GREENWAY-
(High Line, New York)
What is real!? Is this world a complex synaptic creation of our own making? Or, is there some form of greater collective creation occurring? Marc Bedarida ("Walking through the Psychogeography of Paris") - Architecture instructor at GT College of Architecture - suggests, “all the material of our mind borders on these zones of the unknown and the frightening”. The newest planted promenade of New York - more passionately referred to as the High Line - is an example of the spectacles that we create amongst us – incongruities between subject and meaning – which give rise to an uncertain strangeness and fear we experience as urban dwellers.
The High Line is an exquisite piece of eco-revelatory design in its own right, and novel to New York. Similar to the spectacle created in Paris that is the Viaduc Daumesnil (Viauc des Arts), however, the High Line “is not a set of images, but a social relationship between people, mediated by the image, whose production takes place along the way” (Bedarida, "Walking through the Psychogeography of Paris"). It is this image or sign that becomes the benchmark from which we base our existence, and its meaning. The form and its meaning(s) enable us to comprehend our place in society and give meaningful participation to our daily interactions. As the philosopher/literary theorist Roland Barthes ("Mythologies") would suggest, it is the constant evolution of signifiers, through the process of signification, that the conversion of reality into speech takes place. As our realities change, so does our language. This language may take many forms, and is not limited to oral speech. The nature of the signifier - its instability – permits such mutation and generation of language.
The signifier is unstable. In this there can be no literal meaning as it is a mere icon - the symbolic form to which is attached many alternate realities as are evidenced by the many 'Friend of the High Line' - http://www.thehighline.org. The sign’s inherent difference – both to defer meaning and differ in its expression – is the condition that provides a level of signification that we may comprehend. As we can deduce from the French philosopher Derrida ("Margins of Philosophy"), it is this point he illustrates regarding the lack of inherent meaning in a particular signifier. Signs can hold universal meaning, but also possess meanings of regional and historical potency also. It is this fact that contributes to their inherent instability.
As one might deduce from Derrida ("Margins of Philosophy"), the bridges and aqueducts that comprise the Viaduc Daumesnil in Paris along with the rails and steel trestles of the High Line in New York are simply “instruments of nostalgia”. In reclaiming the historical rail corridor to provide an exclusive pedestrian route through the city, the designers have, in fact, preserved these original features and fixed them within a spatial and temporal continuum. Reality, not fiction, becomes the driving force behind the processes of signification, and also to what Jorge Silvetti referred to as mythification. It is here that Derrida’s notions of temporization and spacing occurs simultaneously. Arguably, the elevated and reclaimed rail line, “loudly proclaim[ing] the loss of its original function” (Bedarida, "Walking through the Psychogeography of Paris") leads to an estrangement of its visitors. The estrangement felt by visitors to this place is a direct result of the mythical preference for images lacking significant meaning (Roland Barthes, "Mythologies"). The visitors “become the space of time” at the same time the place is “becoming the time of space”.
As Bedarida ("Walking through the Psychogeography of Paris") suggests, the paradox of all gentrification: “who acts loses the world, but even those who [simply] want to hold onto it lose it too”. The signs we create are realities that defer to something other than itself, often referencing a historical past. The High Line, while a fantastic amenity for the City of New York, is an example of the evocative power of a sign’s lack of presence – presence of its literal meaning. Unfortunately, a common subconscious tendency towards creating a language with such unstable meaning eventually leads to perpetual discontentment.
(Viaduc Daumesnil, Paris)
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