1REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X ARQUITECTURA / CIUDAD / CINE ARCHITECTURE / CITY / CINEMA 2REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X ENSAYO The Space and Time Between PhD. Kory A. Beighle, Architect University of Cincinnati Invitado Internacional Recibido : Agosto-2013 / Aceptado : Febrero-2014 ABSTRACT The field of architecture continues to find itself in deeper and deeper discourse with other disciplines, yet these relationships continue to be blurry and uncertain. Using the framework of corporeality established by Walter Benjamin in his 1936 text, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, this study will consider the tenuous intersection of the author of a work, the experience of that work and the tools that are used to bring the work into being, within the mediums of architecture and film. Additionally, this study will discuss the emphasis such a juncture places on the expressions of space and time, both critical factors in the experience of reality. To establish a backdrop for this discussion, a comparison of the two fields will be laid out and traditional limits of both disciplines will be considered. Jumping off from this comparison specific architectural and filmic works will be discussed that directly challenge traditional models of production and consumption. Explorations of projects such as Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro)’s built work Blur (2002) and Abbas Kiarostami’s film Taste of Cherry (1997), will highlight specific methodologies for questioning the blurred zones beyond disciplinary practice – the space and time between. These works offer insight into these regions beyond traditional discourse, exposing new potentialities for exploration and models for disciplinary intersection. Keywords: architecture; film; disciplinary practice; corporeality RESUMEN El campo de la arquitectura se encuentra en un proceso de discurso cada vez más profundo con otras disciplinas, pero estas relaciones son ambiguas e inciertas. Usando el marco de corporalidad establecido por Walter Benjamin en su texto de 1936, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, este artículo estudiará la intersección tenue entre el autor de una obra, la experiencia de la obra y las herramientas utilizadas en su creación, en los medios de la arquitectura y el cine. Adicionalmente, se analizará el énfasis que tal intersección impone sobre las expresiones de espacio y tiempo, ambos factores críticos para la experiencia de la realidad. Para establecer un telón de fondo para esta discusión, se hará una comparación entre los dos campos y se considerarán los límites tradicionales de ambas disciplinas. Con base en esta comparación, se discutirán obras específicas de arquitectura y cine que desafían los modelos tradicionales de producción y consumo. Exploraciones de proyectos como la obra construida Blur, de Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) (2002) y la película de Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry(1997), enfatizarán metodologías específicas para cuetionar las zonas borrosas y ambiguas entre la práctica disciplinaria, el espacio y el tiempo. Estas obras ofrecen hallazgos que van más allá del discurso tradicional, exponiendo nuevas potencialidades para exploración y modelos para la intersección disciplinaria. Palabras claves: Arqutectura; película; práctica disciplinaria; corporalidad. 3REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X Over the course history, the field of architecture has found itself in a rather tenuous relationship between both industry and art. In an attempt to understand these relationships, and to potentially take advantage of their existence, a number of designers and theoreticians have attempted to explore the limits of these fields. In the work of remarkable writers, artists, or composers one sometimes finds disconcerting elements located at the edge of their production, at its limit. These elements, disturbing and out of character, are misfits within the artist’s activity. Yet often such works reveal hidden codes and excesses hinting at other definitions, other interpretations…The same can be said for whole fields of endeavor: there are productions at the limits of literature, at the limit of music, at the limit of theater. Such extreme positions inform us about the state of art, its paradoxes and its contradictions. (Tschumi, 1996) The same can obviously be said for industry; every definable field has a limit, which is how one is able to define it as a field in the first place. What is most intriguing about the limit of these fields is not what they contain, but rather the potential growth and vitality that a limit might offer in the form of moments of departure from or expansion of the field. Understanding the fringes of any given discourse and by extension, the overlapping grey areas between them allows for a clarification and reinforcement of the underlying framework of such fields and exposes new potentialities for exploration; such is the aim of this work. So, how might the field of architecture relate to both art and industry in our contemporary age of accelerating departures and expansions? In Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), which analyzes and problematizes the relationship between production and experience, he explores the intricacies of this question. One central idea of this work is that with each new epoch, whose emergence are primarily driven by industrial innovations, new modes of human sense perception emerge; he goes on to say that both the manner and medium of human perception shift according to nature and context of the collective society; various artistic mediums inevitably arise to account for the new modes of perception. Two media that Benjamin identifies as participating in this process, which are able to present objects for the collective simultaneous experience are that of architecture and film, which both act upon and exist in reality.