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Above all, what is missing from the world is a sense of what is in operation as the world. Even so, it can be stated without hesitation that each of us is involved (or ought to be involved) in an ongoing process of self-invention. If each person must invent herself further out of what she has at her disposal, we should at least have readily available a reference guide to all that a person can possibly rally to the cause of being a person. When I assign a meaning to something, I do it on the basis of what? In this, as in all instances, the questioner herself is the big question, the greater context. Being a person is an astounding event or series of events. Astounding in its variegated ordinariness. Does variegated ordinariness exist only always to dwindle away toward a dreary end? Why should the astounding series of events that is a person have to come to an end? But in regard to a whole person, what constitutes the whole of it? The body-person cannot be studied apart from her surroundings. What wields itself as the architectural body? To what extent do architectural surrounds guide behavior? Can architectural inflection of thought and feeling be calibrated precisely?

REVERSIBLE DESTINY

ARAKAWA/GINS

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

REVERSIBLE DESTINY - ARAKAWA/GINS

ORGANIZED BY MICHAEL GOVAN

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM SOHO JUNE 25-AUGUST31, 1997S

THIS EXHIBITION IS MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM FUNDING GROUP A/G, TOYOTA, SHISEIDO, AND THE JAPAN FOUNDATION

DEUTSCHE TELEKOM IS A PROUD SPONSOR OF THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM SOHO AND THE DEUTSCHE TELEKOM GALLERIES.

Unless otherwise noted, all works are in the artists' collection.

©1997 The Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, New York All rights reserved

All Arakawa and Madeline Gins works © 1 997 Arakawa and Madeline Gins Used by permission All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-8109-6902-5 (hardcover) ISBN 0-89207-188-5 (softcover)

Guggenheim Museum Publications

1071 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10128

Hardcover edition distributed by

Harry N Abrams, Inc.

1 00 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10011

Design Michael Sumner, Burning Books, Santa Fe Editing, design assistance Melody Sumner Camahan Project editor Edward Weisberger

Cover by Arakawa and Gins

Printed in Belgium by Snoeck Duca|u & Zoon

Contents

Introduction

MICHAEL GOVAN 11

Dear Neverending Architectonic Reflective Wherewithal,

JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD, MADELINE GINS AND ARAKAWA

14

The Road to Critical Resemblances House: Report of a Mapping

CHARLES W. HAXTHAUSEN

38

Early Works

ARAKAWA

42

To Think, To Invent, To Be Invented: Reflections on The Mechanism of Meaning

F L. RUSH

54

The Mechanism of Meaning

ARAKAWA AND GINS 112

Testing the Limits of Brain Plasticity: Or, Why Is There a Wall Down the Middle of the Tub?

GEORGE LAKOFF

124 Saving Not

MARK C TAYLOR

140

Judging Landing Sites

ANDREW BENJAMIN 150

Landing Site(s)

ARAKAWA AND GINS

164 Films

ARAKAWA AND GINS

168

Architectural Body

ARAKAWA AND GINS

188

Ubiquitous Site*Nagi's

Ryoanji* Architectural Body

ARAKAWA AND GINS 195

Sites of Reversible Destiny

RADOVAN IVSIC AND ANNIE LE BRUN

200

Site of Reversible Destiny— Yoro

ARAKAWA AND GINS 208

Out of Balance

BERNHARD WALDENFELS

214

Four Architects on Reversible Destiny

ED KELLER. JOHANNES KNESL, GREG LYNN, JESSE REISER

222 Terrain

ARAKAWA AND GINS

238

Reversible Destiny Cities

ARAKAWA AND GINS

256

Isle of Reversible Destiny— Venice

ARAKAWA AND GINS

258

Reversible Destiny Houses

ARAKAWA AND GINS 312

Types of Function

ARAKAWA AND GINS 313

Reversible Destiny Questionnaire

ARAKAWA AND GINS 314

Selected Bibliography

317

Selected Exhibition History

Foreword

Acknowledgments

The Guggenheim Museum is honored to present Reversible Destiny - Arakawa/ Gins, the first major museum exhibition in the United States devoted to the work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins. Focusing on a career committed to challenging the fundamental premises and philo- sophical implications of perception and space, the exhibition features Arakawa and Gins's earliest collaboration. The Mechanism of Meaning, 1963-73, 1996, and their recent groundbreaking reversible destiny archi- tecture, 1971 -present.

This exhibition and the accompanying comprehensive volume provide the ideal opportunity to reflect on the artists' formative principles while experiencing the possibilities of their new science. Arakawa and Gins's Vie Mechanism of Meaning (exhibited here in its entirety for the first time in the United States) and their reversible destiny architecture demonstrate a breadth of mediums and engage in a multidisciplinary discourse from such diverse sources as biology and poetry. As we head toward the twenty-fast century with reversible destiny sites being developed world- wide, it is a particularly appropriate time to celebrate the visionary artis- tic collaboration that defines Arakawa and Gins.

Michael Govan, former Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum, and currendy Director, Dia Center for the Arts, merits special recognition for his longstanding commitment to the artists' work. His organization of this exhibition has been handled with clarity and elegance.

An important group of organizations deserves acknowledgment for providing the resources to realize such a significant project. They are Funding Group A/G, Toyota, and Shiseido. Special thanks is given to Gallery Takagi for its assistance in working with these sponsors. We also thank the Japan Foundation for its support in producing the catalogue.

We are pleased to present Reversible Destiny-Arakawa/Gins in the Deutsche Telekom Galleries of the Guggenheim Museum SoHo. Deutsche Telekom is a proud sponsor of the Guggenheim Museum SoHo and the Deutsche Telekom Galleries. This exhibition continues Deutsche Telekom's support for the art and technology of this century and the next.

THOMAS KRENS

DIRECTOR

A central tenet of the work of Madeline Gins and Arakawa is collabora- tion, both between themselves as artists and with others inside and out- side their immediate surroundings-whether it is with other artists, poets, scientists, or philosophers. Arakawa and Gins see their own work within a larger field-the exchange of ideas. It has been a special privilege to work with them to create this exhibition and catalogue, and both artists join me in thanking our collaborators.

I thank Thomas Krens, Director, for his longstanding interest in Arakawa and Gins's oeuvre as well as for his support of this exhibition. His enthusiasm has been shared by Lisa Dennison, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and Judith Cox, Deputy Director and General Counsel.

For the effort of coordinating the exhibition and catalogue, I thank Christina Yang, Project Assistant Curator, who intelligently and diligently saw the project through all its details, and Max Hollein, Executive Assistant to the Director, who energetically helped launch this initiative and compiled the bibliography and exhibition history.

This book, the first major overview of Arakawa and Gins's projects in English, is an event itself, which was made possible in large part through the impressive and patient leadership of Anthony Calnek, Director of Publications, as well as the exacting work with text and image of Edward Weisberger, Editor. For the enormous technical and creative challenge of the book's design, including significant editorial contributions, thanks are due to Melody Sumner Carnahan and Michael Sumner of Burning Books, who have collaborated with the artists in the past and came to understand the material in depth.

The publication was assisted also by Domenick Ammirati, Editorial Assistant-Jennifer Knox White, Associate Editor; Susan Lee, Assistant Designer; Elizabeth Levy, Managing Editor; Melissa Secondino, Production Assistant; and Keith Mayerson. For their exemplary research assistance under deadline pressure, my sincere gratitude also goes to Robin Clark, Collections Curatorial Assistant; Susan Cross, Curatorial Assistant; and Vivien Greene, Curatorial Assistant. Special thanks are also due to Christa Haxthausen, Research Assistant, who shaped the pro- ject's research effort at its critical early stage.

The catalogue presents important analysis and historical perspective on Arakawa and Gins's work, extending from its early investigation into

phenomenology to its current research on architecture and city planning. For the intellectual rigor and poetic illumination of their contributions, my sincerest gratitude goes to the catalogue authors: Jean-Francois Lyotard; Charles W. Haxthausen, Professor of Art and Director of the Graduate Program in the History of Art, Williams College; F. L. Rush, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University; George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley; Mark C. Taylor, Director of the Center for Technology in the Arts and Humanities, Williams College, and Director of the Peter B. Lewis Critical Issues Forum, Guggenheim Museum; Andrew Benjamin, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick; Radovan Ivsic and Annie Le Brun; Bernhard Waldenfels, Professor of Philosophy, Ruhr Universitat, Bochum; and architects and architectural critics Ed Keller, Johannes Knesl, Greg Lynn, and Jesse Reiser.

For her steady monitoring of the project's finances, thanks go to Ruth Taylor, Director of Budgeting and Planning. I am also grateful to Nicole Hepburn, Exhibition Administration Coordinator.

For their professional skill and dedication to the arts of conservation, exhibition design, registration, and installation, I thank Jocelyn Groom, Exhibition Design Coordinator; Mary Ann Hoag and Dan Gillespie, Lighting Designers; Barry Hylton, Exhibition Technician; Gillian McMillan, Senior Conservator; Peter Read, Production Services Manager/Exhibition Design Coordinator; Christopher Skura, Museum Technician; Hubbard Toombs, Assistant Registrar; Dennis Vermeulen, Senior Exhibition Technician; and Scott Wixon, Manager of Art Services and Preparation.

For their enthusiastic work in public access of the exhibition, I thank Laura Miller, Director of Visitor Services; Elizabeth Weinberg, Manager of Visitor Services; and Scott Gutterman, Director of Public Affairs.

As Hason to the funders and supporters of the exhibition and cata- logue, thanks are due to George McNeely, Director of Corporate and Foundation Giving; Stacy Bolton, Development Coordinator; and Alex Gomez, Manager, Corporate Relations.

For their enthusiasm and commitment to the project, thanks are due to Guggenheim interns Roman Enders, John Han, Min Lee, Isabelle Leonard, Franceses Pietropaolo, Sumie Shubata, and Kristin Shepherd.

Arakawa and Madeline Gins are grateful to Silicon Graphics and Alias/Wavefront for generous grants. They also wish to express gratitude to the following associates of the Architectural Body Research Foundation: Stephan Buerger, Stacy Doris, Howard Freedman Angela Gallman, Helene Greenspan, Christa Haxthausen, Quo-Ching Heaton, Wayne Herman, Ulrika Karlsson, Stephanie Kaylin, Ivo Kos, Petei Macapia, Robin Narvaez, David Nelson, Akihiko Ono, Jiyun Park, Francesca Pietropaolo, Susana Valera Reed, Arnold Rivera, Alberto Rizzo, Fred Rush, Eiko Sakai, Cedric Scharer, Yuko Suzuike, Hideki Tamura, Tamar Teller, Lisa Tsang, Thomas Tsang, Oliver Wall, Chet Wiener, Leigh Wishner, Tony Wong, Masa Yoshikawa, Sam Yu, and Chris Zelisko.

MICHAEL GOVAN

ISLE OF REVERSIBLE DESTINY - LA CERTOSA, VENICE

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If only one were not obliged to disappear in the end. If only one could practice how not to vanish forever. Articulated terrains and low, rammed-earth walls cut across each other to form three hundred and sixty- five gardens which, individually, and in groups, or in sequences, provide practice of this kind--a training ground for the architectural body.

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Introduction

The collaborative work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins already has a place in art history. The Mechanism of Meaning, the multipanel cycle begun in 1963, completed in large part by 1973, and augmented with two new panels for this exhibition, is a touchstone of conceptual art. Marcel Duchamp said that through his own work he wanted to "put art back at the service of the mind." Arakawa, a friend of Duchamp, wanted art to question the very nature of the mind that contemplates it.

An open-ended project begun when Arakawa and Gins first met in New York, The Mechanism of Meaning stands as a huge compendium of human capability. In the course of its elaborate analysis of meaning, this cycle of eighty-three mixed-media panels-divided into sixteen subdivi- sions, such as I Neutralization of Subjectivity and 7. Splitting ofMeamng- addresses a range of philosophical issues centered around the nature of perception and, in particular, the inseparable connection between body and mind in the process of all human understanding.

Incorporating stenciled letters, diagrams, drawings, and other collage elements, the eighty-three panels offer a series of interactive exercises and thought experiments, intended, more often than not, to serve up non- sense when successfully executed. Through each exercise, viewers actively participate in the formation of meaning from a particular and specified perspective. They observe a slippage from meaning (or near- meaning) to nonsense, and sift through and recombine elements and events in the process of construing meaning.

As a systematic catalogue of the ways in which meaning emerges in processes of perception, The Mechanism of Meaning presents itself as a model of human consciousness. The work in total suggests that the nature of meaning is embedded not in any compendium of knowledge, but m each person's active engagement with the world. Meaning is not arbi- trary, but it is individual. The artists refer to each viewer, each person, as a "mechanism of meaning."

The Mechanism of Meaning extends a tradition of intellectual and artistic expression through visual and verbal paradox. It can be related to Paul Klee's whimsical diagrams or the puns and puzzles of Rene Magntte s paintings, and certainly to Duchamp. As a research project the work was not an end in itself, but provided the basis for Arakawa and Gins s further work off the canvas: the project of "reversible destiny.

In the short history of avant-garde art, no challenge and provocation by artists to viewers is so ambitious as Arakawa and Gins's "learn how not to die." Reversible destiny challenges the definition of art itself, eschew- ing aesthetics for something that might be called "practice"-the praclu a] implementation of philosophical ideas, and practice for living. Reversible destiny, embodied in drawings, models, and outdoor parks and buildings, such as the recently completed Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro, L993-95, in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, looks something like architecture, if not art, but rejects architecture's aesthetics as well as its traditional function.

Too practical to be art, too confounding to be architecture, as we know them, reversible destiny, like Vie Mechanism of Meaning, is presented as exercises that blur any distinction between mind and body. In the park and buildings of the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro, we are asked to walk along steep and changing inclines and to make sense of nonsensical dis- crepancies in scale and arrangement of familiar objects and images- without benefit of a fixed horizon to keep our bearings. We walk across maps that combine known streets of different cities. The map of Japan is a roof; then, we see it repeated endlessly in different scales in varying incarnations as ground, object, or map. We walk in a depression that appears again in its positive form in front of us as a hill, and yet again perched as a free-floating mound on top of a wall that blocks any other view of the horizon. There is a building, but its roof is also the ground, and its walls seem not to divide interior from exterior. Outside the build- ing, sit kitchen appliances (which are also inside); inside, a wall div.des a table in two with its chairs repeated upside down on the ceiling. There are three tubs in one of many bathrooms: one disrupted by a wall, one beneath our feet, and one on the ceiling. It might take several hours to go from one room to another, experiencing everything as a subtle and differ- ent comparison to something we have already seen. In Arakawa and Gins's Site of Reversible Destiny- Yoro, with every physical and mental effort spent avoiding injury in the midst of maintaining a continually changing and elusive balance, there is no possibility for moment, like the passive interpretation or reflection that takes place in the face of a traditional painting or work of architecture.

A starting point in Western art and architectural history for approach- ing Arakawa and Gins's revers.ble destiny might be the work of Vladimir

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Tatlin and El Lissitsky, whose hybrid art and architecture was intended to put revolutionary political and social theory into practice in everyday life. Or. perhaps more historically, one might refer to the tilting floors and walls of the famous leaning house in the park of Gianfrancesco Vicino Orsini's sixteenth-century castle in Bomarzo, Italy (as Radovan Ivsic and Annie Le Brun do so beautifully in their essay in this book). Yet, Tallin's and Lissitsky's architecture works through a combination of symbolic form and social function; they did not prepare us for the intended disori- entation, lack of discernible propaganda, and confounding of function inherent in Arakawa and Gins's projects. And the leaning house at Bomarzo-poetic, disorienting, and compelling, particularly in light of Arakawa and Gins's recent work-is an eccentric architectural folly intended to amuse rather than to challenge the fundamental environs and practice of everyday life.

As documented in this book and exhibition, the artists have come to the creation of their Site of Reversible Destiny-Yon, as well as the more sculptural projects that preceded it and plans for new buildings, parks, and cities that have followed it, with a philosophical/scientific treatise of research on mind, body, perception, space and time, and ethics. The invention and explication of the terms "landing site," "ubiquitous site," "architectural bodv," and "reversible destiny," among others, in Arakawa and Gins's work and writings embody an entire philosophy of being in theory and practice.

Impossible to adumbrate in the space of an introduction, or even this book, the terms of Arakawa and Gins's philosophical and practical chal- lenge-embodied in "learn how not to die" and reversible destiny-deal with the fundamental nature of the relationship between us and the thing we call the world around us. Specifically, the artists have set out to demonstrate that the greatest part of our experience, and therefore the course of our destiny, is lost to a habitual and deadening lack of under- standing of our experience in the world.

The artists illustrate how we make and become part of our world through our perception, much of it preconscious (that is, before the cer- tainty of our mental reflection, logic, and philosophy). When Arakawa and Gins's buildings and parks disrupt our balance and confound our expectations, they rob us of our habit but propose to give us new insight and practice in living. Of primary importance in living is to understand that the mind is not isolated from the body. The body thinks, forms con- clusions about-and becomes connected to-its surroundings, and sets the terms of our understanding long before we can rationalize our experience in reflective thought. In the artists' example: when I stub my toe, it is because I do not have the proper set of architectural landing sites in place. That is, my architectural body has not assembled enough clues to connect itself properly to its surroundings. Sites of reversible destiny are designed to be as complex as our most innate mechanisms of our per- ception. It might take an hour to go from one room to another, and I might live there in a continual state of deja vu as I experience a repetition of slightly differing perceptions. Yet, I will be involved in a constant cri-

tique of my own experience. I will see. I will live. Perhaps for the first time.

In philosophical terms, Arakawa and Gins dispute the fundamental principals of an intellectual tradition, beginning with Descartes, that has theoretically separated mind from body, and subject from object (that is, person from world perceived). Descartes, of course, helped launch the notion that being (our sense of being) was a function of our conscious mental processes: "I think therefore I am," and therefore the world is inside my head. The corollary to his proclamation, perhaps best pre- sented in a Hegelian world view, is that the subject (the thinking being) and the object (the world) are separated by an infinite chasm. We cannot know the object in itself, only as we represent it to ourselves, and there- fore we as subjects are disconnected from our world. Oversimplified, those are the central terms of the debate that Arakawa and Gins confront. Through their work, they challenge the distinction between mind and body, subject and object, on two grounds primarily: First, our bodies as architectural bodies think as our minds (which becomes abundantly clear in our experience, for example, of Site of Reversible Destiny-Yon). Second, the world is not given but formed by us; a body lives in a reciprocal relation with its surroundings; landing sites put into question the subject/ object distinction; and the effect of change (positive and negative) on the world by us-and our perceptions of it-are indisputable.

What is at stake in this philosophical and theoretical debate? Our lives, our destiny, the natural world around us. Reversible destiny houses and cities will not allow us to be complacent about a set of givens of our envi- ronment that we must realize are not given but formed by our percep- tions. It is our habit that becomes the given, which becomes the assumptions and practice and then morals that form our destiny and lead to our not living-lead to the death of our perception that is the founda- tion of our existence, lead to the assumptions that bring terror and the tragic threat to human existence witnessed with the Holocaust or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or that bring the threat to the survival of the ecological whole of person and world. As the artists Arakawa and Gins suggest, "death might not be inevitable." Thus, they offer their challenge: "learn how not to die."

MICHAEL GOVAN

10

Dear Neverending Architectonic Reflective Wherewithal,

Dear Friends,

Could one perhaps call your antidestiny architecture "angiography"?

Would the distribution of time between beginning and end be neutralized?

Would the possibilities reserved for childhood remain open in every circum- stance? Might they even multiply? Could the body be younger at sixty years of age than at fifteen?

The body would no longer inhabit a dwelling that grew old along with it. It would no longer be dedicated to adapting itself to constant volumes -a door here, a chair there, an ear here, a pair of knees there. Would its space begin anew each day?

Instantaneous habits would come and go. Affectionately, energetically. Would architecture summon energy and affection to inhabit the body?

Would it be futile to build concepts? Could one write or draw through encoun- ters, straight from nothingness?

The three children playing hide-and-seek in this house as I ask you these questions reverse the destinies of the beds, the tables, the rooms, ignoring the assigned purposes of each. Laughter, shouts, silence, vehemence, foot-stamping, breathlessness-is this, in fact, similar to the task your architecture expects of us, dear Madeline, dear Arakawa?

JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD January 1 , 1 997

Translated, from the French, by Stephen Sartarelli.

Dearjean-Franqois,

In response to the questions you frame in support of what we are attempting:

The oxymoron "reversible destiny" pits a theoretically unlimited plas ticity against hoary inexorability. The point is to force flexibility upon invincible necessity. The term "antidestiny" is not a worthy substu.nr Denying necessary links between events in favor of a chaos having its own inexorable givenness, antidestiny weighs in on the side of no change.

Reversible destiny calls neither for a negation nor for a barring off, but for a pivot-a pivoting around in one's tracks. Are these mortal tracks pivotable? So far, this species has been sentenced to death prior to having been able to ascertain who or what it is that must die. Why not invent ourselves into becoming another variety of being, one thai will not relinquish its own elasticity and multivalency, one that will veer off from dire necessity?

Why not construct life to become what it can become without worry- ing about biography, pro or anti? On the Other hand, how would a biog- raphy of spacetimeenergymatter strike you? It must be admitted that we, of this species, have, after all, not even come close to the point ol know- ing who or what needs a biography?

We are not concerned with reversing time but rather with adding a measure of reversibility to the mortal condition by squaring off againsi n If one speaks of a neutralizing of the distribution of time between begin- ning and end, referring, of course, always to bodily time or duration "I bodily movement, one is obliged to note all manner of neutralizations Perhaps no one yet knows all that needs to be addressed in this regard?

Can you accept the following definition of "growing young": becoming increasingly able to field an ever greater number of possibilities? Could you release the notion of "young" altogether in favor of an open-ended nondisintegrating? Could not the concept of an adult-infant find favor with you? The adult-infant is as infant as adult.

There are reversible destiny houses, such as the Amorphous Interpenetration House and the Infancy House-Lvju Chaos, ... whic h the body would, even more than ordinarily is the case, be "dedicated to adapting itself to constant volumes," but yes, in still others, within the

11

Ubiquitous Site House in particular, there would be no constant volumes with which to comply. In any event, space which, as we define it, exists only by virtue of the actions the body takes, or the series of configura- tions of landing sites delineating the body and its maneuvers within an architectural surround, would do nothing but recommence within both types of reversible destiny houses, and within any ordinary dwelling for that matter.

At last no longer generalized out of existence by (the term) space, the landings constitutive of landing sites can be noticed in the variety of ways they occur, which include for a start: Upward landing. Lateral landing. Hesitant landing. Embracing landing. Penumbral landing. Ricocheting landing.

Ever)- bodily morion within an architectural surround elicits a particu- lar constellation of configurations. Changing one or two aspects of an architectural surround-pitch of terrain or general orientation-has the effect of drastically altering a few of a constellation's configurations while leaving the majority of them in place. The differences that become appar- ent as one moves from one architectural surround to another form as bodily concepts, that is, conceiving happens, more noticeably than ever, through and across the entire body.

Concepts generally form bodily, of course, but hardly in so evident a manner. Could this be because the full extent of the body's scope eludes us still? If the body is born into architecture and is from then on inextri- cable from it, why not take it up in its full scope as an "architectural body" (the body proper plus the architectural surround)? Within an archi- tectural bodv having some cognizance of itself as an architectural body, might not that which is formative of the ability to construct concepts in the first place surface as revealed?

What will it be like to live in a world in which instead of conceptions being a dime a dozen, they are a dime for every hundred dozen or more? If the basic unit of concern is the body, not an abstract body considered apart from impulses and movement, but the body in action, then will not the concepts most central to the living of a life be those formed-no mat- ter how fleetingly-through architectural encounters?

