This three-dimensional structure is a typographic interpretation of a
chapter from Italo Calvino's 1972 novel Invisible Cities, in which a
city constructed entirely of memories is described to Mongol emperor
Kublai Khan by Italian explorer Marco Polo.
The structure is composed of
deconstructed images (from photographs taken in the Kensington Market
neighbourhood of downtown Toronto) & deconstructed type (Berthold
Akzidenz Grotesk), assembled in an unplanned, random mode similar to
that of Surrealist automatism. This particular version is the fourth
iteration of the structure.
"In vain,
great-hearted Kublai, shall I attempt to describe Zaira, city of high
bastions."
"I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising
like stairways..."
"But I already know this would be the
same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of
relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of
its past..."
"...the height of a lamppost and the
distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line
strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite..."
"...the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering..."
"...the three old men seated on the dock
mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of
the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate
son..."
"As this wave from memories flows in, the
city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira
today should contain all Zaira's past."
"The city, however, does not tell its
past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners
of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the
steps..."
"...the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."