(Benjamin, 1936, pg. 37) 1 Though he does not fully explore it, Benjamin creates the framework for an interdisciplinary study of architecture and film, on the basis of reality and corporeality (understood in this context as a balanced spatiotemporal existence of reality) at the tenuous intersection of the author of a work, the experience of that work and the tools that are used to bring the work into being. Before a study of these two forms of expression can be conducted, ground rules should be established. First, it is important to note that this study is not meant to blur the lines between film and architecture, but rather, to define the blurred space between that already exists and consider its potentials. In this study, architecture will be understood as the art of creating space and film will be understood as the art of the moving image 2. That being said, both mediums traditionally take on differences and similarities, specifically with regard to how one produces and consumes these works, which should be teased out. One similarity that has already been acknowledged is that both architecture and film possess a corporeal nature. This is to say that they require both balanced conception of space and time as part of their existence in reality, though the nature of these requirements are different. For instance, film is essentially time-based; though it can’t exist without spatial conditions, time is the primary driver of the filmic experience. The primary work of the film-maker is the ordering and sequencing of events in time, to portray the narrative or content of the work. The fundamental gestures of architecture, on the other hand, are spatial movements. Architecture creates spaces, which are then experienced by its users in time. In many ways, the architect’s most basic existence inherently relies upon rules of geometry, composition and tectonics, all tools that extend from the arrangement of objects in space, to define space.(Tawa, 2010) While the creation of space is one of the most quintessential characteristics of architecture, in the distant past, built works also absorbed time into their vital 1 This is in juxtaposition to painting, which is meant more for individual experience or for the experience of only a few. Epic poetry is also highlighted as having been able to project for simultaneous experience in the past. 2 While defining fields like “architecture” and “film” more clearly could certainly be explored, it is the intent of the author to leave the terms without complete definition KORY A. BEIGHLE 4REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X fabric, explicitly embodying the various ratios, proportions, cycles and rhythms of nature. Miraculous works such as Stonehenge or the Pyramids at Giza took on these rhythms and embedded them into physical markers of the passing of time. Even until the turn of the 20th century, the built environment had no choice but to critically respond to the movements of nature if human comfort was to be achieved in the built landscape. Now free of these obligations by technological innovation, one might argue that formal fetish and elaborate imagery have come to dominate the built landscape. In general, the modernisms of the 20th century have, both in concept and technique, removed the necessity of temporal character from this fabric, dematerializing it from a physical manifestation to a conceptual fascination. Despite these traditions of embedding time into the built landscape, architects have never held authorship over the ordering of time as those who produce moving images do; a builder can’t alter time’s duration or the velocity of its passing. The builder cannot arrange sequence or control the frame completely, though we may often try. Though the filmic discipline is still young and exploring itself vigorously, the field has developed an acute sense of the power it has over both space and time, which has given it a privileged position in contemporary society. The moving image has become the dominant form of communication for this age, in large part because of this control that the medium offers over its message. Through the use of techniques such as montage, the film-maker is able to seamlessly depict a wholeness of space and time, where only fragments exist. In another way, the same film-maker might utilize the continuity of space and time to destabilize his audience creating a sense of fragmentation to convey meaning. The reality of most architectural practice is that as soon as the plans are drawn and the building resurrected, the architects lose all control. While one may envy the control authors of the moving image have over their work, it also comes at great cost; the viewer subtly loses the ability to fully engage the work, as they are necessarily removed from it, if only slightly. It is as if the audience of the moving image stands before a mirror where the event unfolds and yet they are not present. Another aspect of the moving image that might be envied by the architect is its seeming impermanence. The moving image, while it has the ability to last forever within the digital age, tends to be quite ephemeral. Part of this is driven by the ease of making a moving image. There are generally few barriers to creating a film, which is something that cannot necessarily be said of architectural works. Architecture can manipulate the experience of time through plays of light, environmental conditioning or even perspectival manipulation (Tawa, 2010), but such strategies remain reliant upon the production of an object with a certain permanence. The moving image does not need to be lasting because they rely so heavily upon societal conventions, which change faster than the seasons. Another critical similarity between the field of architecture and that of film is that both mediums have a tangential relationship with the act of story telling. While this idea is not so difficult to recognize in film, both the cinematic and built form have narrative roots. Traditionally, the role of architecture was as much about telling stories as it was providing shelter. Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages are a commonly cited example of this, as their facades and stained glass windows unfold in the narrative of the scriptures. In more subtle ways architects also use tools such as form, materiality or ornament to convey cultural narratives or even to articulate how the building was constructed. Over time this relationship has changed, but remains in a conceptual way. Victor Hugo once wrote, “This will destroy that. The book will destroy the edifice.”(Hugo, 2002) It is debatable and perhaps unclear if this prophecy ever fully became realized, but even if not literally, buildings remain artifacts of the social-cultural contexts within which they have been constructed. Architecture is ultimately the same as the screen upon which a film is projected; it is the neutral backdrop upon which life happens. Now these are just a few small things, but one must admit that as a summary, while these definitions are generally accurate in a traditional sense, they do not fully capture the limits of either built works of architecture or the moving image. These similarities and differences establish a wide range of potential approaches to an interdisciplinary study of architecture and film. First, the ideas of the “real” and the corporeal must be established. Also, the act of production presents itself as a critical factor for further exploration. In a similar THE SPACE AND TIME BETWEEN 5REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X way, the narrative aspects of both architecture and film present an interesting ground for comparison. While all of these ideas will be explored further, what begins to be evident is that many of the similarities between the two mediums come in the form of their conception and production, while the critical differences lie in the tools used to produce the works in reality and the way these works are received. BUILDING ANTI-IMAGE One example of a contemporary group of architects addressing these ideas critically are the firm of Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro). The pair of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (later joined by Charles Renfro) began their own story through the formation of an interdisciplinary studio that has come to embody a new vanguard of architectural practice – a more rigorous and engaged form of discourse, where the relationship between content and language-medium are in a flickering quantum state occupying the space and time between disciplinary boundaries. The studio was formed in the late 1970s as an interdisciplinary experiment pursuing the “line of confluence between various arts including architecture, the new media, the spectacle and the performance.” (Marotta, 2011, pg. 9) Since then, the firm has worked in an “intermediate sphere,” (Saggio, 2011, pg. 7) moving between a wide range of disparate fields: installation art, philosophy, set design, performance, architecture and teaching. Each of these transitional movements engages disciplinary discourse and challenge traditional perspectives of the works significance. In the context of DS+R’s products and process, we begin to reconsider the nuance of both the moving image and built form. The moving image is no longer literally a linear sequence of images consumed through time and built form is no longer a static, non-reactive physical construction. DS+R’s interest in expanding their approach to the discipline of architecture has caused some to form a perception of them as fringe elements or even outsiders to the field. (Simpson, 2007, pg. 21) In the context of broad cultural change and the increasing decentralization of social and cultural power, it increasingly seems that their work represents far more than a fringe element. Perhaps the single most significant built work in DS+R’s rise to broad popularity was their pavilion entry – entitled Blur – at the 2002 Swiss Expo in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, which is in many ways participating in the discussion at hand. The project essentially is a large, 90-meter oval on stilts, projecting out over Neuchatel Lake. Through a kit of parts approach and a fairly stripped down construction, the work could be understood as a vital take on the concepts of exhibitionism explored in projects such as the 1851 Crystal Palace for the first universal exhibition in London and the theatre designed by Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames for the 1964-65 World Fair in New York. (Marotta, 2011, pg. 79) In another way, the project’s steel tensegrity structure, hung 15 meters above the lake by 4 columns, has been read in discourse with the line of structural experiments begun by Buckminster Fuller in the 1940s and 50s or Friedrick Kiesler’s Endless House, a project whose flowing envelope stands elegantly upon a number of firmly grounded stilts. (Marotta, 2011, pg. 79) Despite these formal similarities, the project’s effect extends beyond its physical manifestation.3 The Blur hovers over the water; a long bridge extends out from the land to meet the cloud, which becomes a shroud for all of the formal moves described above. “The