Landing sites are tokens of types. Configurations of landing sites have a certain uniformity and repeatability. Each sensory mode disperses as a particular configuration at each instant. It is all quite complex because landing sites abound within landing sites. In any case, configurations are additive, forming constellations.

Are we not ready to tell the pesky, old-guard concepts (for example, "mind," "space") to go fly a kite? Must we not become more adept at pin- pointing concepts on the fly? In the midst of action, allow a brief noticing of the atmospheric muscle or muscle tone (the airy sinews of an architec- tural body), or a look to architectural palpation, a palpating to check the condition not only of the body but of the architectural surround? Might not then a deja palpe come to exist as both an embellishment on the deja vu and a means of explicating it? How much of what the architectural body has to say results from what articulated terrain asks of it?

What if an architectural body could (communally) self-administer appropriate daily doses of both order and chaos?

In these poor times, surfacing from childhood having gone through a first acculturation, and faced with an ever-to-be-suppressed impending terror, most people, no matter what games they have played, began their adult lives unaware of finalities. What if a series of acculturations could be prepared in advance for one as a sequence of architectural set- tings and surrounds?

Architecture is a tool that can be used as writing has been, except that it can have a far more extensive range of application. What if architec- tural form could hold open the acculturative process itself? Would it not be the ultimate common sense, or better, the Ur-intelligent act, for this species to assume responsibility for its own conceptual process? Might not an architecture incorporating articulator}1 accuracy-an accuracy that does not allow anything whatsoever that is in play to be overlooked-be a fine training ground for an ethical stance? Might not an architectural sur- round set up to cooperate with the gathering of intelligence increase, at the very least, ones feeling of connection with and sense of responsibility to the world? One should be no more wary of reflected-on and thought- through architecture that embodies premises and tentatives than of writ- ing that does so. Perhaps it is dangerous, but in facing this danger, we can begin to insist on the species' architectural responsibility to itself.

Would it not be good, indeed, amazing, to be finally given a chance to choose whether or not to be mortal? Could it be merely that this mortal coil has so far never been either amply coiled up or fully enough uncoiled in a sufficiendy comparative architectural manner?

"See that woman over there-she's not that mortal." How can this be made to become a statement of truth?

Yours out of the range of any conservative gesture whatsoever,

MADELINE GINS AND ARAKAWA January 1 1 , 1 997

12

REVERSIBLE DESTINY

death, not the word

but the event, becomes obsolete

nondeath without end

denecessitates dying

dying becomes extinct

no more irretrievable disappearances

vintage nondying

ongoing regeneration

no destiny but a reversible one—

the pair as inseparable: reversibledestiny

its motto: death is old-fashioned

Body Proper + Architectural Surround « ARCHITECTURAL BODY

13

Site o* Reversible De*tiny— Tfero, Gifu Prefecture. Jopon, )

The Road to

Critical Resemblances House

Report of a Mapping

CHARLES W HAXTHAUSEN

Negation says nothing, affirmation just as little.

The artistic begins with the word otherwise. -Carl Einstein'

A raised concrete rim painted with gigantic fragments of urban maps from Cairo, Peking, Bangkok, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and New York enframes Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro, 1993-95, designed by Arakawa and Madeline Gins, in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. The maps are so large, visi- tors can stroll down their "streets," passing abruptly, for example, from Times Square into central Tokyo. These schematic icons of cityscapes, conjuring up images of familiar landmarks, of bustling squares and tree- lined avenues, border a landscape unlike any other-a landscape with strange, tilted, labyrinthine structures dotting its perfectly rounded cookie-cutter hills, with kitchen appliances and living room furniture incongruously dumped onto steep hillsides. Adorned with such place names as Cleaving Hall, Exactitude Ridge, Critical Resemblances House, and Trajectory Membrane Gate, featuring buildings whose walls pass through bathroom fixtures with chairs suspended from ceilings, this bizarre terrain emphatically resists attempts at negotiation by means of the familiar stock of perceptual patterns and categories out of which each of us constructs

the world.2

Together, these terrains-the one a graphic representation of the famil- iar the other, a palpable, traversable landscape that assaults our habits of perceiving-mark a trajectory in Arakawa's work. Maps, floor plans, and diagrams-schematic two-dimensional icons of three-dimensional struc- tures-figured prominently in Arakawa s paintings from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Then, in the late 1980s, his paintings began to take on a three-dimensional element; although they remained literally as flat as before, he incorporated devices to engage the beholder in increasingly physical, tactile ways. It was roughly at this time that Arakawa, working with poet and philosopher Gins, redirected his energies to what the two artists have termed "reversible destiny architecture," leaving painting behind 3 The move from two dimensions into three marked not only a change of medium but a fundamental change of strategy in the explo- ration of perception that has motivated the efforts of both-mdividually and iointly-since the early 1960s.

The present exhibition documents the collaborative projects of

Arakawa and Gins: The Mechanism of Meaning, 1963-73, 1996 (see pp. 54-111) and the architectural sites of reversible destiny. But as Gins herself insists, these collaborations have their roots in Arakawa's painting, the medium to which he devoted most of his time and energy from 1961 through the 1980s. Although it appears at present that Arakawa's painted oeuvre is now closed, that body of work, so intensely rewarding in its own right, contains the germ of the ideas that found expression in reversible destiny architecture. My purpose here is to review Arakawa's development as a painter and to assess the relationship of that two- dimensional work to his architectural collaborations with Gins.

THE PAINTER WORKING IN THE PHILOSOPHER'S HOUSE

The poet Howard Nemerov once penned a lyric homage to Paul Klee and titled it The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House. Klee's art, which sang "the secret history of the mind," could serve as a model "for all research that follows spirit where it goes."' In a similar vein, looking at the early work of Arakawa, one might dub him "the painter working in the philosopher's house," for his paintings could be understood as a model-or, rather, as a stimulus-for rethinking some of the most funda- mental philosophical questions. Philosophers have acknowledged this affinity: Arakawa "makes us think through the eyes," wrote Jean-Francois Lyotard. For Arthur Danto, Arakawa "is the most philosophical of living artists." Italo Calvino, though technically no philosopher, concurred with this assessment; what came to mind when he looked at an Arakawa, Calv.no declared, "is the mind itself."' Yes, the mind comes to mind, but in looking at Arakawa's paintings and his collaborative work with Gins, the poverty of the very concept "mind" also becomes evident.

What has made Arakawa so attractive to thinkers has, arguably, long made him an enigma to most of the art world. From Pop and Minimalism through the multifarious forms of Postmodernism, Arakawa's project has been resistant to the dominant critical paradigms of the last three-and-a- half decades. Much of the best critical writing on Arakawa's painting has focused on its abstruseness. Even Armin Zweite, publishing one of the most rigorous and penetrating essays on Arakawa, cautiously and self- effacngly subtitled his text "attempt at an approach," and concluded that the work was intended to remain an enigma."

15

The earliest paintings made by Arakawa in the United States-after he arrived from Japan in 1961 -confirm that from the beginning his concep- tion of painting has had little in common with either traditional or con- temporary practice in that medium, and certain of his statements suggest an equivocal attitude toward it, a detachment from it, in the sense that he is not concerned with the advance, or extension, of painting for paintings sake. "Painting is only an exercise, never more than that," he once said, and his subsequent development seems to have confirmed this.'

Yet, Arakawa's painting is not completely without any relationship to contemporary practice. In his work of the 1960s, for example, certain aspects may remind one superficially of Jasper Johns (the extensive use of stenciled letters) or of the cerebral preoccupations of Robert Morris, with whom he shared a studio for a time. The pristine surfaces and the cool, mechanical-drawing style of these early paintings, their renunciation of retinal charm and "expressive" painterly gestures, may suggest affinities with the "post-painterly" sensibility that gained ascendancy in New York in the early 1960s, a moment that witnessed an emphatic rejection of the pictorial rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism. But it would be utterly false to link Arakawa's art with the agenda of any form of Minimalism. This becomes clear enough if one recalls a well-known interview conducted in 1964 with a celebrated contemporary of Arakawa. It is a document that well conveys the temper of the New York art world in those days:

FRANK STELLA: ... I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting-the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen

there is there. It really is an object All I want anyone to get out

of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion. . . . What you see is what you see.

BRUCE GlasER: That doesn't leave too much afterwards, does it?

STELLA: I don't know what else there is."

As we shall see, Arakawa's paintings of these years attest that there is in fact a great deal else; what one sees may indeed be what one sees inso- far as seeing is understood as purely retinal, as an activity of sense iso- lated from mind. But seeing is not isolated from mind; there is no such simple equation between what is seen and what is perceived. Seeing is inex- tricably entangled with a much more complex activity than merely regis- tering with one's eyes what is optically there.

In this regard, in those days Arakawa's greatest affinity was probably with Marcel Duchamp, with whom he was friendly, and who identified with the ideal, discredited by Modernism, of painting at the service of the mind. " Like Duchamp's art, Arakawa's is also at the service of the mind, or at the service of something usually associated with this inadequate and elusive concept. As with Duchamp, those beholders blind to the nature of

Arakawa's quest will find little to seduce them on what Duchamp called the "retinal" plane. The activity that an Arakawa painting stimulates behind the retina is much richer than the spare configurations the work offers to the senses.

Despite these affinities between Duchamp's enterprise and Arakawa's, the rediscovery and canonization of Duchamp that took place in the art world in the 1960s helped little in furthering the understanding and appreciation of Arakawa's project, at least in the United States. Yet, in some respects Arakawa seems more truly in the lineage of Duchamp than do those American artists whose piecemeal appropriation of his ideas has led them to be playfully labeled "bachelors" to Duchamp as "bride."10

As with Duchamp, the process that an Arakawa painting sets in motion within the beholder is more important than the work itself, which is not to be fetishized and has no value apart from that process. Or, rather, one might say that the painting is but a sensuous stimulus for the real work, which is formed by the viewer's perceiving and is only partly visible. The forming of this largely invisible work begins with the act of looking. Yet, the received paradigms for looking at art only get in the way when stand- ing before an Arakawa-here we must jettison all inherited assumptions and expectations in order to engage in an open, intense, and concen- trated questioning of the work itself.

Arguably, the early paintings are the best introduction to the most recent work of Arakawa and Gins: the basic rules of the game are already operative; the major issues are already enunciated; and the paintings themselves are on the whole less daunting to the uninitiated. Those issues concern the nature of perception-perception as a process not merely engaging mind and body but constituting them in a subjective, self-con- scious sense and serving as an index of the relationship between the two." Arakawa's painting was in effect a laboratory, an experimental station for stimulating mind/body operations so that we may observe that of which we are normally unconscious, so that we may perceive ourselves perceiv- ing. All of this was directed toward the development of a more profound knowledge of what we are and of our human capacities. To that extent, Arakawa succeeded in endowing painting with a function in this age-the age of its alleged functionlessness.

EARLY PAINTINGS

Although conception without perception is merely empty, perception without conception is blind . . . We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbo Is. -Nelson Goodman"

Even when painting was Arakawa's primary activity, he claimed that as such it was not his true medium: that medium, rather, was "the area of perception created, located, and demonstrated by the combining (melt- ing) of languages."" For "languages," one should read types of signs, one of which was nearly always language, while others were iconic or indexi- cal or a combination of the two." In an overtly metapictorial canvas of 1968-69, titled Paintings, which consists entirely of a cursive text by

16 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

Arakawa about his painting, he used the phrase "compound not mixture" to characterize his combining of languages or modes of signification. The nature of this compound of word and image varies, but the introduction of language, whether as compositional element or merely as title, is never redundant; it never merely names what is already recognizable. The image does not illustrate the words, nor do the words merely label the image. Rather, linguistic elements function as interpretants, that is, as a means by which to interpret the graphic elements.1. Yet, there is a para- dox here, for even as words help us to perceive the graphic configuration as an iconic sign, frequently they also render that same configuration problematic.

Adapting the concept of the "language game" from Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is tempting to call these early Arakawa paintings "signifi- cation games." Wittgenstein's language games proceed by means of set- ting up arbitrary relationships between linguistic signs and things or actions as elementary systems of communication. These languages he sets up as "objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of

our language, by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities.

But Arakawa's signification games had a different goal: his paintings, he explained, aimed "to trap questions, areas, operations, answers: to make them visible by combining two or more languages. Draw and name it."17 Arakawa combined different types and/or systems of signs, but rather than doing so in order to throw light on the nature of signification itself, he was more interested in the process set in motion in the beholder by the attempt to interpret these signs. What this means will become clearer as we examine some of his earliest paintings.

On the surface, the painting Untitled (TUBES, TUBE), executed in 1963-64 appears simple enough. It presents two identical graphic forms, each cons,sting of two vertical parallel lines closed on each end by a cir- cle Thev differ only in one respect: the lines of the form on the left are painted in intermittently changing hues of yellow, red, green, blue and Ly while the form on the right is rendered in dark gray hnes^ The diffi- culty begins with the words printed in stenciled letters below the draw- ings, identifying them as tubes. These labels induce us to interpret the flat configurations as volumetric, but they also spawn confusion. For while the singular form of the noun on the nght is in agreement with the singu- lar image above it, that same configuration on the left is designated by the word "tubes." At first, we might interpret this discrepancy between the word and the image as an indication that the plural form of the label ls mistaken. But, then, other possible interpretations present themselves. Is this contradiction the result of an error in labeling or does the bel denote an intention which the drawing has failed to fulfill In other words: is there an error in labeling or an error in drawing' Is th draw and name ,t" or "name and draw it?" There is one way-*, interpret^ Ztoras a * of plurality we can resolve the contradiction between lord and image and thereby make sense out of this painting. The tub n lh(. lel( ablxl. lhl. word -tubes/' is rendered ,n multiple colors, while he ube on the right, above the singular form of the noun, is rendered

monochromatically, in graphite. Quantity is shown not iconically, as we would expect, but symbolically, as in language. Just as the plurality of an object is signified not by multiplying its sign but by adding V to it, within this sign system a plurality of forms is signified by rendering a sin- gle form in multiple colors. This is a good example ..I what Arakawa meant by creating an "area of perception" by the "combining of lan- guages"-an area of perception that is richer than could be created by either type of sign in isolation.

This compound form of signification, in which certain features of the object or referent are depicted iconically (for example, shape, propor- tions) while quantity is expressed symbolically, generates a curious ten sion within the viewer. It means that in looking at the single tube on the left we must form a picture of several tubes; while looking at the Ldentii al shape on the right we are to picture only one tube. The linguistic message appears to be in conflict with the iconic message.1" This conflict of codes, this contradiction between what we see iconically and what the text instructs us to think, disrupts the familiar habits of perception and also heightens the viewer's awareness of his or her own body in that process. This is an example of what Arakawa and Gins in The Mechanism of Meaning called "splitting of meaning" and "reassembling."" In one panel (see p. 77, fig. 7.3) of subdivision 7. Splitting of Meaning, for example, the viewer is instructed to "SAY one THINK two" In a panel (see p. 81, fig 8 2) of 8. Reassembling, which shows image S? as an inchoate scribble and image "B" as four squares, we are instructed, "PI W MM ^ ASB." But it is more than meaning that is being split, the act of perception itself- which to the extent that we are aware of it at all, is usually experienced as an instantaneous, unitary process-is here broken down into discrete stages, accomplished by discrete faculties.

\rakawa and Gins have used the phrase "coordination ol the senses to describe this gradual forming of perception Uthough Arakawa prob- ably was not aware of it at the time, the perceptual experience that takes place when a viewer is in front of his paintings has an interesting relation ship to what cognitive scientist, call "binding." Language n.m,».rhnis.,n and the various operations of perception are localized processes within the brain; they occur in different regions of the cortex. Experiments have shown that even different visual features such as shape, color, volume, and movement are processed by the firing of different neurons a differ- ent locations. As Francis Crick explained, "Our experience of perceptual unity suggests that the brain in some way binds together, in a mutu ally coherent way, all those neurons actively responding to different aspects of a perceived object.- Of course, if binding is indeed what occurs, it is something we are not conscious of when we perceive a famil iar object; we experience only perceptual unity. In what will become a typical feature of many of Arakawa's ,, gs xperience these sepa- rate processings before we experience that unity, that binding.

In the early work, the combinations of signifies that Arakawa used always address the beholder exclusively through the visual S) stem Lmgh the different types of signs, of course, signify in different ways.

HAXTHAUSEN 17

TITLE

18 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

(being pogc Arokowo

Untitled (TUMS. TU«), 1963-64 Acrylic, oil, and pencil on convaj, 72 x 60 i

ich*»

Arolcawa

The Place o» Saying, 1963

Acrylic, oil, ond pencil on canvas, 65 K 97 inches

HAXTHAUSEN 19

Time and patience are required to correlate and interpret these differing signifies, due to what amounts to a degree of sensory deprivation. Language must supplement the meager iconic or indexical signifies and even then there may be a period of bafflement before the "viewer" suc- ceeds in constructing in his or her mind the visual signified of the painting.

In The Place of Saying, 1963, the asymmetry between what is optically apprehended and what is ultimately perceived is initially less a source of puzzlement than in Untitled (TUBES. TUBE), but in the end is even more emphatic. The composition is dominated by two identical interfacing lin- ear forms, one the inverse of the other. The area between the lines is think colored in a sort of eggshell hue that distinguishes it from the remainder of the canvas, which remains a pristine white. Standing before this two-and-a-half-meter-wide painting one might easily interpret it as an unusually spare example of Color-field painting. Because of its coloration, this area assumes a figure/ground relationship to the unpainted periphery of the canvas. But the inscribed stenciled lettering that descends vertically from the upper right-hand edge, a fragment of the designation "[LIVIN]G ROOM," provides a directive for interpreting the lines that contradicts this spatial configuration. It leads us to reinterpret these lines as signs, as ele- ments of a floor plan. The lines, it now becomes clear, are to be read as sigmfiers for walls; the diagonal lines, which prevent closure, are there- fore doors. What we initially interpreted as a configuration of open lines we now perceive, with the aid of language, as an aggregate of enclosed three-dimensional spaces. But the painting-unlike other two-dimensional paintings with "pictorial space," whether figurative or abstract-does not produce this expenence of space illusionistically, by generating sensations analogous to those of actual space. Rather, the experience of space is unlocked by a purely conventional semiotic code.

Now, because the painting is so relentlessly flat, because the space we expenence cannot be located in what we see, in what is accessible to the senses, the entire experience of space is centered in, is formed within, the beholder, and for that reason that perception of space seems all the more intense. Yet, this is not a disembodied, merely mental, experience, for as we become conscious of the spaces that open up within us, we become conscious of our bodies as well. The architectural space that we construct within our minds, which is configured on a horizontal plane, exists in a state of tension with its pictonal sign, which hangs at ninety degrees. As a result of the ensuing tension, we gain a heightened awareness of our own bodies, of our bodies as the locus of perception within which that space

originates.

"I flatten what is the view to demonstrate how it is perceiving that g,ves volume to space," explained Arakawa; "there is no space except that which the perceiver forms."- Clearly that principle is already opera- tive in this work of 1963. "The place of saying," the place in which space is formed and the world is created, is the beholder.'

What a strange type of painting! The medium itself seems strangely impaired. Arakawa disables the very power of visual art to show us things; the "viewer's" expectations are repeatedly thwarted. The few who do not

impatiently turn heel when confronted with such conundrums must then labor to complete in their "inner" eye the signified they cannot see. The experience of "viewing" an Arakawa painting is thus a kind of visual ana- logue to blindness, even if, paradoxically, all the data that allow us to constitute the image in our minds are obtained through the eye.

That this effect of sensory deprivation was deliberate has now become evident, thanks to the publication in 1994 of Gins's Helen Keller or Arakawa.' ■ The book amply confirms, with many references to the paint- ings, a remark Arakawa made to me several years ago, when I asked him whether any one book, any one thinker, had been especially important for setting his course. Based on my conversations with him and Gins her- self and on what I then knew of his paintings, I expected him to cite something by Wittgenstein or, perhaps, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His response was as unexpected as it was unequivocal: "The autobiography of Helen Keller." His familiarity with this book went back to his youth in Japan; through his older sister, who had been an enthusiastic admirer of Keller, Arakawa discovered the famous deaf-blind woman from Alabama. Although this connection has been totally ignored in the criti- cal literature, Gins has now, with her book, made the connection impossi- ble to disregard. Helen Keller or Arakawa takes the form of an often playful but always thoughtful amplification of the autobiography and accounts of Keller's life by those who knew her. While the Keller connection does not necessarily simplify the process of "looking" at a work by Arakawa, it has made his project, whether pursued alone or in collaboration with Gins, much more intelligible.

Keller, born into a prosperous family in 1880, lost her sight and hear- ing at the age of nineteen months, following a serious illness. Her "awak- ening" began more than five years later when, just before her seventh birthday, her parents hired a remarkable, exceptionally determined tutor, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, herself partly blind. Within a short time, Sullivan taught the gifted young girl language and reading through the manual alphabet, communicated with the fingers into the palm of Keller's hand. She became in effect the deaf-blind girl's eyes, ears, and mouth. Through the manual alphabet, she described distant phenomena that Keller could never have known by the three senses that remained to her.- Keller attended Radcliffe College (where she wrote her autobiogra- phy) with Sullivan at her side, manually communicating the substance of

the lectures.

Those endowed with sight and hearing can only imagine how Keller represented the world to herself; certainly it was a less familiar place than her autobiography and copious letters might lead one to believe, since she often borrowed or adapted metaphors and descriptive phrases either from Sullivan or from the many books she read. A striking example is her description, in a letter, of a visit she made at age fourteen to the Statue of Liberty:

Liberty is a gigantic figure of woman in Greek draperies, holding in her right hand a torch. ... A spiral stairway leads from the base of this

20 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

pedestal to the torch. We climbed up to the head . . . and viewed the scene on which Liberty gazes day and night, and O, how wonderful it was! . . . The glorious bay lay calm and beautiful in the October sun- shine, and the ships came and went like idle dreams; those seaward going slowly disappeared like clouds that change from gold to gray; those homeward coming sped more quickly like birds that seek their mother's nest

As a deaf-blind person, Keller could have breathed in the briny fra- grance of the bay, sensed the warmth of the October sun, and even felt the vibrations of the ship's whistles. But she had no sensory capacity for the perception of distant objects. She could not have meaningfully experi- enced the form of the colossal statue wrth her fingers, nor seen the ships coming and slowly disappearing. Neither could the cloud metaphor nor the colors of gold and gray have been meaningful to her from her own sense experience. There is no way Keller could possibly have experi- enced such things except through Sullivan's descriptions.

Undoubtedly, many readers of the autobiography have shared the frus- tration of its editor, John Alfred Macy (Sullivan's husband), who regretted that it did not contain more passages concerning "what speech meant to her of how she felt the statues, the dogs, the chickens at the poultry show, and how she stood in the aisle of St. Bartholomew's and felt the organ rumble. . . -The reason they are comparatively few is that all her life she has been trying to be like other people,' and so she too often described things not as they appear to her, but as they appear to one with eyes and ears."- Gins characterized this tendency as Keller's "usual lin- guistic covering over of [her] stark individuality.""' In reality, of course, she did "not see with her eyes, but through the inner faculty to serve

which eyes were given to us. But only occasionally do we get a sense of

the world she formed through that "inner faculty."

