Lecture date: 2009-05-08
Pier Paolo Pasolini initially theorised free indirect discourse in cinema in his 1965 speech ‘Cinema of Poetry’. Prior to this, Pasolini had made the film ‘Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo’, during the making of which he questioned whether he, an atheist Marxist, could make a film about Christ through the eyes of a religious person. As Deleuze explains, Pasolini discovered how to go beyond the two elements of the traditional story the objective-indirect story from the cameras point of view and the subjective-direct story from the characters point of view using free indirect discourse. In the cinema of poetry the distinction between what the character saw subjectively and what the camera saw objectively vanished, not in favour of one or the other, but because the camera assumed a subjective presence, acquired an internal vision, which entered into a relation of simulation with the characters way of seeing. The author takes a step towards his characters, but the characters take a step towards the author: double becoming.
Now that architecture is part of the global culture industry, the method of free indirect discourse could be of decisive importance when we want to make architecture political again. An analysis through the lens of free indirect discourse and its spatial and aesthetic implications will encompass the work of contemporary architecture practices.
Roemer van Toorn is an Amsterdam-based architect, writer, curator and photographer in the field of architecture. As professor at the Berlage Institute, he runs and coordinates the Projective Theory programme, and is a staff member of the Delft School of Design at TU Delft. He also lectures internationally. Van Toorn is co-author with Ole Bouman of The Invisible in Architecture, an editor of the annual publication Architecture in the Netherlands and an advisor for Volume and Abitare magazines.This lecture was the keynote address at the PhD Dialogues Symposium 2009.
