the district are dependents of the ‘Other’. The proposals for future development of the Vine District mimic the development and density of other neighborhoods owned and operated by the external capital. Just as the physical development begins to mimic the “Other,” the beings and bodies of the residents begin to assimilate through the mimetic process. The act of ownership is an active technology of biopower,
unlike the more passive process of assimilation that operates through various mediums to recondition the psychological. Once the process of mimesis reconditions the group, notions of the self are altered.
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This project seeks to expose the epistemic violence mimesis. The ability of societies to assimilate that, which is useful, can only enhance them as they evolve; however, the use of biopower to manipulate subject groups eliminates cultural density.
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| PRESENCE
If an object is to exist it must have a mandate to operate freely within its own space. This project has endeavored to reveal objects not merely mimicking lost capital, but rather locating the operations of capital.
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This project located built objects in the Vine District that mimic built objects owned and operated by groups from outside the district. The development of the area by outsiders lead to the erasure of the indigenous, historically black culture that migrated to the area in the post Civil War period. The culture constituted by institutions such as beauty shops, barbershops, lounges, corner stores, whiskey shops, tobacco shops and textile shops has been violently removed, leading to the development of cultural institutions that are not unique to the indigenous peoples. The forcible insertions of entities such as coffee shops, check cashing offices, commercial banking centers, and smoothie shops mimic dominant cultural development while constructing the lack of density characteristic of deliberate assimilation, and producing the absence of presence.
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In order to re-craft the Vine District, the development must maintain some vestiges of the history or risk losing any connection to vibrant indigenous culture that once occupied the site. The process of free assimilation allows the indigenous culture to co-exist with the new, dominant culture. The development of cultural institutions that sponsor the culture that is/was fosters the presence of culture. If the indigenous culture can be identified through appropriate entities, we can then re-craft presence through one or many of these entities.
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This project used hair as a medium to locate and analyze race, gender and sexuality in urban development. The use of hair governs the selection of the hair salon and the barbershop as building types through which one could analyze and re-craft the presence of presence.
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| PANOPTICON
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This project attempts to uncover the means of passive control that manipulate how domination occurs; thus, this project must expose the mechanisms of capital operating via sight. The Panopticon, as a passive tool enabling continual oversight, must be re-crafted.
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Early models of the programmatic arrangement organized the shop as a mass center within a ring sponsoring retail activity. The retail activity locates the shop within the greater society as a viable commercial entity. The ring also identifies the environment that connects the shop to external capital, as well as the culture industry. The ring fostering commercial interest operates as a subversive body that manipulates culture; because the environment operates passively, its true modes of operation are obscured within social practices and were initially represented as a solid mass. The internal mass representing the shop constituted the re-cursive or dependent figure that controlled and manipulated by the retail entity acting as an agent of the state. The core was viewed as a transparent mass, which acts as the background.
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As this analysis progressed, the cursive/commercial and re-cursive/shop entities argument doubled back against itself. The two bodies revealed that the commercial body was the transparent entity and the shop entity was the opaque body. The dependency relationship reversed in part because the presence of cultural capital inherent in cultural institutions negated the absence of presence. The development of the shop environment as a cultural body functioned to reinforce the
indigenous culture while accepting commercial interest. By accepting commercial interest the shop assimilates characteristics of dominate culture, thereby attaining density through random assimilation.
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The opacity of the core dissolved to incorporate transparency into the solidity used to veil the shop from external manipulators. The dissolution of the vertical surfaces into a diaphragm acting to incorporate rather than control visibility crafts the shop into a Panopticon, allowing the shop to monitor the retail ring or be monitored by the retail ring.
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Within the Panopticon the shop operates through time and space as a sequence of moments or traumas. The initial moment in the sequence is framed at the entry, the initial trauma one encounters upon traversing the threshold negotiating exteriority and interiority. The solid black bamboo entry box pierces the external glass wall as well as the internal bamboo diaphragm.
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The terminus of the entry box within the internal diaphragm locates the second moment or trauma at the threshold of the empty center or shop. The empty center is that which is not the presence of presence, because the void framed by the diaphragm houses the absence of presence that is now the presence of presence. The presence the culture maintained by the sponsorship of cultural institution is the presence or acceptance of trauma.
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Mapping of random moments throughout the architectural diagram locates thresholds, or voids, that signify a transition within the mass. The overall diagram of the shop frames the empty center that now envelopes beauty salon, barbershop and the beauty supply entity. The density of the presence of presence now defines the conflation of these disparate parts identified by difference.
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Bibliography |
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Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (2006 by Verso)
Jean Baudrillard, Passwords (2003 by Verso)
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1991 by Blackwell Publishing Limited)
Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (2001 by Routledge)
Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (2007 by Verso)
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. I (1990 by Vintage)
Louis Althusser, Althusser: A Critical Reader
Barbara Johnson, The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race and Gender (1998 by Harvard University Press)
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (2006 by Routledge)
Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference
Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs
Juhani Pallasmaa, Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture (2007 by William K Stout Pub)
Colin Rowe, Collage City (1984 by The MIT Press)
Neil Leach, Camouflage (2006 by The MIT Press)
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Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (2001 by Harper Perennial Modern)
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