07 ON THE TURNING AWAY: CRATER 308
2011
The Moon
SuckerPunch (online)
On the Turning Away: Crater 308
There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of
fact it’s all dark.
-Pink Floyd 1973
Daedalus
Crater lies on the far side of Earth’s Moon at 5.9˚ S, 179.4˚ E, measuring 93
km in diameter and 3.0
kilometers in depth. Near its center lies the location on the Moon measuring
the furthest point from Earth’s surface and, given the Moon’s synchronous orbit
about Earth, firmly resists ever knowing its host planet. Despite this
ambivalence mankind insists upon knowing Daedalus: first naming it after the
distraught Greek mythological father of fallen Icarus, then measuring its
dimensions according to humankind’s “universal” base-10 standards; endeavoring to
photograph and map its details to increasing levels of detail, and finally,
suggesting a short list of “purposeful” uses best suited to this potential site
for human occupation. Were they not so tragically self-centered these efforts
would seem comical in the face of the crater’s disinterest in our ever knowing
anything about it. After all, the impulse toward humanizing Daedalus would
suggest that someone might ask, at some point, “what does Daedalus think about
all of this?” But of course Daedalus is dead, yes? So that would be
preposterous. Best to labor forward with plans for his future role in mankind’s progress...
For
all of this, we are skeptical of the urge to colonize Daedalus and its dark
side environs and yet understand the impulse at the heart of this call for
submissions. Indeed, we could not resist, hence our entry. But like Libeskind,
Eisenman, Boullée,
and other designers before us whose initial impulses were to question
architecture’s first moves on a site charged with the politics of human
occupation we ask that you forgive our refusal to engage the subject of
normative programming. With due respect, we feel it presumptuous to promote the
kind of colonial flag-planting championed by NASA with its muscular, focused
agendas toward human progress with its attendant quickness toward utilitarian
practicalities. Darkside radio antennae, let alone lunar hotels (run by Virgin
Galactic, we assume) are not for Daedalus or, as we prefer, Crater 308 (its
original, pre-Greco-romantic nomenclature.) Instead, we propose a more
ambivalent study of object in space...
As
we know, craters are indexes of the impacts that create them. As it happens,
Crater 308 is the largest crater on the Moon so it must be that whatever
created it must surely have been fantastic. And yet, as with all craters, that
original object was obliterated in the act of producing its remarkable
signature upon the face of a surface. So sad that it no longer remains. Alas,
the act of imagining that original thing is our charge, and since it could have
been so many different things we feel free to propose that which most
readily comes to our mind. So glamorous it must have been, we think...it
probably sparkled like the best disco ball, but was surely irregular as all
things are in the real world...
To
trace the object from its index is not the game here. After all, that would be so 1990‘s. Instead we propose something more optimistic, which is to
say, not beholden to the specifics of site and what came before. We imagine a
thing respectful of its place in the crater yet desirous of its own presence in
the lunar landscape, a thing nearly as ambiguous as the site itself. Nevermind
program, plan, and section. This object presents nothing but elevation, and
even that seems obscure. Sometimes it appears in crystalline clarity, other
times darkened by the shock-black of space. In the beginning, Joy Division did
not know what they were after, so they left the back side of their Unknown
Pleasures album cover mostly empty - white lines denoting categories of
information surrounding the black space of content itself. So too is it here:
Despite
the mystery we would venture to specify some things we think we know. This work
is to do with nothing other than rendering: hence no program, plan, or section.
Disciplinarily-speaking, the rendering seems to be the core of expertise as
architecture waxes toward new horizons. This is why, in each image, sometimes
the object’s exquisite facial qualities are presented with hard clarity and
other times they are occluded by the blackness of their environment. Regarding
the latter, the question to ask is “are they there at all?” We are not sure but
we hope not because that would provide the object an unlimited array of
potential figurations and postures, a libertine position regarding the
architectural elevation. Shade and shadow regain lost status as the arbiters of
elevational expertise: sometimes crisp, sometimes soft, but always thereand aware of their role in architecture’s presentation. Look closely and
you see the role they play in extending the reach of the object and the
relation of the thing to its background. This may sound old-school (read:
phenomenology) but in contemporary discourse cast shadow plays a vital role in
the continual re-figuration of the restlessness of things. Dismiss it at your
peril.
Strange
as it may seem, a study of the perceived nature of things in the clarifying
dark and light of the Moon seems prescient at this time. A return to the renderingas sine qua non site of architectural speculation makes perfect sense in a
discipline where imaging the presence (and, in our submission, absence) of things has risen again to
preclude other forms of representation. This is nothing new, as in times past
the image of architecture has been its theoretical anchor as well as its
developmental pry-bar. So after at least fifty years of sublimation we relish
the opportunity to explore again the unique power of the rendering to move our
discipline toward novel positions. The harsh whites and depthless blacks of the
Moon afford no better point to reengage the visage and thing-ness of
architecture...it may be that here is the place where the unfinished technical
work of phenomenology might be readdressed, in an entirely new way...
They
say that they knew Syd Barrett had moved completely beyond human communication
was when the black of his pupils expanded to completely occlude the color of
his irises...