topology

This from John is too interesting to leave in the comments section. He writes:

The term ‘topology’ has always intrigued me since it became a significant aspect of photography in the 1970s. We can think of the word as referring to the narrative of any given space: the effects of time on space. The topology of a story is speaking to the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ it came to be the way it is at the ‘present.’ The Little Red Cap project works at two levels: to remediate it from one form to another and also to record its topological evolution.

Then, while perusing the dictionary, this appeared: “The art of, or method for, assisting the memory by associating the thing or subject to be remembered with some place.” Is it also topology when we ask “*Where* have I known you before?” or “We’ll always have Paris.”?

I’d say that placing someone in time and space is always an “act of topological positioning” and an act of interpretation. Memory is a vast organic and dynamic database, thus also a dynamic storyspace, whose plot waits for the making. Links, paths, strands, and narrative all suggest mental and brain-organ space, I would think.

What does it take to put together a broken pot? No, the answer isn’t glue. In Cadre’s Photopia, readers in Contemporary Fiction fashioned the work according to colors, names, desires, inputs, and “x self.” This is the lingering text, the aura of what stayed in the mind.

Thanks John.

1 thought on “topology

  1. Pingback: Five Fingers

Comments are closed.