NASCLS 2009 Updates

I thought some of our readers would be interested to hear the latest news pertaining to this year's annual North American Society for Contemporary Labyrinthology conference, which is being held on the weekend of April 17 in Manitoba. Midway through December, John K. posted descriptions of the panels here. Since that update, some interesting developments have occurred. As some of you may have heard, John and I have been invited to serve on keynote labyrinthian Philip Cunha's panel. I spoke with Philip just this past week, and he informed me that his paper, which is nearing completion, investigates the ways in which Mathieu Gramont's notion of cyclico-ambulatory intuition anticipates and, in many ways, invalidates subversive navigation in the wake of Crete - a particularly interesting move on the part of Cunha as Crete is likely to be in attendance.

Cunha told me that he decided against his previously considered address, which focused upon labyrinthological ethics at large in favor of this "more pointed assessment." As an exteriorist Gramontian, I, for one, couldn't be happier with both Philip's choice of subject and the veritable renaissance which the French Recursivists seem to be experiencing within the realm of contemporary labyrinthology. For those of you not subscribed to the NASCLS newsletter (which you can subscribe to by sending an email with the subject "add to list" to Stephen Holdern at manitobalabconf_09@yahoo.com) a tentative schedule has been posted, to wit:

Friday, April 17

1-2 pm
Meet at Hudson Bay Overlook in downtown Churchill for hors d'œuvres.
3pm
Check in to Manitoba Marriott (or adjourn to other arranged places of lodging)
5-7 pm
Dinner and Awards (featuring the presentation of the Mezin Kobrin Award for Innovation in Labyrinthecture, the Phillip Ambrose Walker Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Labyrinthology, and the Percival Crosley Award for Outstanding Ecolabyrinthological Accomplishment).
7:30 pm(in Marriott Conference Hall)
Introduction of Panels and Panelists by Jacques Oligreff
7:45-9 pm
TBA Philip Cunha Keynote Address and Discussion
9 -10 pm
Stanlislav Barta "The Indestructable Ontos" and Discussion

Saturday, April 18

The day is open, so to speak, and those who have never been to Manitoba are encouraged to experience it. That being said, there will be a group navigation of the Lake Winnipegosis Labyrinth (an estimated 3 hour navigation) which begins congression at 2pm sharp. Those who wish to sign up should contact Stephen Holdern before the event or sign up in the lobby of the Marriott.

5-7 pm
Dinner and Cocktails
7:30 -8:30 pm
Alan Berkhardt "Kafka's Corridors" and Discussion
8:30 - 9:30 pm
Bernhard Smallencroft "Subverting SN: Reclaiming the Sanctity of Navigation" and Discussion
9:30 - 11 pm
Open Discussion and Wine

This is, of course, subject to change between now and April, but I think it looks great so far. Remember, if you have any questions don't hesitate to get in touch with us here at CLP or with Holdern directly.

Notes from the Ribbon Reef

Dear Labyrinthians,

I'm almost two weeks into my navigation of the Ribbon Reef Labyrinth. I have reached the second center. It is indeed paradisiacal, but this is truly terra incognita. Today marks my third day wandering the second center. A storm threatens, which will delay me for perhaps another week.  

I am trying not to lose hope and sanity. All across the coastline, there appears to be no entrance back into the reef corridors. The labyrinthecture is maniacal; no congression points, no regression points in sight.

My oxygen supply is sufficient, but my second center navigation has to be parsimonious and well-planned, else I risk wasting too much of my precious tanks. The Atlantic sun has singed my skin, which feels indelibly brackish despite my wetsuit. My provisions are perilously low, and I have been forced to forage flora and fauna that appear comestible and innocuous. (A word to the wise: Never navigate without Floyd Brendelmen's Field Guide to Labyrinth Foraging). Sharks, I think blacktip reef sharks, are patrolling what seems to be one of the more promising congression points. The dance of the light on the water is beautiful, mesmerizing, but the refraction titanically complicates the detection of third doors. 

