The book of exploration

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escapism and architecture

architecture of limits

t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n

© Charlotte Elise Middelveld

ExploreLab 27The Book of Exploration2018 - 2019

Technical University DelftDepartment of ArchitectureMSc of Science

Design mentor. Roel van de PasResearch mentor. Stavros KousoulasBuilding Technology mentor. Jan van de Voort


escapism and architecture

architecture of limits

2

c o n t e n t s

introduction

a manual to indifference

the placement of the living in this world - or how

understanding territorialisation is the key to understanding

death

1. an understanding of the emergence of living things

2. territorial boundaries and how to break them

3. the human condition in assembled territories

4. the placement of the stoic in this world - a different understanding of death

5. escapism

6. escapism through architecture

7. the destination

bibliography

7

9

11

12

13

13

14

17

18

20

23

76

[…] stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion and doubt. Happiness is never granda .

--

‘In fact,’ said [the man], ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.’

‘All right, then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappyb .’

a Huxley, Brave New World, 195.b Huxley, 212.


1

Kay SageUpper side of the Sky1944

The book of exploration is the theorethical body of my research that I conducted in the graduation studio ExploreLab, for the Technical University Delft. This book aims to provide the reader with a complex layering of thoughts and ideas through which the persona - the Recluse - of my graduation should be understood.

The Recluse finds its origine in ‘A man asleep’ by Georges Perec, and through themes of assembled territories, rhythm’s and ritornello’s his placement in the world is theorized. These themes are further developed in the book of curiosities and the book of methods.

i n t r o d u c t i o n

9 a m a n u a l t o i n d i f f e r e n c e8 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n

Indifference to the world is neither ignorance nor hostilityc.

To want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep. To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. To follow the gutters, the fences the water’s edge. To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls. To waste your time. To have no projects, to feel no impatience. To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt.

In the course of time your life will be there in front of you: a life without motion, without crisis and without disorder, a life with no rough edges and no imbalance. Minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day, season after season something is going to start that will be without end: your vegetal existence, your cancelled life.

You are alone, and because you are alone you must never look to see what time it is, never count the minutes. You must never again eagerly tear open your mail, never again be disappointed when all you find is advertising bumph inviting you to acquire, for the modest sum of seventy-seven francs a cake set engraved with your monogram, or the treasures of the Western art.

You must forget hope, enterprise, success, perseverance. You are letting yourself go, and it comes almost easily to you. You avoid the paths which you followed for too long. You allow passing time to erase the memory of the faces, the telephone numbers and the addresses, the smiles and the voices.

You forget that you learnt how to forget, that, one day, you forced yourself to forgetd.

c Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties; A Man Asleep (London, UK: Vintage Classics, 2011), 169, https://www.goodreads.com/work/best_book/933080-things-a-story-of-the-sixties-a-man-asleep.d excerpt from Perec, 161–65, redacted by author.

a m a n u a l t o i n d i f f e r e n c e

11 p r e f a c e

t h e p l a c e m e n t o f t h e l i v i n g i n t h i s w o r l d - o r h o w u n d e r s t a n d i n g t e r r i t o r i a l i s a t i o n i s t h e ke y t o u n d e r s t a n d i n g d e a t h

In the autobiographical book ‘A man asleep’ Georges Perec describes the life of a young man who one day decides he no longer wants to engage with life. It tells the memorable story of feeling a complete inability to deal with the pain and heaviness of the world. The horror caused by life and happiness, the impossibility of waking up. To only want noting. The main character displays anxiety towards the upwards driving forces of society, and refuses to partake. He decides not to care. Not to care for not caring. With his novel, Georges Perec shows an intimate understanding of the downside of a society which expects everyone to progress at all times. The man asleep decides he no longer partakes in this predetermined future in which he wakes, eats, works, sleeps.

The man asleep decides he’s a Recluse.

I believe Georges Perec touches upon a feeling that many people at one stage in their lives feel. The world can seem pretty dark sometimes, tasks too intense, or beauty too overwhelming. It may feel like an escape – to a tropical island, a house in the middle of nowhere, a job in a new city - might be the solution. However, though I believe the feeling of escapism to be relatable to many, I also believe I live in a society in which it is - at least - uncommon to voice the urge to escape. It is even more unusual to actually manage to escape, as the Western urban environment is dense and crowded, and social systems suffocating.

