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NOT YOKOHAMA, NOT MEMPHIS:

ACTIVATING LATENT SPACE
Sing D'Arcy
Published online: 28 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: Sing D'Arcy (1996) NOT YOKOHAMA, NOT MEMPHIS: ACTIVATING LATENT SPACE,
Architectural Theory Review, 1:1, 135-140, DOI: 10.1080/13264829609478271

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13264829609478271

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 NOT YOKOHAMA, NOT MEMPHIS:
ACTIVATING LATENT SPACE

SING D'ARCY*
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"Memphis is like Yokohama, but with sixty percent less buildings."

This statement, made about Memphis by a young Japanese tourist from Yokohama, is a line from Jim
Jarmish'sfilmMystery Train., which tells four separate stories occurring in the same hotel in the same
city (Memphis) at exactly the same time. The observation by the Elvis-obsessed tourist is interesting in
the way it refers to both cities, yet the city that the tourist is experiencing is neither Memphis or
Yokohama, but a latent sp(l)ace in between.

The latent space or place is activated by the phenomenological anomalies surrounding the tourists. For
him it is not Memphis, for it is like Yokohama with less buildings. The apparent and incongruous
collision of circumstantial and unrelated data activates a new space and place, somewhere in-between,
an unclear zone that lies latent, and is only activated by chance occurrences. It is a real place and a real
space that exists as the in-between of neither and both. The 'between' place that the tourist is
experiencing is NOT YOKOHAMA, NOT MEMPHIS. Within the moments of the spatial slip, the bizarre
juxtaposition, the metaphorical short circuit, the lie we tell of places we have not been to, or in a
rediscovered forgotten (fabricated) memory, we activate the spaces that lie dormant and subverted.

The notion of latent space and its inherent multiplicities is an aberration of gridded, ordered and
mapped Cartesian space, which is inherently associated with Western metaphysics,1 the concept of
space that during the last thirty years has come under heavy attack in Post-Structuralist and Deconstructive
critiques. Latent space fundamentally challenges thefixedreferential system used by the usual way of
conceiving, negating and describing space and place. The Japanese tourist's comparison negates
reference to both cities, but instead refers, or defers, to another associated but displaced place. The
heterotopic layerings of the spaces and places merge to form the complete experience, one that a
definitive, finite ordering system fundamentally excludes and denies. The negative exclusion of the two
cities creates a rift,

... where fragments of a great number of possible though exclusive and inconsistent orders
coexist in a space 'without law or geometry' a space in which the structure no longer defines any
common centre of classification or coherent locus of residence beneath the categories, can only
be defined as heterotopic.2

*Third YearBSc (Architecture) student, The University of Sydney, 19%.

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 Rrchitecturol Theory Review Vol. 1 No. 1

The deferring reference erases the locus by denying the possibility of an exclusive or unique place or
space. The defined existence of Memphis and Yokohama has been thrown into doubt as the
presupposed loci of each has been re-inscribed as a negation of both.

The acknowledgement of latent heterotopic spaces and places allows foran exploration of the blurring
that occurs with metaphorical allusions and illusions,"... an idea that insists that the ordering of spatial
systems is subjective and arbitrary art... an idea which consequently produces/theorises spaces as
transient, contestory, plagued by lapses and ruptured sites."3
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The Not Memphis/Not Yokohama space/place is a ruptured site, a site that is neither a place nor space,
but "a radical site/space of irreconcilable tension with the hermeticism of inescapable binary terms."1

Whilst many argue that the rigid oppositions of the Cartesian spatial system suppress these other
spaces, its very structure allows these experiences to break free. It is only the order that makes the
disorder apparent. Merely to say that binary oppositions in spatial and temporal systems are restrictive
does not acknowledge the fact that infinite possibilities can occur in-between the poles of fabricated
oppositions. In the in-between of Memphis and Yokohama there exist any number of different
interpretations and perceptions that work within, and to some extent undermine, the ability to say that
this is the place, this is the space, since they are mapped both in terms of recorded historical events and
in mercatorial representation based on inaccurate information. Feeding off these inaccuracies are more
supposed spaces and places, all slightly out of sync with each other. An example of this is a street
directory, which is made up from photographs taken from the sky by a survey plane, which are then
processed intofilm,or data record, which is then computer-enhanced, and then drawn. This directory
is then used by people to navigate their way about the city, even though it is full of inconsistencies and
errors, traces of roads removed, and dashed lines to represent freeways yet to be built. This record,
mapped on a Cartesian grid, undermines its own authority with layers of information which are all
slightly flawed.

