M A D A M E W A N GJ O U R N A L F O R GEO-DISTRIBUTEDCOLLABORATION

I S S U E 2 . 2

EDITORSSam Basu, Craig Cooper, Sabrina Tarasoff

WITH THANKS TOErin Baillie-Rutter, Nick Carr, Cenk Dereli, Erdem Yildirim, Kelly Halabi, Rana Hassanieh, Kelwin Palmer, Liz Murray, John Aiken, Mercedes Hutton, Rem Koolhaas, Dali

Excerpt from Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Rem Koolhaas1978Page photos from Oui: The Paranoid-Critical Revolution, Writings 1927 - 1933 Salvdor Dali. Exact Change 1998End paper grab from American PsychoDir. Mary Haron 2000

issue2.2paranoidARCHITECTURE

Europeans:Biuer!Rem Koolhaas6

OccupyCraig Cooper

12Sullen Sue’s Burial Ground Erin Baillie-Rutter24

Works on PaperRana Hassanieh

36Ruins of Eryhrae Palmer/Basu46

ThresholdNick Carr

58Model Kelly Halabi64

RottingDonkeySalvador Dali

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For New York is the Futurist city, the Baden Baden of that dying stench called Europe, the ironic gargantuan offspring of the senility, the debilitating spirituality and black breath of the European succubus.– Benjamin de Casseres, Mirrors of New York

BIUER! AI BRING OU SURREALISM.AULREDI MENI PIPOUL IN NIU YORK JOVE BIN INFECTID BAI ZILAIFQUIVING AND MARVELOS SORS OF SURREALISM.– Salvador Dali

Manhattan, great unfilleted sole spread out on a rock...– Le Corbusier

CONQUESTIn the mid-thirties both Salvador Dali and le Corbusier – they hate each other – visit New York for the first time.Both conquer it, Dali conceptually through interpretative appropriation (“New York: why, why did you create my statue long ago, long before I was born?”)1, Le (“its skyscrapers are too small”)2 Corbusier by proposing literally to destroy it.Their reactions – diametrically opposite – are episodes (fuelled by equal parts jealousy and admiration) In the long history of European attempts to “reclaim” Manhattan.

METHOD“I believe that the moment is at hand when by a paranoid and active advance of the mind, It will be possible to systematize confusion and thus help to discredit completely the world of realty”3: in the late twenties Salvador Dali injects his Paranoid-Critical Method into the bloodstream of Surrealism.“It was in 1929 that Salvador Dali turned his attention to the internal mechanism of paranoid phenomena, envisaging the possibility of an experimental method based on the power that dominates the systematic associations peculiar to paranoia; subsequently this method was to become the frenzied critical synthesis that bears

Europeans: Biuer!Dali and Le CorbusierConquer New York

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MADAME WANG 2.2the name of ‘paranoid critical activity.’”The motto of the Paranoid-Critical Method (PCM) is “The Conquest of the Irrational.”Instead of the passive and deliberately uncritical surrender to the subconscious of the early Surrealist automatisms in writing, painting, sculpture, Dali proposes a second-phase Surrealism: the conscious exploitation of the unconscious through the PCM.The PCM is defined by Dali mostly in tantalizing formulas: “the spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectifications of delirious associations and interpretations...”4

It is easiest to explain the PCM by describing its exact opposite.In the sixties two American behaviourists – Ayllon and Azrin – invent a “reinforcement therapy” which they call Token Economy. Through the generous distribution of coloured plastic tokens, inmates of a particular insane asylum are encouraged to behave like normal people whenever possible.The two experimenters “posted a list of desired behaviours on the wall and then gave bonus points (tokens) to those patients who made their beds, swept their rooms, worked in the kitchen, etc. These tokens were redeemable for canteen items or for amenities such as a colour TV, staying up later at night or a private room. These incentives proved very effective in motivating the patients to look after themselves and take care of the ward.”5

The hope that underlies such therapy is that, sooner or later, such systematic simulation of normality will turn into real normality, that the sick mind will insinuate itself successfully into some form of sanity like a hermit crab into an empty shell.

