Hongjohn Lin
"Contemporary" as a Spatial Term
The word "the contemporary" seemingly refers to time, but in fact, such is not always the case, if only because we ceaselessly find ourselves in the contemporary moment. Paradoxically, the contemporary becomes a permanent duration and thus loses any distinction. As a time-oriented term to indicate a certain zeitgeist, "the contemporary" is utterly ineffectual. However, it is difficult to undo the notion of the contemporary, because if we wish to exist outside of it, we have to imagine a whole new set of a past and a future: an attempt that is inevitably in vain. The contemporary is applicable to all expressions in a period of time, and thereof its universality causes its excessive signifieds to nullify the signifier. "Contemporary" can describe anything and everything, thus signifying nothing. The only solution for making " the contemporary" a meaningful expression lies in its tendency to unfold spaces, much like the direction of the current global state of simultaneous spatial juxtaposition, in which chronological order has lost its significance. In the global regime of virtual "real time" and instantaneous communication across oceans and continents, temporal distinctions are subsumed beneath a busy "24/7" always on, always open world; where time zones are irrelevant; where the sheer acceleration of life reduces duration to the zero point of hyper-novelty; and where historical incidents are forgotten almost before they occur. Therefore, the contemporary is no longer an emphasis on the temporal sequence of cause-and-effect, but instead is a discombobulated, variegated state of spatialization. To put it bluntly, from the word "the contemporary" in which we live, various forms of spatialziation replace temporal progression in our understandings. The cognition of space is an entry point for grasping the global reality, and an apt description of the present state as a materialized world.
Thus, corresponding to the multifaceted state of politics and culture in the contemporary world, a clearly ordered Euclidean space is no longer effective ¨C instead, a complex, synchronous, multidimensional space is the condition of the current age. We are also accustomed to using topographical terms to describe conditions of contemporary society and culture. Utopia, an idealistic, non-existent place as its prefix "u" indicating "without" as well as "good," is an age-old spatial term loaded with the connotations of a long tradition. Literary history has no lack of musings on such an ideal progressive society: The unified, harmonious world in Thomas More's Utopia; the kingdom of the Houhynhynms who ruled the Yahoos in Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels; and the society of surveillance governed by Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984. These literary depictions reveal the connections between idealist and the masses, and also the notion of progress in relation to societies. Utopianism is a collective construct of a possible imagination of totality that can sweep away the differences among individuals. This is the reason that the very thin line separating utopia from dystopia can so often be crossed, sometimes in a single work such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which begins as a utopia of consumer pleasures, but is quickly revealed to be a dystopia of totalitarian control.
In the left-wing political blueprint, utopia is the ultimate goal. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of such desire for
the collective is the impossible. The true reason is that the gap between totality and difference can never be fully bridged, and
the latter can inevitably transform a homogenous utopia into a heterogeneous dystopia. Recently, utopianism has resurfaced in the contemporary world as the fantasies of capitalism and globalization, such as the disappearance of cultural boundaries, transparent communication by technology, the free flow of capital markets, and seemingly the universal prosperity of consumer society as well. This notion of a "one-world-ness" signals-- instead of an ideal global village of peace, joy, and togetherness -- a state of blending and penetration under the deterritorializing effects of globalization. Simply because the program of such "world-ness" is in fact a battlefield of struggle under the subordination of power based on ideology, a world of a peacefully and commonly shared culture is a pure and unadulterated never land.
The Margins of the Margins: From Heterotopia to Atopia
In "Of Other Places," a seminal exploration of the contemporary topology, Michel Foucault suggested that a state of
intersubjectivity exists within contemporary spaces. The spaces that he explored in this lecture were places on the margins, such as ethnic communities located in foreign lands, red light districts in big cities, the graveyards of holy places (churches), and boats when they are far off shore. Because of the marginality in relation to the center, this spatial disposition is a
contradictory phenomenon. In other words, in Foucault's view, "other places" are those spaces corresponding to, yet
incompatible with the center. Foucault coined the term "heterotopia" for a social discourse on the dynamics of space: The
prefix of the term "hetero-" suggests "difference," and therefore heterotopia is a place of contradictions and differences. Foucault's view of space has initiated an exploration of the expounding of contemporary spaces, and also leads to a variety of possible interpretations of heterotopia in cultural to societal to urban situations.
