thresholds 30 - Microcosms

Microcosms
Mechtild Widrich , ed.

Wholly Partial. An Introduction
by Mechtild Widrich

“You’re in a bar, having a drink, and someone beside you starts a conversation. Someone you might fancy the look of. All very pleasant, and then you’re chatting along, and she or he, we have men as well, mentions this great new streetwear label, or this brilliant little film they’ve just seen.” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)

William Gibson’s thriller Pattern Recognition involves the reader in the struggle for individuality and authentic modes of expression in today’s “post-geographic” society. Throughout the protagonist’s search for the elusive creator of filmic footage that had appeared on the Internet and had stimulated a fashion driven, esoteric yet globally active community, we do not know if the footage emerged from an artistic subculture or a clever PR department. Gibson confronts us with the uncomfortable possibility that everything we seemingly long for as individual and non-interchangeable beings is nothing else than the carefully thought-out staging of multinational businesses, trying to establish us as functioning units within consumer society. Even the most spontaneous liking and the most comfortable encounter with others be just part of a concerted merchandising activity. Ultimately, Gibson shows a power struggle between the microstructure of individual models of life and the macro-system of a globalized world, which gains energy through its inextricable reciprocal dependency.

Gibson’s axis of reference is a concept that has fascinated for many centuries. The thought that the patterns of existence resemble and influence each other from the smallest to the biggest unit can be traced throughout history; it shaped the contours of Platonic philosophy, mysticism, alchemy, aesthetics and the arts. Two main questions reappear in this context: first, which is the influencing and which the influenced component; and second, at which point does the seemingly self-enclosed and monadic system of the microcosm become permeable? That is, where does it interface with the outside? And is this outside antithesis or equation?

The classical thought of embedding the smaller into the bigger element as comforting linkage with a divine and organized macrocosm (kosmos meaning both order and world), is reversed in Gibson’s novel.

In its contemporary transmission, the (illusionary) desire to be authentic is threatened by anything that could shape or predetermine the individual from the outside. In the end, Gibson allows for the possibility that, even in the very rational, globalized superstructure, spontaneous emotions do take place. In an almost Romantic conclusion, he returns agency back to individual creation; the emotional ontology generated in ignorance of an outside world and free from calculated response succeeds, not as encapsulated entity, but as microutopia, which forces the structure around it to adapt to its pace and mode.

Post-Marxist theories of recent years have operated with a comparable idea of the micro-utopia, fashioning it as an operational method of opposition from within the political system, a postmodern resistance tool that does not aim towards a radical (revolutionary) change. Also in the realm of cultural production, the idea of locating traditional subcultures on the “margins” of society, from where they act against the center, has been largely supplanted by the concept of “interstices,” which function as contemporary microcosms integrated into macrosystems and are thus able to act from within. Initially it was this contemporary use of the concept of microcosm that shaped my wish to look at it from different points of departure. I am therefore grateful to everyone who took the time to prepare a submission, and helped broaden my view. I hope that the parts of the parts that are being presented here are conceivable, not as wholes, but as valid fragments of the possibilities of the concept.

Faust: Nun gut, wer bist du denn?
Mephistopheles: Ein Teil von jener Kraft,
     Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft. (…)
Faust: Du nennst dich einen Teil,
     und stehst doch ganz vor mir?
Mephistopheles: Bescheidne Wahrheit sprech ich dir.
     Wenn sich der Mensch, die kleine Narrenwelt
     Gewöhnlich für ein Ganzes hält -
     Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I*

The microcosms introduced in this publication contribute to an analogous sense of vertigo – from inversions which reinforce the status quo to dependent fragments that subvert the structure of the entirety.

The dissolution of one individual in the superstructure of knowledge and his reappearance in microscopic doses in the work of others is the topic of Nikki Moore’s essay on the French philosopher Jacques Martin. Jacky Bowring hauls out the ambivalences in the idea of mimicry in her psychoanalytical reading of the new roof garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Paolo Soleri elaborates on the micro, the macro and the mega and proposes an utopian understanding of nature, humanity and the cosmos from his viewpoint as architect. The ambitions of the United States to “adjust” Middle Eastern countries after WWII to consumer culture is explored by Pamela Karimi, who introduces us to the sociohistorical and political implications of the modernization campaigns in Iranian households. Freedom and constraint play a role in Olga Touloumi’s reading of Franz Kafka’s short story “Der Bau,” in which the impulse to construct a safe and invulnerable surrounding shifts the origin of danger to the inside.

Three projects show how the idea of the microcosm can be made operative in the realm of design: The problem of finding oneself inside an actual closed-off microcosmic system, a spaceship, is the starting-point of Barbara Imhof’s and Susmita Mohanty’s proposals to alleviate psychological unease during space travels. Azra Aksamija’s wearable mosques expand the notion of religious space and explore its formal limits. Marianthi Liapi and Susanne Seitinger present an interactive spatial “workshop,” a construction kit that enables children to playfully assemble their own microcosmic surroundings.

Daniel Barber dives into the middle of the current debate in architecture; by reading anti-humanist theory and specifically the concept of the diagram against its postcritical interpretation, he proposes to retain a resistant political project in contemporary architectural practice. Itohan Osayimwese’s account of 19th century German Pietist colonies in Africa shows how utopianism and colonialism overlapped and shaped a specific missionary form of settlement. The attempt to construct Washington D.C. as microcosm of the United States is analyzed by Wolfgang Sonne, ultimately leaving us doubtful that architectural language is able to consolidate and transmit messages solely through form. The ongoing negotiation in reclaiming local spaces for temporal individual action, regardless of their predefined architectural or economical setting, is explored in Peter Mörtenböck’s analysis of the urban practice of free running or parkour. Edward Levine reflects on modernist art’s self-referentiality in contrast to postmodernist’s contextualization, while Mark Jarzombek bridges the formally sealed 1960s art project and the physically sealed museum universe to demonstrate the fugitivity of aesthetic permanence at the personal and institutional level.

One common motive in the diverse microcosmic strategies pursued here turns on Mephistopheles’ own reluctant admission: just as he partakes of that spirit which, desiring evil, does only good, so our micro-worlds, desiring closure, bear within them the potential to radiate onto the greater world. It is this belief in the umbilical cord binding micro to macro that has energized organizations in opposition to the ruthless conduct of economic globalization in recent years. It remains to be seen which impact those microcosmic endeavors will have.