March 27, 2009
Understanding Watchmen
The Trans-Atlantis blog doesn't pride itself on timeliness. The Watchmen movie is no longer the cinematic event of the moment. The movie's been debated to death, chewed over, the hype has been sucked out and all that's left is a gory twitching corpse of low expectations. What better time to see it!? Was I disappointed? No. Was it good? Not really. I'm not sure that I can give an objective opinion. I mostly agree with Zak Sally's assessment and I think that Isaac Cates is onto something… I think the film will have it's greatest impact on the academic world of media studies. Zack Snyder's slavish adaptation of the comic-book turns the two Watchmen versions into the perfect study-guides. The story is essentially the same so the student can focus on the unique properties of each medium. Take Marshall McLuhan's 'hot' and 'cool' media theories. The hot high definition film can now be studied side by side with the cool low definition comic-book. Watchmen the movie is the perfect example of film as a hot medium. Since the film can never approach the comic-book's narrative complexity, it compensates with visual overload. Every texture, grain of dust, shard of glass, spark of energy, drop of blood and rain, is visible and rendered in loving hyper-real detail. Each frame is crammed with detail in an attempt to get as much of the comic on film as possible. Dr. Manhattan's nauseating avatar (CGI has a long way to go before it ascends from the Uncanny Valley) represents the film's high definition aesthetic. Nothing is left to the imagination. Watchmen the comic-book takes full advantage of the cool nature of comics. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons chose to tell the story mostly through a tight nine-panel grid. Each panel by itself doesn't contain much detail. It's too small for that. The complexity of the story unfolds though repetition, juxtapositions, foreshadowing, etc. It's up to the reader to stitch the whole thing together; to fill in the gaps… etc. I suspect that both the movie and the comic-book will very quickly become ubiquitous in college syllabi around the world.
Posted by tomk at 11:27 PM | Comments (6)
March 21, 2009
UR : Utopia Report : No. 2
Cartoon Utopia the mini-comic
It's time for another edition of the UR, the Utopia Report. If you missed the previous edition, check it out here.
The first Utopia Report ended with Ron Regé's Cartoon Utopia. In a recent post, Ron took the time to explain the sources of the utopian world he is building. Ron's reading list tends towards the transcendental and mystical visions of utopia. This makes sense. His work for me, always had mystical underpinnings. The interactions between his characters always depict some kind of unspoken (telepathic?) connections. Auras, rays and halos emanate from his characters revealing extrasensory sensitivities. Their egos dissolve into larger energy fields producing new undiscovered harmonies. It's really interesting to see this work develop. The Cartoon Utopia is slowly becoming the theoretical underpinning of it's own formal qualities. It describes a vision of the world by being that vision… a ouroboric vessel…
Also, check out Ron Regé's Cartoon Utopia mini-comic.
Interesting call for more 'utopian post-apoclaypse' movies. The author wonders why we don't see "suggestions for post-apocalyptic living or specific life-changing prescriptions for our current situations" in movies as much as we see the destruction of the world. The answer seems obvious. It's a lot easier to destroy then to create. In a way he's giving further evidence to the Zizekian creativity deficiency as expressed in his "it is much easier for us to imagine the end of the world than a small change in the political system" statement. If we can't imagine a small change, then how can we go about devising new utopian societies and civilizations? But, Zizek's statement is starting to sound a little dated these days. As the financial crisis erodes confidence in our society, it's becoming increasingly possible to question the way of life that led us to this point. Perhaps this can lead to more creative visions in cinema, science fiction and politics. I'm skeptical on the political front… but I would welcome more pulp utopianism.
I recently read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. It's part one of a trilogy about the settlement and terraforming of the red planet. Earth is overpopulated and running out of resources. Mars seems the obvious solution as the destination for mass emigration and a huge source of natural resources. The drama of the novel hinges on the struggle between capitalist and socialist tendencies (though the author doesn't necessarily spell this out). The capitalists see Mars as a planet-sized mine and a source of planet-sized profits. The socialist see the red planet as a blank slate for a new society and an opportunity to forge a new relationship with the environment. The harsh living conditions on Mars foreground the preciousness of things we usually take for granted on Earth. Atmosphere, soil, water are not there for the taking. The terraforming (literally Earth-shaping) of Mars is a huge collective effort. In such an environment concepts like private property and money become meaningless. How do you turn Mars into a new Earth, when Earth no longer resembles itself? I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy.