It is this world that captured Arakawa's imagmation-a world different from the one most of us know. Keller's world was formed with the aid of her three remaining senses, and the loss of sight and hearing were com- pensated to a great degree by language. There is indeed a sort of parallel : Wittgensteins language games; for just as Mer ^ son which are meant to throw light on the facts of ™*^>^Z ous experience of the radically different perception of the -deaf-Win lean foster .heightened awareness of the process of percepts itself ^^J each of us forms the world and, in turn, ourselves in our own subjectivity. Tht experience also reveals alternative possibilities of perception, and I'll X of knowing, being, and acting in the ^™^- * *

its crucial role in Keller s peiccK liberator,

as a k,nd of surrogate sight. "Language/wrote Macv. J her bb

i u ,u„A it "" Keller described her awaKening

name gave birth to a new thought . . . every j

seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me

Arakawa's early paintings, as I have said, offer something analogous to this "strange, new sight." He strove to produce in sighted persons, by visual means, an experience that approximates the perception of the blind; using the limited stimuli provided in the painting, the viewer must construct in the mind an image of something that he or she cannot full) perceive, something of which the painting offers a limited sensory experi- ence. Accordingly, the pictorial evidence is fragmented and often my si. Is ing, even if the ultimate signified of the painting may itself be familiar. Most often the paintings present a world without familiar visual percepts. In such a world, language is never a redundant label, for only through language does the world come into being. Heidegger's assertion. "Only where the word for the thing has been found is the thing a thing,"" cer- tainly applies to Keller's experience, as it does to Arakawa's paintings

Language is always a conspicuous element in Arakawa's early paint- ings, even by its occasional absence. While most of these works consist of a combination of words and iconic and/or index.cal signs, there are a few works consisting primarily of language and others where language is completely absent, but that absence is almost always experienced by the beholder as a deficiency, as a condition of obscurity.

In 1968-69, Arakawa completed a number of paintings dominated by or consisting almost exclusively of language. Here, the linguistic compo- nent goes bevond mere labels; the text may take the form o! contradi. torv propositions about the painting ("I HAVE DECIDED TO LEAVE THIS CANVAS COMPLETELY BLANK") or nearly impossible directives to the viewer ("IF POSSIBLE, PLEASE FORGET ABOUT ANY PLACE NOT MARKED PLACE ■ whose prominent inscription along the lower edge of a canvas m which 'the word appears eight times virtually insures that we cannot for- get) « These are variants of the "splitting of meaning" we observed in Untitled (TUBES. TUBE). Some of the most amusing, however, fall into a different class: they take the form of fairly straightforward cursive inscrip- tions of recipes for banana cake, lamb stew/' or coconut-milk cake. Into the last of these, Sky no. 2 (Coconut MM ( 'ah i 1968, Arakawa introduced his familiar stenciled letters as a heading. At the bottom of the painting, we read the ingredients, inscribed individually in stenciled letters, with arrows indicating the location of the invisible substances. Otherwise, there is nothing unusual about this as a visual artifact-except that it ,s a painting! And despite its banality as painting, the perceptual expenenc it generates is a veritable orgy for Kellers three senses-flavors, fragrances, Textures are conjured up by the words "EC( ;." «S u.i , M" K "COCONUT," "VANILLA," "BUTTER," "FLOUR," "SUGAB < 'I course to the -ghted all of these conjure up visual images as well, but their differ- ences- more vividly perceived ^^f^^f^^^ smell - Gradually, we become aware that baking and eating the cake are densely pleasure activities for which sight and hearing are ultimat 1> superfluous. An apt Arakawan directive for the viewers of this painting might be: "Close your eyes and open your mouth.

HAXTHAUSEN 21

COCONUT MILK CAKE

Two f- /nek Round Czfa$

>j c«ps ontCt flour

3 t*4i/>09*$ h*bl*-4cti*i baking pwd-er /$ fasp**h silt

Sf t r

/4 o*m t>*ti-tr

J hit** <sv yolks Af c»* €.#&•««/ milk ot mllK

yu*A^ l+L+\ f^vo 4* *£v*T~ <Jf m**uJ+o . % AAA»f.

MILK COCONUT

SUGAR

SALT

/

IJUTTKU VANILLA \ PLOirii #

Arakowo

Sky no. 2 (Coconut Milk Cake), 1968 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

22 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

Sculpting no. 7, 1961-62, exemplifies the other extreme: the absence of language, an absence that is acutely felt in this case. It is a spare canvas consisting of a series of boxes-eleven of them rectangles, the twelfth irregular-along the left side of the painting, each of which has an arrow pointing to the edge, presumably linking the box to an object that lies beyond the visual field. In some places, the arrows from several boxes converge toward a single site; in the lower left corner, instead of a box there is a single point. Along the right edge is a vertical line, intersected by a single arrow. In the bottom right corner is a box indicating the tide, name, and date of the painting. That is all.

The "sculpting" of the title is a metaphor for the process of articulating the blank continuum of the canvas, not the result of that process. (It seems consistent with the rules of Arakawa's version of blindman's buff that the metaphor is drawn from a tactile process.) The results of that articulation remain as yet nameless, for it is not the boxes that are sculpted; they only indicate the sites of the sculpting, sites awaiting names so that the world, and thought, can spring into being. The painting is one of the first Arakawa completed after his arrival in New York, but pre- cisely the isolation and intensification of this process of articulation, of the forming of discrete entities out of a blank continuum, would become the central issue of his work. Sculpting became "cleaving," the unidenti- fied referents of the arrows became "perceptual landing sites," and "blank" became their precondition or ground. We shall return to these terms below.

The overwhelming majority of Arakawa's paintings fall between these two extremes, with a more equally balanced combination of the linguis- tic, the iconic, and the indexical. Alphabet Skin, 1965-66, is a more typical example of Arakawa's game of "draw and name it" and an especially rich one. In some ways, it is a later, more elaborate variant of The Place of Saying. But in contrast to that work, the motif is now readily identifiable as a room, due to the foreshortened windows along the top and bottom of the tripartite canvas. Five of these six windows are slightly ajar, with the openings revealing pure colors outside: pale blue, green, gray, yellow, and pink. Within the long, narrow horizontal space between the win- dows, indexical marks denote the relative positions of objects, but not their shapes or any other characteristic aspects. Only by means of names do these marks become identifiable as the loci of particular objects: a foot, a bookcase, a bed, clothes, a desk, a cat, and so on. In the lower left of the right-hand panel, there are two curious labels, denoting "human skin" and a "shadow," the latter indicated, it appears, by a sort of blem- ish, with a skein of bright white spray paint marking it. It appears significant that it is only the windows that are recognizable iconically, that is, without labels, for they are a source of light, and hence partly visi- ble to many blind persons. Everything else is marked with regard to place and identified by language. The analogy to Keller's experience of the world is obvious. Small wonder that Gins playfully attributed to Keller the remark: "These are among the most realistic paintings I've

never seen.

TRACKING PERCEPTION: "CLEAVING/' "BLANK," AND "LANDING SITES"

But why "alphabet skin"? Does it refer to the human skin that is identified by label? Or to the deaf-blind Keller learning and utilizing the alphabet only through her skin, through the manual alphabet and Braille, the alphabet that had endowed her with a strange, new sight through which her world came into being? I lean toward the latter explanation but am inclined to carry it further, possibly beyond Arakawa's own intended meaning. Just as skin functions as a sort of envelope of the body (a metaphor brilliantly incarnated in certain sculptures by Kiki Smith), lan- guage becomes a set of envelopes for the blind, containers for dividing up the tactile continuum into discrete objects."* In this regard, language, in the form of these alphabet skins, functions as vision does for the sighted. For as Gins has put it:

Characteristic of the sense of sight is a constant slicing up of the world into separate parts at seemingly some remove from the ongoing sens- ing-not at all how it is with the sense of touch. Sight cleaves apart thing from thing and person from thing; that is why Merleau-Ponty called this the fragmentary sense. Those not having this cutting-off maneuver available to them . . . must live in a world that remains all of its own thickness, one that moves always through its own texture, more immersed than immersed in its own self-sameness." (emphasis added)

The term "cleaving" that Gins employed is one that she and Arakawa have used in both of its ostensibly antithetical senses, that is, the more common denotation, being "to divide or to separate from," and the oppo- site meaning, "to adhere or cling to." Through this process of cleaving, all thought, feeling, perception, and so on are formed by and out of what they call "blank," leaving the rest blank as before: "During the cleaving something becomes apparent and something remains blank.""' The sites of such cleaving they call "perceptual landing sites." "It is unknown to whom or to what cleaving ultimately answers," they declare, "but, along the wav, cleaving, in its various intensities, sculpts the perceived world by means of perceptual landing sites."" (I examine the concept of "landing site" more closely in the final section of this essay.)

The notion of blank-to call blank a concept would be to distort its nature-is central to the project of Arakawa and Gins. Although they began using the term only at the end of the 1960s, that to which they gave the name blank had been an issue in Arakawa's art from 1961 on. Beginning in the 1970s, the word "blank" began to occur in titles of Arakawa's paintings, and propositions about blank were incorporated into the paintings themselves.'-'

Although Arakawa and Gins often playfully employ the word "blank" in some of its accepted dictionary meanings-as in "point blank" or "to draw a blank"-blank in the sense in which they use the word with refer- ence to their project is not encompassed by any established definitions. Perhaps the most succinct and accessible formulation of what Arakawa and Gins mean by blank has been made not by them but by Dagmar

HAXTHAUSEN 23

/

nut

NAME

A/okawo

Sculpting no. 1. 1961-62

Acrylic and pencil on convoi, 72 « 48 inche

24 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

Arokawa

Alphabet Skin. 1965-66

Acrylic, pencil, and oil on convoj, lhr«

I, 94 k 1 80 inches overall

HAXTHAUSEN 25

Buchwald: blank "denotes by approximation that which precedes and underlies all thought, action and perception and cannot be direi (K thought, acted, or perceived."" Blank might be defined as a primal, unar- ticulated, non-sensible medium out of which everything linked to con- sciousness-feeling, thinking, acting, perceiving, indeed subjectivity itself, the very sense of a self engaged in these activities-is configured, config- ured bv virtue of a latent energy within blank." The condensation, the configuring of these energies, is what Arakawa and Gins have termed "clea\ ing

It is, simply put, this process of cleaving, whereby the changing densi- ties of energy configure themselves within the primal, undifferentiated medium of blank, which is the true object of Arakawa's painting; the painting is purposively designed to initiate and energize this very process in the beholder, who in experiencing it becomes the observer of her own observing, the percipient of her own perceiving. This has been Arakawa's goal from the beginning, even before he and Gins succeeded in develop- ing a vocabulary and conceptual framework for discussing it.'

Arakawa's signification games, that is, his strategy of combining lan- guages or sign systems in an interdependent yet often contradictory rela- tionship, emerge as central to the pursuit of this goal, for the issue of signification is integral to blank. Blank is that which precedes and ener- gizes signification; it is the generative ground of signification, which is formed out of blank and thereby differentiates blank as blank by leaving it blank." Therefore, at a given moment of cleaving, signification and blank exist in what might be called a figure/ground relationship. Because blank lies outside signification, it cannot be directly verbalized, cannot be directly pictured, cannot be apprehended by the senses or direcdy con- ceived within the mind. But Gins argues that these incapacities may be due to limits not of the human organism but only of any given single sig- nifying system. She proposes that we recast Wittgenstein's maxim at the end of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus-'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence"-as follows:

Should you find that what you wish to refer to is in any way indeter- minable, make no attempt to convey this through that sign-system upon which you rely (through only one way of speaking) but go ahead and leave it blank. . . . what needs to be conveyed about the central svmbolizing and image-forming process is its containing of a sphere of action that is nonconveyable through only one way of putting it. This will remain blank to us until we have constructed a way for it to "say" itself to us.i: (emphasis added)

Arakawa's early paintings were a preliminary stage of the attempt to construct such a way. One might say that if blank is not shown, if it is not signified directly, it is intimated, it is tracked in the gap between two sig- nifying systems, whose initially bewildering interrelationship leads us to experience that process of cleaving occurring out of blank. Arakawa's art does not signify blank, then, but by means of its signification games it

leads us to an experience of "forming blank," that is, of cleaving occur- ring within blank. The painting Blank Dots, 1982, exemplifies this process.

Blank Dots is a characteristic example of Arakawa's paintings of the 1970s and early 1980s: from the relatively simple word/image configura- tions of the 1960s he moved toward larger-scale canvases and greater visual and linguistic complexity. In place of the simple naming character- istic of paintings of the 1960s, Arakawa now introduced long, usually her- metic propositions. The expanded dimensions and greater density of sensory input slows down the process of perception, thereby rendering discrete its stages of self-articulation, so that we might observe it slowly forming, that we might observe cleaving. Blank Dots consists of a long proposition inscribed in gray stenciled letters over three superimposed diagrammatic schemes: two of an unlabeled street plan, including arrows indicating traffic flow, and a third consisting of dozens of arrows arranged to suggest patterns of movement. The text reads:

WHEN IT ITSELF,

AN OPEN POSSIBILITY FOR REASSEMBLY,

BEHAVES IN WAVES ACROSS/THROUGH CONFIGURATED ENERGIES,

AT ITS OWN PACE,

IT GRADUALLY BECOMES A "FORMING BLANK"

INTO WHICH ALL CONFIGURATIONS ARE DRAWN. ABSORBED.

CONDENSED,

AND OUT OF WHICH UNRECOGNIZABLE PLACESJUMP.

SHAPING VOLUMES INTO IMAGES."'

At first sight, the painting is perplexing. First of all, the meaning of the proposition itself is elusive. Second, in contrast to early works like Untitled (TUBES, TUBE) and The Place of Saying, it is now difficult to deter- mine the relationship between the words and the image-they appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. Even when the proposi- tion is read on a printed page, it is difficult enough to understand, but when spread over a surface of such large dimensions the difficulty is greatly exacerbated, for the scale of the work enforces a slow reading of the text: at first, we take in only individual words and short phrases; only after rereading the text several times can we grasp it as a syntactically coherent sentence and comprehend its semantic content. Yet, even then its meaning remains elusive, because we still do not know what the sen- tence refers to; we cannot picture any of its referents. The identity of the subject of the sentence, "it itself," is unknown; and not one of the ten nouns signifies a concrete object.

If we persist in our efforts, however, we begin to unravel the enigma. We discover that the phrase "behaves in waves across/through configu- rated energies at its own pace" describes the text itself m its slow unfolding across the swirling eddies of arrows, and the rest of the sentence describes its own effect on our perception of the graphic configurations beneath it. The text is the forming blank that draws, absorbs, and condenses these configurations into the gradually expanding domain of intelligibility; it

26 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

Arokawo

Blank Dots 1982

Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 1 38 inches

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York,

Gih of Glono ond Leonora1 Lurio, 1 985

HAXTHAUSEN 27

stimulates us, through its anticipator)' reference to this perceptual event, to convert these iconic schemes into three-dimensional images within our minds. The painting, however, was not made for the sake of this solution, but for the sake of illuminating the process through which we arrive at the solution.

The strategies Arakawa employed in Blank Dots represent a significant advance over those of his paintings of the 1960s. Here he has succeeded, through the use of scale and the length and difficulty of the text, in slow- ing down the perceptual process so that we become aware of its microevents and microactions. Because the subject of the sentence is that perceptual process itself, we are, even before we become aware of it, lured into focusing on that process. We experience the action of cleaving, triggered by forming blank as perception configures itself within us.

It should be clearer now what Arakawa meant by saying that his goal at this time was "to trap questions, areas, operations, answers: to make them visible by combining two or more languages."" The eye is not intended merely to gaze placidly on these surfaces, in pursuit of the sort of aesthetic pleasures we normally associate with painting. These works do not exist for the purpose of stimulating purely plastic sensations or of expressing emotion; they are not intended as "expressions" of anything. Rather these works, like all of Arakawa's works, function as reflectors: they direct the complex, mysterious act of perception-the process of making sense of our sense impressions— back onto itself. Their difficulty serves to focus our attention on our own questioning, on our own groping for sense, on our unfolding attempt at "consistency building,""' as we seek to find intelligibility within these deceptively simple configurations. As Gins has put it, the work "presents a question no less worked out and convo- luted than the organism that would seek to answer it"51 And it is for the sake of activating that organism so that we may observe it, so that we mav observe ourselves observing, that these paintings were made. -

PAINTINGS FOR CLOSED EYES

After the linguistically and iconically dense paintings of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s, Arakawa returned to a formal simplicity superfi- cially reminiscent of his earliest works. This was more than a stylistic evo- lution; it was part of a fundamental change in rhetorical strategy. With the painting Determining Body no. 7, 1987-88, he introduced a wholly new concept: he included with each painting a platform from which it was to be viewed. These platforms, consisting of two or more joined panels cov- ered with Plexiglas, may consist of photographically reproduced images or of solid color areas; most often, they occur in combination. In the first of such works, exhibited in 1988 at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York, the platforms lay flat on the floor, but shortly thereafter Arakawa began to raise them at an angle to form a ramp for viewing, and they became increasingly steep. With the series Paintings for Closed Eyes, 1989-90, first shown in 1990 at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Arakawa developed this idea further. The ramps, which earlier had been placed either parallel or perpendicular to the axis of the painting on the wall,

were now placed at angles to it, thereby effecting a spatial tension between both elements. In a text from this time, Arakawa explained that he wanted to put an end to the idea of viewing as "a passive reviewing of actions taken by an artist. . . . The viewer enters the depiction as part of it

In contrast to Arakawa's previous paintings, which incorporated schematic configurations of an iconic nature, these paintings are com- pletely nonrepresentational in the sense that they refer to no palpable object. Moreover, their markings have become simpler, sparer, more uni- form/' The earliest paintings with platforms comprised a variety of mark- ings, including such devices for suggesting space as lines breaking the horizontal and vertical. But with Paintings for Closed Eyes, Arakawa achieved a drastic simplicity, restricting himself in several of the canvases to free-floating horizontal lines, rendered in graphite and acrylic on pris- tine white surfaces. The suggestion of space became simpler and subtler. The marks on the canvases do not appear to be traces of any object; they are no more than optical markers of space. Confronted with constant ele- ments of varying lengths, the beholder interprets them spatially-the shorter lines seem farther back than the longer ones; denser lines can seem to be either near or far. This is not a palpable space with limits; there is nothing within the space-what we sense by means of these lines is, simply, space. And the lean materiality of the markings is such that the surface of the canvas, viewed from the enforced distance of the ramp, seems dematerialized; hence there is a sense of a space that lies not behind the sparsely painted surface but passes through it.

Arakawa introduced the ramps to enrich and intensify the perceiver's forming of space. The components function in at least three ways: First, the ramp renders explicit the space of beholding by heightening the beholder's awareness of his or her own physical presence before the work. Second, the contrasting orientation of the images on the platforms- near and far, foreshortened, upside down, and so forth-creates a sense of tension between the viewer's body and what is seen, thereby reinforcing the beholder's sense of body as an agent of the perceptual process. Third, and most important, the steeply sloping angle of the ramps heightens the tactile experience of viewing (the creaking of the platforms also adds an aural dimension to the experience). One must exert energy in moving against the force of gravity- to ascend the ramps and then maintain one's equilibrium as one stands on the sloping surface to gaze at the painting. In some later works in the series, ropes are attached to the platforms to be gripped as an aid to maintaining a firm footing, further enhancing the viewer's tactile involvement. This intensification of the tactile sense is cru- cial to the beholder's forming of space, and Arakawa's strategy here dis- closes a fundamental insight into the nature of spatial perception. It finds a remarkable-and to him at the time unknown-corroboration in the writ- ings of Hans Jonas:

The basic fact, of course, is that vision is the part-function of a whole body which experiences its dynamic involvement with the environment in the feeling of its position and changes of position. The "possession"

28 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

of a body of which the eyes are a part is indeed the primal fact of our "spatiality": the body not merely as occupying a volume of space geo- metrically but as always interacting with the world physically, even when at rest (e.g., by mere gravity). Without this background of non- visual, corporeal feeling and the accumulated experience of performed motion, the eyes alone would not supply the knowledge of space, not withstanding the imminent extension of the visual field.

The experience of space, or the forming of space, in this series of ensembles differs from that of Arakawa's previous works. In the earlier works, one perceives configurations of specific volumes and spaces that are sig- nified by emphatically two-dimensional conventional renderings of those volumes and spaces. Standing before Paintings for Closed Eyes, the viewer experiences nothing so concrete. This space contains no volumes, no par- titions, no boundaries; indeed, it has no articulation and so we cannot visualize it. And yet, when-after having looked at one of these paintings from its ramp-we follow the directive written on its surface and close our eyes, we have a remarkable and surprising experience of space, of a space discrete from the gallery space in which we stand. It is strangely exhilarating: we have no image of this space, yet we feel ourselves enveloped by it, contained within it-and it is a space that originates within ourselves.

In the paintings in this series, the horizontal lines do not signify objects, they are not signs for things in the space-as are, for example, the lines sig- nifying walls and doors in The Place of Saying-hut are indices of space only, of depth; they indicate space but do not configure it. And this expe- rience of space is intensified by the tactile (indexical) sense of our bodies moving in actual space.

In Paintings for Closed Eyes the beholder's perception of space does not correspond to the usual experience of sighted persons. Although we see the marks on the canvas, we gain extremely fragmentary sense data thereby: we see only disconnected markers of depth and, hence, do not experience a spatial continuum, as is usual with the sense of sight. The world formed is akin to the "intermittent and thus fragmented world" of the blind, as John M. Hull has evocatively characterized it" Like the blind we do not see space but perceive it, forming it within ourselves.* And the activation of the tactile sense strengthens this kinship with blindness. Hull calls the blind person's sense experience of the world "whole body seeing": "the specialist function of sight is devolved upon the whole body, and no longer specialized in a particular organ."

The senes Paintings fir Closed Eyes marks a significant shift in Arakawa s work The textual component has been reduced to a simple, easily under- stood command to the viewer, the indexical to a mere intimation ol space » And while the earlier paintings addressed primarily, if not exclu- sively, the sense of sight, the newer work engages both sight and touch. Arakawa's earlier strategy for tracking the "area of perception created, located, and demonstrated by the combining of languages has evolved into a strategy of pursuing this same goal by the combining oj modes of

sensing. This approach has found its fullest, most complex realization in his collaborations with Gins in sites of reversible destiny.

BEYOND THE FICTION OF PAINTING

Architectural structures have always played a role in Arakawa's painting, as we have seen in The Place of Saying and Alphabet Skin. But along the way to sites of reversible destiny there have been a number of experi- ments and prototypes in three dimensions. In 1962 6 I. Arakawa con- structed, out of diverse materials, a group of suspended sum hires titled Bottomless /-///(see pp. 38-40). And a number of models and actual structures realized in the 1980s anticipate the constructed Site of Reversible Destiny- Yoro and the development of prototypes for "reversible destiny housing" and "reversible destiny architecture," the most ambitious being Bridge of Reversible Destiny/The Process in Question, a model for a "complete sensorium" on which Arakawa and Gins worked from 1973 to 1989.

Arakawa's cessation of painting at the end of the 1980s and his focus on architecture in the 1990s should be understood not merely as a change of medium, nor even primarily as a change of strategy in the continuing exploration of perception. It constitutes a radicalization of aims. The nature of this radicalization can be most easily understood through a closer examination of the concept of "landing sites."

The term "perceptual landing site" first appeared in the mid- 1980s m a series of charts before it found a more precise and elaborate theoretical formulation. In the series Perceptual Landing Sites of 1981-85, Arakawa and Gins defined it as "any discerning that is to any degree beatable."1 More recently, they have explained: "The concept of landing site is basi- cally a heuristic device for mapping how a person forms the world and situates herself within it.""1 In these charts, Arakawa and Gins designated the array of perceptual landing sites that occur when a person enters a symmetrical octagonal structure. A distinction is made between different types of perceptual landing sites: visual, tactile, aural, olfactory, kinaes thetic, proprioceptive, imaging (supplementing sense perception with the imagination), and locator-perceptual (for the establishing and maintaining of distance and the assessing of volume and distance). Locator-perceptual sites may occur as a result of some or all of the other forms of perceiving in combination.

