Week 7 - Allen Ginsberg 'Howl'

Ok, so I can't say Howl was an interesting read but it certainly got my attention. The outcry of anger towards the abusive and destructive society. It is graphic, scary, explicit and I guess honest for the world it describes. I'm not surprised that the publisher was arrested following its publication the obscene content was not what I was expecting and held me in shocked silence. 

Ginsberg introduces cultures that many would never experience and his ability to share cultures was carried on throughout his life in his other works and organising of events such as “Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In,”. I do struggle to see how somebody who can write such violent (rubbish) text can also be an advocate for 'flower power' though.. This does not come across as the writing of someone who uses smiles and love to mend problems.

I didn't like or approve of the content of his text at all but I can appreciate his writing style. Once I got over the content I found it easy to read through and digest. Reading poetry was a big change on the other texts though and perhaps this is where it challenged me the most. The language provided a very clear and strong mental imagine of this social space and also introduced glimpses of the physical space. 

I think his idea of Moloch isn't from the traditional sense of god but the idea of the physical space or structure as the god of people controlling their actions and lifes. Is it the buildings or is it society that he is talking about I'm not sure. Is it Moloch as society he is talking about who has designed the prisons and factories and caused the blood and the pain. Moloch is everything and yet seems man made. Social spaces and society can be man made or elected so is this control he is explaining from mans control of self? Is it the cross over to a different culture that shocks.. The introduction into an otherwise unknown, underworld culture of dirt and promiscuity?

Ginsberg mixes the 'street's' with skyscrapers and factories with the madhouse. He describes people at their worst yet he walks with the angels. He talks of soul searching and soul destroying... Perhaps reading it from context, from my experiences in todays society I am taking a different feel for the poem but I guess the basics of how communism, need, judgement or denial can run our lifes is evident whichever decade you are from.....

Week 6 - Marshall Berman 'All that is solid melt into Air'

The more I read of 'All that is solid melt into air' by Marshall Berman the more I think that this is more a diary, it is deeply personal to the author growing up and watching the world change around him. Berman took in everything around him and in his book Berman distinguishes between three key ideas:

Modernisation - being the constant changes that go off around us every day.

Modernity - the way in which such changes are experienced and lived through.

Modernism - the reflection and representation of these changes.

Berman wants to make modernists of his readers; he wants them to feel at home in the world for which they live in. For this very reason, he argues that it's crucial to understand contemporary modernism as the product of two earlier modern periods, represented by Goethe and Marx and many others.

He uses Marx, Dostoyevsky, Baudilare,Goethe, Bely etc. to try and show how the quality of being able to appreciate and respond to modernity itself has developed largely out of literature, and how we can see that sensibility at work in our own age with issues of geography and city planning. Not only does he offer examinations of those thinkers and their works, he places them in a different context with an intense, deep look of their work in order to develop and back up his own assertions of modern life.

Faust is the idea of going together cultural self-development and the real social movement towards economic movement to help bring about mans modern development. For a transformation to take place changes need to happen in both areas to make changes to the moral, social and physical world. Further in he goes even further to say that to create anything new he must let everything go. That for modern man to move forward everything already needs to be destroyed. I think this is a bit drastic, I mean to me as humans we build on what we already have and learn from our mistakes. If we destroyed everything we already have and rebuilt then there would be no record of mistakes and so man would repeat them again and again. Thats not developing thats going in a circle....

Week 5 - Colin Rowe 'The mathematics of the Ideal Villa' & 'La Tourette'

In the 1947 text 'the Mathematics of The Ideal Villa' Rowe compares Palladio's and Le Corbusier's work particularly Villa Foscari and the Stein Villa at Garches. The essay offers little introduction to the text before jumping in with room dimensions, scales and layouts. This makes it a bit disorientating when first reading the essay and I had to do a fair but of other research just to understand what he was trying to explain. To look at these buildings they do not have much in common but Rowe argues that mathematically they are similar. He highlights areas like the Piano Noble on the first floor giving access through the terrace to the garden, the portico, steps and the general proportions of the building. He also talks about the Garches upper balcony and compares it to the prominent portico of the Villa Foscari.

Although he does touch on some differences its almost like he feels there is a supernatural power before th similarities rather than just being coincidence (or possibly imaginery). This supernatural power could be simply mathematics. Le Corbusier's Golden ratio of A : B = B : (A+B) and Palladios 3 : 4 to 2 : 3 both being mathematic ratio will show similarities. However it kind of feels he is grasping at straws and trying to explain a connection which may or may not be there. Maybe I just couldn't visualise what he was trying to say and so I was missing something but although I can see how buildings based around mathematic designs could be similar to me it kind of ends there.

