Revisiting Constant´s New Babylon. City Surfaces and Saturation
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Abstract
Citizens in post-industrial societies are divided into art makers and art owners, reified by certain mechanisms, specifically, the capitalist co-optation of visual culture, which tacitly reminds us of the goods we have yet to consume or the ideals we do not reflect. City surfaces are saturated with images that conflate the spatial and temporal dimensions of consumption. Such a class fracture between makers and owners reveals itself in language and in space; the way we describe “decoration” as an additive gesture, or refer to craft projects as “hobbies” and the way we schedule time to “visit art” at museums. Under what conditions could art and life absolutely coalesce? How could citizens generate and own all visual culture? By revisiting Constant Nieuwenhuys’s New Babylon project, this paper will address the city as a frame for creative adaptation over time. Saturation can actually serve as a radical architectural tool to repair dissociated citizenship. New Babylon envisioned uninterrupted but ornate processes of urban drift that were closely linked with Guy Debord and L’Internationale Situationniste. This demands we ask questions about superficiality as well as the responsibilities for architecture in future societies and to interpret the surface as a crucial site for revolution.
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