This phenomena deserves more attention, as it is a hidden characteristic of society that is clearly not well understood. In order to understand the Recluse and escapism, the layers of the world he lives in need to be examined. Why is he a recluse? In what territories does he operate? What desires are not fulfilled? Though not immediately obvious, escapism can be problematized through architecture. The recluse is not feeling the way that he does because of the

1 This layering aims to create a mythopoeia, through layers of different information sources a dense framework within which the work should be understood emerges. The text aims to both be understood within a theoretical framework, as within a mythical whole, both produced by the text itself, the persona of the Recluse and the Book of Curiosities.

house that he lives in, nor is he looking at another house to live in in order to feel better. His desires run deeper. How is his behaviour inscribed in his territory? How can he disappear? How can he die without dying? How can he disappear for the world except his own?

This text aims to provide the reader with a complex layering of thoughts and ideas and as such I would encourage the reader to be percipient for imagery to be provokeda. Through a series of topics the world of the Recluse is placed within a theoretical framework in order to produce a productive architectural problem.

The first step in understanding the Recluse is understanding the symbiotic relation he has to the territory in which he operates, and where he develops a life consisting of a complex set of habits and ideas, all while being developed himself. The first chapter will therefore explain the world in which the Recluse lives as a series of territories in order to build an argument in which the exact societal context of the Recluse is of no importance, but the ritornello – a series of rhythms within himself and his environment- are. The second chapter will then continue this argument arguing that the misalignment of social rhythms with personal rhythms is the root of the urge to escape that the Recluse has. The third chapter aims to answer what happens once the Recluse feels the need to escape, to deterritorialize himself, on which the fourth chapter continues. The conscious act of deterritorialization is compared to Stoicism: a form of self-development. His wish to leave is then no longer a question of simply living elsewhere: it becomes a matter of dying a non-biological death; of disappearing from his assemblage. The Recluse needs a transformative experience in order to escape. Chapter five elaborates on this transformative experience, and explains that an increased openness to a new assemblage is essentially a style of living. Without openness to the potentials in an environment, the rhythm of the Recluse is not attuned to its territory. The sixth chapter then argues that architecture becomes the producer of new potentials, manipulating the assembled territory in which the Recluse lives his life. Thus, the Recluse and his escape can be formulated as a merely architectural problem: how to design an assembled territory that attracts the transformation of the self?

reclusea

re· cluse \ ˈre-ˌklüs , ri-ˈklüs, ˈre-ˌklüz \ rɪˈkluːs\

noun

1. a person who lives a solitary life and tends to avoid other people.

2. marked by withdrawal from society

adjective

3. favouring a solitary life

e Though the term ‘hermit’ is often used to describe those that seek a solitary life, for the purpose of this thesis this term is incorrect. Hermit refers to someone who lives alone for religious reasons.

10 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n

1312 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n s e c t i o n 1 , 2 a n d 3

2 . t e r r i t o r i a l b o u n d a r i e s a n d h o w t o b r e a k t h e m

A territory always has a boundary, but this isn’t necessarily physical. Social formations can form the boundary of the territory, or conversely the coren. A church is also a territory, because it operates in a specific locale, and has a set of – partially unwritten, but - defined social ruleso. These rules are thus intrinsic to the territoryp. As such, territory does not just describes why subjects do what they do, or how they are formed but also how they are defining the boundaries of territoriesq. This symbiotic relationship of both forming and being formed is the process that shapes a life. Based on these processes, Deleuze rejects the idea that life is shaped by a God, which leads to the understanding that behaviour is never predestinedr.