When talking about La Tourette ( Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis) in the 1961 test 'Dominican Monastery of La Tourette', Rowe is, for me a slightly better read. I could visualise what he was trying to describe. La Tourette is a closed community for its users and Rowe breaks this down quite clearly. He also does quite a good job of describing the cold bleak approach and aesthetics of the building. Rowe seems to spend a lot of time describing what La Tourette looks like and how it feels compared to in 'The Mathematics of an Ideal Villa' where he seems to be trying to explain why they look like they do rather than what they look like. 

When talking about La Tourette, Rowe sets the stage, describes the scene and even introduces the characters. Its a much easier read than when he was writing about Palladio and Le Corbusier but it still feels a bit bitty. It still feels like he is writing perhaps so passionately that he is forgetting to write down the joints in his thoughts to help the reader make sense of what is in his head. However is it better to learn about a piece of architecture from somebody else experience or opinion of it or by analysing the facts and looking at the physical space? 

Week 4 - Henri Lefebvre 'The Production of Space'

In ‘After Life’ Lefebvre tries to make sense of the complexity of the capitalist contemporary city and attempts to define a “unitary theory of space”. In Chapter 2 he focuses on social space and his idea is that there are multitudes of spaces which all overlap on each other. He has the idea that absolute space is nowhere and has no place because it holds all places and has a symbolic existence. 

My understanding is that social space is the analysis of everyday life and the urban reality. It is the beginning of space where basic needs are met and political space grows. Then the political space, religious space become bonded in an absolute space which holds them together. His idea tha everyday life has been capitalized and as a result so has the location of everyday life. i.e. the ‘social space’. 

Then when he goes on to talk about social space which is a social product which takes mental space and physical space to bring them together as a social space. This social space holds the actions of people, the thoughts, people grow in this space, they suffer and eventually they die. Lefebvre seems to think that his idea of social space has no boundaries. 

Does Lefebvre sees space as a form of power? I think so. He talks about the social space being a social product so then the space produced is a production where new space is created which then becomes where powers and control lays. He also talks about the split between professionals when dealing within the space of a city particularly mentions Venice. Where the macro and micro levels within the space of the city have allowed it to improve, change and grow.

He talks about nature that it does not produce because it does not labour. It doesn't know what its doing, it just does!. People do produce though because they do labour and they do know what they are doing. Its on these social spaces the natures doesn't produce and people do produce which give us the production of daily life. 

I particularly like his idea of horizontal space meaning submission, I took that to be residential types of housing where we are just going about our daily life. Vertical space being about power which holds try for the skyscrapers when business is conducted and the decisions to affect a national are made and subterranean space meaning death. A graveyard is underground… Underground is dark, its cold and all live is held out. 

I think I like some of his ideas and themes but as he jumps around I’m not sure I followed him completely. He seems to constantly be creating spaces out of space so it was difficult to keep track of all these spaces. Interesting read but it should come with a warning that your brain might end up disorientated and lost in another space to one you started in!

Week 3 - Terry Eagleton 'After Theory'

What is true now vs what was true in the past? He seems to be holding an argument about truth and the idea that something cannot be truth and can be at the same time. That is one of the ideas I got from Eagletons writing. His ideas jump all over the place so it is difficult to grasp one topic and follow it through. 

Eagleton seems to have two main aims in After Theory to 1) sketch a history of cultural theory and its evolution from the 1960s to the 1990s where he tries to highlight what he thinks were its achievements and defects and 2) uses the Bible and Das Kapital to construct an alternative kind of theory which addresses the important issues that he believes are ignored by recent cultural theorists. These are things like truth, objectivity, morality, revolution, and fundamentalism.

It was a difficult article to read because he seems all over the place and so I barely made it through the first 50 pages. I’ve got lots of thoughts or topics flying round my head but no main theme for his writing really.

I can grasp his breakdown of the history of cultural theory in the 20th century and his ideas of what worked and what failed. Then in some way I can see he is trying to explain his idea for cultural theory coming into the new century. 

I can understand his take on Marxism and how he explains the breakdown of class, ideology, and power but these ideas are difficult to pick out in the multitude of other ideas which are competing for attention. Post-modernism, Marxism, Post-structualism and lots of other concepts used by Eagleton and in some cases he has made his point clear so the book has a unique viewpoint and an introduction to lots of ideas, personally I’d prefer less ideas and more explanation as rather than introduce me to many topics he has confused me on many topics!

Week 2 - Dave Hickey's 'A Home in the Neon' & Mike Davis 'Fear, Sand and Money in Dubai'

His idea that there is no social class in Las Vegas I find a bit wrong though. Stars and celebrities are held up like royalty whereas your diner waitress is at the bottom of the ladder. Funny how most stars start at that bottom but them most I guess fall off on the way up! The flashing lights and big buildings of Las Vegas draw people in like a moth to the light but the problem is when you get there I think the commercialism and capital needed to live there probably mean that those who don’t become ‘cocktail’, using Hickeys idea, get zapped away by the bug killer..