experience translates from visual to sensorial when the visitor passes through the double walkway in fiberglass 100 meters long onto the floating platform.” (Marotta, 2011, pg. 82) As one crosses this extended threshold they are transported to a blurred world controlled by a computer, which is constantly reading and responding to changes in the environmental conditions in order to communicate with more than 30,000 nozzles that process water from the lake below into the cloud of mist that cloaks the pavilion. The mist constantly dances, revealing hidden platforms and stairs to nowhere in particular, but only for a minute. The platform takes life from the body that it rests upon and changes its state of being. The water is still water, but altered, if only for a short time, as it drifts through the air, back to the lake and through the cycle once 3 Project description based off of images and a textual description by E. Dimendberg and A. Marotta in there texts, which are cited within the references section of this work KORY A. BEIGHLE 6REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X more 4. As the cloud’s nebulous form ebbs and flows in the flux of the world around, one’s understanding and perception are blurred. One can only imagine the stirring experience of being lost in a cloud, amerced within the infinite – an experience that certainly calls into question ones reality. Certainly, this is the stuff of dreams. In the context of Blur, the question of what is “real” is a difficult one. Is reality external to our existence or merely a perceptual experience of individuality? For the purposes of this study, it seems necessary to define reality in one way or another between these two ideals. We have already suggested that reality might fall in line with the idea of corporeality, which is of the physical body. Such an understanding of reality places perceptual experience of the physical world above more conceptual and connotative ideologies. Such a position also frame experience of space and time in balance, flowing as a continuum, as opposed to any emerging hegemony of spatiality or temporality. As early as 1905, Albert Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity, which was the first theory to attempt to unify space and time into a single continuum. Einstein’s theory not only made time a vital factor in the understanding of reality, but it also turned space into a conceptual framework, rather than an entity unto itself. Over the course of the next 100+ years, physicist and thinkers across the globe have attempted to expand upon this still radical theory. Somewhat ironically, the field of architecture, which claims the position of the marker of space and objects that form space, has been one of the slowest disciplines to respond to the innovative investigations put forward by these new sciences (or perhaps, more appropriately, philosophies). The work of DS+R suggests that the moment has come for architecture to evolve and to respond to the more broad developments in humanities understanding of the universe, which have departed from convention and expanded over the past hundred years. This response must first occur at a structural level, through the re-conception of the experience of architecture and the human methods of interaction with it. 4 Project description based off of images and a textual description by E. Dimendberg and A. Marotta in there texts, which are cited within the references section of this work In his introduction to Bernard Cache’s Earth Moves, while considering this problem, architectural theorist Michael Speaks asks: What form or forms will a new architecture take? Today we must acknowledge that any new form of architecture will not only have to rethink the specific forms it produces, but, as a condition for doing so, will have to rethink the form, shape and articulation of its practice of architecture. (Speaks, 1995, pg. xviii) It seems clear that DS+R’s Blur is the embodiment of this statement in that it re-conceptualize the both the object and experience of architecture, from the very conception of the work. As opposed to an iconic form the designers reduce their ideas to an elegant anti-image, which in its ephemerality resists static singularity. This state of anti-image must be understood to extend beyond the confines of mere impermanence; Blur is not a construct of physical presence, but rather a process of being and being made. The process that is Blur allows for one to read the project not only as physical mass of materials, but also as the embodiment of the moving image and its consumption. The work engages discourse far beyond the limits of built form, and as it does one can begin to see that it is in fact the blurring of conventional architectural processes that lead to a blurring of the architectural product. Ultimately, understanding production means understanding the objects of that production. The framework for a comparative study of the products of both architecture and film, begins with the re-visioning this concept of object, as can be seen in the case of Blur. This will require an understanding what constitutes the nature of being object. The architectural and filmic objects in particular, are by nature technological artifacts. If architectural thought and practice is to break out of narrow academicism on one hand, and aestheticism on the other, it must conceive of itself as belonging to a different series of developments – to what recent parlance sometimes calls the “history of practices. (Kwinter, 2001, pg. 13) For the purposes of this study, this problematic is extended to the field of THE SPACE AND TIME BETWEEN 7REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X film as well, as the film works of Abbas Kiarostami present particularly interesting opportunities to explore the potentials of a filmic system to speak of both its process of being made and the place it is situated within once formed. By shifting the products of such a method toward a process focus, our notion of the object is able to move with the flux of the human environment and the creation of objects can be a reactionary process that allows a more subtle questioning of reality and the corporeal. BLURRED REALITY In an interview with several Iranian film critics, Abbas Kiarostami once said, “Lies carry a kind of truth.”