While Foucault's heterotopia is a marginal space, could there be another kind of marginal space even beyond the margins, without dependence upon a central norm? And what is the orientation and delineation of such a space by which it unfolds? In other words, can a "non-spatialized space" exist? The German sociologist Helmut Willke has proposed the concept of "atopia,"defined as a place without borders. In Willke's views, we can get the picture of blurred boundaries as a result of the "de-territorialization" of societies under the influence of globalization in national politics, cultures, technological conditions (i.e., the Internet), and transnational corporations. In other words, atopia is a redefinition of spatial territory: In the process of globalization, the technological conditions and fluid economics of capital and the deployment of power have penetrated borders as we formerly defined them. In Willke's perspective, atopia represents the blurring and inevitable loss of borders, manifested in the process of globalization with its tremendous activity, e.g., the redemarcation and reorganization of cultural, political, economic and societal terrains: multinational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational markets are most fittingly in this category. Nevertheless, we must also consider that atopian phenomena, as Gilles Deleuze noted, can imply a motile tendency toward re-territorialization. In other words, this is an irresistible trajectory in the various aspects of the process of globalization, such as power, control and autonomy. This is also the precise reason to develop the concept of atopia as an interpretative framework, because the current course of globalization is filled with countless quasi-utopias: Asianized McDonalds, European fengshui, Chinese ikebina, Taiwanese hip hop, and other common phenomena known as cultural syncretism. Atopias, not utopia, are present in everyday life of our contemporary culture. " '
Of course, "atopia" is a neologism, a hybrid form from the prefix "a" (meaning "not") with the root "topia." Thus, atopia means "a place cannot be placed," or simply not-a¨Cplace. The logical extension of this concept is that of a place losing a proper name, and therefore it cannot be seen as one: a state of de facto without de jure, a paradoxical spatial condition. We may view an atopia as a "place that cannot be spatialized" to articulate its inability to be seen as a space. In geometry, both a torus (Fig. 1) and a Moebius strip (Fig. 2) are atopias, because their gravities lie outside of parameters, and their interiors are also exteriors. These odd forms defy the conventional understanding of space. Their spatial characteristics can draw a parallel relation to special manifestations of contemporary culture and politics. Atopia is a margin that cannot be marginalized, because it cannot be represented by conventional spatial concepts, and thereby owns a special and paradoxical nature.
Atopia is a terra incognita, abiding by the logic of a space more marginal than heterotopia; its marginality is not derived from a
reference relative to the center, but rather from its own spatial configuration, much like the paradoxical nature where the center is located outside its bounds as in torus and Moebius strip. An atopia is a space that cannot be represented in an ordinary manner for its characteristic is that of an unplaceable place. Atopias corresponding to the contemporary cultural context are thus un-representable spaces, such as a non-communal community, a non-cultural culture. It is an exceptional realm to the principle of representation.
The Borromean Knot of Space
Atopia bears infeasibility according to the reality principle. It is the place that has been intentionally ignored and suppressed
within the global logic of militarism, law, economics, and biopower. Although there is a desire to be recognized as a place, but its lack of naming soon renders its incomplete subjectivity. The reason is precisely that subjectification is not merely the self-awareness of the subject itself, but also the acknowledgment and recognition that the subject is well placed among others ¨C an intersubjectivity of identifying and being identified.
Lacanian psychoanalysis is helpful in understanding the relationships among utopia, heterotopia, and atopia. The seduction of this interpretation lies in its clarity in displaying the topological concept in relation to the function of desire. In a Borromean
knot ¨C a schema that Jacques Lacan has used to demonstrate the twisted layers of the real order, symbolic order, and imaginary order --
if any one of the circles is removed, the entire knot comes undone, and there is the interconnective relation among the
three.
Heterotopia can be associated with the Imaginary order where a baby in "the mirror stage" (mis)identifies its reflected image as a whole autonomous Self: "Me!". The imaginary order is thus at once complete and fragmented to mark a split subject between the independent image and utterly dependent body in reality, and between the subject represented in the mirror versus the subject misrecognizing that representation by identifying with it and thus forgetting the ego's own lack of control over a fragmented psyche. Next, the Real order represents utopia, because in psychoanalysis, desire is always a postponement of self-realization, but a drive repeatedly leans toward the realization of such impossibility. The impossibility of the ultimate realization of desire marks the real order. Ironically, the Real is that which resists realization. This is the reason that based on the economy of desire; utopia is manifested as an ideal and beautiful neverland, and also constantly tends to initiate its ultimate realization.
Atopia then belongs to the Symbolic order, because the fundamental spatial symptom for atopia lies in the lack of a symbolic
status, its naming, defining the status of language. Atopia stresses on the frustration of the symbolic order. It is the
impediment that the symbolic order encounters when entering the real order. Based on the castration principle, aphasia is its
symptom. In other words, it is the given law of the symbolic order to make it always incomplete as a content without name. The paradoxical nature of atopia lies in the subject's relationship of excessive submissiveness to "the big other," because its "unnameability" must be employed, in turn, within the symbolic order, gaining the bizarre condition of an "exterior interior" and a "center on the margins."
