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The Apollonian man, remade in the image of thesun. Western civilization has basked in this glow.The ideal subject. The ideal. The same. As thefusion of the Judeo-Christian tradition and Athenianhumanism spread across Europe, whence across theglobe, this image, rooted in a misinformed dualismhas followed with it. Humankind forgot the body,and the phenomenal world that sustained it. To besure, this sun-worship, this human narcissism, has

taken its blows. Copernicus ung us from the centre

of the universe into the darkening void. Darwinripped humanity from the image of god, into the

muck, the esh and slime of animality. Freud tore

the conscious mind from its pinnacle, no longer thereasoning creature, we were once again naked toour animal instincts, at the mercy of the vast andterrifying unconsciousness

. Yet we cling to the

threads of this failed tradition, at great sacrice to

the phenomenal body, the sensible/sensing thing.There is no ideal subject. Human is an imbroglio,embroiled and in constant negotiation with othersensible subjects. We are monsters.1

Harraway, Donna. When Species Meet, 11.

“somewhere in the sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepwere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

- W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

“Now it is time that gods came walking out of lived-in Things…Time that they came and knocked down every wall Inside my house……O gods, gods!Who used to come so often and are still Asleep in the Things around us …”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, “[Now it is time that godscame walking out]”Thesis Proposal - 18. December, 2008Joel Letkemann6789583

Terri Fuglem, Advisor

Traces of this other humanity have lingered in ourmyths, in the pagan symbols of a world unknown

but mysteriously felt. Specically, the gure of the

human-animal hybrid has served for centuries as the

gure of that which is human, but which supercedes

categorization.There’s something very human about the minotaur,or satyr; what we’ve been unwilling to categorize as‘human’ gets relegated to some animal or instinctualnature. Instead of relegating the unknown to theideal realm, these myths set in a phenomenal formthose things which are profoundly human, that is,above human, profoundly monstrous.The monsters still lurk within us, “this dangerouspresence dwelling just beyond the protected zone of the village boundary.”

The creation or continuationof these myths in an architectural setting is meant toprovoke a confrontation with the animality inherentin humanity, and conversely, the cyborgian ontologyof all things. Cyborgian, in the sense that it confusesthe subjective and objective natures of all beings.2

Campbell, Joseph.

Hero with a Thousand Faces

. 66.

“…-ghostssapped of strengthwailing at the gateheartbreak at the bridgehead desiredead in the heart haw haw haw haw-and memory brokenwheeeeeeThere were never satyrsnever maenadsnever eagle-headed godsThese were men from whose hands sprunglove…”

-William Carlos Williams, “the Trees”

“mankind cannot remain indifferent to its monsters”

- George Bataille, “Deviations of nature”

“The monster is a special case of humanrepresentation, is the special phenomenon that encourages metamorphosis, and through it, the

merging of the signier with the signied.”

- Frascari, Marco, “Monsters of Architecture.”

“The fact that reason denies any valid content ina mythological series is the condition of its most

signicant value.”

- Bataille, “The Pineal Eye”

Hybrid gures from pre-Christian Europe and

around the world, farther from the reach of Athenian and Judeo-Christian philosophy, formthe basis of a new mythology for Montreal. Amythology of the grotesque, aberrant, or monstrousthat supercedes categorization. The undertakingis “… an anthropology that itself provides aliving and orgiastic myth to overturn, through itsexperience on a collective level, “modern” sterilebourgeois society.”

Myth, like poetry, supercedescategorization in a labyrinth of meaning.

Monstrosity

Monstrosity in architecture is a function of hybridity.Its promise lies in the constant overlapping andexcesses of two or more (not necessarily compatible)systems or spatial constructs. No one mind canplan a deserving space for another. The architectmust always be of two (or more) minds. Themonster promises the confusion of spatial signals,of organizational schemes, of programmaticcontent. The monster promises ambiguity, constantphenomenological/ideal destabilization, unexpectedturns and consequences, which provoke a ‘creative’user, an active engagement with the social status quo,and with the city

.The notion of monstrosity extends far beyond the

gures of mythology. It is primarily a social, a

relational

, mechanism. Social space happens insurplus or ambiguous space, in the tensions betweenconstructs, between territories. A social spaceis necessarily a monstrous form, the tangentialgraspings of two (or more) (mental) spatial

constructions, two amoeba oating past one another,

exchanging genetic sequences. Spaces of constantor cyclical social encounters develop as a result of constant overlapping, the friction of two tectonicplates meeting, slipping over and under one another,taking bits of the other with them, and sendingmountains into the sky.3

Stoekl, Allan. Introduction to Visions of Excess, xiii.

See Hill, Jonathan. Actions of Architecture.

“Monsters thus would be the dialectical oppositeof geometric regularity, in the same manner asindividual forms, but in an irreducible way.”

- Bataille, “Deviations of Nature.”