(Rosenbaum & Saeed-Vafa, 2003, pg. 66) Exploring the notion of the “real” is one of the key ideas of Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema and particularly his 1997 film Taste of Cherry. This questioning of reality is really just the beginning though; Kiarostami’s questions inevitably lead to questions of narrative as well: linearity of experience, the presence of the audience within the film and by extension the audience’s awareness of reality in what they are watching. As part of this discussion, it is important to note the differences between the use of the words narrative and plot. Western film has traditionally taken a position heavy on plot, with a standard 3-act sequence of beginning, middle and end. This is not the case in more recent filmic strategies, especially in non-western film, where Kiarostami has come from. For the purposes of this study we will define the narrative as the series of event while the plot will be defined as the plan or scheme of the narrative; another way to define plot might be the direction of the narrative that takes the audience somewhere. The reason for defining these two issues of narrative and plot is that Kiarostami’s work has a distinct narrative, but blatantly and quite intentionally lacks a plot. With this in mind, it is important to understand how Kiarostami approaches his subject matter. In his book, Displaced Allegories, Negar Mottahedeh writes, “His films are only movies, and though imbued with an air or realism, they are also movies…his films are about the processes of making movies.”(Mottahedeh, 2008, pg. 139) Kiarostami’s simple film, in its form, structure and content blatantly question what “real” actually means to cinema and to humanity. One of the ways Kiarostami achieves this is through his narrative, or more accurately the lack there of. The lack of a plot is important because upon contemplation one might realize that the narratives of everyday life are in a constant evolution and as such, have no discernable plot. Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997), though one may be able to summarize it as a story, has a surprisingly ambiguous narrative thread. In The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, Alberto Elena writes, “A film turned in on itself, with a strong meditative dimension, Taste of Cherry thereby avoids – following a director’s usual line, which has very few exceptions – any possible identification with the protagonist.”(Elena, 2005, pg. 124) This is the first attempt of Kiarostami to break away from narrative. The main character, Mr. Badii (played by a non-professional actor named Homayun Ershadi), is never really introduced to the audience, at least not in a traditional way. The film opens with a long sequence of a man coming toward us in a vehicle. The shot of an ambiguous man, driving in a car through the outskirts of Tehran, Kiarostami makes the audience acutely aware of the frame, and of the distance between his protagonist and you, the viewer. The first 20 minutes or so of the film are shot in or around the car, but always with a certain distance. One shot is through the windshield looking directly at the driver. Another shot comes in profile, but again from outside the car. When one is inside the car, the shots remain distant, if only because this man appears to be somewhere else, off in his mind. This, along with the ambiguity of the protagonist, places the audience in an atmosphere of uncertainty that carries throughout the film. One film critic, Laura Mulvey, in her essay “Kiarostami’s Uncertainty Principle” (Elena, 2005, pg. 125) 5 chronicles the use of a highly developed concept, which highlights the ambiguity of the opening scene as an attempt to use Mr. Badii as a medium for questioning “rather than a character within a coherent fiction dressed in the trappings of verisimilitude.”(Elena, 2005, pg. 125) 6. So, from the outset, as a reader of the film, 5 Elena is discussing this in referencing a work Mulvey had published in Sight and Sound, June 1998 6 Another Elena is discussing this in referencing a work Mulvey had published in Sight and Sound, June 1998 KORY A. BEIGHLE 8REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X you know nothing about where he comes from or what is motivating him. You eventually find out that he is trying to find someone to aid him in committing suicide, but you have no idea why he wants to end his life or why he wants to end it in such a strange way (he wants someone to bury him after he digs a hole and dies in it). This ambiguity is a literary way for Kiarostami to use the cinemographic technique of the long take as a story-telling mechanism. The long take is a cinemographic technique used to create stillness in the space of the film. It is often used as an introductory shot to give a visual overview of a whole, before the film-maker cuts up the space into segments for his own devices. The long take is also used to create space for contemplation. In a narrative, the audience often needs space to step away and breathe or to wrap their mind around the intensity of the events. This second approach to the technique is more in line