SCENE 4
Scene 4.3Dux and Comes, dressed in white powdered wigs and opulent baroque costumes, ascend a tower staircase. Walls: polished aluminum; stairs: exposed concrete; a cold light streams from their overcoats onto the stairs and floor, and onto their faces.
D u x: The loss of form ...
C o m e s: of what has been formed.
D u x: ...is the loss of loss itself. Which is desirable, but leads to psychiatric care.
C o m e s: To involuntary commitment!
D u x: (brief pause) One superficies, absent all doubt.
C o m e s: 'One surface no doubt'.
D u x: Sounds good. I'll take on your version. 'One surface no doubt'
doesn't mean that an increase in the number of surfaces enlarges the possibility of doubt.
C o m e s: It doesn't?
D u x: No, it doesn't. The truth is: (savoring a brief pause) 'One surface, no
doubt' means that a surface exists, and doubt is an element of it. Its name is 'La Topographie Bourgeoise.' It is amenable to mapping, you see, a site within a site.
C o m e s: Site within site.
D u x: Which incorporates its own limit within itself.
C o m e s: A double self. (gently) 'La Topographie Bourgeoise.'
D u x: It is a texture comprised indivisibly of surface and structure. Its
diagrammable traits are: (beating out the words with one hand) not to distinguish between sites and forms.
C o m e s: Sites as forms, forms as sites.
D u x: A structure that constantly implodes, constituting boundaries with itself.
C o m e s: Mnemosyne.
D u x: You don't understand. I am working on a model: Site and form are in
dialogue. Through the passage of time, it is revealed that this dialogue is really the monologue of a topography that is comprehended in the process of its own becoming ...
C o m e s: ...an imploding topography.
D u x: Sounds promising.
C o m e s: You value suicide.
D u x: No, concepts which , reciprocally and assuming alternating roles, are Trojan castles
and horses. I am generating a model that describes surface ...
C o m e s: Amen.
D u x: ...or structure.
C o m e s: Amen.
D u x: Religion and architecture are your things, not mine. Both always bother
me, as substantives lacking corresponding verb forms. Without an accompanying verb, the word architecture — in its dignified solitude — leads an existence as a single noun. The splendor of being a noun made it forget how it became aware of itself, and it became sickly. It died in Berlin.
C o m e s: An aesthetic of consummation.
D u x: Bravo! Substantive language knows how it came into existence . It takes up its verb and speaks itself. (vehemently) You, understand: language!
C o m e s: (tranquilly, lingeringly) La structure trouvée.
D u x: Ou est mon je mon moi?
C o m e s: Ou est mon moi mon je?
D u x: Your question is rhetorical, address it to the others.
C o m e s: I too work with a model. If successful, it will be capable of
answering this question. I am describing it to you, what it deals with is precisely the reverse of what yours deals with.
D u x: I've heard of it already. Copy and Copy of the Copyright meet in
search for their respective originals. Of necessity, they stumble across the duplication machine which they recognize as their common mother.
C o m e s: Xerox in place of Mnemosyne.
D u x: I have heard of your model, and it provided me with the occasion to
develop my own in opposition to it. Yours leads to nothing. Rugae, villi and micro-villi enlarge the reabsorbtion surfaces. Comes, you are working on your own digestion.
C o m e s: Exploitation.
D u x: At the latest with Kleist, we have know that in each intended dialogue ,
one's partner can never be anything but a prosthesis, and if it is absent, one must be able to help oneself.
C o m e s: Digestability is an illness.
D u x: By the way, Xerox or Mnemosyne, it is implausible that a copy would
concern itself with its original. Still, it must strive to attain memory of it. One speaks better with oneself than with others.
C o m e s: Each act of speech creates its own site.
D u x: Speech creates its own site.
C o m e s: trustINformation©
D u x: A new model?
C o m e s: (marking quotation marks in the air) "Call me!"
D u x: A celebrated citation, a great word.
C o m e s: Alright, once this particular depth has taken on its explanatory
claims, let's go on to explore the next one.
D u x: In which language should we continue?
C o m e s: "El Ángel Exterminador".
from: "Sacré Vers Senti". scene 4 (4.1-4.6)
This structure, widely known as the 'Suicide Tower,' makes its unfortunate existence known to itself. Its given name is Fugue. It tries its hand at plunging into its self, to its death. In dialogue with itself, it succeeds.
© carsten sievers 2002 translation: ian pepper