Many left their home in the quest to find the American Dream. Everything was possible in the new free country. Once in the USA, some were buying the dream for ‘5 bucks a day’ working as a machine with fifteen minutes lunch break and three minutes toilet brake. Some, as Henry Ford, were selling the dream ‘sucking every ounce of worker’s life off into production’ for ‘5 bucks a day’. Some, as Frank Lloyd Wright, were materialising the dream of those who achieved it. Some, as Thorstein Veblen, didn’t care to get ‘5 bucks a day’ or materialize their dream, they were far more interested in analysing the relationships of those who sold the dream, who achieved it and those who is still in, perhaps never ending, process of achieving (‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’, ‘The Theory of Business enterprise’).
This is a snapshot of beginning of the 20th century USA society pictured by Dos Passos. Everyone is moved by the same goal, though everyone chose own way to realise it.
In the end everything comes to a single nod of personal values and development abilities in Faustian sense. I can’t judge Ford for exploiting the men: they came to work for him by their own good will, they were paid handsomely. I can’t say he made a tragic sacrifice of all this men’s life, making them work as a machine producing machines, for the sake of the bright tomorrow. Not at all. On the contrary it was the men who chose not to open Pandora box of development and to avoid probable tragic consequences. Here we see the personal choice of intellectually (and in some cases morally) easy life. All, Ford, Wright, Veblen, the workers at the Ford factories, started essentially from the same level with the same ‘dream’. That makes the USA case unique. It was the clean start for absolutely everyone: no old little worlds, no family with the prejudice customs. The new world was already established, the only decision one had to make is how to achieve the American Dream.
Development… I have never thought of the development as a tragedy. And yet, it is the most dramatic eternal tragedy of the world. Development rests on constant thought and hence continuous evolvement of one’s knowledge to the point of the destruction of old ideals. Once thought is triggered the development process begins with an inevitable dramatic end, as the development is not possible without the destruction. New spiral of knowledge must rest on the grounds cleared of any previous thought, values, etc, then and only then it would be considered ‘new ‘in oppose to ‘evolved’. This process is one directional: once it has started it can only progress forward without rest (as rest is equalled to end/death) till the end. Development opens Pandora box which is never destined to be closed again. Destructions, personal tragedies and sacrifices are balanced with the final goal of new better world, a hope at the bottom of Pandora box.
The Faustian paradox (or tragedy) of the development is that the better world can not be achieved with the good intentions. The ugly compromises (often self-destructive) have to be made. Gretchens, Philemons and Baucis, the figures impersonating anything old, be it good, loved or cared for, have to be sacrificed to clear the site for the new spiral of knowledge.
Parts of Goethe’s tragedy are applicable on the development of nations and countries (‘Faustian model of development’ according to Berman). However, it must be noted that in Faust case the word’s development was en extension of the self-development and fulfilment achieved with the ‘underworld’ powers offered by Mephistopheles. Relatively wide knowledge of Faust tragedy enables many to speculate and justify the sacrifices made to achieve ‘the honourable aim’. Today’s ‘developers’ have never been visited by Goethe’s symbolic women*: Guilt and Care. They have seen Need just for a second. Want though became their moody driving and ordering lover which didn’t leave the outer world even for a moment.
So are we witnessing the final metamorphosis of Faustian development? I doubt so. It is more like a Hollywood adaptation of the story: we keep the concept of enormous indeed very real sacrifices (slave-like builders of Dubai, destruction of the whole villages along with ‘modernisation’ of their inhabitants, etc) for some ephemeral promises or vision of the better world.
* Need, Want, Guilt and Care are four symbolic women appeared to Faust when he almost grasped his own tragedy. ‘These are the forces that Faust’s program of development has banished from the outer world; but they have crept back as spectres inside his mind’ (Berman, 1988, p. 70)
This week portion of theoretical reading was substituted with the portion of theoretical watching. I will analyse ‘The Fountainhead’, a 1949 American movie based on the bestselling novel by Ayn Rand.
