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SIMULTANEOUS CITIES

A Project from Amsterdam 2.0

Project Notes

(Revision 2)

starting points

We believe it useful to consider any 'city', at least in cultural terms and probably in social and political terms as well, as a large collective story, or 'narrative community'.
Our project, Amsterdam 2.0, consists of a constitution which allows a large number of these narrative communities (cities) to inhabit the same territory (a state of overlapping or simultaneous jurisdictions).
In legal theory such a system is called polycentric law. We believe the polycentric constitution of Amsterdam 2.0 radically updates Amsterdam's first principles or historical roots. By this we mean the city's history as a safe haven and zone of tolerance, as a place of free trade and free thinking.
Why do we think Amsterdam 2.0 is important? Practically speaking, because we think such a structure creates room for 'experiments in living'. We believe any system which affords and facilitates the testing of such experiments -- potentially systems of survival -- must be good.

Bruce Sterling offers a view of such a 'testing space' in his science fiction novel, Schismatrix:

"The System was wide, Ryumin thought. There was room in it for a thousand modes of life, a thousand hopeful monsters... Only time could tell the difference between aberration and advance."
(Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix)

As artists and architects we are not much inclined (or qualified) to defend our intuition, our starting premises, to argue for the 'rightness' or 'correctness' of Amsterdam 2.0's theoretical base (for example, for Amsterdam 2.0's brand of anarcho-capitalism). We prefer instead to leave that to others so that we can concentrate on what we see as the generative power of the idea. For beyond practicality (the practical reasons for the project) there are many aesthetic reasons for considering Amsterdam 2.0 important.

"So splendid a thesis, makes any fallacy committed by the author insignificant."
(Jorge Luis Borges, Time and J. W. Dunne)

We suspect a perfect city is the perfect prison.
Thus Amsterdam 2.0 celebrates both reason (law and order and the order that derives from the application of law) and escapology (individual freedom through, for example, vertigo, dreams and disassociation). A world where 'The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters' (Francisco de Goya: El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos, 1799).

mise en abyme

While in theory we can appreciate the beauty of legal polycentricism, in practice it is difficult to imagine the workings of Amsterdam 2.0 without concrete examples. If we want the idea of Amsterdam 2.0 to inspire others we will need a set of model cities that appeals to the imagination.

Thus we propose to commission a set of stories, set within the framework of Amsterdam 2.0's constitution, a set of narratives by various authors. Stories which express the differences between the different legal systems (or sets of behaviours or rule sets or ethical codes) underlying each city's reality. But rather than have each author populate the world of Amsterdam 2.0 with different species of city (or by extension different species of city-dweller), to require them create an entire intertwined ecology (such as William Burroughs' does in the 'Black Meat' section of Naked Lunch, with his Dream Police, Mugwumps and Reptiles...

"During the biennial Panics when the raw, pealed Dream Police storm the City, the Mugwumps take refuge in the deepest crevices of the wall sealing themselves in clay cubicles and remain for weeks in biostasis. In those days of grey terror the Reptiles dart about faster and faster, scream past each other at supersonic speed, their flexible skulls flapping in black winds of insect agony."
(William Burroughs, Naked Lunch)

... we prefer to have each author concentrate on the details of one city only, and to interact with the other cities (and authors) having only a limited amount of information, shared points of identity and contact, in the manner of a cadavre exquis.

We have chosen our initial group of writers because we admire their work and because we see in their work affinities with one or more of the topics that we feel are important to our project: labyrinths, disassociation, the double, death, islam and orientalism, dreams, story-telling (narratology).
A cadavre exquis:

Sometime in 1923 at 54, Rue du Chateau, Paris, the French Surrealist Jacques Delaquin invented the 'exquisite corpse'. It was a game played by a group of Surrealists. Each one writes a line of a poem or paints or draws a picture, then folds over the page, and passes it on. By the end they have constructed a imperatively odd creative work. Its name derives from the first sentence this game produced: "The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine."

