From the notebook of the Bleek archives in which the above rock-painting reproduction appears: "A Bushman said of the picture, ‘Ostriches, three black
males, two blue females. The 'nusa Bushmen, not the “kham Bushmen, are
said to hunt in ostrich skins’.
In his book Stow says, ‘A number of disguises were constantly employed
by the old Bushmen hunters to facilitate approach to the objects of
their attack. When taking the field against the elephant, the
hippopotamus or rhinoceros, they appeared with the head and hide of a
hartebeest over their shoulders, and whilst advancing towards their
quarry through the long grass would carefully mimic all the actions of
the animal they wished to represent.
They appeared again in the spoils of a blesbok, with the head and wings
of a vulture, the striped hide of a zebra, or they might be seen
stalking in the guise of an ostrich."
SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun.
Memories of a way of life now past, based on self-sufficient units in direct intercourse with wild nature - the rural homestead of Southern Africa whose autonomy was long ago broken ('one is no longer ever alone' said the Xhosa-speaking Thembu elders in the middle of the last century), the hacienda of America, the family which in Europe, Africa and Asia passed down peasant & artisan trades from generation to generation - captivate the living, condemned as they are to struggle for survival in an alien landscape populated by gaudy simulacra, with the image of an ancient elegance and self-possession so cruelly denied to them. Modern society, devoid of any culture of its own, inevitably strives to recapture ghosts of the past, to reproduce through electro-mechanical means scenes of imaginary halcyon days wherein 'man dwells poetically with the earth'. Captivated by a static image, but nevertheless forced to exist in an everyday reality whose concrete foundations are more like quick-sand than they have ever been, the people of planet earth turn their lives and their environments into farcical re-runs, lurid re-enactments in a ridiculous documentary hatched in the worm-ridden brain of a corpse. There can no longer be any comfortable home in the world. The hacienda does not exist.
The hacienda must be built. This is what has become of current attempts: the fence-less gardens that were once home to our ancestors are bulldozed and paved, only to pop up again in caricature throughout suburbs dotted with green deserts (known, tellingly, as 'turf') embalmed in poison to preserve their brilliant colours. Thus the centre of the green-washed built-environment takes the form of a void (recently this tendency has been expressed even more starkly as landlords increasingly pave over their lawns with concrete, gravel, bricks or tiles). A few trees, flowers, maybe some veggies on the periphery. Surrounding everything, hedges & electric fences to keep out the neighbors. The lawns themselves are the product of an earlier epoch wherein they formed one essential component of thoroughly thought-out landscape-gardens designed to induce various affective states in those who rambled through their many verdant crevices. Such gardens required acres to achieve their desirable effects; when transplanted into the fenced-off plot of turf that has colonised the leafy suburbs of the city, they produce little more than the impatience and dissatisfaction which accompanies all paltry and mean-spirited things. It is small wonder that the inhabitants of urban areas associate nature with boredom and repetition.
We are bored in the wilderness, we are bored in the city. Everyone wavers between the emotionally still-alive past and the already dead future.
We don’t intend to prolong the mechanistic civilizations and frigid architecture
that ultimately lead to boring leisure.
We propose to invent new, changeable decors.
* * *
Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons by air
conditioning. Night and summer are losing their charm and dawn is disappearing. The urban
population think they have escaped from cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding
expansion of their dream life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are
realized in it.
The latest technological developments would make possible the individual’s
unbroken contact with cosmic reality while eliminating its disagreeable aspects. Stars and
rain can be seen through glass ceilings. The mobile house turns with the sun. Its sliding
walls enable vegetation to invade life. Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in
the morning and return to the forest in the evening.
Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating
reality and engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of plastic articulation and
modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a modulation producing influences in
accordance with the eternal spectrum of human desires and the progress in
fulfilling them.
The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time
and space. It will be both a means of knowledge and a means of action.
Architectural complexes will be modifiable. Their appearance will change totally
or partially in accordance with the will of their inhabitants.