Speaking of Kim Stanley Robinson... here's a recent article where he describes capitalism as a multi-generational Ponzi scheme. A lot of ideas found in Red Mars are echoed in this essay.
Posted by tomk at 12:37 AM | Comments (3)
February 03, 2009
Popular Again
It's amazing how quickly things can change. In In Defense of Lost Causes Slavoj Zizek wrote that the success of capitalism was marked by the disappearance of the word 'capitalism' from public discourse. Capitalism has become the status quo to such an extent that we no longer recognize it as an economic idea (something made-up, invented, artificial), we see it only as 'the way things are' (the reality, natural state of things). Needless to say, the book was published before the crisis of Capitalism we're currently enjoying. Capitalism is being questioned publicly once again, and with good reason. Still, one has to do a double take when the word appears so frequently on the lips of the British Conservative politician David Cameron. Here's a couple of choice quotes from his speech at Davos:
"A lot of people are angry with capitalism. Instead of representing hope for a better future, they think capitalism threatens it. This matters because in the future, social, economic and environmental progress will only come from the drive, energy and enterprise of individuals. So if we want capitalism to be a success again, we need to make capitalism popular again.""Today, the poorest half of the world's population own less than one per cent of the world's wealth. We've got a lot of capital but not many capitalists, and people rightly think that isn't fair."
"So we must shape capitalism to suit the needs of society; not shape society to suit the needs of capitalism."
That's quite a statement from the leader of the party of Margaret ("There's no such thing as society." - as Bruce Sterling deftly observes.) Thatcher! Red Tory indeed!
For all his bluster Cameron still clings to tired old Capitalist dogmas:
"Yes, as I've said many times, we must stand up for business, because it's businesses, not governments or politicians, that create jobs, wealth and opportunity, it's businesses that drive innovation, and choice, and help families achieve a higher standard of living for a lower cost."
Somehow 'The Government' never amounts to anything. It's as if property laws & regulations, monetary systems, public education and transportation, trade treaties, research subsidies, etc. had nothing to do with the 'success' of business. Just as Capitalism disappears into 'just the way things are' so does the government. We forget that a lot of the great things Cameron attributes to business (wealth, opportunity, innovation, higher standards of living, etc.) had to be forcibly wrested away in a bloody struggle by several generations of workers and enforced by generations of politicians and lawmakers… yes… the government.
Ultimately, he's simply a moralist. According to him, the system is fine, we just got too greedy. We just have to shape up:
"Markets without morality. Globalisation without competition. And wealth without fairness. It all adds up to capitalism without a conscience and we've got to put it right."
This call for a new moral Capitalism isn't as new as it seems. It's been slowly bubbling up to the surface of politics for years. In fact Zizek already identified its 'chocolate laxative' center while discussing another global economic summit in… Davos… in 2001!
This sentiment is echoed in some recent statements from Obama:
"And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses — the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 — at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don’t provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads — that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful."
There is an expectation of morally right behavior without creating any incentives that encourages that behavior. But, outside the tough rhetoric, there is little evidence that anything of consequence will happen. Instead the strategy seems to be this: wealthy capitalists need to hit the pause button on excess and selfishness until things are 'fixed'… then we can return to regularly scheduled programming. At least Cameron, by using the word 'Capitalism,' is willing to acknowledge that this is an ideological battle. No such acknowledgment is forthcoming from the 'post-partisan' and 'bipartisan' Obama administration. This evasion of politics makes it harder to question major economic assumptions and blind-spots that we keep carrying on our backs like the proverbial monkey. Obama is even going to appoint a Republican as a Commerce Secretary. How post-partisan! It only reveals that Democrats and Republicans don't differ all that much on the basic substance of economic policy. Jacques Monin, the French journalist, has it right [ again via Beyond the Beyond ]:
"You no longer imagine, it seems to me, that there might actually be such a thing as a "choice of society". Along with New Labour, the very idea of anything resembling an ideology vanished. In France, on the other hand, politics still condition the life of the individual. Rightly or wrongly, my fellow countrymen still want to believe that a choice of society really remains possible. They might resist reform, as you like to point out, but they involve themselves - deeply - in politics."Here, however, the boundaries between the major parties have been all but eroded. This drift to the centre, combined with the weakness of the extremes, has anaesthetised British politics. So the British don't vote very much. They don't object very much. They don't dream very much."