with what Kiarostami is trying to do, but instead of only showing long takes (which he does do often) he creates ambiguity in the narrative, which also lulls us into a state of contemplation, similar to someone sitting on a bench and people-watching. Kiarostami’s approach is quite similar to everyday life in this respect. One rarely has insight into the thinking processes or motivations of others. So the ambiguity is seemingly all by design; there was never a script for Taste of Cherry and as such, the film is able to have a realistic ambiguity. In Contemporary Film Directors: Abbas Kiarostami, Jonathan Rosenbaum explains Kiarostami’s process: Because Kiarostami’s recent cinema continues to be a handcrafted one, some sense of how it is generated is important: without a script and with dialogue usually generated by him working alone with his non- professional actors…The technique likely means that Kiarostami is filming each of the actors in separate shooting sessions and then editing the results together by eliminating his own lines. (Rosenbaum & Saeed-Vafa, 2003, pg. 30) Everything was formed in the director’s mind and for all intensive purposes, Kiarostami himself doesn’t have an answer to many of the films ambiguities; there is no need to know whom Badii really is to make the film. All Kiarostami needs is a feel for where he is going and the ability to react to what is happening. The rest can be edited together afterwards. In an interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum, Kiarostami describes his process as something along the lines of jazz, where each note simply reacts to that which came before…even though your following certain notes, you’re also following the feeling of the piece, so the performance you give tonight will be different from the performance tomorrow.”(Rosenbaum & Saeed-Vafa, 2003, pg. 109) The hand-crafted style that Rosenbaum describes is the primary tool that allows Kiarostami to elevate his work beyond the narrative and into a sort of anti-narrative form, and it is what creates the second technique discussed above: the non-linear sequence. One of the limitations of film is that it must order a sequence to be shown, but that does not mean that this sequence must be linear or that it must be a primary driver. By utilizing the uncertainty principle highlighted by Mulvey, a sense of ambiguity, Kiarostami is able to deconstruct the experience of a story into a mere series of moments. Kiarostami’s work mirrors everyday life in these ways. These techniques also allow Kiarostami to transcend the typical linearity in his work, another moment for his questioning of reality. Taste of Cherry is a “road movie,” (Elena, 2005, pg. 126) but unlike the standard prototype “any kind of lineal progression soon disappears, as Badii drives obsessively around and round the dusky tracks on the outskirts of Tehran, sometimes making progress but, as often as not, going backwards, ending up where was a while before, or simply meandering, losing himself on roads that lead nowhere.”(Elena, 2005, pg. 126) The entire story never really goes anywhere. Badii wanders through the hills in his car, back and forth, and nowhere; all the while the audience is given space for meditation. Over the course of the film, Badii has long conversations with several people he comes across, each trying to talk him out of his decision to end his life, but nothing ever really comes of these conversations. These interactions are always flanked by empty space of long, panning shots of Badii driving from moment to moment, space given to the viewer to contemplate. Elena describes the non-linearity well when he explains how the remote spaces Badii passes through are abstractions, representations of circularity that read as “literally, going nowhere,” moving without purpose and without reason. (Elena, 2005, pg. 126) Eventually one of the men he speaks with agrees to aid him in his final act, THE SPACE AND TIME BETWEEN 9REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X but then, the audience is denied the knowledge of whether or not Badii carried out his plan. After getting the man’s agreement to help, Badii returns to his home and the audience assumes he is getting something to help him kill himself, perhaps some pills. You never know because of the intentional distance and obscurity of the shot. Badii returns to the hole, off in the hills and lies looking up at the moon. The camera lingers on his face for a time and then fades to black. From this black, the film then cuts into a series of grainy pieces of footage from the shooting process. Badii and Kiarostami stand together in the frame, apparently discussing something for a shot. We also see the car driving through the landscape. The presence of both the protagonist and the filmmaker in these moments is almost unsettling for a traditional reading of the film. This creates a perfect example of Kiarostami’s final operation, that of the aperture or the frame. The differentiation between the films visual treatment before and after the scene with Badii in the grave and the night sky indicate two different types of film. The grainy nature of the final sequence brings to mind documentary footage from the past and creates a distinctly different mood from the rest of the film. It is in the final sequence that Kiarostami most heavily questions the reality of his film. Another technique that raises this complex feeling is his use of music in these last moments. Throughout the film there is only diegetic sound (i.e. a slamming door), but in this final sequence of grainy footage, Louis Armstrong’s “St. James Infirmary” is playing in the background. This non-diegetic sound heightens the awareness of the audience that they are interacting