A new architecture can express nothing less than a new
civilization (it is clear that there has been neither civilization nor
architecture for centuries, but only experiments, most of which were failures;
we can speak of Gothic architecture, but there is no Marxist or capitalist
architecture, though these two systems are revealing similar tendencies and
goals).
Anyone thus has the right to ask us on what vision of
civilization we are going to found an architecture. I briefly sketch the points
of departure for a civilization:
— A new conception of space (a religious or nonreligious
cosmogony).
— A new conception of time (counting from zero, various
modes of temporal development).
— A new conception of behaviors (moral, sociological,
political, legal; economy is only a part of the laws of behavior accepted by a
civilization).
Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and incontrovertible mythical
exemplars. The appearance of the notion of relativity in the modern
mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL aspect of the next civilization
(although I’m not satisfied with that word; I mean that it will be more
flexible, more “playful”).
On the bases of this mobile civilization, architecture will, at least
initially, be a means of experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying life,
with a view to an ultimate mythic synthesis.
* * *
Guy Debord has already pointed out the construction of situations as being one of the
fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be founded. This need for total
creation has always been intimately associated with the need to play
with architecture, time and space. One example will suffice to demonstrate this
— a leaflet distributed in the street by the Palais de Paris (manifestations of
the collective unconscious always correspond to the affirmations of creators):
BYGONE NEIGHBORHOODS
Grand Events
PERIOD MUSIC
LUMINOUS EFFECTS
Grand Events
PERIOD MUSIC
LUMINOUS EFFECTS
PARIS BY NIGHT
C O M P L E T E L Y A N I M A T E D
The Court of Miracles: an impressive 300-square-meter reconstruction of a Medieval neighborhood, with rundown houses inhabited by robbers, beggars, bawdy wenches, all subjects of the frightful KING OF THIEVES, who renders justice from his lair.
The Tower of Nesle: The sinister Tower profiles its imposing mass against the somber, dark-clouded sky. The Seine laps softly. A boat approaches. Two assassins await their victim. . . .(2)
Other examples of this desire to construct situations can be
found in the past. Edgar Allan Poe and his story of the man who devoted his wealth to
the construction of landscapes [“The Domain of Arnheim”]. Or the paintings of Claude Lorrain.
Many of the latter’s admirers are not quite sure to what to attribute the charm
of his canvases. They talk about his portrayal of light. It does indeed have a
rather mysterious quality, but that does not suffice to explain these paintings’
ambience of perpetual invitation to voyage. This ambience is provoked by
an unaccustomed architectural space. The palaces are situated right on
the edge of the sea, and they have “pointless” hanging gardens whose vegetation
appears in the most unexpected places. The incitement to drifting is provoked by
the palace doors’ proximity to the ships.
De Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He was grappling
with the problems of absences and presences in time and space.
We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the time of a first visit
can, by its absence during subsequent visits, provoke an indefinable impression: as a
result of this sighting backward in time, the absence of the object becomes
a presence one can feel. More precisely: although the quality of the impression generally
remains indefinite, it nevertheless varies with the nature of the removed object and the
importance accorded it by the visitor, ranging from serene joy to terror. (It is of no
particular significance that in this specific case memory is the vehicle of these
feelings; I only selected this example for its convenience.)
A literal illustration of this is seen in the surrealist technique of outagraphy: a photograph in which the subject, what the photograph is "of," is cut out. Writ large onto the surface of the city, one could imagine the gradual removal from the Cape Town CBD of various landmarks: one week the Castle disappears, the next week the Golden Acre centre, the next the Parliament buildings, then the Company Gardens, the Grand Parade, and so on. A variation would be the return of such landmarks the week after they disappear at the same time as as new targets are removed. Even at a smaller scale, such a method could produce startling effects. An interesting illustration of this is the street in Khayelitsha which leads to Monwabisi beach. Here, on the sandstone cliffs which greet the pounding breakers twelve meters bellow, the tarmac trails off suddenly as a ragged-toothed drop into the ocean: the road has literally been eaten away by the wind whose continuous action erodes the cliffs themselves and imposes its bite-marks on anything built on them. The vertiginous feeling produced by this precipitous absence is not easily shaken off.