Substitute 'Americans' for 'British' and that statement still rings true. Of course it doesn't help when the Global Left is a chaotic mess.
Posted by tomk at 01:31 PM | Comments (6)
January 30, 2009
The Eternal Sunshine of the Capitalist Mind
This song has been in my head all day. I finally decided to find it online. Here it is:
It's called 'Солнечный круг' (Solar Cycle). It's better known to many as 'Пусть всегда будет солнце' (May There Always Be Sunshine). It's an anti-war song. If you grew up in Eastern Europe (or at least around Eastern European emigrants) you most likely have this song seared into your head. I posted the lyrics in English below the fold.
It's probably been over 20 years since I heard this song… well, outside of my head that is... Hearing it again is like being hit with a ton of nostalgic bricks. But what really struck me were the visuals of the videos. The second one especially has all the hallmarks of Socialist Realism. And, yet… they are so… well… American. Besides some minor differences in clothing, and the like, the whole thing wouldn't have been out of place in the US… at least in that timeless-Norman-Rockwell-eternally-50's-LIFE-Magazine-innocent-Leave-It-To-Beaver U S of A that still grips the popular (and political) imagination.
I'm often struck by an uncanny sense of déjà vu whenever I watch American politics unfold on TV. The discourse is carefully circumscribed by what can or cannot be said in public about the economy, socialism, Islam, Israel, etc. The 2008 campaign was only the most recent example of that. As much as I like and support Obama, I'm still bothered by the slick visuals his campaign saturated the airwaves with. For all the soaring rhetoric (and yes rhetoric matters) and 'straight talk', everything is still directed at saving Capitalism (with a hefty dose of socialism if need be... but shhhh). Socialist Realism is the term used for art which furthered the goals of socialism and communism. Until the Soviet collapse, it was the officially approved style of art for decades. How long does Capitalist Realism have?
May There Always be Sunshine
Translation from folkmusic.com.
Bright blue the sky.
Sun up on high—
That was the little boy's picture
He drew for you
Wrote for you, too
Just to make clear what he drew.
Chorus:
May there always be sunshine,
May there always be blue skies,
May there always be mummy,
May there always be me!
My little friend,
Listen, my friend,
Peace is the dream of the people
Hearts old and young
Never have done
Singing the song you have sung.
Chorus
Soldier lad, stay!
Hear what we say—
War would make all of us losers
Peace is our prize
Millions of eyes
Anxiously gaze at the skies.
Chorus
Down with all war!
We want no more.
People stand up for you children
Sing everyone—
Peace must be won,
Dark clouds must not hide the sun.
Posted by tomk at 12:50 AM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2008
UR : Utopia Report : No. 1
Cartoon Utopia #67 By Ron Regé, Jr
Introducing another new semi-regular feature on Trans-Atlantis: UR™ or the Utopia Report. If you've read this blog, or my comics before you already know that I'm very interested in the concept of Utopia. In the Utopia Report I'm going to start cataloging interesting articles, posts and snippets relating to the general topic of Utopia. As with my posts on the Apocalypse and Utopia in the past, this is to help me organize my thoughts and sources on the subject. It's mostly going to be undigested links and quotes, though I may occasionally comment on if the mood strikes. Hopefully someone out there will find this useful or at least interesting. OK, here it goes.
Momus recently alerted me to an interesting book The So-Called Utopia of the Centre Beaubourg -- An Interpretation by Luca Frei. From the publisher:
Appearing under the pseudonym Gustave Affeulpin in 1976, and coinciding with the inauguration of the Centre Beaubourg in Paris, Albert Meister's fictional text imagines a radical libertarian space submerged beneath the newly erected centerpiece of French Culture.