In recent years, Arakawa and Gins have refined and simplified theii original concept of landing sites, now dividing them into three basic cate- gories: perceptual, imaging, and architectural. ■ Peroral landing sites, rather than encompassing all types of landing sites, are now restneted to sites of "direct perception," the apprehension through sensor) means of what is physically there. This can encompass direct visual, tactile, aural, olfactory, kinaesthetic, and proprioceptive perception. Perceptual landing sites may be environmental objects and phenomena (a chaii .... I. »ud) or signs (for example, words, whether apprehended by visual, aural, or tac- tile means .

Every type of perceptual landing site has a corresponding type of imag- ing landing site. These "fill in the gaps between perceptual points or areas

HAXTHAUSEN 29

Inifollotion »iew ol Poinfingj for Cloted Eye*. Rortold Feldmon Fine Arts New Yofk. October-Ntwtmber 1 990

30 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

Abrupt Resemblances 1989-90

D.prych ocrylic and penal on canvas, I 32 * 90 inches each panel.

ramp olum.num boards, photograph., pioshc. plywood, ond rope.

s,x panels. 48 x 48 inches each

Included in Pa,nr,ng, for Closed Eyes. Ronald Feldman Fin. Am, New York.

October-November 1990

HAXTHAUSEN 31

of focus," for "without them the world would be made mostly of holes." They are "those areas of a person's perceived world that exist without ever having been or currently being ascertained through direct percep- tion." We do not have to be actually perceiving the whole or even a part of an object or of an environment to be conscious of it as a whole. "Every object is as much imaged as perceived, probably more imaged than per- ceived," wrote Arakawa and Gins.*"

For example, as I am writing this, I see only my computer screen, the objects behind it, and my hands, out of focus, at the lower periphery of m\ field of vision. I can feel my chair supporting my body, my feet resting on the floor, my fingers lightly touching the keyboard. But I am neverthe- less cognizant of and can visualize the shape and color of the chair, my body seated on it, and the floor that supports both. Imaging landing sites, then, "fill in and finish the world.""; The content of imaging landing sites is based on previous perception in the immediate or recent past, on per- ceptual memory imprint.

The third type, architectural landing sites, are what Arakawa and Gins earlier termed "locator-perceptual landing sites." They mark the percep- tion of dimensions, spatial relations, and approximate location, the rela- tive positions of perceiver and perceived: "The quickest way to get a sense of how architectural landing sites function in this context is to think of what happens when they are missing or insufficiently arrayed. Everyone has had the experience of feeling like an idiot when stubbing his toe. The necessary architectural landings sites were not in place.""'

As Arakawa and Gins have put it, the pronoun "I" is already an "archi- tectural assertion," because it creates spatial relations, it establishes what they call "a fiction of place."'" Arakawa and Gins have speculated that the architectural landing site "is probably a hybrid, in part a perceptual and in part an imaging landing site.""" It seems to correspond to what James J. Gibson called the "basic orienting system.""

Although Arakawa and Gins developed this explicit taxonomy of per- ception only within the past decade or so, they now regard it as universal, and so it is productive, in mapping the trajectory of their collaborative project, to reexamine Arakawa' s paintings in these terms. As established, in many of his early paintings he strove to simulate the effect of sensory deprivation, to create a kind of parallel to blindness. In such works, the perceptual landing sites are spare and enigmatic; "gaps" must be filled by imaging landing sites. Architectural landing sites, though often subtle, are also very much a factor in these paintings. They exist not only in the rela- tive positionality of the ingredients in Sky no. 2 but also to the extent that they establish a positionality relative to the body of the beholder. The lat- ter is particularly evident in the vertically hung floor plans of The Place of Saying and Alphabet Skin, and, more forcefully, in the series Paintings for Closed Eyes, which also dramatically incorporates tactile, kinaesthetic, and proprioceptive landing sites.

By this time, the reader may well be asking, "Why this odd, ungainly appellation, landing site'7 Why not locus of perception' or 'source of stimulation' ?"" The former is certainly more felicitous, and it does seem

conceptually consistent with "landing site," at least with perceptual and architectural landing sites. Yet, even in its strangeness, the term "landing site," is more evocative of a transient microevent; something becomes a landing site only by virtue of its being landed upon, of its being registered by embodied consciousness, whereas "locus of perception" suggests a degree of fixity. "Source of stimulation," on the other hand, assumes a strict separation between perceiving subject and perceived object, whereas for Arakawa and Gins subject and object mutually mediate each other."1 The perceiving subject as subject is constituted by its own perceiv- ing; in forming the world it forms itself.

This is not solipsism; it does not deny the existence of anything inde- pendent of an individual's own perceiving. Rather, what Arakawa and Gins are striving for, I believe, is to induce an intense experience of what the philosopher John Searle calls the "first-person ontology" of conscious- ness. Such an ontology recognizes that mental states "only exist as subjec- tive, first-person phenomena." Accordingly, "all of my conscious forms of intentionality that give me information about the world independent of myself are always from a special point of view. The world itself has no point of view, but my access to the world through my conscious states is always perspectival, always from my point of view.""

As Arakawa and Gins have declared: "You are not I. WOien you stand there and field the world as you, that is not my being in the world because you are not I."* However secure we may be in our knowledge that there is a physical reality that exists independently of our multiple subjectivities and their corresponding worlds, the only world any of us ever knows and experiences is the unique one that we, individually, have

formed.

The purpose of the paintings, as well as the architectural projects, is to make the beholder conscious of this process, to experience these discrete landing sites as the stuff of which the world is formed, the world as expe- rienced by a given person. And perceiving, the forming of the world, Arakawa and Gins insist, is the process through which a body becomes a person. "Having a body includes having a world, one of a particular kind. The body, through its senses and its movements, configures the world or, more precisely, each body generates a person who originates, read co- originates, the world." '

The extreme case of Helen Keller helped to sensitize Arakawa to the interdependence between body, person, and world. With her deprivation of sight and hearing, and the resultant drastic limitation of her possible perceptual landing sites, she inevitably formed a radically different world from that of most persons. It was in part through her example that Arakawa first began to contemplate creating "another ground, another surface on which to exist." In an interview with Hirako Akihiko, he explained the significance of this goal:

By creating a second horizon, or better yet many more, we can be released from the out-of-date moral values or obsolete structures of common sense that accumulate on the ground-surface we normally

32 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

exist on. We'd be truly free to develop potentially more fruitful and expansive moral values. Poets and philosophers have said much about the possibility of such a world. But theirs is a world of words and ideas, without shape or color or weight. Theirs is a fiction, no matter how wonderful. Painting turns out to be only such a fictional world, too.7''

Mark Taylor has summarized the project succinctly: "To reform per- ception is to transform the architecture of the I. Since the world is not merely given but is constructed by the activity of the subject, the recod- ing of the I is the recreation of the world."* Painting succeeded in height- ening the attentive beholder's awareness of his own perceiving, but it proved a limited vehicle for achieving this ultimate goal. Why? A com- parison of a painted Arakawa landscape with an actual, constructed one may help explain why.

Landscape (2), 1968, is typical of Arakawa's early painting and incorpo- rates some of the features we have already discussed in paintings of the 1960s. Landing sites are indicated by dots and labeled by means of words and arrows; in two cases, they remain unnamed, accompanied by empty boxes, like those we encountered in Sculpting no. 1, perhaps signifying something unfamiliar or indeterminate among such familiar objects as a mountain, a tree, a cloud, and so forth. All but one of these labeled land- ing sites, "AIR," are perceivable through vision. Air can be perceived only through olfactory and proprioceptive senses, although evidence of it could be detected visually or aurally, as in rustling grass or foliage.

And what of those alternate "horizons" of which Arakawa spoke? The compound significations in the painting may be unconventional but in all but two cases they can ultimately be formed into something familiar. Although the sighted may have shared the deaf-blind experience of form- ing a perception for which there was no sensory equivalent, of forming a world through language, they inevitably draw on their own vast store of visual memories and experiences and familiar "image schemata^ The baffling eventually becomes the familiar, even if we admittedly become acutely conscious of the perceptual process as a result. Arakawa and Cms have acknowledged, "Every person proceeds by continually turning he unfarmUar into the familiar," and that is what haPPe^7^Utt^aatnd Arakawa and Gins now strive for is the subversion of "that habitu nd deadening process."™ Reversible destiny architecture is a more effective

Tth^tption of Landscape (2) required the decoding and coor- dination of different types of signs, and a ^cmo^ landing sites, much of Site of Reversible DesUny-Yoro* Gifu dfasi^df

SSltSlSSiTi— -tar

tual landing si.es: as we amble down Park Avenue South ^jJJJ Ridge we look beyond Critical Reliances House to the c.ty of G.fu

environs-this is a more sophisticated variant of the "SAY one THINK two" that we encountered in The Mechanism of Meaning. Needless to say, this conflict also generates some disorientation with regard to architei tural landing sites. But more often the perceptual array at Yoro leaves less room for imaging landing sites because perception is too confused, too disoriented to be filled in. Entering Critical Resemblances House, the \ isitoi becomes engaged in perceiving not a compound sign of an environment, but an environment itself-one designed to activate the entire body as a sensing organism-which relentlessly assaults perceptual habit and expec- tation. "Juggling, jumbling, and reshuffling the body with its land of land- ing sites introduces a person to the process that constitutes being a person," Arakawa and Gins have declared. Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro was constructed to put "surroundings forward in a manner so con. en trated that they wax unfamiliar; and to have the body be so greatly and so persistently thrown off balance that the majority of its efforts have to go entirely towards the righting of itself, leaving no energy for the routine assembling of the socio-historical matrix of the familiar or, for that mat- ter, for the 'being of a person.'""

Encountering reversible destiny architecture, we gradually form and configure a world out of unfamiliar sense data, out of blank. And while paintings, even large ones, tend to be relatively unassertive physical objects, passively awaiting a too-often jaded gaze, the structures of reversible destiny architecture assert themselves aggressively; we are physically coerced into interacting with them in a certain way, as they continually reconfigure our perceptions of our own bodies.

Reversible destinv architecture aims at the experience of what Arakawa and Gins called, in an earlier formulation, "blank perceiving. This most simply might be defined as perceiving that resists familiariza- tion through existing image schemata. Here, again, the analogy with the experience of blindness arises-or, rather, with the experience of those who are congenially blind and gain sight later in life. Such patients, Cms wrote have "not yet constructed those sets of preconceptions making up visual memory imprint ." She cited the account of Manus von Senden who reported that during the period of their initial exposure 0 reuna] .mages some patients behave "exactly as in learning the words of a for- eign language"; objects with which they are familiar through touch are unTeco^zable by sight. They cannot correlate these sense data with any sigTsvstem available to them; the visual world is a strange realm, as yeTun^ulated by signification-it is blank, and their encounter with it ,s Lk perceiving: "What would a hat be for you if you « ~£ one before? Let every act of perceiving be unique to itself. With all the preconceptions gone, what could be left would be b ank percewmg. This constitutes nothing less than an assault on a defining- nd httle understood-feature of human perception that allows us to function ,n the world as we know it. As Gibson has written:

The unanswered question of sense perception i, how an *""*<£ ma. or human, can obtain constant perceptions ,n everyday life on

HAXTHAUSEN 33

SKY

CLOUD

TREE

MOUNTAIN

AIIT-

RIVER

HOUSE— ~*

MAN

Tu;r i4#vfi+n

>7ir

Arakowa

Landxop* (2) 1968

Acrylic and pencil on ccnvoj. 36 * 48 inch«

34 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

basis of . . . continually changing sensations. . . . The active observer gets invariant perceptions despite varying sensations. He perceives a constant object by vision despite changing sensations of light; he per- ceives a constant object by feel despite changing sensations of pressure; he perceives the same source of sound despite changing sensations of loudness in his ears. The hypothesis is that constant perception depends on the ability of the individual to detect the invariants, and that he ordinarily pays no attention whatever to the flux of changing sensations." '

It is precisely this constancy, these "invariant perceptions," that Arakawa and Gins wish to subvert, because what they call the "event-fab- ric of the world"1" is woven from such invariants. This is why they also call Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro the "Garden of the Self," not because it is a place for narcissistic contemplation, but because it is intended to reconstitute the self by reconfiguring its perceiving."'

"Painting is only an exercise"-the significance of that statement becomes clearer in the face of reversible destiny architecture. But it is probably equally safe to say that these constructions are themselves ultimately only an exercise, not an end in themselves. Arakawa and Gins view their mediums as means to an end that transcends their respective discourses, that lies beyond the normal connotations of the "aesthetic." Their work is motivated neither by issues of form nor by issues of content and subject matter. Arakawa and Gins have worked and continue to work in what are often narrowly construed as aesthetic discourses because these mediums, in their concreteness, have proved the most effective for exploring funda- mental issues that lie outside art and architecture, issues normally regarded as the province of philosophy, psychology, and cognitive sci- ence. Through their efforts, singly and collaboratively, painting and archi- tecture have demonstrated a unique capacity to trap the unsigmfiable, to stimulate within us processes and operations that are as yet little under- stood, as yet uncharted, but which nonetheless raise most insistently the ultimate philosophical question of what we are and what we can become.

Parts of this i aj first appeared under thi title Looking u Vrakawa, tn Constructing thi Ptrutvt) Arakawa

Exprrimtntal Works, <:\\\ cal [bkyo Ma ial Museum of Modem Vrt 1991 pp '• ; >1 [apam i

English I he subtitle ol the presi nl textii taki n from the title ol an \ni awn painting ol 1961

| ,,i. m Bebuquin inEinstein WirktSandl ISO 19fb\2adn\ "I ed Hermann Haarmi

and Klaus Siebenhaai Berlin I il&Wala 1994 p 101

ii,. ,,M,,. tensive publication on the project to date is Silt oft l Madtlim

Gins Arehtiidural Exptrtmtnti [bkyo MainichiNew papei 1995

I: i. vi-.iUi ,i. iniN \i.ik.iu.i .uul i iin\ m. -.in a\ ming the ostensible inevitability of death Onthii

point Arthur I Dantov lin explain to mi thai line, m don't really understand body-mind, w

don't really know that death rdesuri) Hie bridge [of reversibli destiny] in bringing to awaren thi

nature of our nature, prepares us for inextinguishabilit) . ei Danto Gin tnd Vrakawa Building Sensonums." Thi Nation, Octobei IS, 1990 p 131 4 Howard Nemerov, Thi Paint* Drumingin thi Scholar's Houst New fori Phoenix BookShop unpaginated

', Vrthui Dan iviewol Thi Mechanism of Mtanin In D ttttrlO no I

Septembei ber 1979 p 135 fean-Francois Lyolard Longitud. 180 Worl h cal

Milan Padiglione d'Arle Contem] nea, 1984 unpaginated andltaloCalx ["he Vrrowlnthe

Mind Artforum 24 Septembei 1985 ,p 115 6 Vrmin Zweite, Vrakawa versuch einer Annaherung," in Zweite IraJiawa BildirundZtiehnut

1962-1981, exh. tat. [Munich Stldtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1981 pp 7. Arakawa and Madelini G he] Imil In I " Bra ii I Galeri. I ) Bi ichol

1988] p 5 h Bruce Glaser, "Questions to Stella and Judd," in Gregorj Batteodced Minimal I" 1 Critical And

(New York E P DultOD, 1968 . pp I 'i Michel Sanouillet and Elmei Peterson eds., Th Writa hamp New ,""1 D«< »P° 1989),

p [25 I lux it have seemed a heretical, atrangel) retrograde nol in 1947 when it was published in

,i,, bulletin ol New ftrk ■ Museum ol Modem Vrl an institi i thi - Bnnlj dedl. ated to the ideolo

what Du« hamp i aUed lht "retinal I hi. hamp remarked to Pi. rre( labann. Sin. e I lourb. I il believed that painting is addressed to the retina rhatwa everyon. erroi tn. retinal shudderl Before

painting had other functions il Idb. relig phi! p il ■'"■•"»• Oialoguis with

Maral Duchamp, trans Hon Padgett (New York Viking 1971 p 13 hi See Calvin Tomkins, Th Brid* and the Bachelor Fan Mastm oj th i

Rauschmbirg, Cunningham New York Viking, 1965 ITtoug toneoftheartistadli idln Ibmkini

I v [asper Johns has ilsobee irpreted in this waj Duchamp h svei did not acknowl.

affinity with these "bacheloi \ lab is 1966. he observed thai in spite of his own "ai ittnal efforts,

nothing had changed Oui wholecentur) iscompletel) retinal II absolute Uculoui U has to

change it hasn't always been like this ie. I ibann. Dialoguts with Moral Duchamp

,, Byupercepl Vrakawa and Gins mean nol ien* bul ilso lental] isingo

tag sense of our sensal • rhisii sistent with th. de fjame G Gib vh akeaadis

don between mereU having a senaal ind dete. ting ion g V lingl) he differe

-between the passive receptors thai res] -I ead • appropriali fbrmol i nergj tnd tl n | p

tual organs, better called systems that can search out the Information in stimulus enc,

mSmesConsidmdashrciptudSystim NewYork Hough Mifflin. I p ! lU <**

the first definition ol pe "in Thi Oxford English Diet ir, "1 trans I iprehendwid id to

become aware or conscious o bserv. undei

12 Nelson Goodman. Ways ofWorldmoldng [ndiaoapoli H I' '•

MyP« I * [AmMisUdi I kingfo, ArtsMag > no ■

(November 1969 p • text is taken from a painting of ArakaWs tilled Painlingi I

duced in Zweite, "Arakawa Versuch einei VnnSherung, p 16

,4 1 refer here to threes, »1 and tnd. » of Charles Sanders Peirc. TTteicon

rinnfies primarily by virtue ol resembl toitsobjeel by imil g ■ - , .«ejurJ fu,

"nit" „.L so J diagrams, ma, lothers, gut * fl ™<* < d

"Xwi* their object g. *«»>< ' ' t^' " T i

basisof m. h *** » tten anguage ipnm ■"""-"

index, me third , r*»* ■ "" '" " Ul"\ f°b^ " '

but by contiguity, I «ioT. M '" ,refe ^ ,

,„, ^ Cen

" J"..,,.. ...^.....k.... i ' s *- ;""';,;;;"

tjuni, I hiri gb. rtl teror. he^ to ;■

HrTlitv Press 1931

rri - • ;,„;;':;:;;;::

may, I tofAral arly, P^^f">" «JJ-* *" ,

'EBB ^S£=55&

work I-" the imagine

i«; Thru-mi Internretants" eomes d Peirci ■■■ Ibid

;,;;:;:1:;u„„,: ,m ^ u «* w ™ ^> ^ n

HAXTHAUSEN 35

Macm.llan 1968), p. 50. par. 130. Arakawa became familiar Willi the work of Wittgenstein before 19bl. while sull in |apan. v. hen he read parts of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; in 1964 h- read the entire

book for the first bme He did no. read the Philosophical Investigations until around 1968. (Convert a

with the artist, Julv 1991

I «„ M) Paintings, p 29 IS I borrow these terms from Roland Bardies'* "Rhetoric of the Image. In Bardies, Image. MuSli ed and trans Stephen Heath (New York H.U and Wang. 1977). pp 32-51,

19 Although .. is widely known in its book format-see Arakawa and G.ns, Ihe Mechanism of Meaning, new

Abbeville Press. l988)-this group of mixed-media works, absolutely central to the Vrakaw. and Gin, project, has never been shown in the United Sutes until the present exhibition Vu Mechanism of Meaning ,s like an adas of the nund'hody operabons activated bv Arakawa s painting More blatantly man the elrher paintings, this group of works demands the active participation of the beholder Here one finds many of the strategies employed in the paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, but w,th a much broader range of mediums many of the panels are assemblages).

20 Arakawa and G.ns, untided text, in Shusaku Arakawa: Space as Intention, exh cat. (Nagoya: Gallery

2 LFtari. CndT The Astonishing Hypothesis The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York Scnbner's. 1994) pp 208-09. Even Cnck himself concedes, "It is not completely certain that the binding problem as I have Stated II is a real one. or whether the brain gets around it by some unknown tnck (p. 208n).

22 I use the lerm -visual system" rather than "sense of sight" with deference to ihe disbnebon made by Gibson. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, pp 47. 53-54

I i Arakawa and G.ns, "Tesung the Limits." p 5. and Arakawa and G.ns. The Mechanism of Meaning p 102.

>4 However that place, that T." is no s.able entity, but what Arakawa and G.ns will later term a 'fiction of place"-a "ficuon" because in their Mew the perceiving I is configured and in part constituted at any given moment bv .ts own perccing. wluch » connnualb in flux See Ad""-* G^TTie Itattm Constructed Plan as Intervening Device (for a Reversible Destiny!." A+U. no 255 (December 1991). p 48 hereafter referred to as "Tentative Constructed Plan")

, ,, Helen Keller or Arakawa (Santa Fe: Burning Books. New York: East West Cultural Studies 994).

26. See the letters and reports by Sullivan .ncluded in Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, ed. John Albert Macv 11902. Garden City. NY. Doubleday. 1954). pp. 251-320.

J" Keller to Caroline Derby. October 23, 1894, in ibid., pp. 180-81

28 Ibid., p. 119.

29. Gins. Helen Keller or Arakawa, p 181

30 Keller. The Story of My Life, p -

31. Ibid., p

33 Martin Heidegger. On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row. 1971

34P Untitled. 1969, and Shape no. 2, 1969. illustrated in Constructing the Perceiver- Arakawa. Experimental Works.

pp. 140. 145. respectively JS Inntbd and Sky (Lamb Stew), both \96&, illustrated in ibid., pp 133-34 36. In the early days of her tutonng. Sullivan would reward Keller with cake when she learned a new word,

see Keller. The Story of My Life, p 2 5 5

37 Gins. Helen Keller or Arakawa. p

38 Ibid Gins uses this metaphor, p. 291

39 Ibid . p 180.

40 Arakawa and Gins, Pour ne pas mounr/To No, to Die (Pans Editions de la Difference, 1987), p 46

41 Arakawa and Gins, "Tentanve Constructed Plan." p. 49.

4 ! \rakawa first included the word in his painting Untitled of 1969, which consists only of the inscription ,n stenciled letters, "I have decided to leave this painting completely blank", illustrated in Constructing the Perceiver-Arakawa. Experimental Works, p. 140. See also, for example, Blank Model/Model Blank. 197b, Texture of Point Blank 1977, and Blank Stations II. 1981-82. illustrated in ibid . pp 173, 184, 184-85, respectively.

43 Dagmar Buchwald, in her translator's note to Gins. "Der ProzeB in Frage," in Arakawa. exh. caL (Berlin

daadgalene. 1990) p 27n

44 \rakawa and Gins have charactenzed blank as a "neutral positing-in the sense of holding open rt .1 what is there bu. und.fferentia.ed. so .. is no. noth.ng It is what fills emptiness", see Arakawa and Gins, untided text, in Space as Intention, p. 1

45 As Gins explained in conversation with the author. August 5. 1991, what one might term their theory ,s their attempt to understand and conceptualize a given, namely, whal happens in the perception of the work, after the fact-their attempt to draw from the expenence generated by then work conclusions not about the work itself but about perception Arakawa does not proceed according to a carefully constructed theoretical model, the work is always in advance of the theory 1 have found lha.th, theoretii J text. become intelligible only in light of the expenence of the work, when they take on the character ol inter pretive descnpUons of the perceptual process

46 There are some noteworthy similarities between "cleaving" or "forming blank" and Jacques Demda s concept of the "trace" "The trace .s in fact the absolute ongin of sense in general. The trace is the difference which opens appearance (,Vi/par<iirr<| and signification Articulating the living up

nonliving the trace is not more ideal than real, not more intelligible than sensible, not more a transpar ent signification than an opaque energy and no concept of metaphysics can describe if See Dernda, OfGrammalology. trans Gayatn Chakravorty Sp.vak (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, 197b), p. 65.. see also p. 63 on differance -Differance is the formabon of form"

OS, "The Process in Question," unpubl.shed manuscript of a paper presented al Williams College.

