The most interesting comic-book of this
years SPX was easily Yuichi
Yokoyama’s New Engineering. I’ve been obsessing
about Yokoyama’s work since I first saw random pages from his books
posted online. Now that I actually got my hands New Engineering I’ve
been concocting all kinds of strategies for reading and understanding
this work. I decided to string together a bunch of notes, observations
and theories I’ve accumulated over the last few of weeks into this
loose essay. Hopefully this will make some sense to someone out there
and they will find it useful in looking at Yuichi Yokoyama’s work.
By no means do I think any of this is the definitive way of looking at
this work. Picturebox plans
on publishing further volumes in the near future, and that work may contradict
some of things I say here.
I see the stories in New Engineering fall into two distinct,
though interconnected, categories. First, there are the ‘engineering’ stories,
where massive architectural projects are realized by gigantic machinery
with
some aid from the humans
(are they human?). The second category contains everything else. These
are stories of combat, athletics, warfare, fashion, etc. I’ll first
talk about the separate categories. Later I’ll attempt to make
some sort of unified statement on their relationship. First up is engineering.
Spread from Memorial To Newton (read from right to left).
Click to enlarge.
I. Enigmatic Engineering
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw pages from New
Engineering (the story with that title also shared by the
book) was J.G. Ballard’s
first novel The
Wind from Nowhere. In the book, the surface of the whole
planet is rapidly destroyed by a powerful wind, which increases in
force with deadly
regularity.
As the planet is literally sandblasted into a cue ball, and civilization
is on the brink of annihilation, a mysterious structure
is being built – in secret – by a megalomaniacal millionaire
Hardoon. The description of the building process has an uncanny resemblance
to the Yokoyama depicts the massive feats of engineering in his stories.
Here's a taste:
“The hill had gone, obliterated beneath the gigantic jaws of
fleets of bulldozers, its matrix scooped out like the pulp of a fruit
and carried
away
on the endless lines of trucks.
Below the sweeping beams of powerful spotlights, their arcs cutting
through the whirling dust, huge pylons were rooted into the black
earth, then braced
back
by hundreds of steel hawsers. In the intervals between them vast steel
sheets were erected, welded together to form a continuous windshield
a hundred feet
high.
Even before the first screen was complete the first graders were moving
into the sheltered zone behind it, sinking their metal teeth into the bruised
earth,
leveling out a giant rectangle. Steel forms were shackled into place and
scores of black-suited workers moved rapidly like frantic ants, pouring
in thousands
of gallons of concrete,
As each layer annealed, the forms were unshackles and replaced further
up the sloping flanks of the structure. First ten feet, then 20 and
30 feet
high,
it rose steadily into the dark night.”
Detail
from Memorial To Newton. "Like frantic ants..."
This is only the first of several similar passages in the novel. Ballard
totally dispenses with a human perspective. The construction is apprehended
from a series
of unnatural vantage points that allow us to experience the massiveness
of the endeavor. Humans at this scale are “like frantic ants.” Since
Ballard doesn’t have any visuals accompanying his prose, we have
to imagine the scene.With Yokoyama, we are provided with vague
glimpses. Chris
Lanier has a great description:
“Yokoyama uses off-panel space with a droll brilliance — machines
that cut rock or drill into the earth appear from the edges of the panels, needing
no
plausible leverage or further apparatus to do their work. The mysterious
engine that runs these tools is the invisible will of the artist; the drill bits
and
jackhammers are really extensions of Yokoyama’s pen. The people
in these stories have far less presence than the machines — they
come at the end of the narratives to make the finishing touches and
voice their approval.”
What distinguishes New Engineering from The Wind from
Nowhere is that Ballard eventually tells us what is being built
and why: a gigantic
steel
pyramid
designed to withstand the force of the wind. Hardoon, the builder,
hopes not only to survive the catastrophe but thrive in it as well.
But his
motives aren’t
entirely clear and sometimes the reader is led to believe the pyramid
exist solely so Hardoon can comfortably sit in his steel cage, watch
the world turn to dust
and listen to the savage howl of the hurricane. Hardoon is a typically
Ballardian character who transforms and adapts as best he can to
circumstances on the ground
(disasters in this case and in his early novels, but in his later
work modernity and technology are enough). We encounter these characters
in what we recognize
as ‘our’ world, but they already belong to another, hidden
world, emerging in our midst like one of Italo Calvino's Invisible
Cities. And with the new world come
new psycho(patho)logies. This is what’s missing from Yokoyama’s
structures. The author consciously avoids depicting the psychology of his
world. In the interview that is published in New Engineering Yokoyama
says that he wants to create
“ Characters without psychology - I am interested neither in the
feelings of people nor in their emotions. I examine only what
is to the eye.