In De Chirico’s paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates
a richly filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future possibilities of such architecture and its influence on the masses. We can have nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such blueprints to its so-called museums.
De Chirico could have been given free reign over Place de la Concorde and its
Obelisk, or at least commissioned to design the gardens that “adorn” several
entrances to the capital.
This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities specifically established for this purpose, cities bringing together — in addition to the facilities necessary for basic comfort and security — buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing desires, forces and events, past, present and to come. A rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis, into architectural expression becomes more and more urgent as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities specifically established for this purpose, cities bringing together — in addition to the facilities necessary for basic comfort and security — buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing desires, forces and events, past, present and to come. A rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis, into architectural expression becomes more and more urgent as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
Everyone will, so to speak, live in their own personal “cathedrals.” There
will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one
cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to travelers.
This project could be compared with the Chinese and Japanese gardens that
create optical illusions — with the difference that those
gardens are not designed to be lived in all the time — or with the ridiculous
labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the entry to which (height of
absurdity, Ariadne(3) unemployed) is the sign: No playing in the labyrinth.
This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary assemblage of castles,
grottos, lakes, etc. It would be the baroque stage of urbanism considered as a means of
knowledge. But this theoretical phase is already outdated. We know that a modern building
could be constructed which would have no resemblance to a medieval castle but which could
preserve and enhance the Castle poetic power (by the conservation of a strict
minimum of lines, the transposition of certain others, the positioning of openings, the
topographical location, etc.).
The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings
that one encounters by chance in everyday life.
Bizarre Quarter — Happy Quarter (specially reserved for
habitation) — Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children) — Historical
Quarter (museums,
schools) — Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) — Sinister Quarter,
etc. And an
Astrolarium which would group plant species in accordance with the relations they
manifest with the stellar rhythm, a Planetary Garden along the lines the astronomer Thomas
wants to establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the inhabitants a
consciousness of the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to
have somewhere to live in peace — I’m thinking here of Mexico and of a
principle of cruelty in innocence that appeals more to me every day.
The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for
those ill-reputed neighborhoods full of sordid dives and unsavory
characters that many
peoples once possessed in their capitals: they symbolized all the evil
forces of life. The
Sinister Quarter would have no need to harbor real dangers, such as
traps, dungeons or
mines. It would be difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing
whistles, alarm
bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures, power-driven
mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles),
and as poorly lit at night as it was blindingly lit during the day by an intensive use of
reflection. At the center, the “Square of the Appalling Mobile.” Saturation of
the market with a product causes the product’s market value to fall: thus, as they
explored the Sinister Quarter, children would learn not to fear the
anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by them.
The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS DRIFTING.(4) The
changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in total
disorientation.
Couples will no longer pass their nights in the home where they live and
receive guests, which is nothing but a banal social custom. The chamber
of love will be more distant from the center of the city: it will naturally
recreate for the partners a sense of exoticism(5) in a locale less open to light, more
hidden, so as to recover the atmosphere of secrecy. The opposite tendency,
seeking a center of thought, will proceed through the same technique.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
The Grand Fergana Canal national construction project, USSR, 1939
[TRANSLATOR’S NOTES]
2. The Court of Miracles
and The Tower of Nesle: allusions to two Medieval tales dramatized,
respectively, by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.
3. Ariadne: woman in Greek mythology who
gave Theseus the thread enabling him to find his way out of the Minotaur’s
labyrinth.
4.
DRIFTING: Elsewhere at this site, the original French term dérive
is used. See Debord’s Theory of the Dérive.
5.
exoticism: literally excentricité,
which in French can mean either eccentricity or outlying location.