Student Works: Putting Utopia Back To Work is a fantastic and way too short interview with Behrang Behin about his Stack City student project. Behin's project for a sustainable city is pretty interesting in itself. The conversation veers into some illuminating utopian territory:
[…]abandoning the future as a cultural construct deprives us of a valuable instrument for defining ourselves in the present. You can learn a lot about the ethos of a society by looking at their science fiction. In that sense, the future is a place in our collective imagination, a terrain on which we fight our ideological battles and air out our common neuroses. This is precisely where architecture must play a role. Sustainable architecture shouldn't just be concerned with the tactical level of engineering efficiency and the preservation of resources, but should also participate in the invention of alternative futures in cultural imagination.
Finally, here's something I should have linked a while ago. Ron Regé, Jr has been doing some world building. On his blog, he's been posting drawings of his Cartoon Utopia. I don't know if these will be just a series of drawings, or if he will create come kind of utopian comic-book, but it's amazing to watch a whole world come into being before your eyes.
Posted by tomk at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2008
Let a Hundred Utopias Blossom
I got a few thought-provoking comments to my Post-Apocalyptic Dreams post from a fews days ago. Some thoughts got provoked, hence this follow-up.
All of the comments mentioned Cormac MacCarthy’s The Road. The comments inspired me to read it. But, since I haven’t finished it, I don’t have much to say. I’m about half way through, though I’m not sure if I reached, what Chris called, the self-parodic moment yet. Hopefully I’ll have something more informed to say about it soon. Stay tuned.
Speaking of hope, I wanted to expand a little on Obama and, for lack of a better name, the Utopian Moment. I hope a general outline of what the Utopian Moment might be, will become clear below. I’m working on the final part of my Trans- series of mini-comics (alas, currently out of print, sigh...) and it deals with Utopias (as did parts 1, 2 & 3 in one way or another). These posts are a way to clarify some of the ideas I’m working with.
In his comment Chris Nakashima-Brown said:
“I'm afraid when it comes to optimism about imminent real change in Washington, despite my relatively high opinion of Obama as a rare politician with some bona fide intellectual integrity, I'm afraid I'm with Zizek (in the New Yorker profile you link) in comparing the choice between Democrat and Republican to the choice "between Equal and Sweet'n Low, or between Letterman and Leno.”
I’m on board with the Republicrat bit. I’m also pretty cynical about the amount of change that Obama will actually be able to pull off. I’m less interested in Obama’s practical abilities, than in the psychological effect he’s had on the collective unconscious of the planet. I’m interested in what he represents. In that sense, some of the ‘empty rhetoric’ criticisms leveled at Obama during the campaign by McCain and Clinton are true, but at the same time that rhetoric matters a great deal. Zizek:
“[…] Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can publicly say. His greatest achievement to date is that he has, in his refined and non-provocative way, introduced into the public speech topics that were once unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with “enemies” like Iran.”
He may or may not be able to achieve practical changes in the Washington, but the effects of his victory reach further into less tangible mental realms. His victory is an optimism tsunami reconfiguring whole archipelagos of calcified ideologies — not in any specific way, but in a kind of general ‘things are possible’ way.
It’s important to note, that Obama is just a part of the Utopian Moment equation. If the financial crisis hadn’t materialized, if the US hadn’t over-stretched militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, he probably wouldn’t have been elected. Or, if he had been elected, there wouldn’t have been this kind of urgent impetus for change. The message of hope is meaningless when everything is going well. Obama needed this crisis as much as the crisis now needs him. In other words, he’s the right man for the right time. I don’t want to perpetuate too much the meme of Obama as ‘The One’ but there is some truth to that. The idea of ‘Jesus the Son of God’ was revolutionary for it’s time regardless of who ‘Jesus the man’ actually was. In that sense, the idea of an Obama is more important then Obama the politician.