\\ ,lhanis.own, Massachusetts, February 1990, p. 12. The text has been publ.shed in German as "Der ProzeB in Frage." trans. Dagmar Buchwald, in the daadgaleric's Arakawa. pp.9 I !

IS I h,s k-xt and a number of others used by Arakawa in his paintings are publ.shed in Arakawa and G.ns, Pour ne pas mourir/To Not to Die.

19. Arakawa, "On My Paintings,' p. 29.

50 see Wolfgang Iser. The Act of Reading A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universit) Press 1980), pp 118-25. I have taken the term from Iser, who appl.es it to the "synthebzing activit) fhal is fundamental to the grasping of a text." Iser1* interest in analyzing the microacbons of reading and comprehending a text has interesbng parallels with Arakawas explorabons of the process of perception

51. Gins. "The Process in Question," pi

ihnSearle whose The Rediscovery of the Mmd [Cambridge, Mass , MIT Press. 1992), p 97. has some rel- evance to the Arakawa and Gins project, holds that this is an impossibility, we cannot observe our own

observing . ,

If I try to observe the consciousness of another, what I observe is no. h.s subjectivity bu. s.mply h.s conscious behavior, his structure, and the causal relabons between structure and behavior. Well, whal about my own inner go.ngs-on' Can I no. observe those' The very fact of subjecbvity, which we were trying to observe, makes such an observation impossible Why? Because where conscious subjec- ts Ity ,s concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and die thing observed, between the perception and the object perce.ved. The model of vision works on the presupposition that there is a disbnebon between the perception and the object perce.ved Bu. for "introspection" there is s.mply no way to make this separation. Any introspection I have of my own conscious state is .tself that con- scious state the standard model of observabon doesn't work for conscious subjecbvity With Arakawa's paintings. I would suggest, we are not observing our own perceiving as it happens, that is no. our intenbon Our attenbon is directed toward the painbng, not loward our own percepbon of j| We become aware of the process only retroactively, by way of reflecting back on operations already

completed

53 Arakaw'a and Gins, "Testing the Limits, | • 5

54 Ibid Arakawa began this move toward formal simplicity in 1986. before he introduced platforms

55 Hans Jonas "The Nobdiry of Sight A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses." in Jonas,

The Phenomenon of Life Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York Harper and Row. 1966). p 154 I am grateful to Peter Petzling for bnnging Jonas's essay to my attention. 56. John M. Hull, Touching the Rock An Experience of Blindness (New York: Pantheon. 1990). p. 29. e Jonas. "The Nobdity of Sight," p 143:

even the densest distribubon of the point determ.nanls collected and correla.ed in the course of exten- sive scanning by touch SliU leaves areas to be supplied by imagination Bu. however many data may be registered in success.on and entered into the plane of simultaneous presentation, they can never fill a horizon such as .s disclosed to one glance of the eyes. There are bound to remain blank spaces in between and an unrealized hori^n in depth beyond the proximity of the actually contacted resistant objects, (emphasis added) The passage captures the effect of Paintings for Closed Eyes 58. Hull. Touching the Rock, p 217

59 Although all language signifies symbolically (that is. by rule or code), there are nevertheless functions of language mat are .conic or indexical, jus. as icons, for example, can serve symbolic functions (for exam- ple allegorical figures) "Close your eyes" would be an indexical use of language accordmg to Pence: "Some indices are more or less detailed directions for what the hearer is to do in direct experiential or other connection with the dung meant", see Hartshorne and Weiss. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peine.

2 191

60 See Charts 4 (Tl) and 5 (T2). both bded "Detail of Perceptual Landing Sites." illusba.ed in Constructing the Perceiver-Arakawa: Experimental Works, p. 254 The charts are also reproduced, somewhat more legibly, in Arakawa and Gins. "Tentative Constructed Plan," pp 3* II

61. Arakawa and Gms, Architecture Site of Reversible Destiny (London: Academy Editions, 1994). p. 19

h3 It IS worth noting that here Arakawa and G.ns differ from Gibson, who makes a strict distinction between coded and uncoded stimulus information, or whal he calls "verbal meaning" and "perceptual meaning-, see Gibson. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, p. 244

64 vrakawa and G.ns. "Person as Site in Respect to a Tentative Constructed Plan m I ,,„.„.. C Davidson, ed , Anywhere (New York Rizzoli. 1992), p. 65 (hereafter referred to as "Person as Site )

65. Ibid., pp 19. 20

67. Arakawa and G.ns. "Tentative Constructed Plan," p 48 On "fiction of place." see note 24 above

68 Arakawa and G.ns. Architecture SitiS of Reversible Destiny, p. 2 1

69 G.bson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, pp 53. 59-74 As Gibson observes, "Th.s system coop- erates, in fact, with all the other perceptual systems [auditory, haptic, taste-smell, and visual] since tl pro vides a frame of reference for them ."

70. "Locus of perception" is how Mark C Taylor defines a landing site In "Saving N- an tasighlful chs. us s,on of the work of Arakawa and Gms in Ins M* (Ch.cago: Un.vers.ty of Ch.cago Press, 1993) p. 107 (this essay also appears in the present volum. pp 124-39). G.bson uses the term "sources of stimulation ,n h.s The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, pp. 7-30 .„,.,. ..

71 I am indebted for this formulation to Theodore W Adorno". "Zu Subjeckt und Objekt ,n Adorno. Stichworte: Kntische Modelle 2 (Frankfurt Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969), p. 152. Adomo's essay has been trans lated into English as "Subject and Object," in Andrew Arato and Like Gerhardt, ed,, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Unzen Books, 1978)

36 THE ROAD TO CRITICAL RESEMBLANCES HOUSE

trie, /'" Rediscovery of the Mind, <pp. 70, 95 \iakawa and Gins, "Person as Site," p >8 ,i [bid i> IH

7.1 Interview with Hirako Akihiko, cited in Akihiko, ed.. Site »/ Reversible Destmy-Yoro Park. Gifu, ii.his D. Robson (Gifu: Gifu Prefecture Park and Nature Association, 1995), p. 12 I I tyloi Volt |> l')K

77 I derive the term "image ii hemeta" from Mark Johnson Thi Body m tlu Mmd The Bodily Basis o) Weaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1987), p 29 Johnson defines an image schema as "a recumng, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience" (p xiv) Image schemata "operate at one level of generality and abstrai tion above concrete, rich images. A schema consists of a small number of parts and relations, by virtue of which it can structure indefinitely many perceptions, images, and events In sum, image schemata operate at a level of mental organization that falls between abstract proposiuonal structures, on the one side, and particular concrete images on the other" (p. 29). Arakawa and Gins adopt Johnson's concept in their texts "Person as Site," pp 60-61, and Architecture Sites ofRevmibU Destiny, p 7K Arakawa and Gins. Architecture Sites ofReirrsihl, Destiny, p B

i Foi aerial photographs and plan, see Akihiko, ed., Site ofReversiblt Destiny-Yon Park, Gifu pp 1, 10-11 HO Arakawa and Gins, Architecture Sites of Reversible Destiny, pp H, 2 I. 'tins, "The Process ", ' luestion," pp 16 \~

82. Ibid.. |. i'^

83. Gibson, The Senses Considn.d as Perceptual Systems, p I

ikawa .md Gins, Architecture. Sites of Reversible Destiny, pp 19 20 B5 S,e Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro Arakawa + Madeline Gins Architectural Experiment*, p 10

Determining Body no. 3 1987- Diplych ocrylic on convo>, U4 « °6 inch, eoch ponel, romp ocrylic, photograph*, Ploxiglov ond plywood, three poneU. 48 » 48 inches eoch

HAXTHAUSEN 37

EARLY WORKS

These early ««v4> by Aroka^-o prefigure Arolowo and Madeline Gins s current studies ol Irie architectural body

facing pog*

Arokowo

Bottomless I (SOCIOUS) 1962-63 Acrylic ponel, cloth, mirror ileel. steel 1 41 « 100 n 100 inches

esh, steel wire, string, ond ihreod,

Arakawo

Bottomless II (Communal Body), 1963 Acrylic ponel, cloth, mirror, steel, steel mesh, steel v 41 » 98 * 98 inches

re, string, ond threod,

ARAKAWA 39

A/okowo

Botlomlejs III (Communal Rody), 1963-64

Clo*. Wt. mirrof. ileel. >»eel meih, Jled wire, itring. ond threod.

43 > 144" 124 inches

40 EARLY WORKS

Arolcowo

Untitled. 1960-61

Pencil on convoi, 48 x 72 inches

ARAKAWA 41

No More Piss* Reading

altfe fEdianumi rf Jtaung Neuih

Vibratory Disappearance

VISUAL ILLITERACY WIPED OUT BY THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

HOMELESS BECOME INVISIBLE AND TAKE OVER THE MIDWEST

Geometry is «ly » f- - - ■ddeital nil "

toddeitai neighbor oi blank

Ha aa> • pui a- «aaj ■>

»|A -a. » o. U. a

In work by Arakawa

and Madeline Gins

human capabilities

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■ art »■!. *>■*»• lata*"

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Other Ways to Enter

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The Mechanism of Meaning News 1990 (vngle iUM| Newjpnnl. 21 H « 14 inchej

F L.RUSH

To Think, To Invent, To Be Invented

Reflections on

The Mechanism

of Meaning

To become different subjects, indeed different beings; to call down fate in order to remake it as art-this is the stated project of Arakawa and Madeline Gins. In order to effect this transformation. The Mechanism of Meaning, 1963-73, 1996 (see pp. 54-111), tacitly appeals to a constellation of views concerning the nature of meaning that may be characterized in broad stroke as "holistic" or as entailments of a holist view concerning meaning. But far from resting with a holist description of meaning, The Mechanism of Meaning radicalizes and extends such an account norma- tively in ways that holist accounts standardly do not anticipate. The work submits for our consideration, indeed, asserts the radical proposal that even our most fundamental and firmly held concepts and beliefs (among them, whatever beliefs underwrite our current understanding of what seem to be the unchangeable features of our conceptual interactions with the world) are de facto subject to revision and, indeed, ought be revised according to certain aims. Even more exceptional is the claim of Arakawa and Gins about the way in which we alter our conceptual and perceptual structures. The claim is that we reorder our conceptual and perceptual apparatus, at least in part, by recorrelating our physical interactions with the world; the presupposition is that there is such a close causal relation- ship between concepts and bodily states and dispositions to behave that changes in physical interactions will be changes in conceptual structure. This is a radical thesis, made no less so by the expressly antireductionist stance that Arakawa and Gins take with respect to the relationship of the mental and the physical.

In what follows, I shall be concerned to make explicit some of the the- oretical presuppositions that underwrite The Mechanism of Meaning and sit- uate them against a background of philosophical developments in the theory of meaning. In doing so, it is important to be aware that the work of Arakawa and Gins on these issues dates back to the early 1960s, a time predating or, in some cases, concurrent with many of the philosophical treatments of the concerns I will be discussing. Accordingly, the work ot Arakawa and Gins should be seen as complementary to these philosophi- cal developments and not simply reliant upon them. The work of Arakawa and Gins stands as arguably the earliest, and is certainly the most sustained, artistic meditation on "meaning," as that term has been explicated in contemporary philosophical discourse.1

THEORETICAL COMMITMENTS

The fundamental task of any theory of meaning, as Paul Grice has put it, is to account for what makes some physical objects or events-for instance, spoken words or written signs-essentially different from other physical phenomena, such as the sound of thunder or a train whistle. No purely physical fact can possess a significance that is the product of an intent that it be recognized as the product of that intent-which is to say, no purely physical fact can possess "meaning" in the sense essential to communication and thought.

Beyond accepting this baseline desideratum for any theory of meaning, accounts vary as to the question of what constitutes the normative frame- work within which language functions. In general, two schools of thought have developed in this century on this issue. One group of thinkers holds to the traditional view that meaning is conferred on utterances and inscriptions by an individual speaker's meaning or intent: let us call this group the "atomists." Atomism so-defined includes among its ranks thinkers as diverse as Michael Dummett and Jerry Fodor. Atomism is compatible with either one of two views about what sort of linguistic item may be said to be the ultimate bearer of meaning. One possibility is that words or singular terms are linguistically self-sufficient items. The view that terms have meaning abstracted from any more general linguistic con- text is one dating back at least to Locke in the seventeenth century. [1 is almost universally rejected now as a general account of meaning, in favoi of the so-called "compositional" conception of meaning, developed by the logician Gottlob Frege, who argued that sentences are the smallest unit of linguistic significance-that the meanings of words within a sen- tence are a function of their semantic roles in the sentence. Directly opposed to atomism, holism in the theory of meaning holds that the meanings of terms or concepts depend on the entire language or theoi J ,n which they are situated. To the extent that holism is seen simply as the view that signs derive their meanings from their roles in the language or sigmficatory system as a whole, holism is, like Frege's account of mean- ing, compositional; holism is but an extension of the relevant composi- tional context from sentence to the entire language.

Now meaning holism has developed ,n two quite different ways m contemporary' philosophy of language, both in reaction to neo-Kant.un

43

v iews on the nature and function of language. One line of descent can be traced to Willard Van Orman Quine's radical empiricist critique of logi- cal ponih ism (primarily that of Rudolf Carnap) Quine argued that a thoroughgoing empiricism must have four interconnected results that are at odds with commonly held views about the nature of theories, systems, or languages (any systematic bod\ oi sentences). First, terms and sen- tences^ only have meaning when considered in the context of the the- ory or language as a whole.' Second, no one concept or term in any theorv (or any specifiable class of such terms or concepts) is immune to revision through testing of hypotheses. This includes even those concepts, sentences, and beliefs that we hold to be the most central to our thought of the world land hold to be inviolable because of their centrality); even the fundamental laws of logic are not sacrosanct. Third, there is no one u ay to map any given body of evidence, including the totality of evi- dence. That is, ways to conceive the world-our theories of it-are radi- cally underdetermined by evidence. Thus, while truth in a theory or language is a question internal to the semantic rules internal to the the- ory, the truth o/a theory is a solely pragmatic concern.' There is no rule or set of rules neutral to all theories by which we can adjudicate the truest one. Fourth, since there is no one way in which the world must be taken (there are many equally good rival theories of it) and because the mean- ings of terms in any one of those theories will be "theory bound" in the sense that they are functions of their theoretical roles, there will be no pregiven mapping of the meanings of terms in one language to those in another. This last point is but a gloss of Quine's classic account of the indeterminacy of translation.7 When the evidence is a target language or behavior to be interpreted, that language can be translated in any num- ber of ways compatible with a systematically coherent rendering of its meanings. This last point is extended into the theory of meaning proper by Donald Davidson's account of radical interpretation, in which mean- ing in general is understood on the model of the field linguist encounter- ing verbal behavior with the only tools of interpretation available to him or her-tools relative to his or her own language." Importing this model to speakers of the "same" language, we arrive at the view that we each speak an idiolect that is only different in degree from what we consider to be foreign languages.

The view that linguistic meaning is holistic is a natural complement to yet another set of views about meaning that has been hugely influential and to which I have implicitly made reference already-the views that meaning is a function of social context and the product of linguistic com- munities. It is easy to see why one set of views suggests the other. If we view meaning holistically-and thus view the relevant constitutive matrix for meaning to be a language or theory as a whole-the idea that meaning is at least partially constituted by what Ludwig Wittgenstein called "forms of life" follows from the recognition that languages are spoken by com- munities of persons who share certain behaviors and concepts. " Historically, recognition of the public nature of language has been dic- tated by the necessity' of accounting for the normativity of language. Use

(and misuse) of language (more generally, the very capacity to follow a rule) requires that we accord the public nature of language a primitive status and not view it as something to be explained by adverting to pri- vate meaningful mental states. Although it is not altogether clear that Wittgenstein advocated as strong a constitutive role for the social as is sometimes argued for him, such an approach is characteristic of those sec- tions of the Philosophical Investigations that address the problem of rule- following and the impossibility of a private language. Although the recog- nition that linguistic meaning can only be explained if we begin with the notion that language is transcendental to a speaker's individual meaning is often identified with the "linguistic turn" in early twentieth-century phi- losophy, the "primacy of the public" has been a prominent feature of reflection on the nature of language since its modern inception in the time of Herder.

Now, one possible outcome of holist accounts of meaning that accords linguistic groups primary normative force is that different languages may bethought to reflect "conceptual schemes," systems of thought that are so different they confer meanings on their terms that are unique to each sys- tem and that are both untranslatable and incapable of being fully com- prehended by the linguistic occupants of other schemes. That is, given that translation between languages is always indeterminate and always proceeds from the perspective of a "home scheme," it might be argued that the final deliverance of Quine's revolution is a view of languages and systems of thought that are incommensurate. This possibility- received quite a bit of attention in literature devoted to the meaning of scientific terms, and the notion that theories and languages are hermetically sealed systems of thought was, for a time, a powerful way to conceive not only of language but of symbolic practices in "foreign" cultures.10

Obviously, the idea that, in principle, conceptual schemes could be immune to translation endangers any understanding of meaning on a general Quinean model, since it is a central task of a theory of meaning that it account for how communication is possible. The theoretical device deployed by the Quinean to account for meaning is translation: the very idea that incommensurability attacks. But the incommensurability hypothesis had its own problems and can be shown wanting on several accounts. One problem with the view-which generally affects any rela- tivistic thesis that parades itself as an assertion-is that the relativistic claim cannot be asserted except from within a particular conceptual framework and thus cannot aspire to be a global statement. Another problem is that incommensurabalists tend to expect altogether too much from translation, seeming to equate that activity with getting a "perfect read" on a culture as if one were a member of it. But most important, as Davidson demonstrates, the view that there are discrete conceptual schemes rests on an untenable dualism between the form of cognition or language (what we bring to our interactions with nature) and the object of that cognition, that is, a dualism between scheme and content." Put suc- cinctly, there can be no viable distinction between scheme and content (and hence no fundamental problem about the incommensurability of

44 TO THINK. TO INVENT, TO BE INVENTED

languages and no real sense to the notion of a conceptual scheme) because what it is to be an object of a concept is always already a func- tion of interpretation. Interpretation, so to speak, goes "all the way down"; there is no sense to the notion of a predescriptive object of thought"

Let us now turn to the second sort of reaction to neo-Kantian views on meaning-a reaction, centered in France, that radicalized received struc- turalist views on the purported systematic nature of language. Structuralism itself rests on holist views of language, but does not exhibit Quinean and Davidsonian modesty about the systematicity of a theory or language, nor does it incorporate a viable theory of reference. Because of largely phenomenological presuppositions regarding the philosophical appropriateness of an inclusion of reference into a theory of meaning, what has come to be known as "structural linguistics," based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, methodologically treats conceptual systems as self-contained artifacts, held together by the coherence of the set of their member terms. In broad stroke, structuralists argued holistically that it is the position of the sign in a structure that determines the meaning of the sign. Thus, it is argued, a sign's meaning depends on the sign's not mean- ing everything or anything else in the system. That is, the difference between a sign and other signs or groups of signs in a particular system is constitutive of the meaning of a sign and determines what it means to be in a particular place in the system. Being in a particular place in a system is precisely being related meaningfully to other signs in terms of their dif- ferences." Accordingly, the structuralist is set upon the idea (often attrib- uted to Leibniz) that all signs carry with them what we might call a "meaning penumbra," consisting in the meanings of all signs not the sign in question, but as related to the sign in question.

Let us see more particularly what this view of the constitution of mean- ings entails in the theory of meaning. Differences are what a sign is not, but, as a feature of the structuralist view on meaning, they must be part of thesign-what Jacques Derrida called "traces." But, if a sign can only mean in terms of its difference with other signs that, in turn, also mean only in terms of their differences, we are presented with a problem. What is a difference a difference of, on this account, except other differences? The verv idea of difference presupposes some notion of fixity, otherwise it makes no sense to say that one thing is different from another. In other words, though signs are said to be constituted soley by their difference from other signs in a system, we must presuppose the idea of a sign that is not so constituted in order to get a system of differences in place. We are left with no center to the system other than the idea of structure. The notion of sign as a mere placeholder, or variable, disappears since the place it holds is merely a concatenation of differences: essentially a nonplace. This picture of language (outfitted with requisite Heideg^genan trappings) was a staple of the approach to questions of meaning taken by the group of theorists, led by Dernda, that organized themselves around the publication Tel Quel. But it is important to note that this post- structuralist understanding of meaning renders problematic the very

notion of a closed system so important to structuralist conceptions of lan- guage. The very idea of a language composed of such entities-ones with no positive semantic properties-is untenable, and the very idea of a lan- guage (rather than just a contingent coordination of intersecting idiolects) becomes suspect.

COGNITIVE TRANSFORMATION

The Mechanism of Meaning pins a decidedly poststructuralist, post- Quinean/ Davidsonian understanding of meaning with a radical concep- tion of the possibility of art to change human nature. Gins and Aiakawa embrace the notion that no system of meaning can be closed or stable and that the truth of any one way of taking the world cannot be canoni cally established. Conceptual schemes, theories, ways to take the world are one and all fungible, depending on our perceived purposes, desires, and prejudices. Even those cognitive structures that we now consider so fundamental to our way of thinking (in fact, to any way of thinking) are potentially subject to change or even overthrow; even the structure of perceptual awareness, often considered the archetypical case of cognitive passivity, may be the subject of our conceptual intervention." And, since Arakawa and Gins also accept that mental states are embodied and their content a result of this embodiment, plasticity of mind means plasticity of body. Both the mental and the physical structure of the brain upon which mental states supervene are, as far as we can tell, completely malleable. The Mechanism of Meaning is intended to shape our cognitive apparatus (what Arakawa and Gins call "mind-brain") or, if this is too strong, is intended to suggest ways in which our cognitive apparatus mighi be reconfigured-might be liberated from the tyranny of "given" modes of thought. Part of the restructuring must be accomplished by localizing and selecting modes of social mediation of subjectivity. However, such com- munal influence must not be accepted uncritically. Inescapable as so. ietal mediation of meaning and life mas be, it is the cognitive responsibility of members of the community to challenge received modes of thought, to accept them, if we accept them at all, critically. My invocation ol the term Antique" may seem somewhat out of place in a discussion of this woi I illicitly recalling an Enlightenment model of reflection that does not chum to have the transformative power Arakawa and Gins insist upon. But the function of critical intelligence need not be limited to this . on( epuon. And the notion of critique, I would argue, can and must continue to play a significant role in any thought in which theory and praxis are conceived as being intimately connected. On this expanded model of criticism, the project of Arakawa and Gins qualifies as critique in the bes, Kantian/ Hegelian sense, that is, as self-critique. Because we are all mechanisms of meaning, we become self-aware while doing the exercises contained in the panels comprising the work, and in a very real sense, we create our-

selves anew.

