"Then There Was War:" John Hejduk's The Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism. Issue 2 (4th May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dorrian, Mark
• Is Part Of: Architecture and culture. Volume 6:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 227
• Page End: 242
• Publication Date: 2018-05-04
• Subjects: architectural theory -- Jacques Derrida -- John Hejduk -- nuclear criticism -- Roland Barthes -- silence -- The Silent Witnesses; 720.103
• DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2018.1478375
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-7828

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing on the reflections contained in Roland Barthes' lectures on the "Neutral, " this article reconsiders John Hejduk's The Silent Witnesses installation (1976), often thought a peripheral work despite the architect's assertion that it is his most important statement. While discussions of silence normally presume the presence of a listener, I argue that this work concerns that which – if we can still describe it as silence – endures beyond any possibility of audition. This is the condition emblematized by the final blank gray volume of Hejduk's installation, whose radical erasure of all traces gestures toward the absolute archival destruction – characterized by Jacques Derrida as an "apocalypse without revelation" – presaged by the nuclear age.