with a film, and not reality. It is an interesting paradox that Kiarostami creates, between the body of the film, which through his anti-narrative approach, seem to make the film more life like, while the closing segment impugns the whole act. It is, however, not a paradox Kiarostami is afraid to confront. Making the audience a part of the film in this way is his goal: I don’t like to engage in telling stories. I don’t like to arouse the viewer emotionally or give him advice. I don’t like to belittle him or burden him with a sense of guilt. (Akrami, 2003) From beginning to end, there is no apparent progression in the character or the plot, and if there is any dynamism in the mind of this films creator, it is not shared with the audience. Viewing this movie from the perspective of a typical Western audience, the film seems pointless. There is no traditional beginning, middle and end. The film simply exists, looping back and forth on itself for a while and then washing out into reality. But then, that pointlessness, is the point in many ways. What does it matter why this man, Badii, wants to kill himself? What does it matter if he actually does go through with it? The journey is the focus; it is analogous to reality in this way. It is about the process of moving through time; the object, the man, is no longer a typology, but a process of being in existence, so how he got to these moments and where he goes from them, is beyond the scope of this moment and not of concern. The moment is a singularity. One does not generally differentiate these things so clearly, but as an audience, we seem to understand. This is the same kind of blurred line one deals with when considering “reality.” Kiarostami’s work and his questioning of “real” seem to be appropriate, despite some dishonesty in the process. What lies he does propagate are no more of a detachment from reality than the media of cinema itself. Film is perhaps not so clearly honest and objective as one might assume. The director, in the act of editing, or choosing a subject, removes film from pure reality; the lines become blurred. In Taste of Cherry, Kiarostami uses the form of the film, to reinforce the idea that reality is not so cut and dry, while still offering insight into what reality truly is. The layers of movement between “real” and “fiction” that exist in the film deconstruct reality and call into question the “real” beyond just cinematic reality and into the realism of everyday human life. So what is taken away from the process of interacting with Taste of Cherry is not a story, but rather, an experience and a series of methods of eliciting that experience. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Up to this point this study has taken on a number of issues. Benjamin’s basic framework began as a premise for the discussion and a critical comparison of architecture and film was put forward. The study considered the working relationship between the two media and the potentialities that extend from their interaction. As one explored the similarities and differences at hand between the KORY A. BEIGHLE 10 REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X two mediums, traditional limits of architecture and film come closer into focus. For instance, as has been discussed, the production of architectural works may have intrinsically filmic concerns, such as control of space and time through techniques like sequencing and framing or production of narrative through the use of visual signs, but the consumption of built works is considerably more dynamic than the consumption of moving images. Built works are typically experienced in three dimensional space through the non-linear movement of an individual through the space over time, whereas the consumption of moving images is almost exclusively received through the projection upon or the emission from a two dimensional plane. The producers of built works generally have minimal control over how the work is ultimately consumed, while the moving image is often produced with a high level of control over how the work is received. Regardless of such traditional understandings, it becomes clear that the analysis of works such as DS+R’s Blur and Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry certainly expose potential for exploration within the space and time between disciplinary limits. Specifically these works highlight the importance of re-conceptualizing the tools one uses to make in order to more acutely address the perception of those who receive the work in a contemporary context. In the case of both Blur and Taste of Cherry this reconceptualization began with a reconsideration of the object being made – instead of a building DS+R create a cloud and instead of a traditional narrative Abbas Kiarostami offers a snapshot of everyday life without a satisfying beginning or end. Further, the re-visioning the concept of object requires understanding what constitutes the nature of being object. Both the architectural object and the filmic object are by nature technological objects. Our discussion puts forward the notion that the production of these objects must break free of narrow-minded traditions of formalism or aestheticism, but rather should cling to processes of making and being made. The blurred zone between these fields is not concerned about the products themselves, but how those products speak to processes of creation within a “history of practices.” (Kwinter, 2001, pg. 13) Beyond the re-conceptualizing of the objects of production, the narrative character is also clearly at stake, but subtly. The notion of narrative is intimately tied to the idea of movement. Close consideration of these two words will illustrate the point. In the context of