The current crisis is probably a more important component of the Utopian Moment. The financial meltdown exposed the fictional nature of Capital. Basically, everybody stopped believing that things were worth what the banks said they’re worth. Mental recession indeed! We’re in a rare moment when we’re allowed to realize that all these economic structures and systems surrounding us are invented and made up by people just like us. They’re made of theories, habits, laws and conventional wisdom. In other words, they’re fictional. They’re no longer natural or inevitable. We can make up new ones that might work better. Or at least we can try.
Hope & crisis (utopia & apocalypse… maybe that’s a little too neat…) form a kind of space-time-mind zone — the Utopian Moment — where the horizon of possibilities has expanded exponentially… at least until the currently semi-fluid economic-political relations congeal into another consensus reality. It’s conditions like this that make optimistic Utopian narratives and projects not only possible but realizable.
I don’t want to give the impression that the Utopian Moment will have a positive outcome. I think there are always real dangers of it’s liberating energies being sublimated into negative objectives. This has happened frequently in the past, the French Revolution being one of the most obvious examples. But, even if we can’t seize the moment in the US, the Utopian Moment will have reverberations across the planet.
It’s possible that I’m giving too much credit to Obama and that I’m blowing up another market correction into something bigger than it is. It feels big. Only history will tell… well that depends on who will write it.
Posted by tomk at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)
November 20, 2008
Post-Apocalyptic Dreams
The always interesting Chris Nakashima-Brown at No Fear of the Future posted a link to an interesting Reason article about Science-Fiction as a playground for political ideas. But I found his subsequent discussion more interesting, especially since it touches on something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. In the post he says:
"[...] the persistence of post-apocalyptic scenarios (as well as many disaster movies) expresses a latent yearning for the destruction of the state apparatus and the abolition of private property. At a deeper psychological level, [...] the idea of roaming a depopulated earth rummaging for useful artifacts articulates the extent of our individual alienation in a thoroughly commodified society."
I think Chris is correct. I would add that the apocalyptic imagination is symptomatic of an inability to imagine a society different from ours. The Slavoj Zizek quote: "it is much easier for us to imagine the end of the world than a small change in the political system," is particularly apt. The future event horizon is so saturated by commodities, markets and debt (think about it, every 30 year mortgage is a financial spore which ensures that capitalism keeps blooming in our future) that it becomes increasingly more difficult to imagine a future that is different from the present. It becomes easy to think that some kind of Apocalyptic Event (AE) maybe our only way out.
But, much of this is tied to the continued survival of the capitalist system. Recent events, such as the financial crisis, put that survival in some doubt (I'm not counting out capitalism just yet though). Add to that the boundless optimism sparked by Obama's victory and all of a sudden you have a license to imagine a different future. I wonder what kind of Science-Fictions the current situation will spawn? Will the apocalyptic imagination be as prevalent? After all, an Apocalyptic Event (real or imagined) is often prerequisite for the dream of Utopia.
Posted by tomk at 01:32 AM | Comments (6)
November 27, 2007
Enigmatic Engineering - Yuichi Yokoyama's Visionary Architecture - Part 1
The most interesting comic-book of this years SPX was easily Yuichi Yokoyama’s New Engineering. I’ve been obsessing about Yokoyama’s work since I first saw random pages from his books posted online. Now that I actually got my hands New Engineering I’ve been concocting all kinds of strategies for reading and understanding this work. I decided to string together a bunch of notes, observations and theories I’ve accumulated over the last few of weeks into this loose essay. Hopefully this will make some sense to someone out there and they will find it useful in looking at Yuichi Yokoyama’s work. By no means do I think any of this is the definitive way of looking at this work. Picturebox plans on publishing further volumes in the near future, and that work may contradict some of things I say here.
I see the stories in New Engineering fall into two distinct,
though interconnected, categories. First, there are the ‘engineering’ stories,
where massive architectural projects are realized by gigantic machinery
with
some aid from the humans
(are they human?). The second category contains everything else. These
are stories of combat, athletics, warfare, fashion, etc. I’ll first
talk about the separate categories. Later I’ll attempt to make
some sort of unified statement on their relationship. First up is engineering.
Spread from Memorial To Newton (read from right to left).
Click to enlarge.