If one sees two or morefiguresoverlapping one another, and each of them claims for itself the common
overlapped part, then one is confronted with a contradiction of spatial dimensions.... transparency
implies the perception of different spatial locations. Space not only recedes but fluctuates in a
continuous activity.5

In between the directory coordinates AI and G5 there is a setting in which any number of events can
happen. If this map were extended to include all the layers of experience and memory that constandy
and simultaneously occur, it would point out the futility of the obsession with being able to reference
and define our situation, validating our perception and orientation on pre-installed hierarchies of
inaccuracy.

Latent spaces, as parts of heterotopic spaces, evade definition or origin. They lie in "a region in which
it is doubt itself whichfindselaboration."6 Places and spaces blur, often hidden in the guises of'proper'
environments or built objects. Foucault cites as examples churches, hotel rooms, brothels and

136
 Not V o k o h m o . Not M e m p h i s : A c t i v a t i n g Latent S p a c e .

libraries.7 Heidegger's bridges8 and Scott-Brown/Venturi's Las Vegas seen from a speeding car, are
others.9 One of the most prominent examples of a recognisable slip in spatial orders is the suburban
shopping mall, in which "the conceptions of space and time are collapsed"10 by the reduced references
under one roof to many different cultures of the world. In the shopping mall one is able to find icons
and images from many places. The distorted signifiers dislocated in space and in time refer back to a
signified place or space, the original copy of which has for many people become blurred with the
(original) original."

The real time image dominates the thing represented, real time subsequently prevailing over real space,
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virtuality dominating actuality and turning the very concept of reality on its head."12

An example of this, in a contrived architectural expression, can be seen in the works of Ashton Raggatt
McDougall, who use computer anamorphism techniques to morph and distort icons of twentieth
century architecture.13 They blur the image/icon signifier, and thus distort the signified design/
building, to a state which is neither a copy nor an original, but somewhere in-between, inciting a
psychotic cycle of self-referentialmimicry,inherentlyimplyingacriticism of originality and authenticity.
The displacement of image/icon, referring it to another space and transposing it to overlay another
dissimilar space and place, creates the blurred zone of a new space and place that refers to both, but
is not settled in either. The use of the morphing technique has, according to Reed, "no pure centre,
no pure origin... contamination ceases to be a deviation, becoming instead the normative..."14 This can
be seen in their recent works, the Kronborg Clinic, Footscray,
Victoria, and the additions to the St. Kilda Library/Town Hall.

The Kronborg clinic was conceived by reference to or copied

from the Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.15 A number of
old photographs were scanned into the computer and then

Jig. 1 "Just Another No Where Stair," Kronberg Clinic, left. The "No Where Stair" Vanna Venture House, righ
/Transition, 44/5 (1994): p. 187.]

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 firchitecturol Theory Revieuj Vol. 1 No. 1

pixilised. This, according to Howard Raggatt, allows a strategy for "precise

definition of the blurred,"16 this in itself being an obvious, though perhaps
deliberate, contradiction. Fragments of significance, as chosen by the
architects, were then morphed into each other to form the facade.
Elements such as the 'No Where Stair' become "Just Another No Where
Stair" (fig. 1), whilst Vanna and her pot plant (fig. 2) became fused onto the
black tile box protruding from the facade.17

In this example the hallowed image of Post-Modern

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architecture has been savagely desecrated to become an

assemblage ofimplied references and distorted perceptions.
This building exists as an obvious expression of an attempt
to displace the 'truth' ofas/>eq/?cand unique space or place,
or in this instance both. The Vanna Venturi house is
transposed to Footscray and in that process has had its
B ... „ ,, , meanings misinterpreted and all the attached significance
fig. 2 Vanna Venturi and ber r pot
t plant ,. ,. , . j . . ,, ,
,,, , ,, „ , T . garbled into an indecipherable r mess.18 8
ana the entrance to the Kronborg uClinic. °
/Transition, 4415 (1994). />• 186-1 T. fk , • r< AAtfi , ,. c „... ... ,,
The other example is the addition to the St Kilda Library (fig.
3). This building refers to, copies or morphs Alvar Aalto's Helsinki Finlandia Hall." Like the Japanese
tourist in Jim Jarmish'sfilm,so too Ashton Raggatt McDougall creates a building that is Not Finlandia
and Not St Kilda Library. It is the product of a bizarre juxtaposition of two absent metaphors,

fig. 3 Facade of St Kilda Town Hall Renovation. /Transition 41 (1995): p. 47.j

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 Not Vokohmo, Not Memphis: Rctivoting latent Space.

