Trigger
Point
Robert Partridge
Encounter
‘There is no longer any
world: no longer a mundus,
a cosmos, a composed and
complete order from within
which one might find a place,
a dwelling, and the elements
of an orientation.’1
My intention is to reflect the
difficulties of orientation in a
place in which all is illusory
and in which time is seemingly
both suspended and
accounted for. It is a place
separate and separated from
the city, although elements of
a commercial façade persuade
the traveller that ease
of travel and the accoutrements
of glamour and indulgence
are co-respondents in
the exchanges of space and
place, reality and fiction.
My experience of Tegel at
night in a furious rainstorm
emphasised the completeness
of isolation as the weather
forced travellers to abandon
their self- reliance and subject
themselves to the glossy polished interior of this capsulelike structure.
In this space, navigation
becomes less idyllic, and
fragmented. Memories of
the everyday, the functional,
and the ‘already happened’
reconstruct the dreams in
which ‘joy has no more sense
than suffering’.2 In this place,
one is aware of the ‘excess
of time’,3 the possibilities
of disappointment and the
paradox of recognition in our
developing perceptions. How
is reality encountered in this
shifting space?
In Tegel one narrative contests
another as they struggle to
gain consciousness and orientation.
Space becomes place
and place in turn unfolds
space. This is the world of
sense and possibility, Tegel is
but one locus in the nodal and
labyrinthine that extends the
singular through experience,
encounter and memory.
1 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Sense of the
World, trans. by J.S. Librett, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota
Press, 1997, p. 4.
2 Nancy, The Sense of the World,
p. 150.
3 Marc Augé [1992], Non-Places:
Introduction to an Anthroplogy of
Supermodernity, trans. by John
Howe, London and New York: Verso,
1995, p. 30.