Between Writing And Painting

This Text Is The First In A Series Entitled "the Void And The City".  A Series Of 18 Texts Of Impressions To Tell The Void All Those For Whom The City Remains A Place That We Endure More Than We Experience. And To Take Another Look At The Space In Which We Evolve On A Daily Basis Without Really Knowing What It Represents For Each Of Us. This Text Dates From The Early 1980s.   1. LIFE, CITY, EMPTY I Don’t Know; What Does That Mean, But I Have A Relationship With The City That We Usually Reserve For Other People. A Woman Or At Least One A Loved One. Consequently, I Have Been Living For Quite Some Time With Uneasiness, Uneasiness, A Feeling That Is Difficult To Cope With. We Must Confront The Deterioration Of Urban Space And Particularly That Of The Outskirts, Although The Old Centers Do Not Escape It. With A Few Exceptions. At The Same Time, What Strikes Me Is How Little Attention Is Paid To This Phenomenon. First Of All, The Interested Parties Themselves. No Or Few Reactions To This Degradation By Those Who, It Seems To Me, Should Be The First To React. Is It Out Of Helplessness, Unconsciousness, Weariness? A Bit Of All Of That Certainly. And Then, There Is Something In Me That Forbids Me From Intervening To, Let's Say, "do Good." No, I Want To Be Well Beyond That. I Feel Concerned Because I Suffer From It And At The Same Time I Don't Feel Concerned. After All, I Tell Myself, If He Doesn't Find Anything There To Help Him, Say Again, Why Would I Go And Protest? To Be More Royalist Than The King? Want The Good Of People? No, It's Not About That. It's Not A Question Of Good, Of Charity‚ Or Humanism. It Is Rather A Question Of Awareness Of A Loss Of Something Fundamental. A Relationship With The Universe Broken, Disturbed. A Break With The Very Essence Of Things In Life. The Man Of The 20th Century Is, More Than Ever, In Crisis In His Conscience And In Return His Life Suffers The Consequences. It Is Not The City That Destroys Man, It Seems To Me, Current Time, But The Reverse To The Extent Thatù The Concept Of The City As It Has Been Developing Over The Past Fifty Years, First In The So-called Western World And Now Across The Entire Planet, Practically, Is Moving Forward. Goes Against Balance With The Universe When This Balance Should Always Be Sought After. In Its Realization, Which Is Far From Being The Case. Out Of Unconsciousness? Yes, Somewhere. But Also Through Forms Of Reasoning Disconnected From Reality. Fundamental Of What Is The Universe In Which Our Daily Lives Are Built. In This Sense, The Notion Of « Empty» That We Have In The West Is, I Think, An Obstacle To; The Evolution Of Minds On The Problems Of The City. Because It Is A Negative Connotation Which Initially Dominates At First. About This Term Of Vacuum. There Is Only One Thing To Do: See The Synonyms Offered By The Service Dictionary. About This Word. Empty = Zero, Null, Hollow, Nothing, Insignificant, Etc. There You Go The Definition Of Emptiness According To Western Thought. It Goes Without Saying That For Ordinary Mortals, The Word « Empty» Is Synonymous With « Nothing.” It Is A Space Where There Is Nothing, Where Nothing Happens! Now, In Taoist Thought For Example, We Are Told This: The Void Is A Full And Efficient Matter, It Is The Matrix Of The World, That Which Gives Life, To Its Essence. The Image Of The Mother's Womb. I Prefer This Thought. I Feel At Ease There; Comfortable. Besides, One Should Not Believe That Its “label” Taoist Instructions In The Eastern Regions Of Our Planet. I Like To Think That Ideas Have No Borders And That They Have Traveled Easily Since The Dawn Of Time. Perhaps This Should Be Placed In The Realm Of « The Collective Unconscious» As Is Said On The Other Side Of Jung? Our Ancestors, Builders Of These Towns And Villages Which, Throughout The World, Endear Us And Captivate Us With Their Spatial Qualities, Did They Not Behave Like Old Taoist Sages? Their Behaviors « Instinctive» Adding To This, The Result Is There, Convincing. A Quality Of Work Space « Empty» Which Gives To These Urban Spaces What We Call « âsoul» In The West, That Is To Say Quite Simply A Void Which Has A Function Necessary For The Use Of The Inhabitants Of The Place. Which Is Far