TOURISMDali’s PCM is a form of reinforcement therapy, but in the opposite direction. Instead of the diseased performing the rituals of health, Dali proposes a tourism of sanity into the realm of paranoia.When Dali invents the PCM, paranoia is fashionable in Paris. Through medical research, its definition has been amplified beyond simple persecution mania, which is only one fragment of a much larger tapestry of delusion6. In fact, paranoia is a delirium of interpretation. Each fact, event, force, observation is caught in one system of speculation and “understood” by the afflicted individual in such a way that it absolutely confirms and reinforces his thesis – that is, the initial delusion that is his point of departure. The paranoiac always hits the nail on the head, no matter where the hammer blows fall.Just as in a magnetic field metal molecules align themselves to exert a collective, cumulative pull, so, through unstoppable, systematic and in themselves strictly rational associations, the paranoiac turns the whole world into a magnetic field of facts, all pointing in the same direction; the one he is going in.The essence of paranoia is this intense – if distorted – relationship with the real world: “The reality of the external world is used for illustration and proof ... to serve the reality of our mind.... “7

Paranoia is a shock of recognition that never ends.

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SOUVENIRSAs the name suggests, Dali’s Paranoid-Critical Method is a sequence of two consecutive but discrete operations:1. the synthetic reproduction of the paranoiac’s way of seeing the world in a new light – With its rich harvest of unsuspected correspondences, analogies and patterns; and2. the compression of these gaseous speculations to a critical point where they achieve the density of fact: the critical part of the method consists of the fabrication of objectifying “souvenirs” of the paranoid tourism, of concrete evidence that brings the “discoveries” of those excursions back to the rest of mankind, ideally in forms as obvious and undeniable as snapshots.As a didactic model of such a critical operation – in this case, to prove the paranoiac (i.e., essentially unprovable) thesis of Mary’s Ascension – Dali describes one of his dreams.“Now that I am awake I still find this dream as masterly as when I slept. This is my method: take five bags of green peas, collect all of them in a single large bag and then drop them from an altitude of 50 feet; now project an image of the Holy Virgin on the failing peas; each pea, separated from the next one only by space, just like the particles of an atom, will reflect a small part of the total image; now one projects the image upside down and takes a photograph.“Due to the acceleration, conform to the laws of gravity, the upside-down fall of the peas will produce the effect of the Ascension. To refine the effect even more one can coat each pea with a reflective film, which will give it the quality of a screen...”8

Here, the conjecture of the Ascension is the initial paranoiac propellant; by recording it in a medium that cannot lie, that postulate is made critical – objectified, made undeniable, put into the real world where it can become active.Paranoid-Critical activity is the fabrication of evidence for unprovable speculations and the subsequent grafting of this evidence on the world, so that a “false” fact takes its unlawful place among the “real” facts.These false facts relate to the real world as spies to a given society: the more conventional and unnoted their existence, the better they can devote themselves to that society’s destruction.

TOEFacts wear, reality is consumed.The Acropolis disintegrates, the Parthenon is collapsing due to the ever-escalating frequency of tourists’ visits.As the big toe of a saint’s statue gradually disappears under the onslaught of his devotees’ kisses, so the Big Toe of reality dissolves slowly but inexorably under perpetual exposure to the continuous kiss of mankind. The higher the density of a civilization – the more metropolitan it is the higher the frequency of the Kiss, the faster the process of consumption of the reality of nature and artefacts. They are worn out so rapidly that the supply is depleted.

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MADAME WANG 2.2That is the cause of the Reality Shortage.This process intensifies in the 20th century and is accompanied by a parallel malaise: the fact that all facts, ingredients, phenomena, etc., of the world have been categorized and catalogued, that the definitive stock of the world has been taken. Everything is known, including that which is still unknown.The PCM is both the product of and the remedy against that anxiety: it promises that, through conceptual recycling, the worn, consumed contents of the world can be recharged or enriched like uranium, and that ever new generations of false facts and fabricated evidences can be generated simply through the act of Interpretation.The PCM proposes to destroy, or at least upset, the definitive catalogue, to short-circuit all existing categorizations, to make a fresh start – as if the world can be reshuffled like a pack of cards whose original sequence is a disappointment.PC activity is like cheating with the last moves of a game of solitaire that refuses to come out, or like banging a piece into a jigsaw puzzle so that it sticks, if not fits.PC activity ties the loose ends left by the rationalism of the Enlightenment finally together.

DESIREAs an example of recycling the used contents of the globe, Dali himself attacks Millet’s Angélus.At first sight it is one of the most banal of 19th-century clichés: a couple on a barren field, saying prayers in front of a wheelbarrow loaded with two bags of unspecified contents; the scene is completed by a pitchfork stuck firmly in the earth, a basket and a church spire on the horizon.Through the systematic reshuffling of these worn-out contents, through the fabrication of flashbacks and flash-forwards – the tableaux preceding and following the known image – Dali reveals that the Angélus is an ambiguous freeze-frame and discovers hidden meanings: the couple is petrified In a moment of sexual desire that will animate them In the next instant; the man’s hat, ostensibly taken off in a gesture of piety, hides an erection; the two enigmatic bags slumped together on the wheelbarrow only announce the imminent intimacy of the still-separated couple; the pitchfork is the force of sexual attraction made concrete; the woman’s red hat glowing in the sunset is a close-up of the impatient tip of the man’s member; and so on.Through interpretation, Dali explodes the Angélus and gives it a new lease on life.9

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OTHERWORLDLINESSArchitecture = the imposition on the world of structures it never asked for and that existed previously only as clouds of conjectures in the minds of their creators.Architecture is inevitably a form of PC activity.The transformation of the speculative into the undeniably “there” is traumatic for

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modern architecture. Like a lone actor who enacts an absolutely different play from that of other actors on the same stage, modern architecture wants to perform without belonging to the scheduled performance: even in its most aggressive campaigns of realization it insists on its otherworldliness.For this subversive play within a play it has cultivated a rhetorical justification modelled on Noah’s Paranoid-Critical episode in the Bible.Modern architecture is invariably presented as a last-minute opportunity for redemption, an urgent invitation to share the paranoiac thesis that a calamity will wipe out that unwise part of mankind that clings to old forms of habitation and urban coexistence.“While everybody else foolishly pretends that nothing is wrong, we construct our Arks so that mankind may survive the coming flood....”

CONCRETELe Corbusier’s favourite method of objectification – of making his structures critical – is reinforced concrete. The successive steps – from the speculative to the real – of this construction method constitute a transposition of Dali’s dream of photographing Mary’s Ascension that, for all its commonness in everyday life, is no less dreamlike.Broken down in sequence, reinforced-concrete construction proceeds as follows.First, the conjectural structure of shuttering is erected – the negative of the initial thesis.Then steel reinforcements – dimensioned strictly according to the rational principles of Newtonian physics – are inserted: the reinforcing process of paranoiac calculation.Then a mouse-grey liquid is poured into the empty speculative counter-forms to give them permanent life on earth, an undeniable reality, especially after the signs of the initial madness – the shuttering – have been removed, leaving only the fingerprints of the wood’s grain.Infinitely malleable at first, then suddenly hard as rock, reinforced concrete can objectify vacuity and fullness with equal ease: it is the architects’ plastic.(It is no coincidence that each reinforced-concrete building site, with its mad clutter of shuttering, resembles Noah’s project: an Inexplicably land-locked shipyard.)What Noah needed was reinforced concrete.What Modern Architecture needs is a flood.

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MADAME WANG 2.21. Salvador Dali, “ New York Salutes Me!,” Spain May 23, 1941.

2 Le Corbusier, as quaoted in New Your Herald Tribune, October 22, 1935.

3 Salvador Dali, La Femme visible (Paris: Editions Surrealistes, 1930).

4 Salvador Dali, “The Conquest of the Irrational,” appendix of Conversations with Dali (New York: Dutton, 1969), p115.

5. This “theory” was actually put into practice, as described in Robert Sommer, The End of Imprisonment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p 127.

6 Especially important reinforcement for Dali’s theses was provided by the dissertation of the psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, “De La psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapport avec la personalité”.Dali, La Femme visible.

8 Salvador Dali, Journal d’un genie (Paris: Editions de la Table Ronde), entry for July 12, 1952.

9 For a more complete record of all the permutations, see Salvador Dali, Le Mythe tragique de l’Angélus de Millet (Paris: Jean Jacques Pauvert, 1963).

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Sullen_Sue’s_Burial_Ground (Phantom Limbs pt. 2)

Beginnings….

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Underneath a floorboard lays my wake, A lost hatch, buried Thank you, thanks, you