Well, it certainly is a very 40s American drama. Saying American I mean inevitable clash of the ‘good and bad’ with absolutely necessary spine love story line and ‘happy ending’ for the ‘good’ characters. Saying very 40s, I mean a high level of the moral propaganda and clear separation of all roles into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ without any gradation in-between. Only good and bad, plus and minus, black and white. Actually in Rand’s case ‘the black (bad/minus/negative)’ is interpreted as greyness, similarity and conformity. ‘The good’, on the other side, is represented by selfish, individualistic non-conformist principles. Two antagonist characters are Howard Roark, a talented architect, rejected by the society for his believes that individual must be a ‘prime mover’, and Eliswroth Toohey, an architectural critic with collectivist visions, who runs a newspaper column. Both are extremely one-sided, supporting only their ‘good’ or ‘bad’ side of the argument throughout the film.
I found Elisworth Toohey character is fitting extremely well in our 21st century context, in spite of all his one-sided flatness. His great in their evilness believes that a society that must be ‘an average drawn upon zeroes’, and that it is easy to rule if everyone is like one another (Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed) are pretty much the credo of today’s power holding individuals. To re-phrase the well known strategy, divide et impera (divide and rule), - conform and rule. To me this is an absolute summary of today’s politics. The planet is dying (oi, there is no room for hesitation, if it is really true, how can someone possible be hesitant in this dreadful situation (!?), so don’t think and just accept: the planet is dying and it is partially your fault!) all of us have to unite (hmm, more like conform to me) and fight collectively the global warming. Well, ok, I must recycle, otherwise my rubbish will not be collected, and this issue is not even the question of personal believes any more – you and I will recycle or die from pest infestation. The ‘collective mould’ is also defined by: ‘5 a day’, paranoia of cleanliness and disinfection (how, again, people used to live without Dettol and all this 99.9% still alive bacteria around them??!), personal opinion on X-factor, strive for organic produce (and what is the definition of ‘organic’, hash! – no questions, just know that if something is organic it is definitely good for you). I think I will stop here, otherwise the blog will become boring and moody :).
What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! […] How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! This half-formed, ill-conditioned body! This erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of engine, and between them men, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!
Quite a statement by the Professor Silenus*! Clearly Silenus adores machines and their efficiency. The admiration is so great that it even overshadows the simple fact (and without a doubt, a very sad fact for the Professor himself) of his human origin. Here, I might classify Silenus either as a hypocrite or as an intellectual lunatic in the process of realisation of his own hypocrisy. But what has been done is done: he proclaimed to hate human kind. Sooner or later he would have to cope with both: the ‘vile’, imperfect world and duplicity of own values. This dreadful scenario might be resolved in few ways. The first, and the easiest one, is to spare oneself from everything at once (the myriad of methods can be employed: poison, sharp razor, etc, etc). The second one, is to adapt to the world’s imperfections, simply to give up one’s believes. And the third is to try to purify the world to suit one’s aspirations. The character of the spirit of the Professor Silenus or indeed his real-life prototype Le Corbusier without a doubt would select the most ambitious solution to the personal problem and would take a mission to change the world.
This is my take on Corbusier’s work. In the end of the day, it was, first of all, the personal matter of resolving the collision of polar values. The world change was just a tool to prove or persuade that individual ideals can and should be accepted on the global scale. Corbusier’s fascination with the machine and the consequences of this facination briefly discussed above represent the dramatic difference between origins of European and Russian Modernism. I will discuss this dissimilarity in a separate blog.
*By the way Silenus in Greek mythology is forever drunk part man, part beast creature, companion of Dionysus. The name also refers to the double nature of the Professor, a human who hates human kind.
I must admit I am not a poetry person. Now and again when I feel exceptionally nostalgic I would enjoy something from Silver Age Russian poetry.
The British modern poetry is completely unfamiliar territory for me. I don't think I have read anything more serious and more poetic than a newspaper pamphlet. The 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg was my first dip into new English poetry. Well, I loved it! Very powerful, rich, thought provoking piece of writing.