I've taken a photo for your viewing and for the archives. Enjoy, but keep me in your thoughts. This will be one memorable navigation.

[Message sent via Blackberry_//.>Sent 9:26PM_._]

A Scholar of Ill Repute

My dear labyrinthians,

You may have noted a bit of a lull here at the Cincinnati Labyrinth Project. Fear not, however, for the reasons behind our relative inactivity are decidedly positive. John K. is focused on a rather difficult navigation of the Ribbon Reef Labyrinth in Mauritania, and I, along with fellow CLP columnists Walt and Mark, have just attended the famous annual Bern Labyrinthological Circle conference in Switzerland. The conference was excellent, with particularly superb, progressive talks from Bernhard Smallencroft and Anders Heitkamp. Perhaps the most fascinating and exciting bit of labyrinthia that we gleaned concerns the construction of the Amazon Basin Labyrinth, a labyrinth which, as some of our readers may know, was begun by Mezin Kobrin but left incomplete at the time of his death. The project, which drew many skeptics based on its sheer scope (the blueprints posit an area of over 35 miles), has been picked up by CORRIDOR motion DESIGN, a forward thinking labyrinthectural firm out of Portland, OR. More on this exciting news later.

Now, onto the subject of this post, a considerably less pleasant matter. As you, my dear reader, have no doubt noticed, we have, here at CLP, always done our best to avoid participating in the factious and polemical modes of criticism which pervade the landscape of contemporary labyrinthology. It is our contention that what is called for in our present epoch is a labyrinthology which, as my good friend and colleague Philip Cunha says, mends the broken corridor. This being said, recent events have come to pass which I, for one, simply cannot abide nor turn a blind eye. During my sojourn in Bern this past weekend, I had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time with CLP Polish correspondent Czeslaw Gorski, a labyrinthologist well known in European intellectual circles for his writings on "blind ambulation." Gorski has been working on a rather fascinating article for some time now, of which I have read several drafts. The piece takes as its subject a rather problematic, yet widespread, exegesis of Book Seventeen of Gollesten's Framework, an interpretation introduced by Dutch New Interiorist labyrinthologist Rutger Roorback.

In essence, Roorback argues that Gollesten's critique of Aaldi's quantalogical reduction hinges on a fallacious interpretation of Aaldi's notion of cognitive constancy navigation (CCN). Roorback's views, as erroneous as they may seem to us, have become popular in labyrinthological syndicates throughout Europe, proving particularly influential on the Viennese Centralists. My issue with Roorback lies, however, not in my disagreements with his scholarship, but in the way in which he handled the prospect of cogent, well argued dissent entering into the realm of mainstream labyrinthology in the form of my dear friend Gorski's exceptionally well crafted article. The article had been approved months ago for publication in Perímetro, the prestigious Portuguese labyrinthology quarterly. This past weekend in Bern, however, Gorski revealed to me that as a result of Roorback's connections and influence in Portuguese labyrinthological circuits, the article has been pulled from publication.

I can say without hyperbole that this is a travesty. It is deceit of the lowest kind and, forgive me if I seem overly crestfallen, it is precisely the sort of underhandedness that threatens the very sanctity of contemporary labyrinthology. Gorski has agreed to let us publish his article in installments, the first of which I will be posting this weekend. In the meantime, dear reader, please consider jotting a note to Perímetro, as I have, to express your disdain for both their publication and sense of intellectual ethics alike.

Previews of 2009

I have landed in Mauritania, and, as I await my navigational provisions, I thought it fitting to mention what 2009 has in store for labyrinths and labyrinthians. 

The crises of navigational ethics may have dominated the critical brain-space of contemporary labyrinthology in 2008, but despair not: 2009 promises to be an enriching, edifying, and exciting year for labyrinths and labyrinthians.  