And yet, countless of generations have felt as if their path was written for them. The social constructs of their surrounding made them feel like their lives were mapped out before they were actually lived. The Baby Boomers in the ‘60’s spent a decade being angry at their parents who constructed the welfare state, and countered with the nomadic hippie movementss. Their children - the millennials - are angry too, with their anger mostly pointed towards the Baby Boomers for constructing an unstable economy, and neglecting environmental issues. Yet each generation roughly follows the same path: we go to school at a young age to learn. The teacher will tell us to do good in school, to excel in subjects. The logical next step is university or a job, getting married, buying a house, live happily ever after and die. These social constructs are deeply rooted versions of rhythms that humans follow. In time they have become rather hard rules, that only the courageous – or outcasts - break. In this sense, these constructs have become ritornellos: markers for other

14 Manuel Delanda, ‘Assemblages Against Totalities’, in New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2006), 8–46, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/delft/detail.action?docID=711032.15 Grosz, ‘Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture’.16 Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello’; Meillassoux, ‘Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory.’17 Delanda, ‘Assemblages Against Totalities’, 13.18 Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis, 4419 Tim Rayner, ‘Lines of Flight: Deleuze and Nomadic Creativity’, Philosophy for Change (blog), 18 June 2013, https://philosophyforchange. wordpress.com/2013/06/18/lines-of-flight-deleuze-and-nomadic-creativity20 Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello’.21 Kleinherenbrink.22 Ligne de fluite: The line of flight has nothing to do with the act of actual flying. 23 Delanda, ‘Assemblages Against Totalities’.

living beings, forming domainst. Life is more than cells communicating with one anotheru. Non-organic entities, such as these social constructs, are a crucial element in life, and make a life the infinitely complex assemblage of elements that it is.

The Recluse feels restricted by these pre-existing social rhythms, because his own are not attuned to them. His uneasiness with his surrounding stems from this misalignment. He wants his path to be different, he wants to follow his own rhythms. Perhaps he wants to wake at night, or defy those that tell him to ‘act accordingly’ in public. Perhaps he needs silence to hear the birds, but solely hears the car horns blare. The Recluse is out of sync with his territory.

3 . t h e h u m a n c o n d i t i o n i n a s s e m b l e d t e r r i t o r i e s

The previous chapter discussed the social construct as one of the most tangible human rhythms that can be discerned as ritornellos that passed through generations. Though these social constructs help with the everyday flow of the lives of people, there are still a myriad of reasons why they can make a person deeply unhappy. Not until these rhythms create a deep dissonance with the person affected will they be questioned.

Deleuze and Guattari developed the notion of the line of flight, which is the act of fleeing and disappearingv. Though the concept is transcending the real, the line of flight can be seen as an act of rebellion against order. It is the moment a person decides to leave stability behind, and defy the normative society. A person actively deterritorializing themselves, might leave one territorial assemblage, only to enter the nextw. The process of

1 . a n u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e e m e r g e n c e o f l i v i n g t h i n g s

A territory is constructed from what Deleuze and Guattari call milieus and rhythms, which in turn are formed from chaosb. While chaos implies a state of complete disorder, for Deleuze chaos is a state from which order can emergec. It’s a state from which cells can come to form intricate life forms, merely through the forces of chance. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this initial state as chaos, because they consider that there is no overarching principle giving live to things. There is no deity that creates life and earth. From the vast chaos in the cosmos, through chance, rhythms align, producing cells and life forms, elements and partsd.

If by chance from the chaos some form of order emerges, a milieu is formed. A milieu is always part of a larger network of milieus, with some being more like sub-milieus for the living object. For example, an specific milieu produces a sea in which a fish can live. This fish itself, in order to live, needs water (external milieu), needs oxygen and organs that can filter oxygen out of water (intermediary milieu) and needs sources of energy, like other plants, sunlight and living species (annexed milieus)e. In that sense, all milieus are dependent on the milieus surrounding them, and exist in a precarious balance. This stability is constantly collapsing and under treat by external forces. Disruptions such as earthquakes, changes in water temperature, disappearance of other species all potentially harm the stability of the milieu in which the fish operates. The fish needs his milieu to be semi-stable, as all components for his being are part of this milieu.

2 Arjen Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello: Deleuze and Guattari on Thinking Living Beings’, Deleuze Studies 9, no. 2 (May 2015): 211, https://doi.org/10.3366/dls.2015.0183; Quentin Meillassoux, ‘Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory.’, in Unknown Deleuze [+Speculative Realism], ed. Robin Mackay, Collapse, Volume 3 (Falmouth, UK: Urbanomic, 2007), 63–107.3 Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts (New York: Routledge, 2003).4 Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello’; Elisabeth Grosz, ‘Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture’, in Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008), 1–24.5 Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts.6 Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello’.7 Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts; Chris L Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2017).8 Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts; Kleinherenbrink, ‘Territory and Ritornello’; Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis.9 Hume in Manuel Delanda, ‘Persons and Networks’, in New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London, UNITED KINGDOM: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2006), 47–67, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/delft/detail.action?docID=711032.10 Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, 16.11 Even though a ritornello is a rhythm, this does not indicate it is repetitive. Deleuze specifically noted that ritournelle should never be translated as refrain, as that would indicate an ever returning metre. Ritornello is defined by variation.12 Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, 17.13 Bogue, 188.