From Being The Case Today. Besides, Isn't It Better To Work In The Unconscious And In Respect Of The Laws Of Nature Rather Than With A Conscience Which Takes Advantage Of These Laws? Which Is Often The Case Today. These Are Not The Enlightened Analyzes Produced By Consciousness Specialists “ Objective» Who Will Get Us Out Of The Quagmire. Because We Are In A Conceptual Cul-de-sac. Cause Of This Loss Of Meaning Of Words. And I Even Say To Myself That Around This Word « "empty", I Would Rather Say That Behind This Word Lies A Deep Malaise In Our Society, Going Beyond The Urban Fact, Cause Of The Loss Of Value Of Ideas From Monotheistic Religions Where This Void In The Western Sense Takes On Unsuspected Proportions. I Think There Is Something To Be Said For It. About The Space Of The City An Awareness, In The Collective Unconscious, Of A Loss. Controlling Urban Space Could Be Seen As The Universe In Reduction. Besides Certain Eras Of Certain Societies In The Past; Prestigious, This Idea Managed The Very Conception Of The City As In The Far East For Example, But Also In The Near East Or In Meso-America. Today, The Nothingness Of The Circulation Networks That Govern The Design Of Cities The Opposite Of « Structuring Void» Of Ancient Cities Leads The City Dweller Into A Fundamental Rupture With Through His Being With The Cosmos. If We Conceive Of The Void As A « "breathing Of The Universe", We Can Fear Suffocation, One Of These Days! I Even Wonder If Belief In God Has Not Up Until Now Been Avoids Catastrophe, As An Escape, A Flight Made Necessary In The Face Of The Unhappiness Of Societies. I Believe That This Loss Through The « Empty» Became « Nothingness» Was Able, Until Present In A Certain Way, To Be Replaced By A Quest For God As A Symbol Of This Nature Of The Universe, Of This Unity Of Nature. Lost. For Others And Perhaps For The Majority, The “escape” Under The Multitude Of Aspects That It Can Take Could Have Occurred At Any Time. Many Other Levels. Today, From This Point Of View, The Automobile Plays An Essential Role. I Would Not Mention Other Supports For This Purpose. There Is No Shortage Of This “escape”, Fortunately, Because The Imbalance Is Becoming Extremely Serious. It Seems To Me Then That It Would Be Better To Give The Means Back To The Public. Everything At Hand Everyone To Participate In The Production Of Its Space, Of « Make Its Nest» As They Say. Regulation Could Be Found On The Side Of Of A Balanced Sharing Between The Power Of Those Responsible And The Uses Of Citizens. May The Former Encroach As Little As Possible On The Domain Of The Latter, May They Have The Wisdom To Manage - But To Manage It Well - Only The Essentials Of What Allows Them To Succeed. The City To Function And Leave The Citizen Alone In His Territory. Stop Imposing Draconian Rules For The Smallest Door Knob, To Have This Side Of Things. Castrating, Constantly Banned While There Is A Huge Need For Listening, Attention... Always This Notion Of Good And Evil; All About. Adam And Eve, The Serpent And The Apple, Oppositions Out To All The Way; Our Company We Will Not Get Out Of This If We Do Not Move Away From This Duality. This Should Be Replaced, I Believe, By An Idea Of Complementarity. That Is To Say, Turning Our Gaze, For Us Europeans, Rather Towards The East Than Towards The West! I Would Like To Return To This Idea Of Awareness Of A Loss Of Symbiosis With Space. In Our Agrarian Societies Of A Few Decades Ago And More, I Think That The Relationship To Space Was Naturally A Continuous Coming And Going Between A City Dweller Near The Countryside And A Country Dweller Near The Town - Small Or Large - Necessary To Achieve Their Goals. The Sale Of Its Products; This Permanent, Intimate Relationship Gave A Balance « Unconscious» To The Actions That Were Taken. I Don't Believe There Was The Will To Do So. To Seek Out Produce Beautiful Cities - This Approach Being That Of A Minority Aware Of The Ideas Of The Italian Renaissance And Its Notions Of Perspectives, Generators Of Order - (this Is Of Course Only Valid For What We Call The West) , But That It Was Constantly Question Of Producing Something Useful – The Occasion Of The Pleasant- In The Daily Shaping Of The Human Environment. And This