Initialising Strength…. Building Terrain…. Now I am alone in the house. Half of it is sealed off entirely, it is rumored. It does not dare venture into Unknown Territory. This location was harvested alongside the others during the time of The Onlooker using the identities of expired Snowflakes. During this time there was a surplus of new Cellars to be used, often, they were even constructed with the entire house attached. We have to remember though, that this was a long time ago. A flickering candle was even meant to symbolize the visitor, who is itself. Quickly, as I am residing, I will try to explain the Evidence we had sealed that day…. The exact coordinates were unknown…. In the backlot we could still see all of the fabrications ­ soon to be reliquaries, they appeared to be versions of themselves, long extinct. We did not dare ask The Onlooker questions, though there were many. Walking past all of the defaced graves there was one which seemed to respond in great clarity&affection (a shadow itself). Its door was boarded up yet through a small crevice there appeared to be a symphony in the form of a Leontopodium alpinum. From afar it even looked like an original of Snowflake, so you can only imagine our Devotion…. The Gateway was not very strong, but we transported and were able to establish a self. The smell of the interior was very buried in its memory. There were even old systems like staircases and shelves! The shelves were most intriguing, since they seemed to hold some of the former selves evidence. What had been used as furniture was now only lighter patches against the dim setting. We can sometimes still remember the objects, but they are no longer desired. On the table, a quill and an old book entitled “Ward’s Symphony” lay in its own dust. Entirely removed from necessity, it seemed to speak to us in great clarity&promise . It’s ribbon was a

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deep saturation of burgundy (like blood slain) held in its spine. It opened itself to page 22 ­ thought to be its expiration ­ and revealed a handwritten note…. Welcome to my collection! I am sitting nearly itself closed window by my computer. I can't remember what the other one was but now it is endangered itself and expiring. Somehow we have become this old, I do not know how. Why, it feels surreal! First ventures it is trembled and sad, we could sense. But after some time the collection grew and experience was enriched. The first Welcome was hardly the last and I tried to open my arms, and myself. Collectors are a certain type, my dad says at one time, because they want to formulate a new world. Im afraid of new life formed so much this is so that I do not dare grow!! In the shelves there are most hues to be found, fondly. most have no nodular, i have tried to resurface, but cannot obtain. many burial grounds are far and also hard to reach. In the unearthing sometimes you will find others and itself, please do not fear all that are longings. In my demise, so special are these findings! I leave my specimens to you, dear world, as they are meant for a Trembling.... Please Enjoy your stay! And don’t forget to sign the guestbook ­Sue

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...Cracked Windowpane.... Slowly dissolves

Chair is not mine, it is ours

Self­made quote: “Hands are the part of the human body most drenched in history”

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In one image hanging above a Small Wooden Doors there is a woman who, with quiet concentration, is pouring milk into a bowl. With the left Hand she supports the Tremblor she is pouring from. Around her are various objects: a loaf of bread, a stoneware jug, a basket (revealed in infrared photo), and a brass bucket. The woman is standing near the window so she can see what she is doing. The light falls on the Hands; a dark silhouette encounters the white wall. Even though there is a fascinating play of Light And Shadow she continues with her work, totally unperturbed. Softly, Scroll…. somewhere faraway but near a song begins to play.... its melody is haunting and quickly engulfs you in melancholy "snowflake on the windowpain is not dead is not dying snowflake on the window is not dead is not dying snowflake on my window

is not dead is only melting...."

….. *expiration envelops*

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is not dead is only melting...."

….. *expiration envelops*

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We’ve all been here before, it stores our experiences . Fingerprints are not traceable after a certain point, That’s why The Onlooker(s) and ourselves utilized their identities. After a certain coordinate a Snowflake becomes its origin again, but before that it is its own phantom limb. To create a new identity for undercover work was too much, a template is needed. Yet every snowflake remains unique. *the first melting snowflake paves the way for the rest down the glass of the window with its melting tail that envelops itself….they all meld

Sullen Sue’s Findings….

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We’ve all been here before, it stores our experiences . Fingerprints are not traceable after a certain point, That’s why The Onlooker(s) and ourselves utilized their identities. After a certain coordinate a Snowflake becomes its origin again, but before that it is its own phantom limb. To create a new identity for undercover work was too much, a template is needed. Yet every snowflake remains unique. *the first melting snowflake paves the way for the rest down the glass of the window with its melting tail that envelops itself….they all meld

Sullen Sue’s Findings….