everyday expression, the word narrative can be understood to refer to an unfolding of events in a sequence. This definition empowers a sense of movement, which is the critical factor in the activation of this unfolding. In the context of a work of narration, the movement of the narrator’s lips articulates the content of his speech audibly. Similarly in the form of a book, narratives unfold with the reading and turning of each page. In the context of film, the substance of the work is conveyed by rapidly moving a series of projected frames. In the context of the architectural medium, the individual movements of occupants upon the neutral landscape of the built form is activates the space and the narratives of everyday life. Each of these states of activation adds a new layer of meaning to our understanding of movement, and despite the variation, each movement relies completely on the others to make itself complete. In such a narrative, what seems most striking is not so much the content, but its framework. The narratives play out as a series of frictions or “collisions”(Tschumi, 2000, pg. vii-ix), which drive movement within a vast and changing landscape of events. This idea of the collision, borrowed from Bernard Tschumi’s introduction to Paul Virilio’s A Landscape of Events, is really the discussion of intersecting topographies or landscapes with “no fixed meaning” and “no privileged vantage point.”(Virilio, 2000, pg. x-xiii) The beauty of such landscapes is that they become spaces of passage – a medium – upon which lived narratives may unfold. While each of the considered approaches to architecture and film – the notion of blurring the “real,” re-visioning of the object and the reconceptualization of narrative – offer valid and enticing potentials, ultimately it seems as if there is some level of connection between them all. A comparison between these media requires some consideration at each of the different levels of thinking; they are not mutually exclusive. Both architectural and filmic processes come to the forefront of discourse, blurring the limit of disciplinary practice. This blurring creates the space and time between. The examination of and the communication between tools such as built form and the moving image offer grounds for continued exploration and present models for disciplinary intersection. THE SPACE AND TIME BETWEEN 11 REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X KORY A. BEIGHLE REFERENCES Akrami, J. (Producer), & Akrami, J. (Director). (2003). A Walk with Kiarostami. [Motion Picture] Iran Benjamin, W. (1936). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Lexington, KY: Prism Key Press. Elena, A. (2005). The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami (B. Coombes Trans.). London: SAQI. Hugo, V. (2002). The Hunchback of Notre Dame. New York: Random House Inc. Kiarostami, A. (Producer), & Kiarostami, A. (Director). (1997). Taste of Cherry. [Motion Picture] Iran: Abbas Kiarostami Productions. Kwinter, S. (2001). Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Marotta, A. (2011). Diller + Scofidio: Blurred Theater (C. Tilley Trans.). Rome: Edil Stampa. Mottahedeh, N. (2008). Displaced Allegories. London: Duke University Press. Rosenbaum, J., & Saeed-Vafa, M. (2003). Contemporary Film Directors: Abbas Kiarostami. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Saggio, A. (2011). “The Mental Landscape”. Diller + Scofidio: Blurred Theater (C. Tilley Trans.). (pp. 5-7). Rome: Edil Stampa. Simpson, D. (2007). “Some Notes on Disciplinary Practices of Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro)”. In L. Molinari (Ed.), Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro). The Ciliary Function: Works and Projects 1979-2007 (R. Burns Trans.). (pp. 21-32). Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A. Speaks, M. (1995). “Folding Toward a New Architecure”. Earth moves (pp. xviii). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tawa, M. (2010). Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tschumi, B. (2000). “Forward”. In P. Virilio (Ed.), A Landscape of Events (pp. vii-ix). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Virilio, P. (2000). “Calling card”. In P. Virilio (Ed.), A Landscape of Events (pp. x-xiii). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 12 REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X KORY A. BEIGHLE University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati, OH Bachelor of Science in Architecture (2005 to 2009) Cum Laude, Honors Certificate Masters of Architecture (2009 to 2011). Summa Cum Laude AIA Henry Adams Medal Distinguished Research Award PhD in Architecture (2012 to present) Adjunct Professor of Architecture. University of Cincinnati_ Cincinnati, OH Department 7: an architectural design collective_ Cincinnati, OH January 2012 to Present Member 7.3 www.department-7.org Publications and Conference Presentations: Presenter: at Inter[Sections] - A Conference of Architecture, City and Cinema. Porto School of Architecture. September 11-13, 2013. Published: “A New Alchemy. The Moving Image and Built Form in the Work of Diller + Scofi- dio (+Renfro)”, Inter[Sections] - A Conference of Architecture, City and Cinema: Conference Proceedings, 2013 Published: Actualizing Movements_ Exposing Time in the Everyday Through Systems of Re- action, (Master’s Thesis), Electronically distributed @ http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_ num=ucin1305892822, 2011 THE SPACE AND TIME BETWEEN ESTA PUBLICACION FORMA PARTE DE: REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE ARQUITECTURA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA. VOL 1-2014. NUMERO 5. ISSN 2215-275X THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF: