Leaving: The Scene of the House. Reconstructing an Architecture through Absence and Trace

Below is the word.doc Abstract, part of the 'Abstract package' which I sent Lilian today (it was due yesterday, arg!) It's a new direction, feels tingly and exciting, but probably also because my feet are not firmly on the ground and laden with reality and facts as yet. Still, here goes...

Abstract

I am of a curious nature. I have always wondered what goes on behind the locked gates and closed doors of my neighbours. Although we live within three metres of each other, I have never set foot inside. My only chance was the Saturday morning when they hastily moved out. I walked in boldly, unstopped. I looked around and I saw them, the ghosts.

This thesis seeks to revive the House and the lives of its past-occupants by examining the physical remainders within the house at the point after they have ‘pulled out of’ the home. The ‘architectural object’ is the HDB flat and the subjects are the anonymous past-occupants whose stories I will attempt to reconstruct through the investigation of material traces left behind in the event of evacuation.

In heeding Jean Baudrillard’s call to please follow [him] through the context of Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘the scene of the crime’, this thesis attempts to give proof of existence to the lives once inhabiting the House. Subverting the act of pursuing a subject, the House is in stasis, allowing the voyeur to peruse at a leisurely pace, peering through the detailed eyes of a detective searching for clues. Sifting through academic theories paired with the medium of photo-documentation of the disowned HDB flat, the scene of the House and its ‘innards’ will be exposed for investigation. A forensic framework will be undertaken to approach the discarded, disemboweled and abandoned space of the empty house in order to uncover its stories.

By indulging in this voyeuristic investigation of the twilight zone between absence and occupancy of the HDB flat and its absent past-occupants, this thesis hopes to shed light on a different theoretical framework such as forensic photography and the detective approach in arriving at an interpretation of an architectural space as mundane as the house next-door in the vein of the lives of the absent human figures.

This research seeks to expand on the range of existing evidence in the processing of architectural investigation, drawing on knowledge from architectural theory, history and criticism, performative art[1], the detective novel and philosophical ideas, presented through a mode of interpretation and writing that resembles that of a crime scene analysis. Altogether it weaves an alternative architectural tapestry in reading the mystery of the space behind the locked gates and closed doors of the HDB flat, based on its abandoned traces.

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[1] This refers to the range of art and photography guest-curated by art-writer and critic Ralph Rugoff for the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, “Scene of the Crime”. These pieces examine and present the world we live in through a deadpan or ‘forensic’ aesthetic. I have chosen ‘All the simple Old-Fashioned Charm’, 1984 by Alexis Smith, Bruce Nauman’s ‘Dead Center’, 1969 and Terry Allen’s ‘Memory House’, 1973 as some of the points of interest.

Bibliography

1. Rugoff, Ralph, Scene of the Crime, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997).
   “Vectors of Melancholy”, Peter Wollen, pp 23.
2. Baudrillard, Jean, Please Follow Me, from www.sophiecalle.net/writings.htm
3. Vidler, Anthony, Warped Space: Art, Architecture and Anxiety in Modern Culture, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001)
   “X Marks the Spot: The Exhaustion of Space at the Scene of the Crime”, pp 123.
4. Auster, Paul, The New York Trilogy, (London: Penguin Books, 2006)

In addition to these which formulate the basis of this abstract, I hope to draw on the following few which may help.

Selected Readings

1. Julia Kristeva’s “Abjection” concept in Powers of Horror: An essay in Abjection, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)
2. Jean Baudrillard’s essay, The Perfect Crime.
3. Ernst Bloch’s, “A Philosophical View of the Detective Novel”, in the Utopian Function of Art and Literature (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988)

I do not want to negate the previous readings I had done like Foucault and on Martha Rosler’s spaces “Terminal Transfers”, especially Philip Tabor’s “I am a Videocam”. Still on the idea of looking/watching, perhaps I can add the dimension of documenting/methods of documentation.

I have attached four slides of images ranging from just raw ideas beginning with Terence Lin’s HDB art, to random shots of Housing flats I took and some I found online and then the images in “Abstract slides 1 and 2” which are taken from the book by Ralph Rugoff, Scene of the Crime which are mainly slides of exhibited art work/photographs by artists relating to the idea of the ‘scene of the crime’.

The cover photo was searched online spells out the reason why I settled on this direction, in relation to the HDB object we’d talked about previously. However, the raison d’etre was when truthfully, when my neighbour on the same floor moved out just last Saturday (the day I returned from my trip) and my parents and I opened the unlocked doors and walked into the almost-empty flat. It sent tingles down my spine looking at the kind of messy emptiness and the remnants of some decorations and the discoloration of the flooring when the furniture was removed. In a sense, although I never knew how the house looked, I could from the mere evidence of the collected dust, wall paint, know how the space was used. Unfortunately, it did not at all strike me until I picked up Scene of the Crime and managed to piece together Paul Auster’s “Ghosts” with the entire tapestry of reading I had done (somewhat all over the place). Unfortunately by then when I tried to return to take photos of the flat (a day or two later), the housing agent had locked it up.

I intend not to be so ambitious as to attempt at documenting more than 2 flats (photos/analysis) as I am not certain if I am able to find such serendipitous fortune at these recently-vacated flats. The premise being, (hopefully) the vacated occupants do not know that I will be taking photos or it will no longer be an un(sub)conscious seizing of information should they choose not to leave certain objects, etc. In spite of this, I am sourcing for friends who know of/see neighbours moving out, then I will move in to do my ‘job’.

As of now, these ideas, and this direction seems to be very exciting but I know it may pose certain constraints on gathering evidence due to its very haphazard and ‘intrusive’ nature. I would love to pursue this topic/idea, but I will await your opinions! Thank you!