lightness - 两年前写的一篇随感

Lightness

In his article "lightness", the author John Rajchman talks about theconcept of lightness from multiple angles. First of all, lightness is more commonly understood in the world of architecture as 'transparency' and 'immateriality'. But the author wants to emphasize the other dimensions of the same concept. From the phenomenological perspective, lightness can be approached as opposed to 'ground' - the center/anchor of a dwelling. It's a freedom to move out of the 'place', to move across regional boundaries and to be displaced. To be light is to be released of the weightiness of history, to be free of the loads that are imposed by 'place'.

What has moved me most is when the author starts to reflect on Nietzsche's idea of the earth. For Nietzsche, it's essential to recognize that the earth is light. The earth is centerless and formless and unlimited. Lightness doesn't come when you are living in an elevated house. One takes wings when he/she dances with the earth, when his/her soul defeats the spirit of the gravity. The soul sings, dances, and flies.
Zarathustra's lightness is a passionate one, is freedom and revolution.But there is another kind of lightness that is more related to 'floating' than to 'flying'.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's movie Millennium Mambo illustrates such kind of lightness. In the movie, Vicky (by Shu Qi) is a hostess about 20 years old in a trendy bar in Taipei. Her life is rendered as light as possible by the director of the movie and the flickering camera shots against dreamy-colored backdrops. Her boyfriend Hao-Hao doesn't have a job and they live together in a small apartment. Hao-Hao loves Vicky and is often crazily jealous about her. There are no real events/plots about this love story excerpt making love and Hao-Hao being afraid of losing Vicky and acting like a psycho. Drugs and cigarettes and alcohol filled the scenes. Slow motioned scenes of cars passing along highways at night. Even the scenes of making love is so hopelessly unemotional. They finally broke up when the audience is almost led to believe their repeated struggles will last till the end of the movie. Hao-Hao disappeared from Vicky's life without a trace, so suddenly. She doesn't know what to do, although she is not really any more lost than when she was with Hao-Hao. She kept floating around. Years later, in the snow covered BeiHaoDao in Japan, in the quietness of the night sky on an empty street, Vicky remembered Hao-Hao and his shyness and his having disappeared from her life like a snowflake.

Floating, here in the movie, seems to be a status of life. Something similar to 'the unbearable lightness of life'. Lightness is more easily attainable in contemporary metropolis than ever before. In a post-industrial society with cell phones everywhere and commercial airlines, regional boundaries and cultural identities never seemed so ephemeral. Do people really want to escape from the weightiness of life, or is the opposite more true that people more often try to gain orientation for themselves and try to find some definitive purposes in their lives? In any case, lightness has inserted itself as a way of life in the contemporary consumerist society.

What is the difference between flying and floating then? In the end ofthe movie, Vicky is carrying herself so happily and weightlessly, without any purposes in life, only accompanied by friends known back inthe bars in Taipei. One is almost tempted to think she is actually 'flying'.
If one defines flying as a more assertive and purposeful act, then isn't 'floating' even lighter or more inconsequential than flying?

By taking in the peripheral details, the film deliberately avoids a main plot. The main character Vicky is almost empty of personalities, almost used as a person to string the different events together. One doesn't really know what she thinks or who she loves. Her narratives are so devoid of emotions that they become almost touching. Thus everything becomes revealing and in itself an important part of the movie, in contrast to typical Hollywood narratives that preceding events or details are only used to give cues to the grand result. The movie succeeds in rendering an in depth picture of a status of the contemporary life.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien managed to be non-judgmental in the movie. The movie simply presents it without adding anything or arbitrarily cutting anything out. Is this a role that the architects should assume when facing the issue of lightness? It's one of many possibilities.

People will continue to desire to fly, to be unrestricted by gravity. But when they do fly, will they completely forget about the 'ground'? The good thing about architecture is that it is always start from the ground. The relationship between ground and building become a distinction between architecture and other visual arts and also distinguishes itself with the design of automobiles or airplanes.

(There is a distinction between fly in mid-air and fly in between the geological layers of the earth-ground. The author seems to be championing the Deleuzion notion of geology at the end of his essay. He seems to propose a lightness that is derived from moving smoothly among the different layers of the places and making connections freely between the layers. I doubt if the multiplicity of the ground is truly at the center of lightness. Lightness seems to have dissolved/submerged itself in the multiplicity of the ground.)

(On a different note, the Deleuzion idea of geology seems to be most helpful when thought more from the angle of conceptual structure. To move freely and make connections between different dimensions of meanings seems to offer new ways of breaking existing rules. This seems to be an approach that is capable of achieving lightness in architecture. )

I like the poetic floating of Vicky. She does it with grace. She is not un-affected by emotions. It's just that even the sentimentalities are so light and inconsequential.