Is Valid Throughout In My Sense Both For A Hamlet Of A Few Farms And For A City, Considered As A Regional Metropolis. I Believe That As Long As The One Who Thinks About It The City With The Intention Of Acting Does So While Remaining With Both Feet On The Ground – And There It Is. I Think The Expression « Have Your Feet On The Ground» Takes On Its Full Value - This One Will Have An Approach Allowing Us To Maintain This Symbiosis With The Universe To The Extent Thatù This Relationship To The Earth Has A Philosophical Dimension Of Respect And Deep Affection Between Living Beings. When I Say « "with Your Feet On The Ground", I Don't Mean Minding Your Own Business, Being A Materialist, No. I Mean Being Close To The Earth, With The Awareness That The Essential Thing Is The “Earth” In The Sense That The Earth Is « "our Mother", The Fundamental Reference. We Come And Go Back To Earth. We Are Stakeholders. It Is Common To Hear People Say: « We No Longer Believe In Anything These Days! » Were There Days When We Believed In Something, Apart From The Acts That Homo Sapiens Committed; By Building Your House, For Example? I Wonder. Building Your House Was Producing Emptiness. And This Void Was A Link In The Chain Of This Link With The Universe. And These Multitudes Of Dwellings, Side By Side; On The Other Hand, It Was “bring” Everyone Has Their Own Stone; The Building Allowing The Maintenance Of This Symbiosis With The Cosmos Throughout The World. Through Its Being And Its Natural Extension, Its House. Just As It Is Not The City That Destroys Man, It Is Not The Automobile That Destroys The City, But In Each Case It Is The Way In Which The Man Uses And Abuses His Own Productions. Man Must Once Again Become The Center Of The Concerns Of Our Societies, As Has Been The Case, Occasionally Over The Centuries And In Societies Which Did Not Want To Be In The Quest For An Ideal City, A Phenomenon Which Existed, Of Course, But Relatively Rare In The History Of Cities. Approach Rather Of Soldiers Or Philosophers! Even In Societies Where Man Was Predominant In Thought As A Reference Value, Until Recently, A Certain Rationalism And A Naive Belief In The “ Reason» Ultimately Got The Better Of This Precarious, Fragile Balance Between Man And His Environment. The Relationship To The Space Has Changed With The Arrival Of The Automobile And Even More So With The Train And The Plane. However, Fundamentally, Man Always Has The Same Need To Relate To Others. His Space, That Of The Man With His Feet On The Ground. That Of The Man With His Family, With Those Dear To Him. And There, It Gets More And More Complicated, As It Goes On. As Our Societies Become “ Modernize, So-called? The Success Of The Automobile Is Perhaps Due To See In The Role Of Void-cocoon That It Plays In Return For The Nothingness In Which It Moves When It Is In These Habitat Zones Where The Man Feels So Bad; To Find The Womb Of His Mother, This Progenitor Void. The Void In The Center Of Cities Has Often Disappeared And Been Filled With New Resources. By This Multitude Of Void-cocoons That Are Automobiles. Filled. Suffocated. Asphyxiation Literally And Figuratively, Such Is This Center, A Center That Has Become « Nothingness» By Too Much Of Nothing. The Result Is Aggressiveness. That This Loss Of Vacuum Sharpens Despite This Void-cocoon Which Temporarily Fills It. Because This Urban Void When It Plays Its Social, Emotional Role, That Is To Say A Temporizing Role In Our Daily Life, This Void Takes Its Full Expression Of Matter « Full And Efficient». And If It Is Absent As Is Often The Case Today, From The Beautiful Theories Of The City To The Countryside, Producing By Extension These Housing Estates Loss Of Sight Around The Old Towns (which "ape" The Old Villages Obviously Without Having The Spatial And Social Qualities By, Also, The Total Lack Of Work On The " Empty»), It Is Absent From The « Clean City» In The Ideal City Where The Sun Comes In Full Flow In The Hearts Of People, But Where? The Coldness Of Feelings Is At Stake; The Image Of The Constructivist Pseudo-rigor Of Urban Compositions: Tower, Bar, Horizontal, Vertical. All Wrapped Up Of A Magnificent Nothingness That Breeds Boredom. Add To This Is Poverty And Hatred, Racism And