The fact that it requires us to assume a critical posture does not mean however, that The Mechanism oj Meaningis correctly understood as a series of arguments. This approach to the work-one taken by many to works

RUSH 45

that might be loosely termed "conceptual arf-risks submerging the ine- hm. nable artistic nature of the work. The exercises in the various subdivi- sions call upon us to experience being mechanisms of meaning in ways that the experience of arguments (even good ones) cannot penetrate. For instance, many of the panels require physical interaction. Some panels appeal to changes in "mood" and others to our sense of humor. Although arguments can be funny or ironic, can anger or elate us. their force as arguments does not rest on such effects. Rather than proving a hypothesis about the plasticity of mental states, Arakawa and Gins are after ways of experiencing actual changes, and it is their view that art has an essential role to pla\ in bringing about this shift in self-understanding.1'

WHY ART?

Perhaps we should pause to take a closer look at the claimed essential role for art in the reflection on the nature of meaning-a role, after all. that is generally thought to lie more in the province of philosophy. No dispute is more ancient, nor more tendentious, than that of the relation- ship of art to philosophy. Since the time of Aristophanes and Plato, art and philosophy have competed for the intellectual and spiritual currency of the age, each claiming a superiority for itself and its methodology. However, any conception of the nature of the relationship of art to phi- losophy as one that resides in essentially differing, even conflicting, methodologies particular to each approach is imperfect in at least two crucial aspects: First, this formulation assumes that art and philosophy reflect on the world in ways that are exclusively native to each endeavor. But the idea that the pursuits of the philosopher and the artist are so dis- similar that their activities would involve commitments to divergent ways of investigating and representing the world is questionable. Indeed, one might say, at least in light of the present philosophical and literary cul- ture, that such a view of the relation of art to philosophy is positively ret- rograde. Nonetheless, the attitude in philosophical circles that there is, crudely speaking, a methodology native to philosophy that artistic endeavor rarely, if ever, approximates remains a commonplace. Second, the view-an almost certainly false view-that philosophy as such and art- making as such have differing methodologies requires that we treat both philosophy and the production of art objects as fields over which we can specify univocal methodological standards.

Even in the face of admonitions against quick and easy bifurcation of art-making and philosophizing, one is still apt to insist that the approach of the artist to representation and expression, especially involving some- thing like the question of meaning, cannot be entirely isomorphic with that of philosophy. Indeed, the insistence of Arakawa and Gins that their constructions are uniquely suited to revealing the nature of meaning trades upon the idea that there is at least something that their art can do that philosophical analysis (at least, philosophical analysis in its present state) cannot. So, while it is no doubt generally true that there are de facto differences in artistic and philosophical approaches, such an admis- sion need not be accompanied by the view that artistic treatment of an

issue that has been dealt with philosophically in a deep way is inherently suspect. But questions remain: even if we accept that art can contribute to an understanding of the issue of meaning, (1) what is it about art that makes it especially suited to such an analysis, and (2) what does the fact (if it is a fact) that art of a certain type can contribute to an understanding of the nature of meaning in ways not currently open to philosophy say about the nature of meaning?

The key to seeing Arakawa and Gins's answer to both these questions is the notion that meaning-conferring activity is constructive activity. As we have seen, on the holistic account, meanings mean in virtue of struc- ture-a structure that is fungible between cultures and languages, one which is constantly changing and one in which revision can occur, at least in principle, at any level. How do such structures arise? How do they change? In short, how do they subsist? Regardless of what view one has about the fundamental generating force responsible for the structure in question-whether it be a matter of social and historical constitution or one in which individuals can institute changes immediately-some appeal must be made to the idea that meaning-conferring structures are con- structions, that they are not just given, so to speak, as a fact of being bio- logical organisms in environments (although the fact that we relate to environments in nonconceptual ways and how we so relate to the envi- ronment may prove quite important to an understanding of meaning). Now, though it is certainly the case that philosophical arguments and reflections may change the world-or at least the view of the world taken by individuals who are both convinced by the argument and act on the basis of the truths the argument in question is thought to deliver up-the idea that by being convinced of the correctness of a philosophical account we are also constructing meaning is one that does not ordinarily play much of a role in philosophy, at least not in a philosophical tradition still wary of Hegel.

In contrast, even if our views on artistic production have forever left behind the rich and varied legacy offered by the notion of genius as the essence of a successful production (and product), it is still the case, I wager, that we view art-making as a paradigm case of construction and, by implication, of meaning-conferral. For even though what Walter Benjamin famously referred to as the "aura" of artworks (indeed, of the world, in his estimation) has been trounced into nothingness, art is still made, that is, is recognized as a category of things, even though it may be part of that categorization that the mere "thingness" of such work is their

theme."

The unique way in which The Mechanism of Meaning takes its place among the works we situate in the art world is that it reflects upon mean- ing and is, at the same time, in virtue of this reflection, a vehicle for meaning-change. As a construction, the work consists in exercises. The term "exercises" here is no throwaway. The work is envisioned as an invi- tation for interaction in a series of exercises, each of which, in a different way, is supposed to reveal to us, the participants, how meaning happens. And it is supposed to reveal this through our doing the work. The collab-

46 TO THINK. TO INVENT. TO BE INVENTED

oralive aspect, implied in almost any artwork worth contemplation, is here expressed and an irreducible element in the work. In fact, if it is per- missible to speak this way at all, collaboration is its essence. The Mechanism of Meaning is a "meaning-full" construction that constructs an analysis of meaning by inciting us to construct meanings along the lines of the exercises. What is constructed here is meaning. Who is doing the constructing is us. What the construction is about is ourselves constructing ourselves as sites for meaning, that is, as meaning-initiators and receptors. It is the contention of Arakawa and Gins that the work's contribution to an understanding of meaning, a contribution that art may be presently in a better position to make than philosophy, is to reveal meaning as inven- tion through self-invention. And to those who would say that that is all very well and good but has little to do with the current debate on the nature of meaning, Arakawa and Gins would quite probably urge that the terms of the debate should be broadened.

Another factor puts art in a somewhat advantaged state in the reflec- tion on meaning. As mentioned above, it is Arakawa and Gins's convic- tion and hope that reflection on the nature of meaning prompts changes in that nature. The importance of the concept of construction (that is, ot self-construction) is fundamental in this regard. As a practical matter, how is this change to take place? Arakawa and Gins make use of a wide reper- toire of tropes, puns, riddles, and gambits to incite us, many of which are "philosophical" in a relatively straightforward sense. But some of the incitements to change, particularly ones contained in The Mechanism of Meaning, do not conform to an argumentative structure.

Art has a recent history of attempting wholesale change that philoso- phy for the most part lacks-and here I am speaking of Dada and, to a lesser extent, Surrealism.^ For the most part, Dada identifies the object to be changed as a certain attitude toward what can count as art. This is a special instance of meaning-change, involving a limited sphere of art-his- torical and ontological concepts, and thus lacks the global ambition of Arakawa and Gins's work. And to the extent that their work points to and recommends a future cognirive life discern.bly better than the one we now lead, there is a Utopian element to their work that is altogether lacking in Dada. Nevertheless, several of the techniques intended to induce meaning-change find their antecedents in Dada. For instance one should not overlook the great extent to which Arakawa and Gins rely on humor, and further, on the humor inherent in nonsense, as a transforma- tive element. Humor generally operates to a large degree at the expense of our cognitive expectations, and the artists' use of humor exploits this disruptive effect. But humor and its displacement-effect is but one exam- ple of a family of like tropes that are deployed ,n order to shatter our conceptual vessels tout a coup.

SOME APPLICATIONS .

Since the way we are to reconfigure our m,nd-bra,n is by domg the exer- cises in The Mechanism of Meaning, it is important to consider what the work's structure holds for the participant. This can by no means be defin-

itively ascertained; the very nature of the work weighs heavily against dis covering or attempting to establish definitive purposes for the exercises, the panels they comprise, or the subdivisions of the work. Nevertheless, certain general observations are possible: The work is divided into sixteen subdivisions. Of the sixteen, it seems to me thai the first, 7. Neutralization of Subjectivity, occupies a special place. /. Neutralization oj Subjectivity is a clearinghouse for the mind; it is an attempt to neutralize accepted or received modes of interaction with the world in order that we be readied for the task of restructuring those modes. Though there is in the work an ongoing dialogue with Zen Buddhist conceptions of cancella- tion of subjectivity,1" neutralization of subjectivity need not, it seems to me, entail a renunciation of subjectivity in general, just an attempted clearing of generally accepted ways that we as subjects react and interact with the environment. Methodologically, there is a sense in which the neutralization of subjectivity is no different than Edmund Husserl's (oi academic scepticism's) conception of the suspension of judgment, or epoche\ we put modes of subjectivity out of the analysis for purposes of the exercises, neither affirming nor denying particular ways of taking the world as having ultimate validity."' To be neutralized is to suspend belie! about the veracity of any conception of subjectivity we might have brought with us to the work. The activity of neutralization of subjectivHy is a condition precedent to gainful participation in the other exercises.

The next fifteen subdivisions elicit responses and invite conceptual and perceptual reconfiguration in a variety of ways and can be entered in any order. Each attempts to present a feature of cognitive awareness for our contemplation by having us perform basic activities associated with alt. n Hon, perception,' and description. For instance, in the third panel (see p. 59, fig. 2.3; detail, p. 48) of subdivision 2. Localization and ftansfertnce, we find an exercise in which three geometrical identical pairs of two- dimensional figures are positioned one set directly above the other. Printed inside the first two figures of the lower row-from left to right, a circle and triangle-we find the statements "THIS CIRCLE is BLANK," and "THIS TRIANGLE IS BLANK," while a similar statement, this time referring to the square, is printed in the square occupying the top row. This is a meditation on the cognitive activity of designation and that of construing something as without designation (that is, as blank). Each geometric fig- ure is paired with one lacking the statement concerning being blank and thus in the sense that it is lacking the statement, is blank. But each figure that contains a written statement is also designated as a blank by that very statement, though, in the sense that it contains something, it cannot be blank But matters are made even more complex because each pair of figures is "connected" by bidirectional arrows, raising the question of whether the statement within a figure is actually meant to ascribe the property of being blank to the opposing figure. This seems the most invit- ing interpretation of each set of figures since we now have it being said of seemingly blank figures (that is, those without writing m them) that they are indeed blank. But taking the arrows between the figures to debate a relation of ascription or designation is only apparently the most satisfac-

RUSH 47

The Mechanism of Meaning, 2. Localization and Transference ponel 3 (derail)

ton interpretation if the arrows are unidirectional, proceeding from state- ment to referent. As stated, however, the arrows are bidirectional, mean- ing that the figures without writing are also to be taken in some sense to refer to the blankness of the other figures and perhaps themselves. Refer how? One might ask, do they perhaps refer by exemplifying rather than stating the property m question? This mind-bender, nothing but a medita- tion on the concept of designation, demonstrates that the relation is dependent on localizing one sense of the relation between the figures. Such an exercise calls for us to contemplate coeval possibilities. In 2. Localization and Transference, we are made aware that any locality within a structure focuses meaning by making meaning-confernng entailments between other localities more or less remote. Shifts in locality shift mean- ing (or degrees of it). That is, the significance of any sign is a function of its limitation by localization. Moreover, any localization presupposes transference of other signs and their localities. Shifts in locality summon new contexts for meaning and show the context-flux of interpretative activity. Since structures are nothing but a sum of localities, shifts in local- ity can adumbrate the general fungibility of structure.

Let me turn now to the subdivision 3. Presentation of Ambiguous Zones. These exercises and panels present the fact that every meaning (even that of ambiguity) is in a crucial sense ambiguous. While only thematically present when meaning is reflectively considered, ambiguity is, neverthe- less, necessary for any instance of meaning. Ambiguity-the zone of alter- nate possibilities, relative to a purported actuality-is what calls our attention to the interstices of meaning, what systematically eludes com- prehension. In its way sublime, ambiguity is what Arakawa and Cms refer to as "blank." The first exercise in the opening panel (see p. 61, fig. 3.1) of this subdivision consists of the following thought-experiment. Two rectangles, again geometrically identical, sit side by side. The upper

right corner of each seems to have been erased, although a faint remnant of the preexisting line describing the enclosure is apparent on closer inspection. In the rectangle on the left is the sentence fragment, "If this zone is ambiguous," which is continued in the other rectangle as, "This one is twice as ambiguous." Printed under both figures is the statement "THEN THE ENTIRE AREA IS AT LEAST TEN TIMES AS AMBIGUOUS." The entire area of the rectangles and the caption beneath them is, in turn, enclosed in a larger single rectangle whose perimeter is described by a dotted line. Now, the semantic concept "ambiguity" is generally taken to have the following feature: something is ambiguous because two or more fairly settled meanings can be equally offered for it. Ambiguity presup- poses that multiple possible interpretations of one and the same word, phrase, or event are available, and we consult context in order to settle on which interpretation is correct/" In the case before us, it is ambiguous whether we are dealing with zones at all. In order to be considered a zone, a thing must have area and no geometric figure can have an area unless it is a closed figure. But whether these are closed figures or not is ambiguous. We have an erasure, not merely the absence of closure. There was once a line, now either (1) there is not a line or (2) there is a faint line. All this amounts to the fact that what we have before us is the simultaneous representation of zone and nonzone.

Arakawa and Gins further play on the notion of ambiguity by offering the possibility that ambiguity might admit of quantitative distinction by the statement that "if this zone is ambiguous" "this one is twice as ambiguous." The idea that one thing is more obscure or more confused than another is not remarkable; the concept of ambiguity does not admit ol degrees in this sense. More particularly, ambiguity is not a quantita- tively degreed concept; it makes no sense to say that one thing is twice as ambiguous as another, since ambiguity is a state in which more than one interpretation of a thing is possible and a decision between interpreta- tions is problematic. Ambiguity does not increase if there are three rather than two rival interpretations, although disentangling the ambiguity may involve more conceptual work in the former instance (but that is not really clear). And it certainly is the case that saying that one zone is twice as ambiguous as another invokes a precise mathematical operation (mul- tiplication) in the service of a concept that involves imprecision of mean- ing This tension between measurement, zone, and ambiguity is brought home in the caption appearing under both zones: "THEN THE ENTIRE AREA IS AT LEAST TEN TIMES AS AMBIGUOUS." Read as a continuation of the statement appearing inside the two zones, the caption intensifies the sense in which, taken together, the writing in the panel constitutes a "for- mula," thereby deepening the conflict between the notion of the definite and the indefinite (although the final bit of the formula, as I am calling it, contains a qualification of just how many times more ambiguous the outer zone is than the inner ones. Moreover, it is not clear from the final rider to the formula whether the outer zone is ten times more ambiguous than the left zone, right zone, or both zones (or, if they are not zones cor- rectly so-called, ten times more ambiguous than nothing). All of this is

48 TO THINK, TO INVENT, TO BE INVENTED

JA AiC^- 3"*/ *** A-iUilr*0

THI5N THI5 KNTIRK AR15A IS AT LKAST TUN TIMKS AS AMBIGUOUS

The Mechanism of Meaning, 3. Presentation of Ambiguous Zones ponel I |detoil|

further complicated by the fact that the dotted line describing the outside rectangle again puts in question its integrity as a zone. In short, the exer- cise investigates the dialectical interrelation of determination and ambigu- ity by making us constantly play one off against the other.

Of particular importance to understanding the theory of meaning that forms the background for The Mechanism of Meaning are the two subdivi- sions 7 Splitting of Meaning and 8. Reassembling, in which the exercises specifically rely upon the view that meaning is a product of an endoge- nous sundering, a marking-off, a splitting and rejoining, of what Arakawa and Gins wittily term a "cleaving." The exercises invite us to split, disjoin, or iterate meanings and thereby to open up new possibilities of aware- ness. What may seem to be "unnatural" cases of splitting are revealed to be merely splitting along other coordinates; they are perfectly "natural" cases within the expanded significatory context. 7. Splitting of Meaning helps us focus on the potential for structural reassignment of meanings. Since what is sought to be elicited are unnatural splits, it is not surprising to see the influence of Zen and Dada, both attempts to dislodge accepted modes of thought through swift "illogical" breaks. In the third panel (see p. 77, fig. 7.3) of this subdivision, we encounter two phrases for contem- plation. First is the declaration "A LINE IS A CRACK," which sits inside a rectangle whose upper right corner is represented as folding back, reveal- ing black underneath. The letters forming the words in the phrase appear to be semidiffuse, to partake both of the black (as revealed by the fold) that exists "under" the panel and the white that is of the "surface." Now, we ordinarily do not think of a line-that is, an inscribed line-as a crack. We think of a line, if we think of its nature at all, as a physical mark upon the page. We do not think of it in what we might call its inverse nature, as a split forming or dividing the page into two halves. To think of the line

in this way (or of a crack as a line) is to substitute lor the category of pres- ence that of absence; it is to split meaning along this line.

The second phrase we encounter in the same panel contains the imperative "SAY one THINK two." This is, of course, impossible- I ollow ing a command to say "one" is to follow a command to think it. Though it may make some sense to say that we can be saying one thing while we are (really) thinking about another (such dual voices are heard in the wonderful first-date scene with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in AtMU Hall), it is impossible to follow a command to do both at the same time. The cognitive dissonance created by the attempt to "do" the exen ise, when "doing the exercise" means following the written instruction, reveals what doing the exercise is really about. The exercise is completed in the experience of the potential split, in the experience of the distention of meaning that following the instruction brings upon us.

Finally, I would like to turn to the subdivisions that address elements of cognitive experience often not considered in theories of meaning or in philosophical theories as a whole, except perhaps in the ongoing discus- sion of ideology. In broad stroke, these constituents of meaning might be characterized as nonconceptual experience-experience involving feeling, apprehension, or behavior-reactive environmental interaction. They are dealt with in four subdivisions: 4. The Energy of Meaning. 10. Textun ,>/ Meaning, 12. The Feeling of Meaning, and 15. Meaning of Intelligence, of which I will discuss the final three.

Most philosophical treatments of meaning limit themselves to account- ing for conceptual experience. This is primarily because the issue of

s

'■I «■

The Mechanism of Meaning, 7. Splitting of Meaning ponel 3 Idetaill

say 07VL think twty .

The Mechanism of Meaning, 7. Splitting of Meaning ponel 3 (delo.ll

RUSH 49

FIRST SIGN OF SAPI1CNOIC ( ON REFLECTION )

The Mechanism of Meaning, 15. Meaning of Intelligence ponel 2 (deloil]

meaning in contemporary philosophy has been taken to be coextensive with an account of linguistic meaning, an area in which analysis of con- cept deployment seems to exhaust the field. Arakawa and Gins hold that we experience the world as having significance due to our experience as embodied intelligences, and conceptual states certainly do not canvas all the ways in which an embodied intelligence interacts with its environ- ment. This is only to say that a significant part of our existence is informed by affect, mood, and biological state." 10. Texture of Meaning recalls that all significance exists in an infinitely variegated and textured context involving subjective and emotive as well as conceptual factors, what Frege would have excluded from a theory of meaning proper, as mere "coloring" [Fdrbung). The panels in 12. The Feeling of Meaning pre- sent feeling as constitutive of significance and as intimately connected with bodily states. And, in perhaps the most radical of the subdivisions, 15. Meaning of Intelligence, Arakawa and Gins challenge received concep- tions of intelligence as rational or rationally reconstructible thought. 15. Meaning of Intelligence treats intelligence as a cross-species capacity that discerns environmental features crucial to correct functioning but that need not include a faculty for discerning such features as important. Intelligence is thus a structural feature of the universe, an expression of an economy and interdependence of subject and environment.'-'

Because of the preconceptual nature of these claimed constituents of meaning, it is quite difficult both to construct panels that elicit appropri- ate responses verbally (by the presentation of written texts) and to ana- lyze these panels. I make only a few remarks in this direction. First, some of the panels in 15. Meaning of Intelligence treat what, for the want of a bet- ter designation, is the emergence of consciousness. Gins and Arakawa fol- low what is now the common view that what consciousness is, at its most fundamental level, is directed sapience. To be conscious is to be aware

and awareness requires an object for that awareness. This property of consciousness, first discovered by Franz Brentano and developed in a rig- orous philosophical fashion by Edmund Husserl, is what is commonly called intentionality.

An exercise in the second panel (see p. 106, fig. 15.2) of 15. Meaning of Intelligence presents a scene of a ship sailing across the surface of the sea at the horizon line. Centered in the scene is the sun (or perhaps, given the violet shading of the scene, night is indicated and we are looking at the moon). Enclosing an area that contains the ship, the sea, and the sun is a large pair of parentheses. A caption reads: "( ) FIRST SIGN OF

SAPIENCE (ON REFLECTION)." What is being pointed out about sapience or, in the way I have framed the topic of this subdivision, consciousness? To be sure, the point is, in part, that consciousness is essentially directed toward an object; it is about something. It is also the exclusion of some- thing. When I am conscious of a thing, my very attention involves selec- tive sapience. This is not to say that I choose to disregard other objects in my field of consciousness. That would be nonsensical on two counts. First, the idea of choice seems entirely out of place in a description of what takes place when I become conscious of a thing or state of affairs. I must presuppose being conscious of alternatives in order for the idea of having a choice in a matter to gain a foothold. Second, the field of con- sciousness of which phenomenologists are apt to speak is consciousness of whatever is in that field; it makes no sense to say that something is in my field of consciousness without my being conscious of it. Nevertheless, consciousness is exclusive in the sense that (at least, in terms of reflective consciousnesses like ourselves) it may be argued that we are tacitly aware that the world is chock-full of potential objects of consciousness that are not actual objects of my consciousness at this moment. Under this under- standing of the nature of consciousness, the exercise presents conscious-

50 TO THINK, TO INVENT. TO BE INVENTED

The Mechanism of Meaning, 15. Meaning of Intelligence ponel 2

ness as an attending, which means a bracketing of a piece of the world for our cognitive intake.

In the published third edition of The Mechanism of Meaning, the final panel of 15. Meaning of Intelligence is a sketch bearing the same title (see p. 52). In it, types or distributions of intelligence are depicted as relative degrees of angle and not as degrees on a scale. The point, I take it, is that intelligence is not merely a matter of concept use, or even of being reflec- tively aware of the world (although intelligence includes these ways of interacting with the world). Intelligence is meted out in different ways for different approaches to environments. Also depicted in the sketch is a lizard that has severed its tail, presumably in order to escape capture. What prohibits us from treating the biological adaptation (or nonadapta- tion) as a mode of "natural" or "evolutionary" intelligence? It is, on the

part of the lizard, a successful, context-sensitive, albeit nonreflective, interaction with the world. The point is pushed to its limit by implying that the growth tendencies of a tree can also be understood on this expanded model of intelligence.

MEANING, MORALITY, MORTALITY

Let us return to the world of human thought and endeavor. The concern of Arakawa and Gins to introduce us to ways of reconfiguring conceptual space does not mean that The Mechanism of Meaning is meant to .... ite us to any random restructuring of our takings of the world In fact, it is a seriously moral work. The genocidal evil that has plagued this centur) teaches us that some reordenngs of modes of thought are morally repug- nant; those reorderings that emphasize the primacy of the aesthetic over

RUSH 51

ftiw

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/rr'yUiteej-

#

The Mechonism ol Meaning. 15. Meaning of Intelligence ponel 5 1963-7 Pencil and paper on convov 96 » 68 inchei Collection ol rhe Sezon Foundation. Tolyo

the conceptual in the political sphere are particu- larly suspect. Arakawa and Gins seek a fundamen- tal reordering that results in a different conception of what it is to be a morally responsible subject. The reordering aims at creating agents whose sub- jectivity no longer carries with it the irrational desire to consume nature and a compulsion for mass murder and self-destruction. Such subjects would view themselves as coeval with other beings, all the while recognizing the moral obliga- tions that flow from the fact that we are creatures that influence our environment by our concep- tions. Such a moral bearing involves nothing less than organizing our interactions in the world so as not to implicitly transfer to others the authority latent in our having this or that concept of the world as a whole. For while what counts as a world for us may have very much to do with our conception of it, no one conception of it (or even the fact that it can only be a world for us under some conception or another) should be taken as authority to make the world just that way. As I understand Arakawa and Gins, all privileging of modes of thought spell conceptual tyranny and are to be avoided. We must continually remake our- selves in as inclusive a manner as possible at any given time. The "end state" of cognitive growth would be one in which varying concep- tions of the world were obtained in plurality and none assert preeminence.