The CLP has compiled a list of developments to debut in our new set of months that have already grabbed the imagination and ignited the eager anticipation of the international labyrinth community.  

Here are three developments which I greatly await, and my colleagues will be sharing theirs soon: 

1. In March, Californian labyrinthect Skye Morgan will be unveiling The Cube in an office park outside of Los Angeles. One part art, one part social commentary, and one part functional labyrinth, The Cube is a five-story labyrinth constructed entirely from cubicle partitions. The corridors of nondescript, gray cubicle walls underneath numbing fluorescent lights hanging from drop ceilings are purported to make for an extremely claustrophobic and disorienting navigation. No word has yet been leaked about the nature of the center and great room of The Cube, but I, for one, am up for the challenge.    

2. On June 16, labyrinthologists will finally be able to get their hands on Stephon Crete's equally acclaimed and maligned Procodic Boundaries: On the Ballast of the Perimeter. Though shrouded in much mystery, Dr. Crete is expected to unveil significant new corollaries to his Vector Theory, furnish complete data tables from his measurements of labyrinthons, and, most astoundingly, incorporate his theory of salvific magnetism into his so-called Unified Labyrinth Theory.  Labcritics, get ready to spill some ink! 

3. Brazilian experimental composer, who boldly goes only by the name of Thiago, will be premiering Caminhada, an epic symphony written exclusively for Balinese-styled gamelan, Gamelan gong kebyar. In an interview, Thiago revealed that he scored the symphony after navigating the sublime East Amazon Edge Labyrinth. (I am scheduling my first navigation for the fall of this year. Do I have any willing co-navigators?) While not explicating any details about his notation and transcription, Thiago stated that he developed a system by which he assigned pitches and duration based on the length of corridors, juncture composition, and chamber arrangement. He found the gamelan to be best suited to "perform the navigation." Apparently, each performance of the symphony will be different, representative of the alternative congressional and egressional routes the East Amazon Edge Labyrinth permits.  The first performance will be at the Sydney Opera House in midsummer. Get your tickets while they are still available.  

Oligreff on the State of Navigation in the late 2000's

Not normally known for doomsaying, Jacques Oligreff offerered some pointed criticisms of navigation in our present epoch at the MLC (Midwest Labyrinthology Consortium) meeting which took place this past weekend at DePaul Univeristy in Chicago. I managed to record most of his talk on microcassette (though my recorder died near the end of the almost 140 minute presentation). I'll try to post some audio excerpts later in the week.

"The call for a particularly stringent, codified system of labyrinth ethics - rules of the game, if you will - proves particularly urgent in the wake of Crete's labtech. Gone are the days in which navigators toiled solemnly and without interruption. Gone are the days in which the navigator, looking up at the firmament above him, summoned something deep within himself in order to find the will to press on, against all odds, to find his way to the center or to ambulate reverently, if he so chooses, free from the duress of centrality.

Last autumn I visited the Canyonlands Cave Labyrinth in Utah, one of my favorite domestic labyrinths, and one of the late Kobrin's most successful and inspired labyrinthectural designs. In the past, Chantal, my dear wife, and I have always enjoyed the rigor involved in successfully navigating the labyrinth. We've navigated to the center some 15 times now, and it never has ceased to be a challenge. This past visit was different. As we reached what I knew to be the notoriously difficult second center (Kobrin employs a system of deceptively angled obelisks to compel the navigator to believe he is congressing when in fact he is egressing at a rapid clip), I noticed, attached to the wall, a schematic for finding the center, replete with fastidiously documented photographs of the twists and turns one would encounter throughout the rest of his navigation.

I ask you my fellow labyrinthians, will we allow this to continue? Who will stand with me against the subversive, techno-labyrinthians who endeavor to do violence to the very essence of the labyrinth as we know and cherish it?"