On visiting the site at the end of construction, a touring academic became disorientated, Jenner
believing that he had been transported back to 1967 Helsinki. Alarmed as he was, Mrjenner could
still smile at this blurring of time and location.20

The experience of a forgotten memory re-ignited by the building is like the Japanese tourist's activation
of a latent space. It is, in this case, the building's impossible iconography of altered originality that for
an instant catches us unaware and lost. For that instant we are caught in the rift and slip of latent space.

The question of whether or not architects or designers should try to simulate, contrive or organise such
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occurrence is not pertinent to a discussion of the actual event. For there is no doubt that some (such
as ARM) will fail in terms of such matters as the actual 'fitness' of the building,21 whilst others may
succeed. Ashton Raggatt McDougall has attempted to question the basis of referential analogy in
physical and theoretical ways.

In a world in which the ability to designate and define has become seemingly impossible and
undesirable, a world in which the virtual and actual are blurred beyond recognition, we are faced with
the dilemma of how to navigate our way through the mire of ambiguities, multiplicities, fragments and
other detritus that accrete within our memories and our environments. Navigation through the
complex heterotopias is impossible if we try to determine where we are going, for we are deluding
ourselves if we think that we actually know. Latent space lies inactive, until that chance moment, a short
circuit in our memory and perception.

For the coherence of representation, the Eternal Return substitutes something entirely different, its
own c(ha)o-errance. For between the Eternal Return and the simulacrum is a connection so profound
that one is only comprehended by the other. What returns are the divergent series, as divergent: that
is, each one insofar as it displaces its difference from all the others, and all, insofar as they complicate
their difference in the chaos without beginning or end. The circle of the Eternal Return is a continually
eccentric circle with a constandy decentered centre.22

' B. Genocchio, "Heterotopia and its Limits," Transition 41 (1993) p.33.

2
Genocchio, "Heterotopia and its Limits," p. 38.
3
Genocchio, "Heterotopia and its Limits," p. 39.
' Genocchio, "Heterotopia and its Limits," p. 39.
5
H. Fuji, "Dispersed, Multi-Layered Space," Architectural Design Profile 77 (1989): p. 68.
6
H. Raggatt, "A Zone of the Blur," Transition 41 (1993): p. 9.
7
Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics (Spring, 1986), cited by Genocchio, "Heterotopia and its
Limits," p. 35-
8
D. Tiffany /'Unbridled Space: Thoughts on Architecture, Mass Media and Death,"Semiotext(e)IArcbitectre
(1992): p. 85.
9
R. Venturi, D. Scott-Brown and S. lzenour, Learning from Los Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of
Architectural Form, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972.
10
K. Thompson, "Spaces in Between," Transition 43 (1994): p. 61.

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 Rrchitecturol Theory Review Vol. 1 No. 1

11
M. J. Oswald, 'Virtual Urban Space," Transition 41 (1993): p. 13.
12
P. Viriolo, "The Vision Machine," trans. J. Rose, Transition 43 (1994): p. 24.
13
T. Reed, "Morph and the Simulacrum," Transition 44/45 (1994): p. 168.
14
Reed, "Morph and the Simulacrum," p. 168.
15
P. Carlin, "The Kronborg Clinic: The Nether Worlds of a Dionysian Disco," Transition 44/45 (1994): p. 181.
16
Raggatt, "A Zone of the Blur," p. 9-
17
Carlin, "The Kronberg Clinic," p. 168.
18
This building is apparently inadequate in terms of its user appeal and satisfaction as well as the experience
of the space as a whole.
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" M. Markham, "Originality," Transition 47 (1995): P- 40.

20
Ashton Raggatt McDougall, "St Kilda Town Hall Renovation," Transition 47 (1995): p. 46.
21
A very Vitruvian-Modemist concept, it is flawed in too many ways to be critiqued in this paper.
22
G. Deleuze, "Plato and the Simulacrum," p. 45.

140