The poem is divided into 3 parts with the 'Footnote' technically representing the fourth. The first part being one enormous sentence of endless string of vivid images, distressed feelings, hallucinogenic memories, real events disfigured by personal perception said without stop, on one desperate, perhaps last, breath certainly resembles a howl. In this depressing interlinked list of scrap metaphors Ginsberg analyses the time in its all complexity: social, political, cultural and spiritual. He paints the image of screwed lives of thinking individuals trying to find escape in alcohol, drugs and insanity:
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on
tenegement roof illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy and
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
[…]
who ate fire in paint hotels or drunk turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls
[…]
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding
instantaneous lobotomy
[…]
Through the prism of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ we are presented with the paradox of 60s when modernist aspiration for technological efficiency is almost achieved. However, evolving, the concept of standardization and conformity penetrates the society, creating the rigid boundaries for thought and acts. This tragic irony of the modernistic thought, initially striving to get away from the similarity of the historical prototypes, but which has got out of the control, materializes in the character of Moloch, Philistine god to whom children are sacrificed, the men-created god of family hearth which turns against the very idea of family destroying its future, consuming children.
In the context of the ongoing ‘standardization’ of individual and attempts of many (described by Ginsberg) to resist this process Archigram, the avant-garde architectural group, selected the alternative tactic of the opposition to the system. Yet, again, past, this time the Modernist past itself, was rejected. Technology stayed one of the key aspects of their architecture: ‘You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape’ (David Green). However, flux and constant change was chosen as a method to juxtapose new architecture and its users to the standardized elements and processed of the 60s society and bureaucratic machine. Individuality was celebrated in the concept of the constructing the whole out of the parts (‘Plug in City’, ‘Walking City’, ‘ Blow-out village’, ‘Living Pod’).
Lights, casinos, naked girls, night, big limos, loads of booze and drugs, – these are the associative images popping up in my head, when I hear ‘Las Vegas’. So, schizophrenic ‘Hernias’ and ‘buttocks décolletage’ mixed up with handfuls of amphetamine and meprobamate drawn in the litters of alcohol in Wolfe’s piece didn’t surprise me, I have expected something like this. The place where everything is bright, loud and fairly straight forward not to complicate the process of ‘senses’ isolation’ undergone by some drug intoxicated individual experiencing ‘consciousness expansion’.
But ‘old babes’?!!! Old babes were a complete shock to the system! I rather conservatively visualise the granny (aka old babe :)): a) knitting, b)cosily watching some soap on TV, c) writing memoirs/novels/detectives, d) gardening, e)playing lotto/bingo, but not hanging out in Las Vegas maniacally pulling slot machines handles. Not LIVING in Las Vegas! This city, as I perceived it, could be a home, actually not even a home but a ‘temporary base’, only for some glamour girls, crazy musicians and casino stuff. I have never thought about Las Vegas’s residents (does such a term exist???). Well, clearly I was wrong: there IS life in Las Vegas! And ‘old babes playing the slot machines are part of its permanent landscape’.
There might be a zillion of reasons why Las Vegas is attracting ‘old babes’. Nostalgia, finally gained freedom from preconceptions, boredom or simple addiction, - I have no idea. However, the fact pictured by Wolfe in the 60s is still valid: majority of casino-goers and gamblers are in the ‘over-something’ age group. Well, at least some fun to look forward to :)
I will start from saying this text, which I read and re-read number of times, made me think; made me think really, really hard. And I still don’t understand if I am thinking in the right direction, but at least I am thinking which is always a good sign for a blond girl ;).