I. Enigmatic Engineering
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw pages from New
Engineering (the story with that title also shared by the
book) was J.G. Ballard’s
first novel The
Wind from Nowhere. In the book, the surface of the whole
planet is rapidly destroyed by a powerful wind, which increases in
force with deadly
regularity.
As the planet is literally sandblasted into a cue ball, and civilization
is on the brink of annihilation, a mysterious structure
is being built – in secret – by a megalomaniacal millionaire
Hardoon. The description of the building process has an uncanny resemblance
to the Yokoyama depicts the massive feats of engineering in his stories.
Here's a taste:
“The hill had gone, obliterated beneath the gigantic jaws of fleets of bulldozers, its matrix scooped out like the pulp of a fruit and carried away on the endless lines of trucks.
Below the sweeping beams of powerful spotlights, their arcs cutting through the whirling dust, huge pylons were rooted into the black earth, then braced back by hundreds of steel hawsers. In the intervals between them vast steel sheets were erected, welded together to form a continuous windshield a hundred feet high.
Even before the first screen was complete the first graders were moving into the sheltered zone behind it, sinking their metal teeth into the bruised earth, leveling out a giant rectangle. Steel forms were shackled into place and scores of black-suited workers moved rapidly like frantic ants, pouring in thousands of gallons of concrete,
As each layer annealed, the forms were unshackles and replaced further up the sloping flanks of the structure. First ten feet, then 20 and 30 feet high, it rose steadily into the dark night.”
Detail
from Memorial To Newton. "Like frantic ants..."
This is only the first of several similar passages in the novel. Ballard totally dispenses with a human perspective. The construction is apprehended from a series of unnatural vantage points that allow us to experience the massiveness of the endeavor. Humans at this scale are “like frantic ants.” Since Ballard doesn’t have any visuals accompanying his prose, we have to imagine the scene.With Yokoyama, we are provided with vague glimpses. Chris Lanier has a great description:
“Yokoyama uses off-panel space with a droll brilliance — machines that cut rock or drill into the earth appear from the edges of the panels, needing no plausible leverage or further apparatus to do their work. The mysterious engine that runs these tools is the invisible will of the artist; the drill bits and jackhammers are really extensions of Yokoyama’s pen. The people in these stories have far less presence than the machines — they come at the end of the narratives to make the finishing touches and voice their approval.”
What distinguishes New Engineering from The Wind from
Nowhere is that Ballard eventually tells us what is being built
and why: a gigantic
steel
pyramid
designed to withstand the force of the wind. Hardoon, the builder,
hopes not only to survive the catastrophe but thrive in it as well.
But his
motives aren’t
entirely clear and sometimes the reader is led to believe the pyramid
exist solely so Hardoon can comfortably sit in his steel cage, watch
the world turn to dust
and listen to the savage howl of the hurricane. Hardoon is a typically
Ballardian character who transforms and adapts as best he can to
circumstances on the ground
(disasters in this case and in his early novels, but in his later
work modernity and technology are enough). We encounter these characters
in what we recognize
as ‘our’ world, but they already belong to another, hidden
world, emerging in our midst like one of Italo Calvino's Invisible
Cities. And with the new world come
new psycho(patho)logies. This is what’s missing from Yokoyama’s
structures. The author consciously avoids depicting the psychology of his
world. In the interview that is published in New Engineering Yokoyama
says that he wants to create
“ Characters without psychology - I am interested neither in the feelings of people nor in their emotions. I examine only what is to the eye. My characters do not work towards the satisfaction of a collective or individual interest, but to achieve a great goal, to achieve a great mission. ”
|
These “great goals” and “great missions” are opaque to us. They seem absurd, strange and bizarre.Again Chris Lanier:
“ Its four stories show the construction of strange monuments and spaces. They describe huge mobilizations of resources for apparently useless ends. One “public work” is a fluorescent-lit room, set into a boulder, positioned in front of an absolutely straight (and also artificially constructed) canal. Another is a glass room, outfitted with chairs and a floor of Astroturf, set under the surface of a man-made lake. These constructions are not only absurd in themselves, the methods of construction are entirely impractical. The third “public work” is an artificial mountain, assembled from boulders that are dropped from airplanes, then coated with glue flowing from a single hose.”
