Nicholas Warnet - M.Arch ‘17 University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Thesis: Phantom Contingencies: Historical (Re)constructions Thesis Advisor: Perry Kulper
Henry Bergson’s theory of duration describes the passing of time as, “constant invention, creation of forms, and an elaboration of the absolutely new.” The work uses this statement to speculate on the power of temporalities in the derivation of new spatialities. An implementation and choreography of specifically tailored devices is used to calibrate, track, and harness inherent fluctuating characteristics as well as to uncover previous artifacts and inherent evidences of their site(s) in the production of ‘new’ histories.
The island of Alcatraz is used as a ‘first act’ for this cast of devices as they begin to reproduce histories as an iterative “memory theater” of what once was or what once is. Aforementioned devices begin to archive, curate, falsify, hybridize, splice, and combine historical characteristics of the island and ‘islandness’ (dummy paper-mâché heads, tales of unnecessary military artillery, inescapability, insular dwarfism, phantoms, panoramic vision, Native American inhabitation, annual triathlon events, tourism) as they reconstruct the ‘island’ in a new, modified location or test site. Over time simultaneity becomes imbued relationally on the site, existing as both a visible, fertile ground for invention and a graveyard of remnants from past historical modifications in the same moment. This simultaneity instigates relationships between artifacts, evidences, and recollections that might not have been previously explored and that begin to tease out possible spatial realms.
The diptych structure allows ‘new’ histories to be worked on, constructed, experienced, born, reborn, modified, deleted, and demolished. The device becomes a means for giving shape to and creating proximal relationships in the pursuit of existential investigations. A cast of characters ceaselessly interacting, the devices develop personalities over time (bunker blades disseminating decoys as they discretely hijack and falsify data, current can(n)ons taking core samples of water movements, panoptic surface tracers calculating the island’s edge and denoting any shifts in horizon, prophetic evidence harvesters negotiating historical impetuses and searching for what lies in waiting, remembering what has yet to come). Thus, degrees of separation from the ‘original’ history become inescapable and inevitable as imagined and unforeseen realms take front stage.