Fundamentalism. I Should Say All This In The Plural! All That's Left Is To Turn It On. The Fuse For The Final Fireworks. Fortunately It Remains The Heart Of Our « Beautiful Old Towns» Is Not It ! Çcompensated. Historic Center Versus Post-war Urban Planning. But For How Long And For Whom? The City Built By Its Inhabitants Against The City Built By Administrators And Promoters Without A State Of Mind And If There Are A Few Good Promoters, They Do Not Weigh Heavily In The Balance. The Act Of Self-satisfaction Against –all Counter- The Act Of « I Know What People Want; Subtle And Useful Urban Art Brought Back To Life à The Most Primary Utility. Boxes Lined Up And Stacked In A Pseudo-artistic Composition, Pale Copiers Of Abstract Art From The Twenties. Urban Developments Designed As Bauhaus Pictorial Compositions, The Ultimate Reference For Circles Of Intellectuals Living In The Old Centers Of Preference. Which Is Not Forbidden, But If All The Decision-makers And Implementers Of This So-called Modern Town Planning Were Forced To Live There - Start With « Policies» About Whom We Talk Little In These Cases, But Who Play A Significant Role In The Decisions Of The Production - In Short, All These Little People Would Quickly Flee These Places. And I Hope They Would Stop Defending Its So-called Virtues. But It's Worse Than That. Today, “urban Planning” Is Developing. Human Face » With The Proliferation Of Ensembles Which Aim To Be Built In The Spirit Of The Region And Which Ultimately Are Only Operetta Settings Whose Objective Is To Make People Believe In Its Future Occupants That They Are Treated Better Than These “poor Buggers From The Cities” And Which In Fact, Through This Approach, Is An Approach Which Accentuates Divisions. But These Are Just “HLM” Disguised People Who Fit Into A Miserable Urban Pattern. To Make The Pill Pass, The Trick Is To Drown The Fish In “green Spaces” Which Are Intended, You Know, To Be Structuring! What A Farce! Meanwhile, The “activity Zones” And The Supermarkets Sprinkled On The Outskirts Definitively Cancel All Attempts To Structure Urbanity. Of These Cities. But All This Is Very Clean, Drawn From It Is Lined With A Line And Gives The Impression Of Order And Serenity. But It Is An Illusion Which Has No Reality. Than Face To Face; The Still Vivid Image Of The Slums Of Yesteryear. There Is Always Worse, Here Or Elsewhere, Compared To The Slums In Which Many People Survived At The Beginning Of The Century. Obviously. Is This A Reason To Defend These Urban Concepts, The Source Of So Many Of Our Ills, To Be Content With Replottings? A Little Lick Of Paint Here And There. This Avoids Asking Fundamental Questions. And These Fundamental Questions Are No Longer Posed In The Antithesis That Is The Production Of “horizontal HLM” à Namely The Housing Estates Or Even The Reconstituted Village, Very Close To Home. Fashion These Days. Is The Void Something Other Than Nothingness? À The Image Of The Desert Which Is Anything But Nothingness, Because The Desert Is Full Of Emptiness, The Contemporary City Is Full Of Nothingness, I Tell Myself! And This Nothingness Destroys Our Towns And Villages, Our Sociability. It Reactivates Certain Old Demons That We Had Hoped For, That We Had Believed To Have Disappeared From Our Landscape Of “society”. "developed", Democratic, Plural And Other Nonsense Of Touted Political Speeches! But Touts Out Of Impotence Or Incompetence? I Think It Has More To Do With Ignorance, Misunderstanding And A Loss Of Knowledge. This Urban Nothingness Reveals To Us The Side Of Humanity. Animal That Every Man Has Within Him And That Some Hoped, Through The Action Of Our Republican Principles, To Have Eradicated; Alas, This Is Apparently Not The Case. The Void Is A Material Of Primary Importance For The Design Of Our Urban Space As Well As Our Rural Space. I Return To The Emptiness Of The Desert Which Is For Me The Supreme Void. The Life Of Nature.     