My characters do not
work towards the satisfaction of a collective or individual
interest, but to achieve a great goal, to achieve a great mission. ”
From New Engineering. Click to Enlarge.
|
These “great goals” and “great missions” are
opaque to us. They seem absurd, strange and bizarre.Again Chris
Lanier:
“
Its four stories show the construction of strange monuments and spaces. They
describe huge mobilizations of resources for apparently useless ends. One “public
work” is a fluorescent-lit room, set into a boulder, positioned in front
of an absolutely straight (and also artificially constructed) canal. Another
is a glass room, outfitted with chairs and a floor of Astroturf, set under the
surface of a man-made lake. These constructions are not only absurd in themselves,
the methods of construction are entirely impractical. The third “public
work” is an artificial mountain, assembled from boulders
that are dropped from airplanes, then coated with glue flowing
from a
single hose.”
If Yokoyama wants to banish psychology from his pages, we as readers
want to put it right back. Because we lack direct knowledge of Yokoyama’s
world we proceed archeologically and anthropologically. We compare
our world, or the artifacts of our world to the ones depicted in
New Engineering in an attempt to excavate the smallest bits
of meaning. Chris
Lanier finds similarities between New Engineering and
the kinetic architecture of superhero comics. James
Benedict Brown can’t
help but wonder about the ‘why,’ ‘how’ and ‘where’ of
the New Engineering projects and compares their depiction
to the sterility, purity and disconnection of contemporary mainstream
architectural
photography.
Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton, by Boulle.
Indeed, Yokoyama’s world is close enough to the one we live in
to make direct comparisons irresistible. In the “Memorial
to Newton” sequence
Yokoyama provides us with a clue as to purpose or origin of these
enigmatic works. The comic shows crowds of people irresistibly drawn
to climb the immense Memorial
to Newton structure. This is the only building that has any reality
in our world and can be looked at as a key of sorts. It refers
to the unbuilt and imaginary Cenotaph
for Sir Isaac Newton by the 18th Century visionary French
architect Etienne Louis Boulle. Reading New Engineering comics
I couldn’t help but think of the endless
variety of massive and visionary architecture that has been built
or un-built in the course of human history. Starting with the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
the Egyptian Pyramids, Roman Aqueducts and Temples, the great
Gothic Cathedrals, the visionary paper architecture of the 18th,
19th and 20th centuries, The Crystal
Palace, to the massive and often baffling projects of today’s
starchitects that are going up all over the world. The list goes
on.
The Pyramids of Las Vegas and the wonders of Dubai.
Many of these structures, especially the ancient ones, are as unfamiliar
to us as Yokoymas. What do we make of the Great Pyramids? The Easter
Island sculptures? After centuries of trying to ‘solve’ the
riddle of the Great Pyramid we’re really no closer to understanding
the psychology of the builders.
Like frantic ants… to the top!
|
Perhaps the closest relatives of Yokoyama’s context-less plastic
mega-structures can be found in places like Dubai (or Las Vegas,
etc). Dubai is a veritable laboratory of modern architectural gigantism.
Artificial islands and archipelagos in the shape of palm trees or the
world itself,
rotating skyscrapers, tallest towers in the world, these are just
the
tip of the proverbial iceberg. Ostensibly we think we understand
these structures. They are supposed to be engines of economics growth,
steel
and concrete representations of financial capital.When we look at them
in the larger context of globalization, global warming, war, and
peak oil they seem baffling and foreign, but they retain an irresistible
and seductive pull. We are drawn not just to what these structures
represent,
but also to their sheer physicality. In fact climbing great monuments
of civilization is one of the great past times of today (and yesterday).
People will travel thousands of miles for the privilege of climbing
not
only the Great Pyramids, but also the pyramids of Las Vegas. What
has been the initial impulse of the many people who first encounter the
Great Pyramid of Egypt? To climb it!
Part 2 coming soon.
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I meant to post this sooner but the Yokoyama essay has been quite a distraction. Anyway, since the Daily Cross Hatch has deemed me a subject worthy of an interview, I suppose I should at least link to it: here's Part 1 and Part 2. The interview was ably conducted by the intrepid Sarah Morean. Ok, this piece of shameless self-promotion done with, the blog can return to it's semi-regular service...
