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October 28, 2005
Labyrinth
I had mixed feelings about the labyrinth readings. I was amazed that it any feelings at all. I started John Hejduk’s monotonous description of some fairytale landscape I had just about had it. I have never been much one for fiction, I prefer very heavy philosophy and technical manuals, something that can challenge the way I see the world, show me something new or teach me to create something, so, to take this uneventful, stroll through a fanciful world with two characters who I have no connection to was frustrating and boring. What is their relationship to the place? Where are they going? Do they understand what they are seeing , yet do not interact with anything, not even each other? Sure one goes left and one goes right and they meet in the center, but I would hardly call that interaction. I did find his description of the various clocks interesting, how they work differently during the day than during the night, but still don’t seem to show exactly what time it is. It is easy to see all the endless stories that could easily be told as someone rambles on about all the imaginary things he sees while walking down each possible path, but thankfully Hejduk spared us.
As I tentatively began reading Jorge Luis Borges I quickly realized his thoughtful metaphor of the world as a vast library/labyrinth. I loved Borges’ grand scheme of intelligible books in the library somehow containing all the secrets of the universe and his interrelation of all the librarians and scholars trying to make sense and order of all the books, some even trying to destroy the books. They would sometime discover patterns within books and patterns within sections of the library and patterns within the entire library, but the vastness and infiniteness of the library would always supercede. I found this a very unique way of describing the order of the world as out of our total control even tough we try to make order of it, by trying to make a library out of it. Who was the originator of the library anyway? I wonder how Borges would imagine the infinite possibilities of the world could be arranged today in the age of the internet and more access to information than every before. I think even the idea of a library being thought of as an endless labyrinth is not endless enough when compared to the internet.
Anyway, I really liked Borges’ ideas of an endless library containing all secrets and diversity of the world more than Hejduk’s tedious description of a fairytale world with no interaction. However, after I read Borges I was able to rethink Hejduk as a description of endless possibilities for discovery within a foreign land, this is what inspired me to show my daily walk to school as a labyrinth with different levels, encounters, and nodes of interest. The hardest thing to do was to shorten it down to three minutes. Take a look.
Labyrinth.mov
Posted by Leif Mangelsen at October 28, 2005 02:46 PM