Personally I've been collecting Byung-Chul Han's books and books from the publisher Book Journalism. Then on one spring day, a Saturday well-suited for posting, in the middle of sporadic, intermittent reading, I witnessed two pieces of writing turning to look at each other — and wanting to keep this nose-tingling thrill, I'm jotting a few lines.
The Scent of Time (Moonji Publishing — Byung-Chul Han)
| From "The Paradox of the Present" (p.67)
A path carries as rich a semantics as a place itself. A pilgrimage road, for instance, is not empty space to pass as quickly as possible. A pilgrimage road is, rather, a part of the destination itself. Being on the road carries many meanings here. To walk is to repent, or heal, or give thanks. It is a kind of prayer.
In the tourist's dictionary, by contrast, there is no crossing-over. For the tourist, everywhere is here, and now. He cannot truly be said to be on the road. The road is reduced to an empty passageway with nothing worth seeing. As every place becomes here and now, the in-between space is stripped bare and loses all meaning. That is a defining feature of today's experience.
An interval is not merely hesitation. An interval has the function of giving order and structure. Without intervals, only events lined up without structure or direction, or chaotically mixed together, would remain. Intervals structure not only perception but life itself. Through turning points and phases, life acquires a certain direction — that is, meaning.
| A somewhat? heavily edited note
A worn-out-sounding resonance — truth and knowing are grounded in duration. But in an ever-shortening present, truth loses its shine.
The road is not an obstacle to be overcome or a mere passage. It has value of its own and is a part of the destination itself.
The four-week Advent period before Christmas is like an in-between state. Existence carries more meaning than simply being here-now.
Reading these passages, I thought — aren't these insights that could help a lot when planning travel services, content, events? Then — "ah, where have I read something like this..." — I was reminded of Ki Se-ho's writing.
A Death at the Right Distance (Book Journalism — Ki Se-ho)
| From "Space Was Killed" (p.54)
Between traditional society and modern society, an unprecedented change took place. The way people perceived space also changed completely. And the trigger for that change was, unexpectedly, the appearance of railways and trains. Trains and railways shattered the world people had known until then into pieces, and then reconnected it in straight lines. The German poet Heinrich Heine called this "the killing of space."
"Now a change must be taking place in our mode of intuition and representation! Even the basic concepts of time and space have been shaken. Through the railway, space has been killed. It seems to me that the mountains and forests of every country are approaching Paris. I am already smelling the scent of German linden trees. The waves of the North Sea are breaking at my door."
Poets who sensed the signs of the age ahead of others pointed to the new experience of space, the shift in the sense of distance, triggered by the train. The lands passed through in between at great speed feel as if they've been elided. The appearance of the railway was "a fateful event that brings great change to humanity," on par with gunpowder and the printing press.
A hundred years later, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in the essay "The Thing," asks fundamental questions about the problem of distance — specifically the changes in life caused by the loss of the interval. (Since this overlaps with an earlier post, I'm linking instead.. http://bitly.kr/5cmSF )
After industrialization, the intervals between things — the traditional sense of distance — disappeared. Today there is nowhere absolutely far and unreachable. The lost sense of distance soon led to changes in how space was perceived. Via transport like trains, it is experienced fragmentedly, in disconnected hops. Each place is perceived not by its own uniqueness but as numerical differences within a single, identical system. It loses its own aura and is treated, literally, as homogeneous. And a homogenized space becomes editable as needed. An editable city, in turn, expands; and through rapid expansion it became one enormous system whose totality is almost impossible to grasp.
Reading this book, not only do ideas for works arise, but you can get various insights — unexpectedly — on the direction of artificial intelligence. Of course, the field? directly, it starts from the keyword "urban regeneration."
Through these two books I had a chance to redefine the flow of meaning for space and time, and service models that could grow from that.
