Thickened Present

Definition

The thickened present is Edmund Husserl's term — relayed into interior theory by Marian Macken — for the durational quality of a present in which past events are retained as traces: "Stephen Kern writes, 'the present is a continuous unrolling field of consciousness, thickened with retentions and protentions'" (The Culture of Time and Space, p. 84), and Macken applies Husserl's "thickened present" to the preserved interior: it "refers to this spatial, durational quality, in which past events are retained as traces in the present." The concept is the wiki's name for the interior's held time — a present that is not a knife-edge instant but a volume, carrying its recent past (retentions) and its anticipations (protentions) within it.

Macken's application specifies the architectural mechanism. The preserved interior is "a snapshot of inhabitation, no longer undergoing change, yet continuously present" — "preserved as a moment in time – when Whiteley last put down his paintbrush." Because the room remains three-dimensional, atmospheric, and day-lit ("This room has a scale and atmosphere and is influenced by the changing light of the day and the seasons"), the visitor inside it experiences the Husserlian structure doubled: "the visitor experiences two presents: the ongoing present of the spatial document (the moment of the artist's inhabitation preserved) and the current present (the moment experienced by the visitor)." The room is thus a thickened present made thick for two: the artist's retained past-present and the visitor's unfolding present occupy the same enclosure. Macken grounds the experience in Paul Ricoeur's formulation of the archive's strange gift: "a passed past that nevertheless remains preserved in its vestiges" (Time and Narrative, Volume 3, p. 120) — one is "able to be within" that passed past.

The concept's counter-thesis completes it: where Mary Ann Doane's modernism archives presence by losing it ("what is archivable loses its presence, becomes immediately the past"), Macken's preserved interiors maintain "the connection that is maintained between the past and the present: a former 'present' becomes an ongoing present. What is severed, however, is the connection to the future." The thickened present is therefore thick backward, thin forward: retentions without protentions of production — "there will be no future productivity, no future paintings with Whiteley's signature produced within the space."

Key Thinkers

• Edmund Husserl — the concept's originator: the "thickened present" of consciousness, retention and protention as the present's inner structure (via Macken's application; cf. the adumbrations Smith deploys in the pedagogic register).
• Marian Macken — the concept's interior-theorist (2018): the preserved room as "spatial, durational quality"; the two presents; the severed-future correction to Doane's archiving thesis.
• Stephen Kern — the concept's cultural-historical gloss (quoted by Macken): "the present is a continuous unrolling field of consciousness, thickened with retentions and protentions" (p. 84).
• Paul Ricoeur — the concept's narrative-philosophical ground (quoted by Macken): "a passed past that nevertheless remains preserved in its vestiges" (Time and Narrative 3, p. 120).

Related Concepts

• Temporality — the concept's parent cluster: the thickened present as the museum/photograph register beside Heidegger's ecstatic unity, Kwinter's evental, Hedges's suspended waiting.
• Spatial Document — the concept's host-object: the preserved interior is the built thickened present; "the ongoing present of the spatial document."
• Trace — the concept's retention-mechanism: past events "retained as traces in the present" — the trace as what thickens the present.
• Memory — the concept's archive-edge: "the archive's temporal simultaneity" in which "the future has a presence" — the thickened present generalized to the archive.
• Waiting Room — the concept's suspended sibling: Hedges's room where "the passage of time has slowed down" — waiting as thinned time (implied movement), preservation as thickened time (retained inhabitation).
• Forms of Absence — the concept's absence-figure: the preserved studio as "physical container of absence" — a thickened present thick with an absent inhabitant.
• Event Space — the concept's dynamic alternative: Hannah's evental interior temporalizes space in motion; the preserved studio temporalizes space by halting it — two architectures of duration.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Documenting interiority/inhabiting duration (Macken 2018) — the concept's interior-theoretical source: Husserl's "thickened present" applied to the preserved studio; Kern's retentions-and-protentions quote (p. 84); Ricoeur's "passed past" (p. 120); the two-presents formulation; the severed-future correction to Doane.

Open Questions

• The two presents are stated as an experience ("the visitor experiences two presents") — is the thickened present then a perceptual achievement of the visitor rather than a property of the room? What happens to the concept in an unvisited preserved interior (or is "no longer undergoing change, yet continuously present" already thickened without a witness)?
• If the preserved interior's present is "thickened with retentions" but severed from the future, is it a thickened present at all — or a retention-only present, a Husserlian structure denied its protentions? Can a museum design protentions (programmes, commissions, continuing work in the room) without breaking preservation?
• The waiting room suspends time and the preserved room distends it. Are suspension and distension two modes of one interior-temporal operation (Hedges's slowed time, Macken's thickened time), or do they thicken in opposite directions — the waiting room thick with protention (the journey to come), the preserved room thick with retention (the inhabitation past)?
• Doane's thesis says "what is archivable loses its presence, becomes immediately the past"; Macken counters that the former present "becomes an ongoing present." Is the ongoing present a genuine third temporality — neither past nor present in the ordinary sequence ("question the certainty of the sequence of past – present – future") — or the past wearing the present's grammar?