Spirited words, indeed. While I sympathize with Oligreff on the lamentable abundance of subversive and misanthropic navigation in contemporary labyrinthology, I'm reticent to agree that a "rules of the game" is needed. Such a proposal is, to be sure, nothing if not prescriptive and, in a way, appears to run counter to the very essence of labyrinthology. I'm curious hear what any of you might think.

Rasmus Stowe: Selected Labyrinths 1957-1998

Stowe in Vienna, May 2000

For anyone familiar with the topography of 20th century labyrinthecture, Rasmus Stowe will be a well-known name. Born in Cape Canaveral, FL in 1923 to Danish-Canadian parents, Stowe designed and oversaw the construction of 19 ISCL accredited labyrinths between the years of 1957 and 1998, including some of the most revered and, in many cases, notoriously difficult labyrinthine works of our contemporary epoch.

Stowe's labyrinthecture falls very definitely within the realm of Gollestenian labyrinthology. His is a poetic labyrinth, with an emphasis on ambulation and a reverence for naturalism. Perhaps the most unifying trait in his body of work is his insistence on working with the materials most readily available to him in the region of construction. Tales abound in labyrinthectural circles about his refusal to import any raw materials when constructing his labyrinths. Moreover, whereas many labyrinthects in the wake of Molrey viewed labyrinth construction as a physical and abiding embodiment of the sublime/otherworldly/fantastical, Stowe's works remained resolutely in keeping with the embedded landscapes, both cultural and geographic, of his construction sites. For those unfamiliar with Stowe's body of work, here I present a few particularly inspired examples and a few interesting footnotes:

Laurel Grove Kudzu Labyrinth (1957-1960, USA)
Stowe's first labyrinth, built entirely from kudzu harvested from Savannah, Georgia and surrounding counties. Stowe received a grant from the Laurel Grove Citizens Board for proposing a project which would boost tourism in the region and provide a welcome reprieve from the rampantly growing kudzu that was otherwise being uprooted and burned. He reportedly used 215,000 tons of kudzu in the construction of the labyrinth.

Blue Nile Gorge Labyrinth (1968-1973, Ethiopia)
The Blue Nile Gorge labyrinth is the first aquatic labyrinth which Stowe designed. He received the ISCL Honneur du Labyrinthect award for the labyrinth in 1973, the result of scientific findings which show that the aquatic corridors provided safe haven to the critically endangered Spotted Necked Otter (Lutra maculicollis), a species which has since flourished and avoided what seemed to be certain extinction.

Guajira Penninsula Labyrinth (1982-1991, Columbia/Venezuela)
Perhaps Stowe's best known labyrinth. It is a hybrid aquatic/terrestrial labyrinth and, as a personal aside, it is without question the most difficult navigatory experience I've ever had. The labyrinth begins in the xeric shrubland of Columbia and covers an area of approx. 95.000 km2. The corridors become aquatic around the northeastern coast of Venezuela, near the foothills of the Macuira mountain range. The labyrinth's Great Room is above water and noted for its dense population of Caribbean flamingos which apparently favor its misty climes.

Schwarzwald Labyrinth (1993-1998, Germany)
Stowe's final completed labyrinth, designed largely in tribute to German philosopher Martin Heidegger who lived in the Black Forest where the labyrinth was constructed. Stowe found continued inspiration in Heidegger's writing, particularly his post-Sein und Zeit texts. The Schwarzwald Labyrinth is, without question, Stowe's most ruminative and convoluted labyrinth, mimicking the Heideggerian notion that thinking is akin to traveling along a darkened woodpath in which getting lost is as important as finding one's way.


Futher reading:

Brinkley, Joseph. Stowe's Contributions to Labyrinthecture. New York: Paragone Press, 1989.
Gallimard, Maurice. Couloirs Aquatiques. Paris: Editions Arceneaux, 2003.
Smallencroft, Bernhard. Rasmus Stowe. Chicago: Black Thicket, 2011.