If Yokoyama wants to banish psychology from his pages, we as readers want to put it right back. Because we lack direct knowledge of Yokoyama’s world we proceed archeologically and anthropologically. We compare our world, or the artifacts of our world to the ones depicted in New Engineering in an attempt to excavate the smallest bits of meaning. Chris Lanier finds similarities between New Engineering and the kinetic architecture of superhero comics. James Benedict Brown can’t help but wonder about the ‘why,’ ‘how’ and ‘where’ of the New Engineering projects and compares their depiction to the sterility, purity and disconnection of contemporary mainstream architectural photography.
Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton, by Boulle.
Indeed, Yokoyama’s world is close enough to the one we live in to make direct comparisons irresistible. In the “Memorial to Newton” sequence Yokoyama provides us with a clue as to purpose or origin of these enigmatic works. The comic shows crowds of people irresistibly drawn to climb the immense Memorial to Newton structure. This is the only building that has any reality in our world and can be looked at as a key of sorts. It refers to the unbuilt and imaginary Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton by the 18th Century visionary French architect Etienne Louis Boulle. Reading New Engineering comics I couldn’t help but think of the endless variety of massive and visionary architecture that has been built or un-built in the course of human history. Starting with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Egyptian Pyramids, Roman Aqueducts and Temples, the great Gothic Cathedrals, the visionary paper architecture of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, The Crystal Palace, to the massive and often baffling projects of today’s starchitects that are going up all over the world. The list goes on.
The Pyramids of Las Vegas and the wonders of Dubai.
Many of these structures, especially the ancient ones, are as unfamiliar to us as Yokoymas. What do we make of the Great Pyramids? The Easter Island sculptures? After centuries of trying to ‘solve’ the riddle of the Great Pyramid we’re really no closer to understanding the psychology of the builders.
 Like frantic ants… to the top! |
Perhaps the closest relatives of Yokoyama’s context-less plastic mega-structures can be found in places like Dubai (or Las Vegas, etc). Dubai is a veritable laboratory of modern architectural gigantism. Artificial islands and archipelagos in the shape of palm trees or the world itself, rotating skyscrapers, tallest towers in the world, these are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Ostensibly we think we understand these structures. They are supposed to be engines of economics growth, steel and concrete representations of financial capital.When we look at them in the larger context of globalization, global warming, war, and peak oil they seem baffling and foreign, but they retain an irresistible and seductive pull. We are drawn not just to what these structures represent, but also to their sheer physicality. In fact climbing great monuments of civilization is one of the great past times of today (and yesterday). People will travel thousands of miles for the privilege of climbing not only the Great Pyramids, but also the pyramids of Las Vegas. What has been the initial impulse of the many people who first encounter the Great Pyramid of Egypt? To climb it!
Part 2 coming soon.
Posted by tomk at 02:04 AM | Comments (2)
October 26, 2007
Empty Closets
I just found that (the excellent comics academic) Jeet Heer has a blog. Good news!
His latest post is a brief history of classics scholarship. He demonstrates it to be in large part the sublimation of hidden homoerotic desires into scholarship. But, after a couple millennia of Christian (and Jewish and Islamic) prohibitions of same-sex desire, the closet has been thrown open and the repressed sexual energies have dissipated. Are we at an end of the classics now that repressed desire is no longer channelled into mastering difficult texts? (This is a very truncated go read the whole thing and come back).
Jeet states in his post that we got the classics from the Greeks. Via Michel Foucault we are told that the Greeks didn't have the same hang ups about same-sex-sex as we do. The dynamics of sexual relations were dictated by active or passive categories, not male or female ones. This maybe a minor quibble, but how did the Greeks leave us with all those great classics if they weren't trapped in the closet? Clearly sexual sublimation finds other channels. Classics scholars maybe (largely) out the closet, but we're not yet in a perfect age of desublimation. Perhaps this somewhat misanthropic quote from another Frenchman, Michel Houellebecq, points towards something: "Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those a little fed up with the world." (from H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life) Lets hope most theoretically-no-longer-sexually-repressed classics scholars are still a bit fed up with the world.
Posted by tomk at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)