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*A gloved hand turns the page Excavation 1 Stolen soil from around home, stored in medical capsules Origin: Lost Screen Used: Season 2 Episode ? Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: Particular attention is given to my interior, When to Set transports masked in shadow, Aften We spent hours and can find all our content in aerial not dig them out to the East, but we are collections of Us Memories of our search for the windows themselves are I am no longer here Please forgive me Excavation 2 Traces of Ward, in the form of company Origin: Lost Screen Used: Season 6 Episode 1 Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: The carpet hides my floorboard in preferred form I am like a weight on my carpet The specimen is the only holotype In the early years it was easier to find snowflakes are harder to find now when placed in the context that is their own embodiment it will be slow, even Shadows are only obtained if you move to another Search unattainable pattern recognition I am sure that behind these frozen walls there is a world, Also guilty

Excavation 3 Small basket, only visible in certain lighting Origin: itself Screen used: Season 1 Episode 1 Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: If the lighting is full effect I am more saturated War presented itself in deep hues His path was deep underground and in shades of grey In the former self, my body is so weak I'm looking for someone distant, grows Small fingerprints are meaning and less Aging away my ability to recognize faces Patterns are nothing without a master Found on some more advanced areas were our relics there were rumors about you, My Symphony …. *here the Evidence breaks off and becomes unrecognisable in its form

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*A gloved hand turns the page Excavation 1 Stolen soil from around home, stored in medical capsules Origin: Lost Screen Used: Season 2 Episode ? Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: Particular attention is given to my interior, When to Set transports masked in shadow, Aften We spent hours and can find all our content in aerial not dig them out to the East, but we are collections of Us Memories of our search for the windows themselves are I am no longer here Please forgive me Excavation 2 Traces of Ward, in the form of company Origin: Lost Screen Used: Season 6 Episode 1 Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: The carpet hides my floorboard in preferred form I am like a weight on my carpet The specimen is the only holotype In the early years it was easier to find snowflakes are harder to find now when placed in the context that is their own embodiment it will be slow, even Shadows are only obtained if you move to another Search unattainable pattern recognition I am sure that behind these frozen walls there is a world, Also guilty

Excavation 3 Small basket, only visible in certain lighting Origin: itself Screen used: Season 1 Episode 1 Type: Authentic Prop Details upon finding: If the lighting is full effect I am more saturated War presented itself in deep hues His path was deep underground and in shades of grey In the former self, my body is so weak I'm looking for someone distant, grows Small fingerprints are meaning and less Aging away my ability to recognize faces Patterns are nothing without a master Found on some more advanced areas were our relics there were rumors about you, My Symphony …. *here the Evidence breaks off and becomes unrecognisable in its form

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Quote: “As rivers are lost in the sea so are virtues in self”

The book closes itself…. On one of its pages, never read beyond the inscriber, is a lain flower Leontopodium alpinum It will remain there, Forever…. (Nearby a floorboard whispers...Origin Unknown)

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Quote: “As rivers are lost in the sea so are virtues in self”

The book closes itself…. On one of its pages, never read beyond the inscriber, is a lain flower Leontopodium alpinum It will remain there, Forever…. (Nearby a floorboard whispers...Origin Unknown)

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Year 1 Year 1

Thank you so much for showing me around the city this past weekend. It was very beauti-ful. Your family is wonderful, and I couldn’t have felt more welcome. I also want to thank you for teaching me those useful phrases so I could speak a little while I finished my business trip. My time was amazing, and it was just about the only time I could actually get a little rest. The remainder of my trip was busy, but I still enjoyed it immensely.I would love to reciprocate by inviting you and your family to my home. (I’m sure you could use a break from your hard work!) I know the city very well and can show you all my favorite places. And of course you’d all be able to stay at my flat during your trip.I do hope you are able to attend. Don't worry about the cost; it will be my treat. It’s the least I can do to pay you back for your amazing hospitality. Please write back if you would like to visit.Yours truly,

Thank you so much for showing me around the city this past weekend. It was very beauti-ful. Your family is wonderful, and I couldn’t have felt more welcome. I also want to thank you for teaching me those useful phrases so I could speak a little while I finished my business trip. My time was amazing, and it was just about the only time I could actually get a little rest. The remainder of my trip was busy, but I still enjoyed it immensely.I would love to reciprocate by inviting you and your family to my home. (I’m sure you could use a break from your hard work!) I know the city very well and can show you all my favorite places. And of course you’d all be able to stay at my flat during your trip.I do hope you are able to attend. Don't worry about the cost; it will be my treat. It’s the least I can do to pay you back for your amazing hospitality. Please write back if you would like to visit.Yours truly,

Thank You Space and Time.Search: How to write a letter.

Objects In MirrorAre LargerThan They Appear

Objects In MirrorAre LargerThan They Appear

Single Purpose ResistanceStructures, spaces and objects designed with a singular purpose have an inherently higher resistance to global psyche manipulation.

Rare AmalgamsCertain mixtures of product can result in circumstances that artificially atenuate our control.

Programmable ConstructorsFluorescence microscopy reference below.

Programmable ConstructorsFluorescence microscopy reference below.

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