An Alarming Appropriation

Dear Readers,

Please forgive the typography of this post. I am writing to you via Blackberry on my way to the Ribbon Reef Labyrinth in the atoll lagoons off the Western coast of Mauritania. And wish me luck: aquatic labyrinths are among the most challenging and perilous. I will share with you my navijournal when I return.

We labyrinthians at the CLP hold ourselves to the highest journalistic standards, and thus we always strive to eschew any editorialization in our threads. However, we must also uphold the integrity of the labyrinth, and therefore we believe it is our sacred duty to report any disquieting and undignified labyrinthine phenomena.

As many of you know, the best of this nation's college football squads have squared off in the various matches of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).  Advertisers and corporate sponsors lacked no creativity this year in their commercial promotions of the BCS. Yet, one advertisement employed an outrageous conceit: linemen, in caricatured lust for victory, careering the corridors of labyrinths to tackle their ways to the center.  

Watch the video, if you can stomach this egregious appropriation:

We at the CLP avoid prescriptivism, but this promotion displays two sinister misrepresentations which we cannot condone. First, navigation is not a competitive activity. Certainly, navigation has its athletic demands, but congression is not a gladiatorial sport in which one "wins" or "defeats" an opponent. Second, centers do not present the navigator with any kind of trophy. Arrival is its own reward, and there is no prize or treasure awaiting the navigator.

Labyrinths can indeed serve as rich metaphors, but, fellow labyrinthians, we cannot tolerate such co-option. 

Gramont and "La ligne propre"

As I mentioned in my comment to John's thread below, naturalism and observational navigation are issues which are given sustained consideration in the thought of a wide range of modern and contemporary labyrinthians. In Aaldi's text, nature as such is subjected to the quantalogical reduction. Reede's interiorist skepticism, manifested most notably in the writings and lectures from the Tiranė period, often takes as its subject the sensible and corporeal experience of the natural labyrinth. As John intimated, it is in the labyrinthological project of Gollesten that naturalism is reclaimed from the critique of the Medialists.

I find Mathieu Gramont's naturalism to be particularly interesting due in part to the fact that much of his labyrinthology functions as what is essentially a deconstruction of modern labyrinthological theory at large. As our readers know, the recursivist movement, which Gramont initiated, denies both exteriorism and interiorism as appropriate methodologies for navigating and investigating labyrinths as such, advocating instead a labyrinthology in which navigation and ambulation are paramount. In a lecture from the spring of 1940, entitled "La ligne propre" ("The Clean Line"), Gramont articulates an aesthetics of observational navigation. The piece is contained in the French language collection of Gramont's letters and lectures published by Editions Arceneaux, unavailable in translation at present. This excerpt finds Gramont sympathizing with Gollesten, and calling for a new vocabulary with which to assess the aesthetics of the labyrinth. The translation is my own.

"By decisively avoiding the center and the perimeter alike, we bring about a state of affairs in which the structure of the corridors within the sensible labyrinth effectively becomes our horizon. Our eyes focused solely upon the expanse of the corridor, undeniable as Gollesten has shown, and irreducible to constancy as posited by Aaldi. The aesthetics of the post-Industrial labyrinth force us to approach naturalism within the labyrinth in the same manner posited by the exteriorists, though we dispute their fundamental teleologico-labyrinthology. As Gollesten points out, the structure of the labyrinth may only be assessed in the context of properly authentic navigation. But how may we consider the aesthetics of the corridor?

Labyrinthectural theory, bound and blocked from primordiality by its dependence on quantalogical notation, does not provide us with a suitable vocabulary for assessing the beauty of the labyrinth's form. Moreover, the teleological fallacies of post-Aaldian labyrinthology continue to exercise their insidious influence on the topography of contemporary labyrinthecture. Utility should never be the locus. A corridor should beckon us in manifold ways, entreating us always to ambulate. It is the task of the labyrinthian to assess the corridor, but not to explain it away. This is, as Gollesten points out, the crisis of observational navigation in modernity."