Where are the limits of the ‘social space’ analysed by Lefebvre? How small is too small for ‘social space’? A city, as discussed, is a produced social space. What if the ‘macro-space’ level will be analysed not only in terms of social relationships which create an outline, a boundary for the space, but also in terms of ‘micro’ level elements such as ‘micro-spaces’?A tower block for instance. It certainly tick these boxes: ‘..any space implies, contains and dissimulates social relationships – and this despite the fact that a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations between things (objects and products)’. On the basis of this quote I would argue that the tower block IS a social space. This social space is undoubtedly produced as it ‘is the result of repetitive actions’. However, on the ‘macro-space’ level the tower block is ‘a thing’, relationships of which with other ‘things’ make up the social space of the city. Lefebvre argues that ‘social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity—their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder’. My assumption of the duality of the tower block (being at once a social space and ‘a thing’) suggests that Lefebvre’s argument can be applied only when spaces on one level (‘macro-space’ or ‘micro-space’)are analysed. Perhaps not only ‘social reality is dual, multiple, plural’, but social relations are dual as well? Maybe space being a product of social relations of ‘things’, which according to Lefebvre ‘lie in order to conceal their origin’, lies as well, because relations of untruthful things must untruthful as well…
Ermmm, I think I got lost at this point. However, I liked the idea of duality of the space (being ‘a thing’ at one level and set of social relations on another). I am also interested in the question how far can I ‘unpack’ the space in order to find its true origins. Is my tiny room a social space and if it is, does it have any effect on the ‘macro-level’ space of the city? What are the smallest elements/social relations of the social space of the city? Are they the same as of space of the country??
Some quotes:
‘Itself the outcome of past actions, social space is what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others.’
‘Repetitious spaces are the outcome of repetitive gestures (those of the workers) associated with instruments which are both duplicable and designed to duplicate..’
‘Space used to be considered in emotional and religious manner’
‘It is in their nature as things and products co conceal that truth. Not they only don’t speak at all: they use their own language, the language of things and products, to tout the satisfaction they can supply and the needs they can meet; they use it too to lie, to dissimulate not only the amount of social labour that they can contain, not only the productive labour that they embody, but also the social relationships of exploitation and domination on which they are founded.’
‘Things lie, and when, having become commodities, they lie in order to conceal their origin, namely social labour, they tend to set themselves up as absolutes.’
‘So-called social reality is dual, multiple, plural.’
‘Knowledge emerged from a practice, and elaborated upon by means of formalization and the application of a logical order’
‘..any space implies, contains and dissimulates social relationships – and this despite the fact that a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations between things (objects and products). Might we say that it is or tends to become the absolute Thing? The answer must be affirmative to the extent that every thing which achieves autonomy through the process of exchange (i.e. attains the status of a commodity) tends to become absolute – a tendency, in fact, that Marx’s concept of fetishism (practical alienation under capitalism). The Thing, however, never quite becomes absolute, never quite emancipates itself from the activity, from use, from need, from ‘social being’. What are the implications of this for space?’
‘A further important aspect of spaces of this kind [produced] is their increasingly pounced visual character’.
‘…collectives still so close to nature that the concepts of production and product, and hence any idea of a ‘production of space’, are largely irrelevant to our understanding of them’
‘Thus space is undoubtedly produced even when the scale is not that of the major highways, airports or public works’.
“social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity—their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder”
‘The golden age of cultural theory is long past’. It has been swallowed by the consumer strategy of mega-corporations targeting our Achilles spot: self-indulgence. Since the revolution in our world perception, which made us to realise that it is OK to be human with needs and these needs can be discussed and studied, we are constantly being reminded HOW to fulfil our needs and that they MUST be fulfilled.
The idea of ‘after theory’ theorists to study every day life was truly revolutionary. Yes, they would talk and write about sex; yes, they would study pornography for their PhD thesis. And.. they were cool, they were rebellious. So why shouldn’t we, generation NEXT, go with the flow and simply have fun discussing flavour of malt whiskies in the dissertation (surely doing daily research on the matter in the nearest pub)?? Well, it seems to me that there is a quite big chunk missing from the ‘generation NEXT’ equation: sex, drugs and rock-and-roll are not revolutionary matters any more. However, they are marketed as such. To be rebellious you have to rebel against something. Popular culture theorists threw historicisms away and pronounced common people and events of today the subjects of study. Though, the dismantled theoretical foundations were well known to them. They were studied, understood and only after torn down. That act made popular culture studies viable and its students cool. Popular culture is still cool, but this ‘coolness’ is just an echo from the past amplified by capitalist structures to make us not only consume more and more, but ‘also identify our own fulfilment with the survival of the system’. And I and many others from my generation are accepting this baby- food-like processed and adapted theory still thinking that we are rebelling against something openly talking about sex and watching life TV for educational purposes. I think we are just being lazy. This laziness is being encouraged as we often hear that ‘our own opinion matters the most’ (obviously not supported by any facts, because life experience is way more important than texts by some Marx or Derrida). I feel I am missing on something and planning to read more, but will I? To be frank, I don’t know - it is comfortable and what is more important widely accepted to be lazy.
