The Museum Labyrinth

Aksel Gerrit (date unknown)

As Gramont tells us, the structural components that govern the essential nature of the labyrinth have been rigorously codified since, at least, the Interiorists. The work of Aaldi, and of course that of Magarelli, Oriolo and Ungarn, posits rigorous and well-substantiated schemas, elements of which have proved foundational for our current epoch's understanding of what is meant by labyrinth. Indeed, much of contemporary Western labyrinthology has been, in large part, a quest for extrication from the entanglements Gollesten's synthetic totalism. Our recent discussions of the late Kobrin have brought our attention to the school which John and I, as well as others in the field (most notably Philip Cunha, Jacques Oligreff and Wim Cruhs) have begun refer to as Acentrism. Recent findings offer compelling evidence that we should consider the work of the late Kobrin as emblematic of an aesthetic and ideological shift from neo-recursivism, a mode of which his early labyrinths proved archetypal, into this fascinating, even troubling, mode of construction.

In the last few weeks, I've become particularly curious about the extent to which the late Kobrin appears to be influenced by the controversial writings of Aksel Gerrit, prompting me to begin correspondence with the Dutch labyrinthologist Alvilda Jeppesen, translator of the definitive English volume of Gerrit's labyrinthology.

Jeppesen at the Bern Labyrinthological Circle Summit (2006)

Jeppesen, familiar with CORRIDOR's revamp of Kobrin's Basin labyrinth, had yet to hear of my harrowing navigation of the Manuas Cave Labyrinth. Once aware of my experience, as well as Cruemer's reports of the seemingly unnavigable structure of the Basin labyrinth, she immediately made the connection between the late Kobrin's "quasi-nihilistic" tendencies and Gerrit's call for the introduction of a fourth center as a fundamental structural component of the labyrinth. Alvilda has given consent for me to copy some elucidating thoughts from our exchange below:

Alex,

Indeed. The connections between Kobrin's labyrinthecture in the Amazon Basin and Gerrit's labyrinthology are profound. It appears that Kobrin attempted to enact in labyrinthecture Gerrit's purely theoretical notions about sovereignty and preservation. Gerrit was possessed by the idea that the labyrinth should never be navigated or "solved." Having studied in Malaysia with Ah-Pei, seeing the Monsoon Mud Labyrinths firsthand, his labyrinthology was simply engineered in that direction - towards the purposefully unnavigable, the "museum labyrinth" as some have dubbed it. As you've noted, Kobrin appears to have been attempting to realize a labyrinth with a fourth center - that is, a deceptively authentic telos point in which the navigator, thinking he has reached the center, finds himself with four previously unavailable navigational options, none of which allow for successful eggresion.

As Gerrit succinctly put it, "it is in the fourth center that the autonomy and superiority of the labyrinth, divorced from traditional and interiorist notions of form and structure, assert themselves most fully. The navigator has tread on sacred ground, but not on the most sacred of grounds, he is given false hope, he is made to believe the lie of navigation before making his ultimately final 'choice' as a walker." What is most alarming here, as you pointed out, is that, in the case of the late Kobrin, these ideas are enacted, disseminated into the realm of the navigatory.

Jeppesen will give a panel on "Gerrit and The Curved Juncture" at this year's NASCLS in Benesov. Details on the conference will be posted here once finalized.

Fatalism and the Late Kobrin

Kobrin, age 24, in Győr, circa 1876

Transcribing my many (and at times incomprehensible/deranged) navnotes from Manaus - notes which, once rendered in text, I will surely post for our readers here - has given me cause reflect anew on the enigma that is Mezin Kobrin. As most of our readers no doubt know, in his lifetime Kobrin traveled extensively and completed eighteen labyrinths, using materials ranging from glass to bamboo to igneous rock. Remarkably, Kobrin's productivity increased as he aged. In fact, twelve of these eighteen labyrinths were constructed in the last decade of his life. As I have just navigated the previously unknown, arguably unnavigable and center-less Amazonian labyrinth which I have dubbed the Manuas Cave Labyrinth, I have been given cause to reflect on Kobrin's late labyrinthectural writings, writings with which I was previously unfamiliar and would have proven invaluable indeed had I been aware of them. For curious readers, these late writings have been anthologized and translated by Ari Ghisk under the title "Contributions to Acentrism" and are available via Junctures Ltd. Printing.

My navjournals will provide context to my sense that in the case of the Manuas labyrinth (as well as the Amazon Basin labyrinth, which as Cruemer noted when beginning work "finishing" its construction seemed "an utter aporia of walking" - a labyrinth which, given my recent navigation, I now believe was left intentionally unnavigable by Kobrin at the time of his death), we have perhaps an unprecedented example of a purposefully center-less, and, ultimately for the walker, fatal labyrinth. Simply put, it is my contention that Kobrin, possessed of the notion of a sovereign, "pure" labyrinth, began, in the waning years of his life, to design labyrinths devoid of traditional structural components (atriums, Great Rooms, and, yes, even centers). It is thus that a certain nihilism enters Kobrin's work, an alarming symptom of a sociopathic labyrinthecture that was arrested only by the designer's own failing health.

Kobrin at age 65 (Szolnok, Summer, 1941)

The late Kobrin is remarkably dense, ponderous and poetic, so I will quote only this brief and profoundly relevant passage, taken from Section XVI of the Szeged Lectures (1928).

The center is a leaping-forward if left remote, an area in which the corridor gathers itself into itself only in the absence of external entities. It is what is nearest and most far away from the subject, a guiding principle that may do only violence. To dissemble it, to upend its unavoidable thrust, this is our task. What of the squandering that occurs if the center is left permeable? The labyrinth thus becomes history, machination, "prone-conquerable" to the walker. To surpass this is the enactment of proper labyrinthecture - the truth of proper recursivism in the wake of Gerrit.

What Kobrin calls for then is nothing other than a labyrinth without a center. But where does this leave us as historians and navigators? What is the place of the labyrinthologist in such a labyrinthology? And where does this leave the walker?