5. DUBROVNIK, The Bull's Eye There Are Places In Cities Which Reveal Themselves After Many Detours, Which Hide In The Depths Of Other Places And Whose Importance Eclipses These Secondary Places, But Which Later Prove To Be Of Primary Importance. When You Enter A City You Such As Dubrovnik, In This Ancient Ragusa Which Is Surrounded By This Stone Serpent That Is The Ramparts And Which Runs From Hollow To Hump To Protect A Thousand And One Places, It Is A Major Void Which Receives Us. Who Receives Us But Who Also Receives. It Receives, Like A River, Its Tributaries Throughout Its Course Its Rivers And Streams Which Are These Streets And Alleys Tumbling Down From The Surrounding Slopes. If You Let Yourself Be Carried Away In The Current Of The Human Flow That Runs Through It; At The Time Of The «passagietta», You Will Inevitably End Up On The Banks Of One Of These Squares (these Beaches?) Which Are The Culmination. And If By Desire, Chance Or Will You Found Yourself Going Up An Alley Or Having Entered A Street In One Of These Squares, Churches Or Other Places That Attract You More Than This Flow, You Will Arrive At One Moment Or Another In This Covered Street Which May Worry Some But Delight Others. If It's Worry That Drives You To Take Action, At This Time, It Is Unlikely That You Will Notice Certain Details Or Mishaps. If, On The Other Hand, You Are Delighted To Move From Chiaroscuro To Light; Full Light To Return To Darkness, To See In Dark Darkness. à The Limit Of What Is Bearable Depending On The Time Of Day And The Weather That The Skies, Often Clement, Can At Times Considerably Darken So It Is Perhaps In These Moments Of Violent Contrasts Of Luminosity That The That, Walking Along This Covered Street, You Will Inevitably Be Attracted By By The “il-de-bœuf”. This Will Perhaps Remind You Of Memories, Of Sensations From Childhood When, Being In A Dark Place, A Light Like A Magnet Will Attract You. A Light That A Gap Or A Small Hole In A Wall Or Door Will Let Through. And You Won't Be Able To Stop Yourself From Putting Your Eye On This Slit Or Hole To See. See What This Light Reveals. What A World Lights Up The Darkness Like This! À Dubrovnik L’oeil-de-bœuf Reveals “its World” That If We Take The Time To Linger In Front Of The Opening That Offers Itself To Us; You In The Wall And Who Through It Tells You The Essentials Of The City. You Will Discover Inscribed In The Opening Of This Bull's-eye, The Image Of Religious, Civil And Military Powers. Either You Continue On Your Way And Soon Arrive At At The End Of This Covered Street You Come Out Onto The Square Where You Find The Three Symbols Previously Seen In The Bull's Eye, Nothing More, Or You Linger On This Vision And Wonder Why There Is This Bull's Eye ;egg à Agrave; This Place. You May Not Have Measured Then The Importance Of This Hole, Of This Void Among Many Others. À On The Scale Of The City, It Is No More Important Than The Hole In The Attic Which Let In A Little Intriguing Light So Much So That Your Eye Wanted To Stick To It, To See. To See Or To Say? Is This Bull's Eye There? To Allow Us To See Or To Tell Us And Tell Us What? Isn't This Oval Located In The Keyhole Of The City Of Dubrovnik? Severe; In Any Wall, The End Of A Street? Doesn't This Emptiness Give Us The Means To Enter The City, To Tell Us Where? Is The Essence Of This City; In A Space Of &agrav; Barely A Quarter Of A Square Meter; ? And Even If It Were Just The Result Of Chance, Suppose That Chance Exists, This Chance Would Have Done Things Well. Moreover, This Void Has A Strength Which Is Revealed When We Arrive At The End Of The Street And We Then Discover The Same Buildings Between Glimpses. They Then Lose Their Strength, They Do Not Have The Same Intensity As They Do. In Our Gaze. The Place That We Have Before Our Eyes First Of All, Before Perceiving The Buildings, Perhaps Has Something To Do With It. It Is Certain That The Fact Of Inscribing The Combined Image Of These Three Symbols Of The City In A Small Oval Gives A Sense Of Meaning. This Place Has A Force That Your Gaze Does Not Have At The Same Time. Leave The Square. The Void Created Thus In This Wall Then Takes On All Its Importance. He Finds His Reality And His Strength In What He Tells Us, In The Role He Plays. More Than A Way To Bring A Little Light To Life. At The End Of This Covered Street, There Is A Revealer Who Only Tells His Reality That Those Who Want To Take The Time To Understand It. Even If This Were Just An Aesthetic Game, It Wouldn't Take Away From Anything. Its Symbolic Value.