Davis shows this class divide a bit clear in Fear and money in Dubai. A place which as an Arab I find a bit of a Disneyland idea compared to the country of my birth, Egypt. Most Arab countries I know have a clear class divide but Dubai has its clear steps on the ladder. There are rules to be followed and if you follow them then you will have a great time. Stop following and face the punishment. I think it is this which stops it becoming a ‘home’ but it is more a house.

A place of such importance in Western, financial, illegal, tourist worlds was built, often literally, on the blood of the lower class and when they tried to fight back are flicked off. Considering the article is quite a few years old now some of the points Davis made have come about and of course the idea of what will happen when the oil stops? The overspending left the country unstable for a while with projects going unfinished, will they learn? The stretch of the imagination almost sunk the country back into the sands from where it came but it was this imagination that brought it out of these sands so that is a difficult balance to keep. 

These two countries to me almost represent the American / Arab mixture. Both are places of extravagance, both full of people not native to the area. Both cities which would be damaged by the decline of money and who rely on their buildings to keep the money coming in. Is it in these cities the troubles of the past can be fixed? Perhaps its the westernise Arab in me but could Las Vegas ever be my home - no! Could Dubai - although closer probably not. Its too commercial and unequal for me but could I enjoy the place as a tourist or worker / investor? Sure. It’s exciting…… IF you follow the rules! 

Week 1 - Will Self 'Battersea Power Station' & Jonathan Meades, Zaha Hadid 'The First Great Female Architect'.

Self sounds quite aggressive in his writing and the use of swearwords in an article was a shock but all helps make his article to stick in the mind. He discusses how London has grown around the power station and even next to new sky scrapers and other iconic buildings the sheer size of Battersea makes it still an iconic building. He almost seems to admire Hitler and how he supposes he would love the Battersea Power Station.

On the other hand Meades seems to almost be making fun of Hadid throughout his article. A few times in the article he makes comment on her English and seems annoyed that she is not communicating clearly with him. I actually found his English difficult to understand because is he being sarcastic to Hadid or trying to be nice to her? It is difficult to tell.

Meades seems to be admiring Hadids ability to design in different styles and admits that she ‘has style all right, but not a style.’ Then he goes on to say how she is scared by understanding her process and calls her a starchitect, I’m worried that he is kind of jealous of her celebrity status and like he is looking down on her because she lives in London but does not have any building in London by her name apart from the Olympic Aquatic Centre which he calls a scheme.

Where Self is almost seeming to admire Hitler and the Battersea Power Station Meades makes comment after comment about Hadid’s English, sex, talks about her as an artist rather than architect and even questioning her reason to live in London. Its all very strange. His article is difficultto read and understand his opinion because he does not seem clear on what his feelings for Hadid and her work are.....

Week 1 - Alan Badiou 'The Crisis is the Spectacle'

Alain Badiou gives a consistent, critical view on the communist experience of the 20th century in the light of the real revolutionary ideas and possibilities that could've been but never were, and what we can learn from that. Badiou describes this situation with a theme most people will be able to understand – a disaster movie. We sit and watch the situation unfold in fromt of us. We can do nothing as the crisis grows and grows and the world is on the edge. Then like any good films the hero flys in and saves us all. The problem how Badiou describes though isn't the world that we need to save but the banks. The pillars of our economy. These fall and economy falls around us but instead of hers its the people and the government that comes to the rescue.

He begins his book by noting that “communism” has been labelled a failure in the world in which we operate. He then asks, what do we mean by “failure”? But with that I ask, what does this actually mean? What is failure?  Is it that we lose confrontation of a war or that we have simply failed an experiment for now? "Failure is not falling down. It is refusing to get back up." 

His writing was difficult to understand and to follow perhaps because his topic of economics is about what we might have floating around rather than what we have in our hand. What does four hundred billion euros look like? Is it even feasible to see that amount of money in real life? In a physical form? Or is this four hundred billion euros just what the government, what the people in a different social space to the common man tell us what it is? If all the computers in the world crashed tonight will that four billion euros still exist? What would it be worth if the economy collapsed or the world suffered a catastrophe? 

This money, this economy maybe its as make believe as Badious idea of the film. We can watch what is being done with the money in terms of buildings being built, goods being bought but what the 'film' is happening behind the scenes - we see whats being staged we don't see behind the stage. We don't see the four hundred billion euros!

If you are working with things that exist as ideas but have no physical presence, do they exist at all? What makes 100 euros worth more than 100 tomatoes? Is it just because the government says you need money to build an economy, to buy goods. If you didn't have any food surely 100 tomatoes would be worth more to you than 100 pieces of paper? 100 euros is only worth more because the banks, the government tell us its worth more. I think it’s all debatable whether Badiou’s ‘Communist Hypothesis’ is a step forward into communism or a step backwards into a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies.