the origins of my short attention span

I got my tea from the bar and shuffled over to the sofa near the window "Oh yeah, I remember Messenger" Bella said, in answer to my question "the thing I really hated about it was how everyone tried to talk to you at once. I could only have one conversation at a time, so I would block all the other contacts I wasn't talking to."

That's funny, I thought. Isn't multiple and simultaneous conversation the whole purpose of using a chat program? It started a train of thought that lead me to one conclusion: the origins of my digital multitasking was Messenger. In the days when my net connection was still only 2kb/s the idea of browsing was an impossibility. In any case, I'm not sure there was anything much to browse. The net was for e-mail and chatrooms... you remember, like, before the peodos got there?

Not only can we no longer concentrate on one thing for any appreciable period of time, but we can neither concentrate on one person – by spreading our attention across multiple discussions we fail to achieve any depth of communication with any of them.

Millennium People out.

the state of the union, by peter eisenman

Galicia City of Culture model, Eisenman Architects.

“When I was a boy I used to buy my clothes at Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue. Not especially because it was Brooks Brothers, but because if you wanted the best clothes in New York, everyone knew they were to be found on Madison. But the genius loci of Madison Avenue has been destroyed: I can now buy Brooks Brothers in any place, in Newark Airport, in Macau, and so on…”

Eisenman, who spoke at the AA on Friday, made a convincing argument for the non-existence of place, or as he put it “the dissolution of the Hegelian dialectic of Zeitgeist versus Genius Loci” through the destruction of the latter by capital. And in this sense he essentially prolonged the arguments of Fukuyama’s Death of History (and to a lesser extent also those of Derrida).

The absolute dominance of capital as the driving force of contemporary global society is indisputable, and it has been the case for some decades. Saarinen’s TWA building at Newark (a magnificent structure even today) has been abandoned for no other reason than that it fails to serve capital any longer. A more contemporary example would be that of Dubai.

In Rem Koolhaas’ Junkspace he tells us explicitly what capital inevitably produces: ubiquitous, atopical detritus.

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Eisenman recently won a competition in Milan, and the client came and asked him for a 40-storey building. The size of the site did not necessitate it, nor the context of the city lend itself to such a proposal. “Does the desire for a tower stem from theories of living?” he asked, and the client replied, “No, we want to make a statement.”

There can be no spirit of place to a 40-storey tower, or a 100,000m2 mall, because the scale upon which the building is founded is not that of architecture, but that of global capital. This demand requires larger and larger projects from larger and larger firms, with a necessary homogenisation of planning and degradation of detail quality. Additionally, we do not have a grammar to describe this contemporary situation: what is the grammar of a 40-storey tower?

Eisenman paused. “At what point do you refuse? Have I sold out? Is this the end of Eisenman as an architect? I don’t know…” In any case, the result will be a shed with signage, where the signage is the word ‘Eisenman’.
This degradation leads to an architecture that abandons space and concerns itself only with surface (he gave Zaha in the front row a pointed look).

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When Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi flew to Las Vegas in 1968 they classified the architecture they found into two categories: the ‘decorated shed’ (a block volume with elaborate signage) and the ‘duck’ (a building whose form resembles its economic purpose, as in the giant duck that sells ducks). The two terms subsequently became widely accepted metaphors to broadly describe the approach of contemporary architectural projects.

“If you were a young Scott Brown or Venturi today where would you go to re-enact ‘Lessons from Las Vegas’? You couldn’t go anywhere, because Las Vegas is everywhere – it is New York, it is Milan, it is Singapore, and we have to ask ourselves… Is this where we want the world to go?”

Rem argued that, since Junkspace was unavoidable, better to embrace it. As a consequence his more recent projects (CCTV, Seattle, Casa de Musica) are really nothing more than ducks, albeit somewhat decorated-ducks. Although, and Eisenman didn’t mention this, it could be said these were conscious decisions on Rem’s part, foreshadowed in S,M,L,XL.

Ultimately the main problem with the dominance of capital in architecture remains the question of scale. Architects trained in the design of domestic-scale buildings struggle to imagine the scale of modern capital.

For Eisenman’s City of Culture in Galicia he was asked to design not one building, but six: “how can an architect conceive of 6 buildings simultaneously?” He mentioned a man he knows building a city in China for three million and he wondered how such a thing could be possible.

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The other day Gehry was around Eisenman’s place trying to hawk his Catia program, saying how a program designed to realise architecture was indispensible for a practise like Eisenman’s. This set Peter on a rant: the younger generation behave like computers – they have lost the capacity to develop creative response, and instead limit themselves by the programs they use, like rhino, or maya, or max. These programs are not designed to describe space and time, but for film animation, or for other media, or whatever. He calls this thinking the “Parametric disease”, which is spreading, and whose origin is found under the thumb of capital… At one student crit recently a young woman had produced a script to generate a certain type of building, and Eisenman asked her which one she was going to choose. She responded “but choice is no longer the issue, any one will do!”

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Peter’s comments about the spirit of our age, and particularly the prolongation of Hegelian history, seemed too good not to pick out and roll into Millennium People’s second post on the Digital Dialectic, scheduled for the 10th Feb. Be sure to check back on us then…


Cultural City at Galicia, under construction.

digital dialectic

It was eerily silent at Oxford Circus last night. It had been on Sunday night too. I waited in front of the Tube exit for my father while a constant stream of empty buses rolled past, flicking up wakes in the gutters. The pavements were deserted. Then I suddenly had the irrational sensation that London was concealing itself in preparation for some imminent event and only I remained unwarned.

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Fukuyama famously announced the Death of History a couple of years after my birth (I don't believe the two were connected). The Death of History? The end of all history? His basis for this statement was a worldview he had extrapolated from Hegelian thinking. Hegel basically saw the spirit of any epoch (zeitgeist) as being defined by the struggle between two principal opposing entities. The neutralisation of this great struggle signals the end of the age.

The first epoch is supposedly the human struggle for mutual acknowledgement; to be recognised and recognisable to ourselves and by each other. Perhaps less opaquely, the late 19th century might be seen as the struggle between worker and master - the resolution of which signalled the end of the Industrial Revolution. The mid to late 20th century might be seen as the struggle between Communism and Capitalism.

Fukuyama's argument is that when the USSR packed up it ended the Communist/Capitalist struggle, allowing for global free-market Capitalism. The idea of the opposing entities is that they are fundamental. Capitalism is a fundamental organisation of society, as is Communism. The vacuum of the struggle, the absence of a dialectic, apparently signals the end of all history, since no major struggle replaced it.

Fukuyama's basic problem was that he was considering the 'spirit of the times' from a strictly economic standpoint. I find his dramatism about the end of history pretty absurd. Although it is true that the collapse of the USSR did signal the end of the Communism/Capitalism struggle – and Capitalism, having no opposition to keep it in check, ran out of control. The '07 crash (which we are apparently climbing out of) signalled the actual end of this mighty struggle. Which is part of my argument for why we are only now at the beginning of a new decade, new century and a new millennium, people.

To define the new age, to find the spirit of the times, in Hegelian terms is a lot easier than it sounds. It only requires the defining of the two opposing entities. Some people would say that the principal struggle of our times is technology versus nature. I'm not going to get into it too much (perhaps in another post) but this is a false division. If you look at the root of technology - tekne - it means simply 'to assemble'. Technology is an assemblage. Nature, however, is also an assemblage. That is, nature is technological. When we talk about nature and technology as opposites we are really talking about the differences in the manner of assembly. Nature assembles itself, while human assembly is always mediated. Our technology has to be assembled by our own hands.

The nature versus technology struggle can be excluded. For me, the strongest alternative is the struggle between the real and the digital. This is for several reasons - firstly, it would seem to be a logical historical progression: we have moved from the manual revolution (industrial) to the digital revolution. But a digital revolution cannot be without purpose, it has to have something to revolt against. And that subject is the real.

More to come on the subject...

the wake of the wealth of nations

After Adam Smith by Shannon C. Stimson and Murray Milgate (of Palgrave’s fame) is a recent publication from the Princeton University Press that examines how, and in what ways, our thinking about the relationship between politics and political economy was transformed in the one-hundred years or so after the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776).

And yet, for what is at its base a detailed historical analysis of the development of 19th century economic theory, the book remains remarkably current. And with everyone from Barack to Brown name-dropping Keynes it is certainly refreshing to read about the somewhat eclipsed Smith. By re-visiting the grand questions that interested Smith (for example, the relationship between the market and the state, or between individual liberty and common good), Milgate and Stimson re-assess the relevance of his thinking to our current global economic predicaments.

The premise of this (mostly architectural) blog is in fact an economic one – that the period 2001-2007 was not the beginning of a New Millennium, but the continuation of the 20th century, because it was a continuation of 20th century economic thinking. This conclusion is based on a subliminal association: I am defining an epoch not by its essential social dialectic, but by the economic principles that largely determine that dialectic.

In this respect, works like After Adam Smith become important signifiers of the emerging zeitgeist. The book will be of interest to anyone concerned with how the ideas of economics and economists have influenced (and continue to influence) politics and politicians. I wholeheartedly recommend it.


Adam Smith on the new £20 note.

post: apocalyptic futures

'Mike', 1952, via zvis.

I was recently interviewed for a "cult", and, to my surprise and delight, I was accepted. They call themselves Intermediate 7, and they are one of the 13 units being run as part of the second and third year design studios at the AA school of architecture, here in London. Inter 7's other title is: The End of the World and Other Bedtime Stories, and the focus for the year-long studio is visions of the future, post-apocalyptic societies, etc. Think ballardian fiction, sci-fi flicks. Their modus operandi is to slip in and out of the real and imagined, to produce falsified verity (by means of media or objects). For me this seems like a great excuse to re-watch old favourites like Forbidden Planet (hopefully more on that one day, I've got a killer angle on the plot), re-read the Red Mars trilogy, the War in the Air, and so on. This will all hinge around a unit trip to study emerging environmental and political tensions in Greenland (supposedly in November, although what we are likely to see in the unending night of the Arctic winter, I'm not sure).

But I also see this studio as an opportunity to sit ourselves down, take stock of our bearings and have some deep-and-meaningfuls about not just the future (and post-future) but also the present. I believe we will use our visions of the end of the world to perhaps give some shape to the embryonic Zeitgeist of this new decade, as we all become truly New Millennium People. This is a rather happy coincidence given the rubric of this blog, of which I need hardly remind the regular reader (if you're not one now, carpe diem is all I can say).

As an outburst of over-excitement and puerile anticipation of the day the real work begins, I thought I would make the bulk of this post a summary of my initial reflections on the 'Apocalypse'.

My first instinct is to examine a problem through its etymology A problem well articulated is a problem solved, as I believe Einstein once said (quiet nod to A.Verge, M.Tawa and S.Fung). The etymology of Apocalypse comes from 'kaluptein' which means 'to cover'. Apocalypse is therefore the act of 'uncovering'. In the medieval sense, this referred to the coming of JC and the era of Zion (see Revelations).

This set me thinking about a Heidegger paper about the origins of the word 'light' (amongst other things). He talks about heavy, then light, lightness, illumination (bringing oneself to light) and finally the word 'leathe'. This means 'to conceal, to cover' and its opposite 'aleathea' is the Greek word for 'truth'. Truth is an act of 'unconcealment'. The Apocalypse is an act of 'uncovering'. The Apocalypse is an act of truth.

And since it lies beyond the imagination ('ability to be depicted') of the present day, it is also an evidence (evidentia = ex + videre, or "out of sight"). The Apocalypse is evident, and its prediction is an act of previewing. It is to search for patterns in history, to define the present, to project into the future. 'Post-Apocalyptic' accordingly means 'after the unconcealment' – and could refer to either utopic or distopic situations. It could of course refer to neither, and simply mean 'the era following the unforeseen truth'.

So the core of the Apocalypse is not to fabricate or falsify the future, but to reveal, to expose and uncover... the truth, or a truth. This definition hinges on, and leaves open, the dimension of time. The Apocalypse is not a single occurrence (28 Days Later; The Day After Tomorrow; Deep Impact, etc) but can be any period of time necessary to unconceal a truth: the demise of the Roman Empire; the collapse of the Soviet Union; the end of petrol; the decline of the offline...

My goal for the studio-cult is, in no naive terms, to gestate an Apocalyptic truth.

the seer of sheperton

Original cover for the serialised novella, now known as The Drowned World. 1962.

BALLARDIAN: (adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (J.G. Ballard; born 1930), the British novelist, or his works. (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.

Ballard was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, and yet he remains decidedly at the peripheries of mainstream media. I don't mean he is a cult figure, not at all – the man was so well recognised in his own lifetime that he had an adjective made of his name. He spawned his own genre of fiction. He influenced such diverse figures as Jean Baudrillard (whose commentary on Crash in Simulacra and Simulation was how I first heard of Ballard's name), Joy Division, the Klaxons, and Steven Spielberg. There are several websites dedicated to him and his works, the most famous is perhaps the Ballardian. Will Self, who was his friend for many years, recently recorded a production for Radio 4 (online here) in which he pays tribute to the 'seer of Sheperton'. Also worth a look are these images, inspired by his novel Drowned World.

Ballard died of prostate cancer several months ago.

The purpose of this post is not an attempt at summarising, or introducing, the work of Ballard. Its purpose is simply to identify one more reason that this blog is called Millennium People. Ballard's prose is rich, and over-saturated, at times heavy, even indigestible. His plots vary in subject, but rarely in theme – there is a coherent trajectory to his writing as he follows several ideas to their logical (or at times, their frighteningly realistic illogical) conclusions. His earlier works generally involve the transformation of people and societies as the world is subjected to some cataclysmic environmental change. These could be considered, perhaps, a type of science fiction set in the present day.

In The Drowned World "21st century fluctuations in solar radiation have cause the ice-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilisation has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age. " Wiki notes: "In contrast to much post-apocalyptic fiction, the novel features a central character who, rather than being disturbed by the end of the old world, is enraptured by the chaotic reality that has come to replace it."

This is a similarly prominent aspect of The Drought (as it sounds) and Hello America (due to the diversion in global air and water patterns caused by the damming of the Bering Strait the States are turned into a desert, and 100 years into the future a group of European explorers find themselves suddenly swept up by the remnants of American society, who have centred their new and violent civilization on Las Vegas).

'Enraptured by chaotic reality' is a good way to describe his middle and later works – High Rise, for example, is the story of a Corbusian-like ultra-modern tower block occupied by bored housewives and wealthy professionals that descends into a tribal warfare. Or Concrete Island, where an architect rolls his car off an overpass and finds himself trapped, marooned, between on-ramps, unable to be seen or to escape. Perhaps most famously Crash, "a story about car-crash sexual fetishism, its protagonists become sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car-crashes, often with real consequences..."

