Major Project Conclusion

In essence, the objective of the final outcome is to visualise the non-visual. Hauntology is able to interrogate the concept of the spectre by means of articulating what is not physically there while simultaneously always being present. Just as the idea of a haunting
concerns the movement between the past present and future, so hauntology is able to explain the psychogeographical effects of time on the urban environment. History concerns itself with the past, whilst hauntology is occupied by futures that will never arrive. The landscape of the modern city consists of a series visual markers which map our understanding of time and being.

City planners from antiquity to modernism have tried to make the city into a mnemonic (memory aid), mapping into it chains of monuments or sites that would act as a sort of text, reminding the pedestrian of official history and knowledge. (Sadler 1999:99)

My research into the rationalisation of hauntology was a personal journey into the unknown. Every avenue of investigation appeared to open up into intriguing vistas of knowledge. These concepts contain enough raw material to inspire a lifetime’s worth of potentially rewarding design projects. The research was rewarding, both in terms of the stimulating philosophical debate and the acquisition of local knowledge. I have lived in and around Croydon for over 40 years but was unaware of the politics surrounding its dystopian incarnation.

In terms of assessment, I would hope the project would be judged on the depth and scope of the research as well as the level of engagement required to fully realize the project. I would also contend that the final outcome is innovative and avoids the clichés of traditional protest graphics. The revolutionary critique have contributed to an over-production of meaning. They propose a stylistic discourse which masquerades as activism but is actually designed for their own consumption. They impose imperatives of participation on a silent majority that has long since suffocated beneath a pornography of information. The need to conform to some form of stereotype by producing an artefact which is atypical of a certain political agenda has not been the driving force behind this project. My output device is the culmination of detailed research and is the culmination of a range of influences.

This project has focussed on the proliferation of office development in Croydon during a specific period of time. Croydon is not alone as a soulless totem of urban alienation. The world is littered with these ‘edge cities’. This research could easily be rolled out to encompass similar examples of dystopia.

I hope to develop this project further by experimenting with the use of moving image as a psychogeographic tool. I would be particularly interested in pursuing more Kafkaesque themes of bureaucratic subjugation. I plan to investigate the practicalities of drawing upon the work of Iain Sinclair, the ‘High Rise’ and ‘Concrete Island’ novels by J.G. Ballard and the 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film ‘Alphaville’.

Hauntology has revealed itself to be a useful tool for the visual communicator. It’s true power is its ability to give a form to the formless by articulating the invisible. Trace allows the designer to harness the power of the void.

Absences - of meaning, participation, reality and identity – can constitute useful tactics in the struggle to unmask the social and economic relations of contemporary capitalist society. (Plant 1992: 181)

Genuine agencies of dissent should look to the hauntological tactics of trace. Only the empty sign has the power to disarm the self perpetuating spectacle. In the same way that Dada employed the anti-art tactics of the random & absurd. So the sign which fails to signify stands in stark contrast to the ubiquitous images, simulations and reproductions which populate the milieu of hypereality.

Distinctive signs, full signs, never seduce us. Seduction only comes through empty, illegible, insoluble, arbitrary, fortuitous signs, which glide by lightly, modifying the index of the refraction of space. (Baudrillard 1988:60)

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