I will compare Dubai with Russian dolls: it is bright, it is shiny, it gets larger in geometrical progression and no one knows how many more semi-similar skyscrapers it will hatch.
Literally, Dubai has ‘world-within-the-world’ (Island World) and consists of ‘cities-within-the-cities’. Technically, it operates as an independent economic entity with its own laws for one and lawlessness for the other. Dubai is ‘Russian doll world’, where the tiniest and hideously horrid figure, often missing an eye or a mouth, is hidden inside many layers of beautifully crafted shells. This multilayered world has its own creator (and co-owner), Sheikh Mohammed al-Mactoum and , naturally, it is own unprecedented religion… Religion of fear.
It, as a proper religion, drives all layers of society. Slave-like workers fear the absolute power of the employers; the employers fear to loose this absolute power, hence ignore labour regulations, substituting them with local Draconian laws.
‘Creator and Co’ being a trinity of oil producer, distributor and a middle man between West and Islamic militant groups, use fear as the most stable currency to fund the building site of the century.
Once my physics teacher told me one thing I would remember for all my life: ‘Never use the words meaning of which you don’t know to seem smarter, you will end up being a fool’. I will confess from the very beginning: I don’t know anything about Zaha. I know nothing except that she is a starchitect, she is the first woman to receive a Pritzker Prize, she was born in Iraq, studied maths in Beirut and architecture in AA, she designs not just buildings but furniture and amazing shoes.
I have neither read Derrida to fully comprehend the theory of deconstruction behind her early ‘paper’ works, nor do I know sufficiently enough about the concepts of her latest designs.
So, following advice of my teacher I would not argue about quality or aesthetics of Hadid designs. I am way more interested in pidgin of architectural society mentioned by Jonathan Meades (by the way, I suppose he doesn’t exclude himself from it, taking in account his striking expressions weaved in the essay*).
‘The gulf between clumsy, approximate jargon and precise, virtuoso designis chasmic’ [well, even for my non-British ear it sounds quite clumsy http://www.zahahadidblog.com/movies/2007/07/03/video-interview-with-zaha-hadid]. However, isn’t it Zaha’s strategy to avoid annoying questions aimed to ‘jeopardise’ her concepts? She skilfully looses the main focus of the conversation with ‘syntactical mishaps’ confusing the opponent. Like a rabbit, trying to escape cunning fox, she circles in the woods of architectural jargon, leading the interviewer nowhere. She knows she will get away with use of the language because: a) her mother tongue is not English and the most importantly b) she is ZAHA. She worked hard and long for her name and now it is working for her.
Hadid is not just a successful architect; she is an extremely smart business woman. She has carefully created architectural ‘Zaha Brand’: mysterious world of foggy architectural terms, digital design extravaganza and non-explained concepts. Seems very illogical… But is it?, - she is a mathematician after all.
*Some curious terms from Meades:
Chutzpah - (pronounced /ˈxʊtspə/) is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. The word derives from the Hebrew word ḥuṣpâ (חֻצְפָּה), meaning "insolence", "audacity", and "impertinence." The modern English usage of the word has taken on a wider spectrum of meaning, however, having been popularized through vernacular use, film, literature, and television (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah)
Pidgin - (pronounced /ˈpɪdʒən/) language is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different to the language of the country in which they reside (but there is no common language between the groups) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin
