A narrative work said to begin in medias res (Classical Latin: lit. "into the middle of things") opens in the midst of action.
As the Roman lyric poet and satirist Horace (65–8 BC) says, when first using the terms ab ōvō ("from the egg") and in mediās rēs
("into the middle of things") in his Ars poetica ("Poetic Arts", c. 13
BC), where in lines 147–149 he describes the method of his kind of ideal
epic poet, and yes, it is Homer:
Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the egg,*
but always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things. . . .
Horace. Ars poetica (in Latin). nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ovo; / semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res / [...] auditorem rapit* The "egg" reference is to the mythological origin of the Trojan War in the birth of Helen and Clytemnestra from the double egg laid by Leda following her seduction by Zeus in the guise of a swan.
In 1508 Leonardo painted the picture known as Leda and the Swan that has a female nude standing Leda cuddling the swan, with the two sets of infant twins, and their huge broken egg-shells. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed. However the picture is known from many copies, including this one at Wilton House in England, painted by Cesare da Sesto.
'What do you think, Harry?' said Luna, looking thoughtful.'
'What? Isn’t there just a password?'
'Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,' said Luna.
'What if you get it wrong?'
'Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,' said Luna. 'That way you learn, you see?'
'Yeah . . . Trouble is, we can’t really afford to wait for anyone else, Luna.' 'No, I see what you mean,' said Luna seriously.'
'Well then, I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.'
'Well reasoned,' said the voice, and the door swung open.'
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsThe LODE line works because it is a circle and therefore has no beginning.
So, LODE opens into the middle of things, as it were, and so any place on the LODE line is a place in equal relation to all other places along the line, and any moment of making a connection to a place along the LODE Line is equal to all other moments that have occurred in that place.
What is happening at any given location along the LODE Line is happening, or has happened, in relation to all the other things happening or have happened along the the LODE Line, so there is no need to impose a strict sequence to ordering these moments. It is the spatial relationships and the patterns that seem to come through the mosaic of moments of time associated with locations that form the psycho-geographic matrix of the LODE cargo.
It seems a non linear structure works in revealing complex connections in a way that a linear structure cannot, hence the concept of the 'field' when considering how knowledge about things happening is mostly about realising that:
what we know now will not be the same as when we know more!
Presenting knowledge of the world may be ordered, but sometimes, as Jean-Luc Godard once said:
"I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order"!
So, when coming to a place on the LODE line, the original thinking in the proposal was to make a simple magnetic compass from materials sourced close to a particular location on the LODE Line, that would form the cargo, along with other compasses assembled along the LODE line and that would eventually be unloaded and unpacked as the focus for the performance and installation work. The date and time of the "assembling" did not require "placing" in a particular sequence in time, as in a narrative, as it is the value of location in terms of the spatial relations that the project explores.
It is the relational matrix that matters!