This milieu is not the same the territory in which the fish lives, as a milieu only provides the components a being needs to livef. These component are not yet transforming and territorializing. Once the fish displays certain markers that influence the behaviour of other fish, he is territorializing the milieug. He is part of other milieus and other living things are dependent on his existence. The other way around it true as well. A coral reef that is formed in the sea in which the fish lives, might become the specific habitat in which the fish operates. The fish needs the coral reef, and the reef needs the fish in an symbiotic relationship. In other words; the territory is formed by life forms territorializing it, setting out markers for other life forms, in turn territorializing and affecting milieus and rhythms of beingsh. These markers are rhythms. They are reoccurring, changing, and in turn changing others. The repetition of habits lead to a personal identity. A marker for other subjects aroundi.

Any kind of rhythmic pattern that stakes out a territory is a ritornelloj,k. When you hum a tune in the dark to feel less alone this re-establishes a stable point amidst chaos. You territorialize to feel at ease. There are three aspects to the ritornello: there is a ‘point of stability, a circle of property, and an opening to the outside.’ They aren’t successive characteristics, they appear simultaneouslyl. The moment the Recluse feels the need to escape his current surroundings, the opening to the outside, or line of flight, leads him into the next territorialized assemblym. He is actively destabilizing his territory, he is deterritorializing himself.

1514 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n n a m e c h a p t e r

stabilizing, fleeing, stabilizing can go on forever, if not constrained by time.

The line of flight is also the moment the recluse had enough. He used to be in balance in his territory, and yet we wants to unbalance himself. Leaving, escaping the expectations, is what leads to the discovery of places beyond the horizon of what is deemed possible. It leads to creativity that flows out into the voids of the moment of flight. It leads to an escape to a new territory, a new assemblage. Ad nauseum, the line of flight continues. Until the Recluse has escaped, or given up.

‘While plenty of people simply want to ‘fit in’, the best and the brightest want to break out and head for the horizon. When we look into the future, we dream of a world that is radically different from the one we know today. We may be stuck in offices, trapped in traffic, tied down by debt or shacked to unhappy relationships. Inside, we are nomads. We are already in flight. The mainland awaitsx.’

Not just the conscious act of rebellion or loss of stability causes deterritorialization, also learning new skills destabilizes. All of a sudden a new set of skills open up new possibilities to experience the world and to construct new ideas. For example, learning to drive a car, opens up a whole new set of sensations. The speed, the increased range, the social position, all changed by the acquired skill. ‘New skills, increase one’s capacities to affect and be affected, or to put it differently, to enter into novel assemblagesy.’ In that sense, we can say that all daily encounters play a part in destabilizing the subject. In fact, we are constantly destabilizing, but because we feel at ease with the rules surrounding us, we stabilize again. The main territorializing process providing the assemblage with a stable identity is habitual repetitionz. Habits ensure we understand the world, and leave us with the capacity to adjust, and change with our environment.

However, if the subject displays an active wish to deterritorialize, these acts of rebellion then have the purpose of transposing the subject. It is almost impossible to imagine that acquired skills alone are enough to satisfy

24 Rayner, ‘Lines of Flight’.25 Delanda, ‘Persons and Networks’, 50.26 Delanda, 50.27 Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981 - 1982, ed. Frédéric Gros (New York, NY: Palgrave macmillan, 2001), 469; John Sellars, ‘Want to Be Happy? Then Live like a Stoic for a Week’, The Conversation, 2018, http://theconversation.com/ want-to-be-happy-then-live-like-a-stoic-for-a-week-103117.28 Sellars, ‘Want to Be Happy?’

the hunger for change. After all, changing location isn’t hard. Walking new grounds, meeting other people. But two days later, these too will have become the new normal, as the person is the same he was before, just slightly more experienced at life. And this is the paradox of the life of the Recluse: he wants to escape his current territory, perhaps finds a way to escape, but is still the same person. The next chapter tries to understand the deterritorialization of a subject as a flight from a territory, a flight from an assemblage, and therefore a form of stoic epimeleia heautou, the practice of selfcare. The question remains: is being a Recluse his permanent state? Will he forever be fleeing?

