labyrinths

"Bioy Casares had had dinner with me that evening and we became lengthily engaged in a vast polemic concerning the composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality. From the remote depths of the corridor, the mirror spied upon us."

"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in "Labyrinths", p.27


"One of the schools of Tlon goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory."

Ibid, p.34


"The methodical fabrication of hronir (says the Eleventh volume) has performed prodigious services for archaeologists. It has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past, which is now no less plastic and docile that the future."

Ibid, p.38

Travels in the Scriptorium

"My head would fill with images of my wife and daughter, and again and again I would see their mud-splattered bodies being lowered into the ground, again and again I would see their naked limbs entwined among the limbs of other corpses in the hole, and suddenly the darkness of the house would become too much to bear. I would venture out into public places, hoping to break the spell of those images in the noise and tumult of crowds. I frequented taverns and alehouses, and it was in one of those establishments that I did the most damage to myself and my reputation."

pp.44-45



"The Confederation... The Con-fed-e-ra-tion... It's all very simple, isn't it? Just another name for America. Not the United States as we know it, but a country that has evolved in another way, that has another history. But all the trees, all the mountains, all the prairies of that country stand exactly where they do in ours. The rivers and oceans are identical. Men walk on two legs, see with two eyes, and touch with two hands. They think double thoughts, and speak out of both sides of their mouths at once."

p.81


"It will never end. For Mr. Blank is one of us now, and struggle though he might to understand his predicament, he will always be lost. I believe I speak for all his charges when I say he is getting what he deserves - no more, no less. Not as a form of punishment, but as an act of supreme justice and compassion. Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead."

p.129

Neues Museum

Neues Museum

mistakes/myths/lies

The above images are an extract from the London Met's 2009 summer exhibition catalogue. They outline the work of one of the design studio units that dealt explicitly with many of the issues we have been discussing, including narrative as an architectural device, and the creation of histories, both true and false.

Muf's Barking town square

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3153931

Muf's brick wall in Barking town square establishes a dialogue between the user and the memory of the site, while also playing on established notions of time and history. The wall is a contemporary intervention made to resemble, in a most superficial sense, a Roman construction, while, upon closer inspection it is so formally playful as to almost be mannerist. It reflects the rich history of Barking, while also questioning ideas of truth and rejecting received ideas of a singular 'history'.