Another cadavre exquis:

The true hero of the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' (related by Shahrazad to King Shahryar from the 627th night to the 638th night) is of course not Ali Baba at all but Morgiana, the slave girl owned by Ali Baba's rich brother Kasim. It is Kasim who wheedles the password to the robber's cave out of Ali Baba, greedily breaks in to their cave, forgets the password, is trapped, discovered, murdered and cut up, his body parts hung (left and right) at the cave's entrance as a warning to others. And continually saving the day it is "shrewd and sharp witted" Morgiana who hires a tailor in the market place, blindfolds him and takes him home to a darkened room where she asks him to "sew together the quarters of the corpse, limb to its limb..."
Classical examples of the polycentric (or infinite) narrative form: Boccaccio's Decameron, The Thousand and One Nights, Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
We lock the door and switch on the light. Nothing happens. We flip the switch -- off and then on again. Again nothing. Sighing, we begin to slowly grope our way down the stairs. And about half way down the light comes on. (What could be more causal than a light switch?)

the arabian nights

The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night. Shahrazad engages the sultan's nightly curiosity with a series of unfinished stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories) in order to gain time and thus postpone her expected execution. The book of the Nights, by reason of its sheer scale, is considered by many to be the perfect infinite book. Much like a city, it was produced over centuries by thousands of different authors. There exists no single definitive form to the Nights, rather the work is found in a multitude of forms. Perhaps more to the point, we believe that the structure of stories within stories (as endless digressions reminiscent of Zeno's endless divisions of space and time), produces a singular effect on the attentive reader (who continues to interpolate the possibilites within the form.)
The Spanish have an adjective for it, milyunanochesco (thousand-and-one-esque).

Also: while the Thousand and One Nights is an Oriental book, it is equally an Occidental discovery. A historical monument to Orientalism and the Western encounter with the Other. The Orient of the Nights is the zone of dreams. As Borges writes:

"What is the Orient then? It is above all a world of extremes where people are very happy or very unhappy, very rich or very poor. A world of kings, of kings who do not have to explain what they do. Of kings who are, we might say, as irresponsible as gods. "There is, moreover, the notion of hidden treasures. Anyone may discover one. And the notion of magic, which is very important. What is magic? Magic is a unique causality. It is the belief that besides the causal we know, there is another causal relation. That relationship may be due to accidents, to a ring, to a lamp. We rub a ring, a lamp, and a genie appears. The genie is our slave who is also omnipotent and who will fulfill our wishes. It can happen at any moment."

Marvelous coincidences. Labyrinthine movements and dream correspondences. An example from nights 351 and 352:

There lived once in A___ a wealthy man and made of money, who lost all his substance and became so destitute that he could earn his living only by hard labour. One night, he lay down to sleep, dejected and heavy hearted, and saw in a dream a Speaker who said to him, "Verily thy fortune is in B___; go thither and seek it." So he set out for B___; but when he arrived there evening overtook him and he lay down to sleep in a mosque. Presently, by decree of Allah Almighty, a band of bandits entered the mosque and made their way thence into an adjoining house; but the owners, being aroused by the noise of the thieves, awoke and cried out; whereupon the Chief of Police came to their aid with his officers. The robbers made off; but the Wali entered the mosque and, finding the man from A___ asleep there, laid hold of him and beat him with palm-rods so grievous a beating that he was well-nigh dead. Then they cast him into jail, where he abode three days; after which the Chief of Police sent for him and asked him, "Whence art thou?"; and he answered, "From A___." Quoth the Wali, "And what brought thee to B___?"; and quoth the man, "I saw in a dream One who said to me, Thy fortune is in B___; go thither to it. But when I came to B___ the fortune which he promised me proved to be the palm-rods thou so generously gavest to me." The Wali laughed till he showed his wisdom-teeth and said, "O man of little wit, thrice have I seen in a dream one who said to me: 'There is in A___ a house in such a district and of such a fashion and its courtyard is laid out garden-wise, at the lower end whereof is a jetting-fountain and under the same a great sum of money lieth buried. Go thither and take it.' Yet I went not; but thou, of the briefness of thy wit, hast journeyed from place to place, on the faith of a dream, which was but an idle galimatias of sleep." Then he gave him money saying, "Help thee back herewith to thine own country;" (-- And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When It was the Three Hundred and Fifty-second Night,) She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wali gave the man from A___ some silver, saying, "Help thee back herewith to thine own country;" and he took the money and set out upon his homewards march. Now the house the Wali had described was the man's own house in A___; so the wayfarer returned thither and, digging underneath the fountain in his garden, discovered a great treasure. And thus Allah gave him abundant fortune; and a marvellous coincidence occurred.

references

Crumey, Andrew

Pfitz. 1995.

The first chapter of Pfitz is online.

Castles in the Air, a review of Pfitz by Andrew Miller.

Crumey, Andrew

D'Alembert's Principle. 1996.

Etchells, Tim