And so we come finally to Millennium People, written in 2003, and his second-last novel. Put simply, it is the tale of a middle-class revolt in a quiet suburban enclave of London called Chelsea Marina (Chelsea Harbour in reality). The protagonist is a psychiatrist searching for meaning in the death of his ex-wife, who was killed by a terrorist bomb at Heathrow Airport. By degrees he becomes involved with a bourgeois terrorist cell, who target the National Film Archives, libraries and cat shows. They are convinced that the financial obligations of the middle class (associated with consuming and possessing – homes, cars, designer clothes, etc) and the mind-numbing effects of "traditional values" on maintaining elitist social hierarchies amount to a type of present-day servitude. They equate themselves with the powerless proletariat of the Russian Revolution, and their goal is simple:

"'The travel agency you tried to attack, I assume there's a larger target... Chelsea Marina?'
'Far larger.' Relaxed again, Dexter raised his hands. 'One of the biggest of all. The 20th Century.'
'I thought it was over.'
'It lingers on. It shapes everything we do... the way we think. There's scarcely a good thing you can say for it. Genocidal wars, half the world destitute, the other half sleepwalking through its own brain-death. We bought its trashy dreams and now we can't wake up."

september 11: pruitt-igoe

Possibly you've seen this ad by the World Wildlife Fund (who'd have guessed?) kicking around the net recently. Possibly you haven't, because you are not yet incapable of unplugging from the digital world and have been off having 'face time' somewhere with someone. Lucky you. In any case, the ad sent people tropo (here, here, and here – 'oh no you di-unt'). The WWF's message is simple: the Boxing Day Tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. Fair point. Well made. But even 8 years later people are still not really sure whether we can say those sorts of things. Apparently it takes 12.

I am fascinated by the Twin Towers – I don’t mind admitting that.

September 11, by contrast, is not a subject I indulge in, and for that reason I have decided to not make this a post about the towers (opening image excluded).

Of course I have my own ideas about the meaning, the causes and the results of those terrorist attacks, but that’s not for here. Buy me a beer and we’ll talk it all over.

Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the Twins, is the real subject here. I'm going to start with his personal life: he is the only man I have ever heard of who married a woman, divorced her, married two more, and then re-married the first again. Weird. As far as his architectural skills go, he was clearly a man of great talent. However, his theories of urban planning were whack. To the question "why did you make two 110 storey buildings when you could have made one 220 tower?" he is quoted as reflecting a moment and responding (apparently sincerely) "I didn't want to lose the human scale".

The most extreme conspiracy theorists will tell you it was the government that destroyed the Twin Towers. If this is the case, then that makes 9/11 the second time the state has intervened to demolish Yamasaki's projects: the other famous one being the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis.

Infamous amongst public and architects alike, Pruitt and Igoe were segregated projects (named after Pruitt– a black WW2 pilot, and Igoe– a white congressman) built in '55. Essentially, all his theories about how people would use the blocks were wrong. Apartments were purposely built small in order to encourage tenants to use the large public corridors and rooms, found on every second floor. Needless to say, these spaces became occupied by muggers, and the buildings became renowned for their violence and vandalism. The architect's drawings of smiling children rolling down the halls on tricycles never materialised. Like a lot of Modernists, Yamasaki was extremely naive about how the people actually lived, he said "I never thought people could be that destructive." Jencks famoulsy gloated that the projects' destruction marked the end of Modernism. Their demolition, less than 20 years after their construction, was captured in the film Koyaanisqatsi (music by Philip Glass). If you can spare 8 minutes of your life, watch the video below, its truly amazing.

catman luther

A couple of years ago my then 5 year-old cousin Luther drew my portrait. It consisted of a large orange triangle, equilateral, though not square to the page, with a long branch sticking out at a very precise angle (he erased the line several times before its relationship to the triangle satisfied him). I asked him: ‘Luther,’ I said ‘if you had to describe the times we live in, if you had to sum up everything that seems to you particular about this epoch, what would you say?’ He sighed, and climbed down from the chair. When he returned he had in his hands two drawings. ‘This’ he said ‘is a picture of catman… and this,' he contained his boredom 'is a picture of a man with the face of a cat.’
‘But Luther’ I said ‘these two drawings are identical.’ He broke into a big laughing grin ‘I know.’