4 . t h e p l a c e m e n t o f t h e s t o i c i n t h i s w o r l d - a d i f f e r e n t u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f d e a t h

As discussed in the previous chapters, the wish to disappear is a form of deterritorialization, resulting in destabilisation. The Recluse, trying to escape, is (unknowingly) practicing the art of stoicism, by being indifferent to the world. Indifference means events that some would identify as happy, have the same meaning as events that some would identify as sad. Events, until evaluated, have no value. The Stoics assume that the very worst can happen and will happen at any time, and are therefore never surprised by an event. As such, practicing stoicism corresponds with the mind of the Recluse: ‘It is a form of nullifying the future, for if everything will happen, nothing equally matters’aa.

Stoicism is an active practice of how to make sense of the world. One of the most important teachings within Stoicism is that nothing, except for our own response to events, lies within our control. Much of our unhappiness is caused by thinking that we can control things that, in fact, we can’tab.

A place of forgetfulness,

to walk, wander

get lost

get bored

be alone.

Perfect, still

perfectly indifferent.

15 s e c t i o n 4

1716 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n s e c t i o n 5

died. If for example he were to leave and live somewhere up in the mountains, it would be as if he is dead, as he is no longer part of the assemblage. He as a person exist as who he is in the form of his body, in the thinking expression of his mind, and the assemblage of ‘sub-personal components’: his ideas, attitudes, skills and habitsai. The layering of all these components construct his public image: a constructed image as how others experience who he is. Leaving an assemblage, means consciously stepping away from this constructed image. He disappears from the public knowledge of him being a full person with a body and with ideas and with a public persona. In this sense, leaving his assemblage can be understood as dying, and his death being non-biological. His body is still there, but his persona has transformed. It’s a non-biological death in the sense that it is a transformative experience, where the Recluse is leaving behind what he was before, crossing a limit, both his own and that of the assemblage, on to become something else. The non-biological death is thus an escape.

5 . e s c a p i s m

The line of flight is also the moment the recluse had enough. He used to be in balance in his territory, and yet we wants to unbalance himself. Leaving, escaping the expectations, is what leads to the discovery of places beyond the horizon of what is deemed possible. It leads to creativity that flows out into the voids of the moment of flight. It leads to an escape to a new territory, a new assemblage. Ad nauseum, the line of flight continues. Until the Recluse has escaped.

In order to understand the Recluse, and his wish to escape, it is not necessarily important to know what drives him mentally. Whether he is seized by a crippling depression, or is simply bored with the world around him. It is however important to understand that if a subject is perfectly content with his position in the world, he wouldn’t be open to the attraction of a new assemblage. The subject leaving

35 Erving Hoffman in Delanda, ‘Persons and Networks’.36 Meillassoux, ‘Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory.737 Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux; Philosophy in the Making (Edinburgh University Press, 2015).38 Meillassoux, ‘Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory.’

an assemblage thus needs an increased openness or disinterest in the world.Meillassoux explains this openness or disinterest as either an active-, or reactive-becoming. A body without organs, can be understood as all the non-organic elements (the virtual elements), that together with the organic elements create a living body that is capable of thinking, doing and beingaj. In other words, the body itself does not produce the human, all the different rhythms and fluxes do. The Recluse is more than just a living body: he has the capacity to form ideas, be influenced by ideas, have desires and form relations. A life can then be interpreted as an infinite pool of relations and selections, where the configuration of these selections are the living being. These different configurations are either reactive or active in character, either with an increased disinterest or an increased openness towards the worldak.

The active and reactive becoming can both be understood as styles of living, in the sense that a subject either seeks a connection with the world surrounding him, or retreats within himselfal. As discussed in chapter 1, the subject becomes this way because he operates in a territory that allows him to. He lives in a symbiotic relation where he is both actively forming his territory, as being formed by it. He is attracted to elements that make him feel, behave and be in a certain way, because of the needs he has. These elements for example can be the house he lives in, or smaller, the chair he sits in. These objects have affordances, which ‘are the relations between the abilities of organisms and features of the environment.’ In other words, the environment in which the Recluse lives, offers potentials, but he needs to be able to ‘do something’ with these potentials in order to be productive. If he is unable to use these potentials, he is out of sync with his environment, potentially causing the urge to flight.

