Space — My abridged dictionary gives me ten different definitions for the word "space." No wonder we become confused about what space is and our use of it. "Space" is a void to one person, waiting to be filled with objects, is to another, full of unseen and unobserved delights waiting to be discovered.

The theatrical genius, Peter Brook, writes, "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, someone is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged (The Empty Space)." One man in history walked through an empty space, soon after another followed, and then another. People took note and followed, and a path was born. The empty space took form. Are not our acts in space also theater?

Michel Foucault writes in "Of Other Spaces", "Space is fundamental in any form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power." Elsewhere, Foucault states, "I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt, a great deal more than with time (Architecture-Mouvement-Continuité)"

Foucault spent much time thinking about how space functions both in relation to other spaces, as well as the spaces in between spaces. To define his thoughts he coined the word, "heterotopia." This word refers to "external space," that is, the actually lived (socially productive) space of sites and the relations between them. Heterotopia stand in contrast to "utopias," which in Foucault's scheme are "sites with no real place." [An interesting twist to those utopian ideas we often attempt to bring our spaces.]

Foucault postulated six principles to describe heterotopias. While I will from time to time will certainly make reference to one or more of the six, the one that will frame most of my subsequent posts is the sixth:

Either their (heterotopias) role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory. Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.

How we see "heterotopially" determines how we view society and our place in it. In other words, what do we see in the empty space?

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If you have payed close attention to the subtitle of this blog, you will notice the word, "grotesque."  In the sixth principle when Foucault suggests that heterotopias have an illusory role to play my mind is immediately drawn to the concept of the grotesque and the relationship between the grotesque and space, especially when we frame the grotesque in terms of the carnivalesque and the burlesque.  This also will be a theme that will frequently appear in this blog.