All squares are (as if) before … something. We know we
are ‘on’ some place, yet somehow also feel that we are ‘before’ something… As
if, as we stand upon such spaces, we stand (sit, lie, kneel or otherwise find
our presence) before something (…find our presence in relation to another
presence, our role defined by our mode of experiencing some event, a defining
with… or against…). Is it that as we stand in the square we offer recognition
to something (and so the recognition of ourselves as being among those who are
able to do such)? Is it that there is present in squares a sense of witness, an
added sense of community, of totality, of completion as the present of such
spaces? An option to be taken on the experience of such
space. And if the option is not taken? Then
there may be a sense of isolation, of insignificance in space, of being dwarfed
by place. Even amounting to an allergy to the presence of
others, of being drowned in the sea of a crowd; the harrowing feeling that
comes with the apprehension of total loneliness, the onset of alienation and of
anomie. Part of the reason for such (opposite and conflicting) responses
could be that when in a square, when on the square, we are often in the
presence of some form of sacred building, representative of a higher order of
being, of the presence of ideals, of institutions with a important role to play
in the constitution of the social. Part or not-part, taking part, or not; our
response comes accordingly. Partly because such places can be filled (or appear
as if filled even in their emptiness). Filled then, either with
people or their ghosts. Presences, or part of a
presence.
(And inside too, in inside-places, such a sense of
presence, such presences, can be found: in effect such interiors can be read as
covered public squares, roofed over public spaces, spaces of mass gathering,
mass witness, vast auditoria dedicated to a crowd and its collective point of
attention. For all such buildings have a focus: from the centre stage of the
sports hall, ground, or field, to the theatre as viewed, ‘in the round’, to the
choice of a single side for the focus, the attention of the audience, the place
where all expectation finds its home, the place of its reward - be it the
minimal mirab of the mosque or the colossal altar
piece of a Baroque cathedral. Or, in a more secular vein, the stage of our
theatres and cinemas - also places of hushed darkness and discrete zones of
eye-leading illumination. One such case (stronger for not being a traditional
sacred building) is that of the concert hall where not only do we face the
stage, focus of a collective auditory anticipation further gathered by visual
cues, but moreover there are often to be seen strange, illuminated presences
situated within the back wall and the wings. Outcrops and cave-like opening are
often found eerily lit in a manner that suggests some sacred corner of a
cathedral or ancient ziggurat. The focus of aural attention is now also the
focus of visual attention (in a visual display that may, by its very
effectiveness, distract the audience from the finer points of the music…). For
this presence (articulated from around the building by light) has become a site
of occult meaning, replete with mysteries, further calling upon the same
(aesthetic) function as that found in the aura of public buildings on the
square…or rather present in ourselves, present as we face the buildings, the
buildings we find ourselves… before.)
A background effect? A
given? A gift (from elsewhere)? A
focus for the background noise of the sacred. Scene of
an awaited event. Stage for a play. Our play. The background before which we play… The backdrop
before which (and against which) we play…
Public squares often owe their existence to the
presence of sacred places, to the establishment of churches or mosques (the
sacred places of many religions, however, also often occupy their own closed
spaces, as did Christian cathedrals, within the confines of their ‘close’). For
the origins of many squares lies in their becoming the site for markets serving
these places and their populace. Sites functioning at once as
sacred and as secular public space. A space watched over.... Whose
secular exchanges are overseen by a sacred edifice, calling into question their
claim to secularity (a recent claim disavowed by previous generations that
would have claimed their activities as blessed). Blessing the events that take place in its shadow. That bask in the shadow of its light. The
market before the cathedral. The fair before the cathedral (the carnival
before the cathedral…). Public events, entertainments, concerts, all taking
place before …in the presence of… the invisible inspiration of whatever it is
before them (whatever it is that is to come, that will arrive, a face turned to
the future, of events taking place in the face of the future, or of that which
maps its horizons) something more than just the buildings themselves. The space
too plays a role (the square ‘on’ which we are…) in the gathering of crowds,
peoples, communities. If only by virtue of their gathering in one place, to
make one, as if one – temporary yet profound act of witness.
A collective act of witness that may move
from affirmation to revolution as the institutions of power are no longer
approved, affirmed or applauded, but denied and overthrown. A
witness to power which returns again to affirmation. On
the ebbing of the tide of change turning again to a ritual affirmation of the
place itself as witness (as witness to…).
Whatever it is that is there, before (that was there
before…).
(And how easily the geo-positional ‘before’
becomes, in a typical ideological, ideo-rhetorical,
slight of hand, the temporal indicator, ‘before’; offering out to us the hope,
wish, and myth of origins, as source of the mystique of place, the ghost in the
earth, the spirit of archeology, the return of the
interred, that something other, elsewhere as being (safely and foundationally)
located beneath the ground, place of an event before us in time, whose
emanation is before us in space… the sense of place that possesses us, a ghost
returned to haunt the living, sacralisation of space as the mode of its gift to
us, now. Corpse sanctified as giver of gifts. A ghost in the
house. A gift from the past. The
spirit of the square).
Just as space becomes personalised in every
particular, in the course of every particular perception, as place, so
all place is at once there and their (their space, theirs). Space
belongs to the cartographer or to the absentee landlord with the title deed.
Place belongs to a perspective, a community, a culture… a given horizon of
expectations, a view upon the world that is itself a world, world-making,
world-constituting, world-projecting (as in a cinema of the self);
world-unfolding (as in the case of the reader before an ancient scroll).
Bestowing meaning upon the space before us, transforming the empty quantitative
co-ordinates of space into the felt and meaningful sense of place (for it would
seem that space as such does not exist, as the very act of our experiencing the
particular physical make-up of a given space immediately gives it the character
– culminating in the personification that is genius loci- of place, the kind
of place it is…). Home or other. Our
place or someone else’s. Possessors known
(another social group, another community of identification, but not one’s own).
Or of a possessor unknown… Or
unknowable… In this latter case the orientation that takes place on the
square is metaphysical, we are given direction by the
compass of the sublime. Strong sense of place as a
possession, as in possession of, as well as possessing, a sense of the sublime
(in whatever regional form it may take). In which case we may all, in
finding our position in space in such a place, our place in such a place,
participate in sublime possession.
In possession of whatever it is that is to be found
there (that will be found there), before us…
A future made safe by what came before, and what waits
still, before before… elsewhere, before, outside of time…(or
its rhetoric). Before a set of guarantees. Promises. Certainties from the cradle to
the grave. And before… This is what we stand
before, what was before us, what lies before us - and before which we are as a
row of open mouths, agape either with awe or with hunger…on the square.
If you do not know which way to face then the space you inhabit is as
empty as the vacant square of a chessboard. If you know which way to face then
you are participating in a network of meanings, ‘thick’ as the air around you
blows thin. Felt meanings that steer the inner intentions and find you
expecting ‘you’ to take up a certain role or stance (interior and exterior).
For a physical position is also a metaphysical position - on the square.
Copyright, 2006 Peter Nesteruk.