The potentials are thus a collection of organic and non-organic elements, of which not a particular one of them is the direct cause of the urge to flight. Upon a closer inspection of his territory however, elements can be distinguished that affect him more than others. These can be rhythms, social markers, objects or other living things. Being open to their potential means, he can be changed, altered or diminished by them.

We can’t control much of the lives around us. What other people think of us, or how they respond. Stoics argue that the only thing we can truly control is how we think about things. If something bad happens, it is only bad because we interpreted the occurrence as unpleasant. It is our opinion. The same goes for instances where another person is rude, or mean. By acknowledging that this is more of a learning experience than anything else, as it trains patience, the Stoic always prepares for the worstac. Awareness of these uncontrollable events in live is the secret to a healthy mental state according to the Stoics. They call this practice epimeleia heautou, which translates to the practice of the selfad. One of the practices to incorporate Stoic ideas into everyday life is a moment of reflection, or meditation on all events that caused some form of disruption in a day. Stoicism is about being aware of events, and educating oneself on the inevitability of them. The proper response then, is a matter of ethics, of being worthy of the event. Everything in life is a test, and a life should be devoted to training the epimeleia heautou. In doing so, he develops his art of living. This art of living is all encompassing, and in Greek Philosophy one of the pillars of how a person is supposed to function within life: ‘human freedom has to be invested […] not only in the city-state, the law, and religion, as in the art of oneself, which is practiced by oneselfae.’

The Recluse in that sense, is unknowingly a precursor in developing the art of living. In fact, whilst practicing his epimeleia heautou, he is dedicating his human freedom to his escape from his assemblage. He is fleeing, because he (instinctively) needs this flight. It is part of his art of living, and a - rather radical perhaps - expression of his self-care, his development of the self.

His wish to leave can be understood as the wish to disappear. After all not wanting to be part of something, means leaving that something behind. The theory of assemblages describes the relations between parts and wholes, and is both applicable to mechanical parts and social entities. For example a camera has a set of functions, and can be used in multiple ways because it is made up of parts that all have a relation to each other, creating relations that make functions possible. A camera

29 Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981 - 1982.30 Foucault, 439.31 Foucault, 447.32 Delanda, ‘Assemblages Against Totalities’, 10.33 Delanda, 10.34 Manuel Delanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

without a lens, cannot fulfil its original purpose of taking pictures, and has become useless to whomever wanted to use it as a picture device. The lens itself also ceases to function as a part of the camera, as it is now nothing more than a piece of cut glass. However, this piece of cut glass has by no means become useless: it’s capacities can be used in other ways. In the previous example, the camera can be understood as an assemblage of parts, together forming a whole. Detaching a part of the camera, makes that is ceases to be what it was, as it has now lost one of its properties. However, not all the functions of the camera can simply be disrupted through the removal of a part. Removing a screw from the body, does not mean the camera is no longer a functioning camera. Some characteristics emerge from interactions between partsaf. Still, the screw, once detached from the camera, does not cease to be a screw. The component has not become more or less useful: it can still be used in another assemblage, having the same innate properties but a different function. Deleuze describes these relations between parts that form a whole as ‘relations of exteriority’ag. One of the characteristics of these relations is that after a part it detached, it can be reattached in a different assemblage, implying that the properties of a whole are dependant of the actual exercise of the capacities of its parts as opposed to their mere existence.

As mentioned before, an assemblage can both imply mechanical parts or social entities, regardless of ages or sexes, and can best be described as a symbioses between parts forming wholesah. In that sense, the territory and territorialisation that occurs with bodies are another process of the assemblage theory. Assemblages are never static; they are constantly changing. From wear and tear on mechanical parts, to social groups changing organically. This process is the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of parts, reorganising and constituting new assemblages.

The disappearance of the Recluse, his detachment of the assemblage, means he is no longer a functioning part of the whole. He has stopped interacting with the parts that made up the assemblage, which means that from their point of view he has stopped existing. It’s as if he has


6 . e s c a p i s m t h r o u g h a r c h i t e c t u r e

Making up the majority of our living habitat, architecture is perhaps the most suitable tool to affect the habits of the Recluse. The manipulation of a territory causes a shift in what it offers to its subjects within and therefore it alters their habitsam. In that sense, design has the potential to both detach and reattach the Recluse, through manipulation and shaping of his rhythms and desires. An example of such architecture is the monastery, that through its layout supports the rhythms that make up a devout lifestyle.

Architecture is the song of landscape in the chaos of earth. It is the constructing and organizing of matter in order to demarcate, to make discerniblean.

According to Deleuze, Architecture is a tool to organise all the space on earthao. It is a form of expression that no longer has its roots in survival, but rather in distancing the bodily needs from the production of artap. In other words, architecture is a tool to frame certain sensations, through composition and spaceaq. Through framing objects receive meaning other than their easy to distinguish shapely functionalities. Through framing territories are establishedar. In that sense, architecture is the tangible result of us stabilizing ourselves within milieus.

Deleuze and Guattari describe architecture as nothing more than the producer of frames. Boxes, interlacing, hollowed, large, small, they all produce an orderly grid in the chaos of the world for inhabitants to understandas. Its most elementary form being the partition, creating an inner and outer space. This structure and form in

39 Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis.40 Smith, 25.41 Grosz, ‘Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture’.42 Grosz.43 Grosz, 11.44 Grosz, 11.45 Grosz, ‘Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture’; Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis, 26.46 Grosz, ‘Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture’.47 Grosz.48 Cache in Grosz, 15.49 Anthony Chemero, ‘An Outline of a Theory of Affordances’, Ecological Psychology 15, no. 2 (April 2003): 181–95, https://doi.org/10.1207/ S15326969ECO1502_5.

chaos means it can ‘affect and be affected by bodies’. In other words, Grosz argues that the frame is a necessary tool to shape a territory in such a way that it can be a productive place for a bodyat. Without a floor, wall, window, we wouldn’t be enclosed, protected from nature. Within architecture, furniture is a smaller scale framing a territory essentially supplying the immediate physical environmentau. In that line of reasoning Cache dubs furniture our primary territoryav. Through these spatial elements spaces are created that stimulate and produce productive subjects, fulfilling desires through affordancesaw. Manipulating the process of stabilizing and territorializing leads to an understanding of design of an territory that alters, differentiates, advances and diminishes the subjects that live within. It produces design that both detaches and reattaches. In order to escape his assemblage, and thus cross that limit that leads him to escape and become something else, he needs affordances that are different than the ones he knows. Limits are only limits when the subject experiences them as limits. They are probably not the same for someone else, and they might change over time for the subject as well. Having to re-learn the functionality of objects is inherently a destabilizing act, up until the familiarity takes over. This is also true for architecture: if the immediate environment does not offer recognizable objects or spaces, a territory has the potential to become a destabilising element, and thus a method of escape.

The Recluse finds himself a space where he finds the affects he needs to escape the world. He escapes without running. He dies without dying. He lives without being noticeably alive.

He might be living in a big house,

or perhaps walk the streets.

Either alone,

or with everyone.

He might be the woman on the corner of the street,

or the girl that dances in her room.

Maybe he is you, or maybe he is me.

There is no way to know

No obvious sign,

Not one road to follow.

He is in me.

As much is he is in you.

The Recluse is in all of us.

19 s e c t i o n 6

2120 t h e b o o k o f e x p l o r a t i o n s e c t i o n 7

7. t h e d e s t i n a t i o n

We now understand that the Recluse is everyone. It is more than an emotion, and it is different than unhappiness. This leaves us with the question: is being a Recluse a permanent state? Can it be a temporary state of mind? Can the line of flight eventually lead the Recluse to a assembled territory in which he regains his footing, where he returns to a harmony with the rhythms surrounding him?

Or will he be forever searching? Paradoxically, being in a constant transformative state, is both the destination as an infinite state in itself. And if he is forever deterritorializing, does that mean that the Recluse is refusing to adjust, or is it simply who he is?

Architectural design in that sense, can either aid in the art of escapism, being a final destination of the Recluse, or a temporary space in which the Recluse briefly regains his footing, only to deterritorialize again.

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