Smallencroft Keynote Speech, Głogów Contemporary Labyrinthology Conference 12/6/08

This year's annual Contemporary Labyrinthology Association (CLA) summit took place in Głogów, Poland this past weekend. Unfortunately, no CLP members were able to make the trip. Lucky for us though, my collegue Czeslaw Gorski was able to record Bernhard Smallencroft's excellent keynote speech, an excerpt of which I've posted below. As usual, Smallencroft is clear and too the point, largely eschewing the jargon-laden discourse of his peers. His accessible style is most welcome in the world of labcrit. This year's conference focused on Dimensionality and Labyrinth Ethics. Smallencroft's address tackles the issue of the ethical demands of the two-dimensional labyrinth.

“The importance of dimensionality in both labyrinth construction and navigation cannot be overstated. Aside from obvious visual and aesthetic distinctions that exist between the two dimensional labyrinth and its more elaborate and interactive three dimensional counterpart, the essential nature of the 2D labyrinth provides us with a important opportunity to once again place labyrinth ethics under the microscope.

Let us examine first the being of the classical, 3D labyrinth. Its foreboding, monolithic structure and mathematical purity call out to us, entreating us to explore its manifold corridors. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the labyrinthian’s focused predilection to centrality is part and participle of human nature, and not the result of any discursive binarism. Simply put, while it is true that the navigation of the labyrinth is an essential part of its structure and must be treated as such, the allure of the center is not a phenomenon that need be avoided nor decried. From the perimeter of the 3D labyrinth, our experience of the center is, of course, mediated by boundaries innumerable. In short, it is a relationship marked by a rather extreme degree of occlusion.

What then is the essential nature of centrality and navigation in the case of the 2D labyrinth? You might be given to wonder - is our experience of centrality in these labyrinths so different? While it is true that our attitude towards the center is consistent in the case of both types of labyrinths, the 2D labyrinth brings with it a unique test of the labyrinthian’s ethics. Here, we are able, at all times, to see the center and our path to reach it without obstruction. Moreover, we are always able to immediately access the center. Boundary circumvention is as simple as walking easily over top of a painted border or small pile of gravel. As such, our proximity to the center is altered in manifold ways.

How different it is to stoically walk between the painted or stone laid boundaries of a 2D labyrinth, seeing both the labyrinth in its totality and, with complete transparency, our path to the center. The 2D labyrinth forces us to reevaluate our morality by way of the personal decision we must make which determines whether we will navigate said labyrinth in the same manner as we would a more complex, 3D labyrinth, or succumb to the alluring temptation of taking the quickest, easiest course to the center.”