The Non-place of Globalization: Allegory of Atopia
Atopia is the manifested condition of biopolitics within current culture. This means: Our bodies, plans, work, leisure activities
and other practical expressions of everyday life are the results of ethic actions and norms determined by the unitary politico-
economic logic of globalization. In Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe, according to the development of
globalization, the position occupied in contemporary culture by Empire whose hegemonic homogeneity has gradual formed through history, shaping our everyday lives to become part of imperial biopolitics. They describe this state of affairs thusly: "In Empire, no subjectivity is outside, and all places have been subsumed in a general 'non-place.'" In this, the true life condition of individuals is the personalization of deprivation ¨C what Italian theorist Giorgio Agamben describes as the condition of "la nuda vita" or "naked life." As long as we remain in the non-place of the logic of Empire, only movements of self-empowerment responding to the imposition of emergency situations on non-places can manifest a genuine humanity in the face of the homogenized logic of globalization.
On the one hand, atopia is the radical exterior that marks the interiority of the Empire. Contrary to an isotopia that yields to
the logic of Empire, an atopia is the state of exception that brings about self-empowerment in areas such as technology,
nationhood, and urban life in which no proper names are called and, therefore, must be revealed in-the-name-of-others. Thus, within disparate soicio-political scenes, atopia can no longer term as a singular denotation, a highlight of its contradictory
spatial paradox of "neither this nor that, but also both this and that."
On the other hand, as described previously, the key concept of a nation acting as an atopia lies not in its existence outside of
globalized logic of politics, economics, and military, but rather in its state of necessary incorporation "within" the order.
Seen in this light, identity in Taiwan is similar to the Freudian "Fort-Da" game: a perpetually repeating language game within
the symbolic order of oscillating appearance and disappearance. Squeezed between the powerful players of globalized politics, Taiwan, with its self-consciousness unable to be enunciated displays a phantom status of "without nationality."
Taiwan's status on the international stage is consistently expressed in other terms. Consider the countless appellations under
which Taiwan has appeared over the past 20 years: "China (Taiwan)," "China (Taipei)," "China/Taiwan," "China/Taipei," "Taipei, China," "Taiwan, China," "Chinese Taipei," "China Taipei," "Taipei" or "China Taiwan." The names of its diplomatic entities are even more befuddling: "East Asia Trade Center," "Association for the Promotion of Commercial and Tourist Exchanges" and so forth. As an atopia, Taiwan, through a countless list of terms, textual restructuring, division, brackets and slashes, must articulate its own ghostlike identity "in-the-name-of-others."
Just as in a perpetually incomplete signifying chain, the changing metonymies must point toward the unknown subject and the other; through aliases, the political allegory of Taiwan attests to the governmentality of the big Other, the Empire. Taiwan's numerous aliases parallel to its history of "nation without nationality" are ongoing depictions of a political allegory of this island where fragmentary appellations have been pieced together from different times and places. Taiwan's phantom status can only be articulated by supplements, expressing identity as aliases, i.e., creating itself by differance, a persistent reiteration of the enigmatic identity as an open secret of remembrance and forgetting.
Acting Out from Atopia
Atopia is disclosed through various guises ¨C symbol, metaphor, simile, code, metonymy, and cataphora¨C to bespeak the violence of speeches in the symbolic order. All these distortions, contortions, and alterations are transferences from a nameless terra incognita. The uncertain status of naming actively creates a new position between the subject and the others, responding to the network of intersubjectivity codified by political realities, to open up to the impossibility in the real order. By reiterations to create the identity in¨Cthe-name-of-others, atopia retroactively alludes to its own inexpressible phantom status, a symbolicly perverse situation.
What the exhibition Atopia brings to light is that the transference of this unrepresentability belongs to Taiwan's cultural and
political discourse. By creative inscription on exile from within, a gesturing to para-sites of the local, the exhibition reflects
the acting-out of Taiwan within its glocalized map. This is a mirrored community reflexive to Taiwanese-ness as a cultural,
social, and political terrain to excise a magical reverse of psychogeographical play.
Ming-liang Tsai is one of Taiwan's most important contemporary filmmakers. Born and raised in Malaysia, nevertheless he speaks from the perspectives of the local culture. The Exhibition of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan for the 52nd Venice Biennale features Tsai's film installation "Is It a Dream." The setting is in a derelict movie theater in Malaysia, alluding both to the Golden Age of the film industry ¨C the 1970s ¨C and to its present day decline. The work also articulates a nostalgic return to the homeland where Tsai grew up. Tsai's work is like a sculpture in time, slowly unfolding its narrative. The metaphors of the absence of a father figure appear often in his films. In 2005, he wrote the following words relating to his works "Withering Flowers" and "What Time Is It There?"
