12.8.05
The Hieroglyphics of Driftwork
The Architectonality of Psychogeographicism or The Hieroglyphics of Driftwork
(in memoriam Guy Debord)
obscure & mysterious grottoes into which they enter, imitating serpents -- spaces of return to an intimacy that "once upon a time" was shattered by memory -- by the simultaneous reiteration & belatedness of memory -- that faculty of human consciousness "closet to the divine". But don't they say that "to forgive is human, to forget is divine" ? In the ritual reiteration or "remembrance" (dhikr) of the sufis one forgets the "self" precisely in order to recall the Self; -- thus to re-member is to erase separation, & this erasure is a species of forgetfulness. (In certain key Islamic buildings like the Alhambra the reiteration of dhikr as calligrammatic text becomes the very definition of built space as mnemonic device or "Memory Palace" -- not ornament but the very basis or crystal-precipitation-principle of architecture.)
"Since we are Jesus Christ," as one of the Brethren of the free Spirit boasted, "the only issue is that what is already perfect in us should be reiterated ..." This process however leads to a paradoxical un-learning -- hence to a loss of fear -- so that one can "let oneself be led by one's natural senses, like a little child". Now, the cave stands for unconsciousness; -- the goal however is not to lose unconsciousness but to recapture that which unconsciousness separated us from, that which consciousness "spoiled". Thus within the dark grotto itself memory must be paradoxically inscribed -- key images are reiterated (literally repeated in some cases by a palimpsestic or incisive over-drawing) -- images which represent out lost intimacy as a pantheon of animals ("good to think with") -- each animal a special joy or "divine" function. Thus the the cave becomes the first intentional architectural space, the intersection of unconsciousness (the bliss of "Nature") & consciousness (memory , reiteration).
