The Zone and Zones - Radical Spatiality in our Times

On the basis of ever-mounting evidence, amongst which is the “zone” problematic of the Zadar conference that occassioned these notes, it can be concluded that the spatial turn has insinuated itself as an all-pervading heuristic tool throughout the humanities and the social sciences. The extent to which space and spatiality have usurped the central stage in the various branches of reasearch can be gauged by admonishments that what we are witnessing is a new fundamentalism that has simply inverted the terms of the dualism of time and space (May and Thrift 2001: “Introduction”). According to Michael Dear the sway of space is manifested in multifold ways: in the ubiquity of spatial analysis in social theories and practices; in the explosion of publications devoted to the exploration of the interface of the social and the spatial; in the reintegration of human geography into various domains of knowledge; in the focus given to difference and the consequent diversification of theoretical and ...

Na periferiji glavnog grada stajala je niska bijela kuća, veoma nalik kućama koje su je okruživale. Ulica u kojoj se nalazila nije bila popločana zato što je to bila siromašna četvrt. Vrata te kuće, posve nova i ukrašena čavlima, bila su zakračunata i s unutarnje i s vanjske strane. Velika soba, opremljena s nekoliko modernih kromiranih stolica, barom i džuboksom otvarala se na prazno unutarnje dvorište. Na jednoj od tih stolica sjedio je debeo dječačić Indijanac i slušao Good Night, Sweetheart, pjesmu koju je netom odabrao. Svirala je vrlo glasno, a dječačić je ozbiljno zurio u stroj pred sobom. Bila je to jedna od kuća kojima je upravljao njihov vlasnik, senor Kurten, napola Španjolac, napola Nijemac. Poslijepodne je bilo tmurno. U jednoj od soba upravo su se probudile Julia i Inez. Julia je bila sitna i nalik majmunčiću. Bila je privlačna samo zbog svojih neobično velikih i sjajnih očiju. Inez je bila visoka, čvrstih grudiju. Glava joj je bila premalena za tijelo, a oči suviše blizu...

Papagajeva mesnica nalazila se na prašnjavoj cesti na kraju grada. S betonske prizemnice visio je zahrđali željezni znak. Izdaleka se doimala poput autobusne stanice ili skladišta punog praznih boca, tako nešto. Ali kad biste se polako približili, nema toga tko gromki glas koji je punio radnju ne bi pripisao njezinu vlasniku. “Govedinu ste rekli? Od goveda imam ovo. Muuuuuu! Ih, što ne zvuči dobro? Da vam pravo kažem, i ovo je meso dobro mukalo! Muuuuuu! Muuuuuu!“To je bila jedina mesnica u gradu i bila je otvorena od jutra do mraka. Pred vratima su čest prizor bile žene s košarama. Na putu u školu uvijek smo mogli čuti mesarovo glasanje (tim smo putem išli i u osnovnu i srednju školu). Svaki put kad bismo u prolazu bacili pogled na njega, bucmasti bi se mesar oglasio, crvenih očiju i podbuhlih obraza. Žene u mesnici namignule bi jedna drugoj i smiješile se. Još više od prodaje mesa, barem je to tako izgledalo u očima nas djece, mesar je bio posvećeniji oponašanju domaćih životinja.Nje...

Netko je u dvorištu, pomisli Anne. Njišu se grane cedra. Ptice se razbježe prhnuvši s hranilica. Bježe kardinali, plave šojke i domaći vrapci i kroz veliki prozor dnevne sobe bacaju svoje sjene. Tamni obrisi njihovih krila kratko se zadržavaju na baršunastom prekrivaču na Anninim nogama. Ona pritišće dugme s jedne strane svog bolničkog kreveta, a gornji dio naprave počinje zujati i dizati se sve dok se Anne ne uspravi. Krevet joj je kupio sin u trgovini medicinskom opremom i smjestio ga ispred prozora u dnevnoj sobi, tako da može promatrati svoje ptice na hranilicama. Pritisak dugmeta izaziva joj bol duboko u kostima ruke. Tablete koje svaki dan uzima ne pomažu. Zbog njih Anne se osjeća omamljeno i odvojeno od vlastitog tijela, ali lijek sprečava da bol postane nepodnošljiva. Kako napreduje njezin artritis, tako se i bol širi i postaje sve jača. Čini se da sada dolazi iz same moždine, kao da se ona žuta spužvasta tvar iznutra suši i pretvara u prašinu poput starog spužvastog jastuka. A...

Experiences of listening can be appreciated as intensely relational, bringing us into contact with surrounding events, bodies and things. Given that sound propagates and expands outwardly, as a set of oscillations from a particular source, listening carries with it a sensual intensity, whereby auditory phenomena deliver intrusive and disruptive as well as soothing and assuring experiences. The physicality characteristic of sound suggests a deeply impressionistic, locational "knowledge structure" – that is, the ways in which listening affords processes of exchange, of being in the world, and from which we extend ourselves. Sound, as physical energy reflecting and absorbing into the materiality around us, and even one's self, provides a rich platform for understanding place and emplacement. Sound is always already a trace of location.Such features of auditory experience give suggestion for what I may call an acoustical paradigm – how sound sets in motion not only the material world but a...

The cartographer’s dream is that of a perfect map: a map that perfectly represents a territory, a dream of Divine knowledge; a map that has haunted the ideology of representation throughout history; a map so detailed that it coincides with real space. In a short parable, ‘Museum, on Exactitude in Science’, Borges describes the mysterious gild of cartographers which charts such a map. Although Borges’ narrative finishes with a nostalgic conclusion about a superfluous and forgotten discipline, the cartographer’s dream of a perfect map has never ceased: it has merely varied throughout history. For medieval cartographers the perfect map included the physical cosmos and the spiritual one. In Dante’s time the European ‘mappa mundi’ depicted one single landmass, the Northern Hemisphere, with Jerusalem in the middle and the world is variously shown as dominated or held by God. In the Psalter mappa mundi, which is surmounted by an illustration of the Last Judgement, God holds a little dark red ...