Sickly son
The sauna dark and damp
He comes across his father
They do not recognize each other
Embracing
He helps him jerk it off
The Great Man's bronze statue
His back
Silence
In this stanza, transitions from home to country and from body to action, points out a disjunctive state of national and familial
orders, an echo of the contradictory temporal and spatial state in "What Time Is It There?": the protagonist 's obsessive, imaginary love, which gradually shows a psychotic condition in the deterritorialized concurrence between Taipei and Paris. In Tsai's works, his personal attitude ¨C a distant nostalgia¡ªin reflecting local culture is oddly uncanny and that, in turn, serves as an allegory for a non-place. The exegesis referring to the local culture ¨C the political figure (a great man), unrequited love, incest, and sex ¨C presents in the wandering space such as the mist-clogged chamber of a sauna or a muddy riverside as a metaphor for losing one's place without the name of father, the patriarchical Symbolic order.
Kuo Min Lee's documentary photography incisively portrays the relationship among inhabitants, their environment, and history. In addition to documentation, Lee also involved himself as a social activist against the government's removal of communities. Lee's works are at once documentary photography in action and participation in the communal life and its social movements. These hererotopic communities¡ªTreasure Hill, the No. 1 Air Force Community in Sanchong, the Wenho New Village in Banciao, and recently Losheng Leprosarium¡ªall are bygone or on the verge of being torn down. Lee's photographs tell the story of the residents with their belongings, spaces, and environments, while also serving as evidence to testify to the changing urban milieu. Through showing facts from these communities, Lee witnesses the gradual disappearance of empowerment communities, victims of the inexorable urbanization, and also conceptualizes the deceased quality of spaces, things, and objects in a political way.
Huang-Chen Tang's work embarks from a description of a well-known Taiwanese scenic postcard. She begins her video action with a nearly obsessive undertaking ¨C making a lost image to reappear in real places as France, Korea, and Taiwan. Her video--much like any tourist photo-- signifies the re-presenting of a personal memory from visual culture. The work is self-contradictory by employing an impossible means to achieve its impossible ends ¨C rendering a still image to moving images; from her private action to group effort; and from the local, to the other places. Tang is a modern Kua Fu (a giant who chased after the sun in vain in Chinese mythology), constructing a task of sublime untranslatability involving culture/material/action, and etc. Precisely because of her infeasible means, she is able to instill her works to open a boundlessly fascinating space bordering on the gray area between individual action and collective memory.
Shih-chieh Huang is a bricoleur transforming domestic appliances into a symbiotic organic installation. He employs low-tech, mass-produced goods to explore consumer culture and the human condition. Unveiled before the eyes of viewers, these non-utilitarian inventions of recycled objects convey the cultural habitus of the local and the artist's personal psychological state through his spontaneous, chaotic assemblages. His works present, not a perfect simulation of technology, but a short-circuited, alienated technological state of reality. Huang's works point out the atopian state of technology and humanity: a hysterical condition of how the technology of the future is imagined, perfectly explicating a sense of anxiety toward the future, and also serving as an ironic stance toward technopoly where technology has always risen from human beings.
The artwork of VIVA might be described as the result of reinterpreting the Japanese subculture doujinshi ; yet it would suffice to say that through mimicking another culture, he has created a space-in-between for the local: the past is preserved and translated to a new, contemporary culture, and vice-versa. This is one aspect of VIVA's practice to signal cultures in traffic. Much different from that of most contemporary artists, who use the motifs and subjects from subcultures as a source of inspiration, VIVA makes subculture as a living situation of culture and society. VIVA's participating work "Overclocker's Hell" describes the local geek culture as its main theme, a realism manifested in everyday life in Taiwan.
These works of the selected artists are not only an illustration of realities from Taiwan, but also an invitation to the beholders
for a symptomatic reading of atopia, an other space in the absence of proper name. These works altogether are acting-outs that transfer from the frustration and suppression within. Attending to one's homeland without must be spoken through different guises instead of through conventional representation and symbolism, and this is the precise way of Atopia's displaced signs ultimately signify. Relying on a host of transferences to disclose ones singular and unique experiences, Atopia shows the journey of being a stranger to ones own land, in short, an exile from within. Its unrepresentable and fluid state in turn is intertwined with the global order. Here, travelism, urbanization, technology, subcultures and individual existence all meet at the same crossroad, a terra incognita of self-refabrication in the name-of-other-names.