52 TO THINK TO INVENT. TO BE INVENTED

1. In addition to installations of Arakawa and Madeline Gins's The Mechanism of Meaning in its shim

at various times, there have been three I k editions ol die work and two films- Why Nol (A Serenade of

Eschalological Eeology), 1969, and For Example (A Critique of Never), 1971— that are explii itl) structured accoidmg to the work's subdivisions It is also reprodui ed in the present volume Arakawa and Gin Architecture Sites of Reversible Destiny (London Academy Editions, 1994) and Silt of Reversible Destmy-Yoro, built in Gift), Japan, are i ontinuations ol this ongoing project. In preparing this essay, I referred to Arakawa and Gins, The Mechanism of Meaning, new 3rd ed. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988).

2. Paul Gnce, "Meaning," Philosophical Review 66 (1957). pp. 377-88.

3. See generally Willard Van Orman Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in Quine, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper and Row, 19!>1), pp 20-46 Although Chime is often recruited in aid of meaning holism, he is a meaning skeptic I shall follow general practice, however, and speak of Quine's views as applicable to questions of linguistic meaning

I See ibid., p 41 "Oui statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not indi- vidually but only as a corporate body.'* Also see Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized," in Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), p 89: "Meaning, once we get beyond observation sentences, i eases in general to have any clear applicability to single sentences."

5 See Quine, "Two Dogmas," pp 42 I

The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science The totality of our so-called know ledge, from the most casual matters of geography and histor) to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathemaUcs and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements Reevaluation of some state- ments entails reevaluation of others, because of their logical inlerconnections-the logical laws being in turn simply further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field But the total field

is so underdetemuned by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience No particular experi- ences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirecdy through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

6 I Ins is also a i ontinuing theme in the work of Nelson Goodman. See, for example, Goodman. Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).

7 Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.. MIT Press I960), chap 2, passim.

8 See Donald Davidson. "Radical Interpretation." in Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

■ i,l Clarendon 1984), p 125 "All understanding of the speech of another involves radical interpretation

9 See. for example, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, '2nd ed.. ed. G E. M. Anscombe and R EUiees (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), I § 19, To imagine a language is to imagine a form ol lifi

"The term 'language-game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking ol B language is part of an activity, or of a form of life"; and II: x, "What has to be accepted, the given, is-so to speak- forms of life "

li) See. foi example. Thomas Kuhn. Ihe Structure ofScientifit Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Universit) ol

d go Press 1970 and Paul I everabend. Against Method {Hew York. Verso, 1975 Vn analysis of this lil

erature is a complex matter and one thatcannol be treated here In m) view, too much is made of the all. gedl) relativist!, d. liverancesol these views First, Kuhn never embraces the claims that his argu- ments, forwarded in die comparatively narrow context of an analysis of the meaning of terms in scientific theories are applies ible generally to language or less overtly theoretical organizaUons of thought. Moreover, even the most radical "incommensurabalists" like Feyerabend break down and appeal to some sort of immediate wa) to understand rival si hemes, generally one that is not so closely tied to notions ol rational reconstruction and translation as Quine would have it.

11 See Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Si heme in I to idson, Inquiries into Truth and

Interpretation, pp. 193-94

[he uoul.le ,s thai the notion of [a conceptual scheme's] fitting die totality of experience, like the

, itring the facts, oi of being true .o the facts, adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept

of being true To speak of sensory experience radier than the evidence, or jus. th. fai ts, i presses a s ,eu about the source or nature of evidence, but it does not add a new enUly to the universe against whi. h to tesl con. eptual b. hemes I he totalitj ol .ensor) e> iden. e is what we want provided, u is all the evidence there is; and all the evidence there is is just what ,t lakes to make sen.,,,, true Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true, no. experience, not surface irrita- tions, not the world, can make a sentence true.

, lm attempt to . hara. terize languages oi com eptual schemes in terms of the nouon of fitting some entity has come down, then. ... the simple d.ought that something is an acceptable scheme or theory- if

And the Criteri I a conceptual scheme different from our own now becomes: largely

truebul nol translatabl. lb qu n whether this is a useful criterion is Just the question of ha* well

we understand the I truth, as applied to language, independent of the notion of translation.

1 1„ ansv e, ,. I think, thai we do not understand it independent ... ..II

12 Davidson most clearl) endorses this position in "A Nice Derangement ol Ep.laphs " ,n L I ■ I ,,. Truth and Interpretation Perspective on thi Philosophy of Donald Davidson (London Blackwell. 1986

PP I

13 Ferdinand deSaussure, Cours de linguulique gtniraU (Paris: Payot, 1973), p 166

i , . on.o.ue Paul t huu hl.u.d \ u.. , though! experiment concerning .he possibilit) oi the penetra

fconte n rider to be explit u tfed I even at variance wjp-

tual experien. 6 Into late, I , ption; .ee Churchland, Scientific Realm dthe Plasticity ofMtnd

C in.bndge: Cambridge Unh ei lit) Press 1979 chap I lb the extent that we conceive of our perceptual

structures as "hardwired" . apa. itii • nol rubje. t to i hangc through • oni eptual Incursion ( i hland i an

b. een as arguing for at leasl the possibilit) ih.u ilwse . apa, u ■• ■ has,- ., iI.l;i<-i ,,i pl.isin.UN

l.i The idea thai n iful sxl i reati ai * wa) ol pen eh ina th. world and thai il is onlj arl that can

afford this i irperii nee finds its fhllesl expression in thi writings of thi German Romantics particularly in Schlegel's view thai life and arl are re. iproi al i reative enterprises and ihe earK s, helling • identifii ation

of the arUslic intuition as being the closi si approximation one can hop foi an mine dial. exp. ric I

ihe iillimali units ol ua ■ and spirit S.mil.n ih. nights ammali Sehopi iihain i , argumvnl l"i tin mei.<

physical importance of music and. lai gel) following Schopenhauei the earl) iriews of Nietzschi onthi

sigllilli JIM e of UaeiclN

16. Walter Benjamin Das Kunstwerk mi Zt-ii.il.. , teinei u i hni. h. m El | luzii rbarkeit," m Benjamin

Gesammelte Schriften Frankfurt am Main Suhrkamp 1974) 1 Vd 17') Benjan , attitude toward this disap

pearance is difficult to characterize Initial!) hi seemi to treal thi disenchantmenl "t the world and ol

merely as a feature of modernity, the loss oi which is nol an occasion foi mourning Postaural "ill be

unabashedl) "pohucal ..rt .ts purpose will in to elicit appropriate!) Marxist emotional responses from its audience Later, in his writings on Proust and Baudelaire, Benjamin lakes a more negativ. view ol the technical incursion into arl ( onnei ting il s^iih what he takes to bt thi radii ill) disjointed nature "i mod em, techno! . BenjamintreatsthelossofauraasanimpoNeiisliin.nl Still he is not entirel)

pessimistic, claiming a possible reconstruction of art through a reenchantment of the everyday-a rcappro pnauon of technology by art that he believed to be essential to Surrealism

17 \rthur Danto has pointed out die impori.ni' •• ,,i I i.i.i.i I... Vrakawa and Gin Danto Gin

and Arakawa: Building Sensonums," in Danto. Embodied \teantngi Critical Essays andAesthelii Mutilations (New York Farrar, Strausft Gil 1994 pp 119 '

18. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, Que pemdre7 Adami, Arakau • i. Bun n Paril Editions di la Difference 19 pp 67-82, for a meditation on the dialogue between Arakawa i images and Zen Buddhism

19. There is also a parallel to be drawn here between neutralization and Minn, Heideggei ilatei notion of the primordial meaning-conferring relation of Dasein ami Being U on* ol a clearing awa) taakawa and

Gins's conception of neutralization ol siil.je, us us do, i. hoNNese. nadi InH. ism Foi

Heidegger's views, see "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, in I lei, I, «n //»/ .■/■/, v I ..uiklun .nn Ma... Kloslermann, 1952

|| I lus corresponds to the second type of ambiguity identified in William Empson, S,un ly/i (New York: New Directions 1947

21 See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors II, /,.. B) Chicago University of I 1980 and Lakoff. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things What Categories Reveal about thi Mind ( I University of Chicago Press, 1!)87). Il is not exactly true thai thi embodied natun ol out existence has

entirely escaped philosophic a I icrutiny, bul .he philosophical tradition In which such li receivi theii

fullest discussion is quite remote from prevailing tendencii i nineteenth cenrur) German ihoughl

(Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: andtwentieth centurj phenomenology (Maurici Merleau P ) ihesitu-

ation in coniemp.i.aiN linguistic theor) is a bit more condudv nanalysisoftl gnitive signifii unci

of nonconceptual mental states and bodily dispositions ,,„i attitudes, so Vrakawa and I lini End them allied with recent work in psyeholinguistii i, In partii ulai the work ol 1 ikofl and Johnson on

metaphonc structunng of concepts How, ., I ikofl n to harbor doubts aboul Arakawa and Gin

clam, foi the ultimate plasticit) of our categones ol thought; ■ ihe presenl volume,

pp. 112-23

22 I he s.ew that there is no differen. e In kind betw. en the lawful itructure ol Ihe i .1 and the lawful

structure oi thought, foreign as it may seem to us. has a long and distinguished philosophii i digree,

extending back to Heracleitus and Anaxagoras, through Aristol *eve. Aral nd

( ,U1 , ,,v. doe, n0| .,.,.„, to share the teleologii a] . ommitmenti of these former views

RUSH 53

THE

MECHANISM OF MEANING

THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

1. NEUTRALIZATION OF SUBJECTIVITY

2. LOCALIZATION AND TRANSFERENCE

3. PRESENTATION OF AMBIGUOUS 3SONES

4. THE ENERGY OF MEANING (BIOCHEMICAL.

PHYSICAL. AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL ASPECTS)

5. DEGREES OF MEANING

(>. EXPANSION AND 1U2BUCTION-MEANING OF SCALE 7. SPLITTING OF MEANING B. REASSEMBLING <>. REVERSIBILITY

10. TEXTURE OF MEANING

11. MAPPING OF MEANING

12. FEELING OF MEANING

13. LOGIC OF MEANING

14. CONSTRUCTION OF THE MEMORY OF MEANING

15. MEANING OF INTELLIGENCE

16. REVIEW AND SELF-CRITICISM

Complete captions for poges 54-109 a grven on poges 1 1 0-1 I

1. Neutralization of Subjectivity

1 NEUTRALIZATION OF SUBJECTIVITY USB THESE EXERCISES AS A SERIES OF FILTERS ' THROUGH WHICH TO PASS SUBJECTIVE MODES OF INTERPRETATION AND NEUTRALIZE TO SOME DEGREE :

X X X x x \

X

*

XX x

X \ X X ^

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+

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USING THE SAME SYSTEM SEPARATE THE. NEXT TWO SHADES

ARAKAWA AND GINS 55

TIIKSK JUNCTURBS

MAKE THIS AS TIGHT AS POSSIBLE

WITHOUT POINTING . COUNT THESE LINES

WITHOUT POINTING . COUNT THESE LINKS

LOOK AT ANY CLOSE OBJECT AS YOU OPEN AND CLOSE YOIJH EYES FOtt SEYEUAL MINUTES

CHOOSE EVERYTHING

56 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, I NEUTRALIZATION OF SUBJECTIVITY

/tty. AAj. vUvi^X&f -*f «-/ ,<* AA* .U^f .<*-*<* ~-*- ■ •

STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS

SANNAH NRUTUAMZI

- IN MIUUOU

- 1IY/1N WATRH

- l-OUCUINC KICK MOOT

- < i.«n!i BBTWRBN aiims AND I

- an<;i.i: OF BODY

- BRING HPUKAD our ON

- DI8PKU81NC HUM

- DIVIDING HAM? INTO MANY DUAIDfl

- SAM1-. UttACKtKT ON BA»ai AHM

- I.ISTRN1NG

CD BLDHII NBUTUALIZRS ":

- I1Y NOT BHRING SUSANNAH

- riir STANDING 01

- t.u: OTIIKU IIV GUA11DING a CLOTS and TDK LOSING 01 am. His BODY BXCRPT FOP. OKAD AND Alixi

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in CRNRUAI.

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\I.I/.ATION7

- HUTU ANIMAL AND BIUD AIM' LOOKING AWAY

DBSIDHS THIS LIST THRU! MUST UY MAN BOTUAUZATIONil IN

0P1UIATI0N IN THIS PAINTING.

ARAKAWA AND GINS 57

2. Localization and Transference

THE FOLLOWING WORDS AND FIGURES ATTEMPT TO LOCATE THIS AREA OF MEANING ( PERHAPS TO PINPOINT ) AN1) TO EXPLORE THIS MOBILITY OF THE CONFIGURATION WHICH SUGGESTS ITSELF. IN THIS CASE, PLEASE 1)0 NOT THINK OF THE CONTENT ONLY OF THE CONTAINER .

THAT

TUTS

THAT

1 I

THIS

IF POSSIBLE LOOK AT THAT.

IF POSSIBLE LOOK AT THIS

PUT THIS THAT IN ITS APPROPRIATE PLACE

58 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

"FIVE MILES" means

"CIIAIHS" auk

1 HEADACHE

2 DELICIOUS * COLOll

1

2 HIllTHDAYS

J MISS

<i. I 1

5 MELODIES

THIS KOUAUB IS Uf.ANK

ENCLOSURE POH ONI! ATTENTION SPAN

THESE AUK TWO Oil MOttE DOTS WHICH WB11B PfflPlTWB ffWfffrwi WHICH GOULD NOT

111! SEPARATED.)

...no,, ,,OTS SHOULD APPROACH THE VIEWER AT REGULAR SrSlUjS STARTING FROM THE MOST DISTANT BOUNDARY SUGGESTED DY THIS FIGURE

THIS SYMBOL IS THIS -

ARAKAWA AND GINS 59

1 THE LENGTH OF DECISION

2 NEXT TO THE SELECTION OF A MISTAKE

3 GEOMETRY OF DECISION

4 THE NAT CHE OF TASTE OR BULLSHIT

NATURAL HISTORY

60 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 2 LOCALIZATION AND TRANSFERENCE

3. Presentation of Ambiguous Zones

3 PRESENTATION OF AMBIGUOUS ZONES EVERYTHING IS AMBIGUOUS AS WELL AS THE JUDGEMENT THAT SOMETHING IS AMUIGUOUS . AS SOON AS ANY FACT IS PRESENT El), AMBIGUITY APPEARS AS THE ZONE OF ALTERNATE POSSIBILITIES . ATTEMPTS TO SELECT (JUXTAPOSE) AMBIGUOUS ZONES WHICH MIGHT EXPLAIN ONE ANOTHER OR THE ( AMBIGUOUS ) NATURE OF AMBIGUITY .

J)A sf&o %*** ■"> A*n£++*OM*0

%±> PKi- sCo Xto^e*-* *> ^mAf****** .

THEN THE ENTIRE AREA IS AT LEAST TEN TIMES AS AMBIGUOUS

USE ALL OF THE ABOVE TO SAY ^^ OR lV&~

ARE THESE ZONES FLAWLESS ?

IN THE NON-SENSE what is the ratio

ZONES PRESENTER TO AMBIGUITIES EMPLOYED ?

OF

ARAKAWA AND GINS 61

THIS IS A COHESIVE •

VISCOUS .

adhesive * sessile . tenacious . ukseparated . adherence

AND/ OU AX

AMBIGUOUS

ZONE

Y E S

NO

1)0 VOU LIKE TIMS PAINTING ?

11 LANK

62 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 3 PRESENTATION OF AMBIGUOUS ZONES

AT THIS MOMBNT THB WHOLB STHUCTURE KBPBAT8 IT8BLV ( ANOTHBll SCALE ? MBBCTJON ? )

THIS IS AN AMBIGUOUS X-ltAY OF ANYTHING. IS THIS AN AMBIGUOUS X-KAY OF ANYTHING?

BUT SOMETHING IS MISSING

r

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i-.vrn 01 THBsi: is iilsiiii- down

_

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'<^L/-

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ARAKAWA AND GINS 63

* TO UAKK A :*-» MODEL OF THIS-PKRHAPS BASED ON DOUBLE HBLIX IV THAT ONE DAY EXISTS THEN THE OUALLITY OF AMBIGUITY MIGHT CHANGE

* AMBIGUOUS ZONKS EXIST WITHIN BACH STATEMENT OR ItEPKBSENTATION AND ACBOSS THE CONCEPTUAL DISTANCE WHICH SEPARATES THESE

* HOW TO ESTIMATE THE EXTENT OF THESE ZONKS . . . . ?

* BOW NOT TO THINK IN TERMS OV ESTIMATION BUT TO DEAL WITH AMBIGUOUS ZONES AS BASIC UNITS

64 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 3 PRESENTATION OF AMBIGUOUS ZONES

4. The Energy of Meaning

I Till! FNFRGY OF MHANING A STUDY OF SIGN PHOCFSS IN MOTION, AS MOTION; THIS WILL INCLIJDF A HFPOUT OF CIJHHFNT THFOMFS ( MOCHFMICAL, PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL ASPFCTS ) AS WKLL AS FUHTHFU SPECULATION

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?>7*>j

GUHY ARROWS -RANDOM ORGANIZING PRINCIPLKS IN PRK-KNKRGY STATK WIIITK AHHOWS— RKPRKSKNT TDK UNSPKCIFIKD

uiiAirviU IS NOT COVKRIOI BY A WOHl> on A Willi i: nil GRKY ARROW IN I HIS DIAGRAM lU'Plu'siNl-^ I'VHK I \Sl SP KC'll.l) AMI 1UB IIA1IBLY SUSPUCTKIJ IN IJV1JRY CC.NTKXT Tm^hh\NKKVt ANDTHK PURPOSK Ol INDICATING THIS HI-lli: HAVE K» DO WITH TIIK fflOTIcSfSTB CRUCIAL ROLH WHICH SUCH UNSUSPECTED CNON-KXISTKN1 FORCISS PLAY IN IJSTADLISHING A GROUND.

ARAKAWA AND GINS 65

-

1

AS VOW lui-W MA : s'.VKCT THT. IXHN IXTCi v: 111 VAiVT

I>UAW dots into links wnn-K

BYPASSING T):

nim APMloPlUATi; KYB IIOTIOl H LWH DACK IWTO

DttlQINATINC DOTS AT KITHI-:!'.

A CARD BECOMES A POOT

-*-/-

•<r-

e-a-iv a

-4±J~t+*U~('tf~rt~- w

'- »>r>K,lt—A

huh

DRAW KYKS 0ACU AJMJ FOttTH TO CONNIMTI' DOTS INTO MKKK j

Q&**H_ u-m/CL cotrvuAA+n*. •

i. A*bCi&—*<. -Asi*-

66 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 4 THE ENERGY OF MEANING

im/mai TO THB POT15NTIAL KNIJUGY PATHS TAK13CMAKI3) AS MUCH ISNISUOY AS POSSIBLE

I

;W- Jt Ma—

X*~

j+xU+rv*—**/.

(fit.- vu*X*»r*±. *fi—

STAR 15

VRAKAWA AND GINS 67

5. Degrees of Meaning

5 DKGRKKS OF MKANING

KXKRCISKS TO STUDY THK OPERATION OF ABSTRACTION THROUGH THIS ALTKRATION OF SIGNIFICATIONS HY DKGRKKS ( ANGLK , POSITION . INTENSITY , PKRSPKCTIVK . ■•• > AND THK RANGE OF THIS NOTION OF D12GRKKS IN ABSTRACTION THROUGH KXTKNSIVK COMPARISON OF THESE . ( TO SURROUND DEGREE HY DEGREES ? )

USB THK FACT THAT

THK ABOVK OBJKCT ( :~~jU~^f- -^ <&-*— *^*A- *4f**& >

THK ABOVK PAINTING ( >

THK ABOVK GAMK ( (km+*^ >

THK ABOVK STRUCTURE C -#c Jk**Z*A*— #f Mu. <Xu«*ZZiA^ >

THK ABOVK DIAGRAM < OC^fn^^- }

IS ISOMORPHIC TO ANYTHING ( CHAIR ♦ LANDSCAPK ♦ AIRPLANE , HAND , CAKE « ETC • •

TO SURROUND DKGRKK BY DKGRKKS THK ABOVK SOUND

68 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

TI1BSB AUK Al SIS'-"

USB THIS

TITLBS: *~.

TIIBSB AH SIJ8B

j huoM FOB COUHBCTIOM |

[{OUGHT

TIIBSB AllK ALL THB SAMB SIKH DO NOT ALLOW FOR CORttBCTION

WAR OF THB WORLDS

VRAKAWA AND GINS 69

THE TWO ARRAS SEPARATED BY THU GRAY STRIP < MOVABLE ) SHOULD MBVBB BB UNITED IN ONB PBRCBPTION

JL

DBGRBBS OP PBRMBATION NON ****«*&, PUNCTIONAL

NON XU^Ay SBNSU

USBLBSS OB MOBE

r

OPBN THIS TO HAVi: A DIM A VI;

OPBN THIS TO HAVE A DBJA VII

1	I
i 1 1 [	jj

l*=i

70 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 5 DEGREES OF MEANING

A 13 C 1) IS V G II I J K L M Z

1234 5 (> 78 9

CAT HAN MAT DOG HAT COW GOT HOY

WHISPER WHISTL1S COV1SR PAIR WOOL SH1S1SP

N1SV1SR MINI) WHAT HIS SAYS

HOP1S TO S1515 YOU SOON AGAIN

KINA1SSTH1STIC SCULPTURlfc

f

I

VARY THIS RATH OF PRONUNCIATION ACCORDING TO THIS L1SNGTH OF TIM1S SP15NT TOUCHING THIS OHJ1SCT

T II A S

ARAKAWA AND GINS 71

6. Expansion and Reduction — Meaning of Scale

(> EXPANSION AND REDUCTION-MEANING OF SCALE

ATTEMPTS TO OBSERVE THE REGULATORY OPERATIONS OF SCALE THROUGH EXERCISES FOR EXPANDING AND RE- DUCING BOTH PARTIAL AND OVER-ALL PATTERNS. SOME OF THESE MAY BE USED AS PROBES TOWARD THE DIS- COVERY OF CRITICAL POINTS OF NON-CONFORMITY.

>12N

THIS IS 1,000,000 x ITS SIZE

SMELL THIS

72 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

, «™«xt t« ri«v« Kirv TO ACTUALIZE THIS DIAdHAM THE NEON SI N S 1 HJ K „,",?]", GREEN TO RED. AS EACH AREA EXPAN11 YE";^ AS SHowN IN

33 S5JBS S* ^WJSi <>r THE KEY WILL BLEND

ARAKAWA AND GINS 73

J ±.

_c I 2_

THIS MAY SUDDENLY START TO EXPAND

A NEW IAPANES

THE DIAGRAM OF BOTTOMLESS

~~ n | « | 2 | v. | J [~~

o — i — »— r

74 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 6 EXPANSION AND REDUCTION-MEANING OF SCALE

i\l\% 10: 40 KM 100 n A

wnmurs this punch

THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS BETWEEN PARALLEL LINKS (EXPANSION AND REDUCTION IN FIVE PARTS)

>,RAKAWA AND GINS 75

7. Splitting of Meaning

7 SPMTTIJMi OP MKANINCJ

PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA ( S,5gYA£0™^

76 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

THIS IS AliOUT TO SPLIT

-iibam

-NKCK

„TJIOUAX

^""ls

p^FOUKAllM

-HANI)

-THIGH

p^=-»lM)()T

1

talking on walking

!

a wmm

say OTUL think Xwxr .

ARAKAWA AND GINS 77

I . FOUND . THIS . GLOVK. IN . MY . DUAWK1I . YBSTBH- DAY . I . CUT . IT . IN . HAM'. I . SRWBU . OP • KACII ■ HAL- V , IT . TOOK . Ml- . TWO . II- OIJUS . AND . POIITY-PIVK MINOTKS .

/f*J AXUo <***~ >f~ sGi~i«so *~U{ -<Sc -£p~i_

ffff.

78 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING 7 SPLITTING OF MEANING

11% 1VIV1KHI

iu. V

VTTRIBUTION

KctnuntlKf for Ar r . p»1 . ■

Imputation, detention from TJ-, nffil-ln'lon; pnlifrrc ^■

npUn&tlnn *C linlrrnrrfcil.™) 53; rouonwhyAc (co«x) Ii3

V lUrD »--r'» -. Impu't ,

frfw -, Uy -, |w»il -i ira<r -, bnn» lion,, lo; put -, «■!- down- lo, ch»nt> -, rrouaa- i nj Inmvl wllb, taign «j

auM, rhirfr Wilh. I.l*iiir. I»\ •' 'I"

door of, father upon; oM\* tnih, •ffilul. . uanml lor, J.n\T Irom, point oul il.. -laUOU ki ISS; Ik • I Ik.. II .omr», pul the «.ddk oo tho nr.hl bone.

Ad) »linl.ulcd fa I ; »linliul»l.l«. Ar r . r.

jf.rf) l&l; puUllTC

Adv. hcorr-, the •Inrx, on •c.oiuil of, bmw, oiMn«

m 'hjmtj In, (or

wheon-. pro

wh. ' wh«Won-r whfw.' how -ron..». - U. - haptens- il* b«W do» It hipprnT

iy; ion* ho., - ur othtr

Ph/. il^t u why; *.« i«» l«olrjn»»;

- '

HVfll

,.IAIH».

I TO TUB LAS'I

ARAKAWA AND GINS 79

8. Reassembling

H R15ASS12MHLIXG AN INVESTIGATION OF THIS FL15MFNTS OF 11KASS1SM11LY AND OF THK POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS OF TII1SS12 IN OHDUll TO CHANGE USAGE

ABC

A B = C

A B = C A + B = C

A -tB = C

ABC A ^ B = C

A * B = C

A + B

TO WHAT BZTBNT IS = A FUNCTION OF + ?

IL + ^* A~. }*+**. ( JtUrunZU ) *J>**M »f- =

80 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

I

PBRCBIVB A AS B IMMEDIATELY UPON RECOGNITION OF THIS PROBLBM. SOLUTION MAY BB PROVIDBD (TRIGGERED BY UNDERLYING SIMILARITIES?) BY AN INSTANTANEOUS DIVERSION OF A INTO B. IF NOT. THE FOLLOWING EXERCISES MAY All) S1IBSEOUBNT TRANSFORMATIONS

PREPARATIONS OR ELEMENTS FOR REASSBMBLY

1 111 W IIS ION

*H~~-

J

■

•Z REMOVAL

TRANSPOSE . SEPARATE.!) ISPLACIj^lTDb4lAW.CHA

NOB • IJB WjPPvRWMOVK . 15

mpt4JQ^8?&t.- II ofp/mibvkX^^ooii

bye

RANSF

EH. BE GONB.PULLT>FF.T UANSMIT.PUSHOIIT.BY

w

ARAKAWA AND GINS 81

FOB DIAGRAMS OF A AND Ji RBFBR HACK TO FIRST PANRL ( DIFFUSION )

3 mmncTiQN

*

4

UtUX. **x. JtUu^ ? U*A~£ ^ Xtu*,?

I

12 o'dotk

18(5!)

I

STAND BBTWRHN RITHBR SOT OF LINRS

PREPARATIONS OR RLRMHNTS FOR 1WASSKMRLY (

4 strktchino

6 COVBRINO

FRONT

\t~J- a

OUR BYBS

i

HACK

82 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 8 REASSEMBLING

7 LAYKKINU

J-f. ,1a, fTls •{. M-jl. *if**~G*

H PILMNW AND CASTING

ARAKAWA ANO GINS 83

9 MFASIJRIXG (JUDGING)

Dl-CIDF WHICH 1SACH OF TII12S12 RFSFMHLFS MOST A Oil II

w

WHICH WOULD HI- MOllH USFFUL FOR MEASURING THIS A OR II ?

KSTIMAT12 THIS 12FF12CT OF«

A'

PI211C12IVI2 A* AS 13'

HOW MUCH MOU12 DIFFICULT IS THIS PROHLFM THAN ITS PROTOTYPE ?

/C*-»A^ *A" A fc*^-v^/- «~ ^£+-u*L

n

U/A^T -<^ ^€Xx_. ^*/u£Ax<*t oLuX^^c^. {s*+a*lI£*-

a «~U n?

£»#, A -«i*&- H . ^ei^v*: A ^A- 1) , ^ A ^*^- H , -*G-

U/AUA^ Xtrxrt^ U*n*y**-~ st»~

A ** H ?

84 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 8 REASSEMBLING

9. Reversibility

.

» Ri:vi:nsmiLiTY

TO STRKTCH Till: CONCUPT OF BRING AliLR TO Hi: RRVKRSRD WHIM? EXPLORING THK FLEXIBILITY OP SUCH NOTIONS AS POSITION, CHANGK, SYMMETRY. BTC. I ALTHOUGH THIS IS CLOSRLY RKLAT1SD TO SKVKRAL OTIIKR SUBDIVISIONS IT IS F1SLT THAT A Sl-PAHATl- INVESTIGATION MAY PROVE USEFUL)

A MNEMONIC DEVICE

LOOK A, THIS FOR MORU THAN ONK UIXUTH TO KRNF YOUR OWN NAM.

I

A MNEMONIC DEVICE FOB FORGETTING

ARAKAWA AND GINS 85

SUM	MOM	TUE	WED	IHII	FRI	SAT
			30	2!)	2S	27
2(J		24		DO	21	20
1!)	IS	17	Hi
11	10

WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTJ5N ? WHAT HAS BERN FORGOTTEN? WILL YOU WERE ? WILL YOU R1£M1!MRRRED ?

86 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 9 REVERSIBILITY

HOW KVKRYTHINOl

PORTRAIT 01f A THOUGHT WHICH BYPASSES EVERYTHING

summer to reversals

SHALL WE DAN CM OH MAY I COMB IN

94

VRAKAWA AND GINS 87

10. Texture of Meaning

10 T15XTURK OF MKANING

PKRCKIV121) TKXTIJRK— TKXTURK CM? PERCKPTION1 TKXTURK

OF COGNITION; TKXTURK OF AMOTIONS (DISPOSITION). ATTEMPTS TO THROW OPKN THIS CONCEPT OF MKANING BY PKKLING HACK THK LAYKRS OF TKXTURK .

USING ONLY THIS BRUSH , DRAW KACII TKXTIJRK FURTHER OUT

88 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

1UK
		RDGII
SURFACE	SURPACB	-.
STTBl'ACn	-
;	SURFAfiP0"
BDGli		RDC
	BDGB	SURFACE
1!»«1! SU11FACU .. BDGB		BDGB
•	•m •»	X

E1NJQ uui_oxji million wm.Bs in bach si;cno.\ .

TI1KN J- ILL LUliM _AVITH_SOMKXlIINU_LIKIi_T.ms .

o

X-RAY or tbxturb

TOUCH IT

ARAKAWA AND GINS 89

I

WINDOW

FLOOD

CHAIR

BOOK

TABLE

PENCIL

LIGHT

PLANT

SHOES

FOOD

CIGAUETTE

RED

Minnon

WATEU

WINDOW

FLOOD

CHAIR

BOOB

TABLE

PENCIL

LIGHT

SHOES POOD

CIGARETTE BED

MIllHOll WATER

I'Y EXTHJ

TEXTSTAUS ?

90 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 10 TEXTURE OF MEANING

11. Mapping of Meaning

11 MAPPING OP MEANING

CONSIDER THAT ANY REPRESENTATION Oil SYSTEM MAY BE IJSED AS A MAP WHEN PAIRED WITH OR PLOTTED AGAINST AN OBJECT OR AN ENVIRONMENT. THIS SECTION DEALS WITH RE- PRESENTATIONS OF « THE PROCESS OP MAPPING ITSELF I THE DOUBLE ASPECT OP SIGN* THE RELATION OP DENOTATION TO CONNOTATION (PROPERTY OP MEANING)* THE RELATIONS OP SIGNIFIEDS TO EACH OTHER. USE WILL BE MADE OF PRO JECTION • DISTORTION AND 'NEGATIVE' MAPPING IN AN EFFORT TO SURROUND AND

SUGGEST THE ARRANGEMENTS OP AREAS OF MEANING .

A LINE AND FIVE MAPS

11 i

ARAKAWA AND GINS 91

D

GOOD * GOOD * GOOD . GOOD * GOOD

o

GOOD A GOOD n GOOD .: GOOD ■> GOOD m

D

HAD » HAD . HAD « HAD a DAD

D

DAD a HAD .. HAD c DAD ..

D

NBITHim. NIHTHK1L NBITHBB. NBITHBH- N1JITHHR.

NONB OF THIKB IS RIGHT OH W1IOKO

92 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, 1 I MAPPING OF MEANING

MAP OF AN AllJ'A

w y. f xit- &ez m^ £****( ***-

MfTr sis y> **«. z^^c #*-. ^fu~-

\\% /***<. -tiJ^ -J (rM-- '1 Yt *o4- /U/\s+*«&£*'*+-

15 y. ^ Att- ttjZT m*~*« f*»~*A*( K) K rf- Mt- d+G ***** A^m^/AXt.

11 % m*st* <6**k. ~t4 frM— .

6 % AC n+T~ *ff~+Sl+M^

ARAKAWA AND GINS 93

\IGIIT TAB L1C

\ LAMP

/

TELEPHONE

SHADOW

PA N

CLOTHES

PL A \T

(HAIR

DESK

94 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 1 1 MAPPING OF MEANING

12. The Feeling of Meaning

12 THE PEELING OF MEANING

TOWARD A DEMONSTRATION OF THIS AFFECTIVE ROLE IN COGNITION THROUGH AN INVESTIGATION OF AFFECTIVE VALUE AS A MEASURING DEVICE; EXERCISES FOR THE MOVEMENT OF EMOTIONS IN AN ATTEMPT TO SET PARAMETERS FOR FEELING THROUGH CONTORTION, OVERLAY, REVERSAL AND OTHER DIS- RUPTIVE SYSTEMS . ASSUMING THE VALIDITY OF THE JAMES

LANGE THEORY, IF THERE IS AN INTERNAL SENSORY BASIS FOR FEELING. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS PERCEPTION ?

,*£<_- ote&C

I ; i I i I ■• » ■ ■ ■ ■■ > ■• i f i ■ i i ■• i ■

±r^;£^T-^

12 1

ARAKAWA AND GINS 95

DKPKN'DINtt ON

96 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 12 THE FEELING OF MEANING

A A & A

ALMOST STABLIJ

IW1IMN0	l	SKCONDS
PIUSMNO	o	SBCONDS
PKKLINH	-1	SKCONDS
PKKLINO	w	SKCONDS
i NO	^^
ri:i:i.iN(J	5,746	SECONDS
PKKLINfS	lip 05	SKCONDS
IWKLING	»'i,092	SBCONDS
lWHUNti	3^05,071	SBCONDS
l'HKUNG	R.012.4SO	SKCONDS
IWKMNG	40,:i(>7,14»	SECONDS
i\<;	W11.CM

A WOMAN'S II A IK

A MANS HAIW

%

1\ l'/ltl.

ARAKAWA AND GINS 97

13. Logic of Meaning

13 LOGIC OF MEANING

VIEWING LOGIC AS THE ORDER AND/ Oil CONTEXT IN WHICH ANY MEANING OCCURS, TO STUDY ITS FUNCTION AS A STRUCTURING ELEMENT ( POINTS OF APPLICATION TO SOMETHING] AND SUGGEST ALTERNATIVES

*if*&&, s£&+>9- JU*x*~ tyx^xJL, *Jkl&*i*^cJt

LOGIC OF

-MEANING

MEANING

WHAT'S THIS POINT

L.-J

Ml

W.1

54

54

98 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

COf'Ott SAMPLKS

r

$k

Sm

USK ANY COMBINATION 01' THB BBTS DBLOW TO DKMONSTUATE THE LOGICAL CONNECTIONS OF TIIK ONK ABOVE

WHOSE BLUE

USTAHLISn A COMMON MBKTING POINT UOH 15ACH S151 OP ARROWS

^RAKAWA ANO GINS 99

FORTY - TWO (42)

100 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 13 LOGIC OF MEANING

14. Construction of the Memory of Meaning

CONSTRUCTION OP THH MICMOllY OF MKANING

A STUDY OF MKMOllY: ITS OPERATIONS, ITS SCOPK, ITS ROLF IN THIS REALIZATION OF M13AN1NG. TOWARD TII12 CONSTRUCTION OF A TOTAL SITUATION IN WHICH MEMORY CAN R13MKMB13R ITS12LF (ITS OWN OPERATIONS)

v

^3^^

|&**^!

^-^

|M&»^kM«u> -

NIGHT

ARAKAWA AND GINS 101

QUARTER 01' A SECOND HALF A SECOND ONE SECOND TWO SECONDS FIVE SECONDS THIRTY SECONDS FORTY -FIVE SECON1 ONE MINUTE

DURATION IN PRESENT TIME FOR MEMORIES OF BLUB

QUARTER OF A SECOND HALF A SECOND ONE SECOND TITO SECONDS FIVE SECONDS THIRTY SECONDS FORTY-FIVE SECO ONE MINUTE

NE DAY ONE WEEK

FORTNIGHT ONE MONTH ONE YEAR ONE DECADE HALF A CENTURY ONE CENTURY

INDICATION OF DURATION IN PRESENT TIME FOR MEMORIES OF PAST PERIODS

BLUE INTO BLUE. PRESENT INTO PAST. RELATION OF REMEMBERING TO MEMORY.

NE DAY

iNE WEEK A FORTNIGHT ONE MONTH

NE YEAR ONE DECADE HALF A CENTURY

NE CENTURY

BLUE INTO THE PAST < OUT OF THE BLUE )

102 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 14 CONSTRUCTION OF THE MEMORY OF MEANING

£.0W T0HTO3 flHTTAOa

AdhDUH O'f aau

l .ovi Korrojoeaii

yau awo

uaaw awo

•rciniwrjioa A-

htwom aw

iiaby awo

auAJaa awo

YfluTyiao A <LIAH<

ynuTwao aw

sow viorrojoaaii

jjA'jaa or aau

t .ow Toaaaa aaTTAoa

UWOOffii A 10 JMTHAUO

aviooae A H.I AH

uwooae avio

auwosae owt

aavioDae avr-i

eawoora ythiht

;ooae avro-YTJioa

aTiivnu awo

WAiswuusuMsi TViaaafli wow aiua t«a<i craA*! Twaoaa > teat Twaaaaa anr

^jUjU^U

awooaa a mo hhtaauo

a/iooaa a mjah

«iwooaa awo

aowooaa owt

auwooara avn

aawooaa ythiht

•aawooaa avia-YTfloa

-otuwim awo

oWLflaoMaMaji Twaaaiw wow tzat t3a*i wow Twaaana ao Yaowai/i

yao aw

xaaw awi

THOIWTJIOH

htwom aw

iiAaY aw

auA'jau aw

TOUTKB3 A 91AH<

YHUTwao awo

ao.ni anT orvn ba anj« am' ao too owuiaowaMaji

sjdka nairroviA ao auia aairro hht .owiirraMoa jihomsicimi oT.aioaaa

14.5

ARAKAWA AND GINS

103

		x
\
	\	/
	/	I
/

vrv

/

,

H1SVOLVIS M5SOLVK

WHICH LKAVI2S

/

SOM12 OF TBB THINGS WHICH THH ABOVH DOTS AND

LINKS INDICATE AU12: A ROOM, A WINDOW7, A FLOOR,

A DOOR, A MAN, A TA11LK, A CUP, A m 40 , A SHADOW • •

104 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING, M CONSTRUCTION OF THE MEMORY OF MEANING

15. Meaning of Intelligence

15 MEANING OF INTELLIGENCE

AN EXPLORATION OF WHAT IS MEANT BY THE STATEMENT OF AN INTELLIGENCE, OF WHAT TWO Oil MORE ELEMENTS (ACTIVITIES?) AHE ALIGNED WHEN SOME X IS DECLARED INTELLIGIBLE AND OF THE POSSIBLE (IMPOSSIBLE) REASONS BEHIND (IN FRONT OF?) THIS.

•K

AN AREA OF INTELLIGENCE ( RIGHT AND WRONG )

~%

AN AREA OF INTELLIGENCE ( WRONG AND RIGHT )

ARAKAWA AND GINS 105

IIM) LIMIT OF ICHHOlt

THE aa Xr

oa OV jU Jdy .

( ) FIRST SIGN OP SAPIKNCE < ON REFLECTION >

USK TWO OR TIIRBK DIPFEUENT WAYS

106 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING. 15 MEANING OF INTELLIGENCE

PLACE

PLACti

1PLACB5

^

PLACE

PLACE

i

P ACE

IF POSSIBLE , PLEASE FOUGHT ABOUT

ANY PLACB NOT MAHKB1) PLACH SHAPE

IF POSSIBLE . PLBASB FOROBT ABOUT ANY SHAPB NOT MARKED SIIAPB

ABOUT

WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS THIS

noosi: von ,\ COCKROACH

I DON'T OIVR UP

PL1SASK DON'T LAUGH

r WHOSE MOMENT IS THAT l.\ WHICH I HAS NOT VET EVEN BEEN THOUGHT

ARAKAWA AND GINS 107

16. Review and Self-Criticism

MAKER, BETWEEN ABOVE AND BELOW

Where edge blank eddies The texture of receivability

By

Vectors may saturate

Pieces of layered approximations received

The surfacing of a parallel drift

generating a sense of out and in,

angular spin, the depth-maker of a surface

Distance of time, prehole.

Tunneling volumes of degrees as if

broken tubes

Within but between the numbers being counted

The setting of a broken rail

The enormous movability of a sucking passage (omnidirectional)

random, partial shrinking

Appearance of some profile junctures, some linear burps Many

Volumes exchanged, a speed of shifting

Place for construction of a core of flexibility only

Diffuse receding that parallels and contours waiting texture

The unique range of elasticities of impressionable stretching, not yet texture

The regulating of reflection, deflection, inflection

Coalescence of sound joints, guides

Realization of mounting and push of duration (instant group)

Both senders and receivers, configurational coverings on all and any scale

Pull of breath

To keep the end in sight; balance

As always the necessity of out of the blue, "to" and "from"

A sudden drop into a scale of action

The call of continuity

(1973)

108 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

ARAKAWA AND GINS 109

The Mechanism of Meaning

An ongoing project, Arokawo and Modeline Gins'i The Mechanism of Meaning began to take shape in 1963. when tKe eorliesl panels were made, and was completed, for the most part, by 1 973 All panels in the first fifteen subdivisions dole from 1 963-73 The two panels in subdivision 16 Review and Self-Cntiasm. doting from 1996, link The Mechanism of Meaning to Arokawo and Gins's recent wort on reversible destiny architecture

To dote, two editions of The Mechanism ol Meaning have been mode The edition featured in the present exhibition is reproduced in this volume [The other edition wos ocquired in 1989 by the Sezon Foundation. Tokyo |

Mony of the panels incorporate colloged elements, including thre For all panels, the dimensions of the canvos ore 96 « 68 inches

sionol ob|ects

Table of Contents

page 54 Acrylic on canvas

1. Neutralization of Subjectivity

fig. I I Acrylic and silkscreened paper on canvas

fig I 2 Acrylic and pencil on convos

fig I 3 Acrylic, photographs, ond silkscreened Mylor on canvos

fig I 4 Acrylic, oil, and plastic on convos

fig I 5 Acrylic ond photograph on canvos

2. Localization and Transference

fig 2 / Acrylic, pencil, and wood ruler on canvas fig 2 2 Acrylic and photographs on canvos fig 2 3 Acrylic ond pencil on canvos fig 2 4 Acrylic ond oil on convos

3. Presentation of Ambiguous Zones

fig 3 1 Acrylic on canvos

fig 3 2 Acrylic, glue, metal forks, oil, plastic bottles of Elmer's Glue-All. and

plastic recorders on convos fig 3 3 Acrylic on canvas fig 3 4 Acrylic and pencil on canvos fig 3 5 Acrylic, cotton shirt, and pencil on convos fig 3 6 Acrylic, oil. ond pencil on canvos

4. The Energy of Meaning

fig 4 I Acrylic and colored pencil on canvos

fig 4 2 Acrylic, oil, pencil, ond wicker bosket on canvos

fig 4 3 Acrylic, notebook, pencil, ond string on canvas

fig 4.4 Acrylic, cardboard, mirrors, pointed rope, ond painted string on canvos

5. Degrees of Meaning

fig 5 I Acrylic, colored pencil, and playing cords on canvas fig 5 2 Acrylic on convos hg 5 3 Acrylic and synthetic fur on canvas

fig 5 4 Acrylic, cork, magnetic clip, nails, painted assemblage (Mylar, poper. string, wire, ond wood), paper, rubber strip, wire, wood, and wood measuring stick

fig 5 5 Acrylic, bulldog clips, composition-board cabinets containing mirrors, and

ploslic sheets on canvas fig 5 6 Acrylic, level, melol chain, newspaper, pockoged outdoor thermometer,

paintbrush, sponge, and wristwatch on convos

6. Expansion and Reduction — Meaning of Scale

fig 6 1 Acrylic, cotton rope. map. oil, and photographs on canvas fig 6 2 Acrylic, neon tubes with plostic electrical unit, and oil on convos fig 6 3 Acrylic, convos shoes, photographic enlargements, and wood ruler on canvas fig 6 4 Acrylic and pencil on convos

fig 6 5 Acrylic, handkerchiefs, metal, oil on canvas in wood frame, rubber balloon, ond rubber bond on convos

110 THE MECHANISM OF MEANING

7. Splitting of Meaning

fig. 7 I Acrylic, oil, and photo-printed canvas on canvas

fig 7 2 Acrylic and pencil on canvas

fig 7 J Acrylic and oil on canvas

fig 7 4 Acrylic, eye patch, metol hook, ond plastic slide viewer on convos

fig 7 5 Acrylic, cotton-glove halves, industnol tope, photocopies, and photographs

fig 7 6 Acrylic, oil, paper, paper-towel holder, and paper towels on canvas fig 7 7 Acrylic on canvas

8. Reassembling

fig 8 I Acrylic on canvas

fig 8 2 Acrylic, cardboard, lightbulb, lighlbulb socket, and painted duct tape on canvas

fig 8 3 Acrylic on canvas

fig 8 4 Acrylic, cork, industriol tape, paper,