Net-Materials

The behavioural patterns of the rural and the city have now been reversed. Rural land is now meticulously organised, perpetually executed/exploited beyond what could have been imagined when the industrialisation of agricultural land began. Today, as Jameson (2004, pp.49) puts it, ‘it is the city and the urban that grows wild like the state of nature… whereas it is nature which has, in late capitalism and the green revolution--but perhaps all the way back to the original neolithic revolution itself--been subject to careful planning and engineering.’ Thus, it is not ironic that there increasingly exists places, at the centres of cities, that ‘appear’ as explicit cases of ‘non-design’, or deliberate dilapidation or as manifestations of what Lacaton & Vassal might say as spaces that are ‘better-left-alone’. It is strange though that this phenomena sometimes represents the pertinent sites on any tourists’ agenda, for example Berlin. Yet when you look at it closely, these contradictory territories make a mockery of places in which neglect of a central is the only answer to solve other real and pressing economic problems. I can’t help but see a link here between these (advanced capitalistic) spaces of ‘planned-neglect’ (see images below) and the way Hollywood stars ‘dress-down’ and don a pair of jeans like something miners would wear in Harlan County, USA, Come Back, Africa or from deep down the limitless caverns of Coober Pedy. Why then--even in cities where tourism represents a large portion of its own economic condition--do these sites remain as ‘non-designed’? Similarly what motives do the Hollywood mega-stars have to ‘dress-down’ to appear more say ‘of the working class’? Only in this highly commodified landscape/existence we live in, can the ‘non-designed’ be itself a commodity: it represents the frontier of the commodity spectrum which, after so much market/spatial diversification, can the mimetic spatial/bodily accoutrements of poor/decay become accepted (like the Beuysian quest for a Gesamtkunstwerk).

Fashion trend-setters, West Virginia’s Finest.

Stars in Miner’s Jeans. Incidently the jeans are put through a labour-intensive “enzyme wash process, giving them the authentic look and feel of the jeans”.

Advanced capitalistic space of planned-neglect 1: Forte Prenestino, Rome.

Advanced capitalistic space of planned-neglect 1: Forte Prenestino, Rome.

Advanced capitalistic space of planned-neglect 2: Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin. Left: Tacheles three years after the fall of European communism. Right: Now. Coincidently, this site is off Oranienburger Straße in Mitte (the bearer of Berlin’s tourism core).

Advanced capitalistic space of planned-neglect 3: Caledonian Lane, Melbourne. Left: This highly contradictory space at once appears as urban residue, a site of state/commercial neglect, however this area is directly abutting Melbourne’s ‘main street’ and serves as a cove for a muddle of those whom determine the covert embourgeoisement of the space itself. Right: The new renovation of Myer department store next to Caledonian Lane. The project promises a “state-of-the-art shopping environment, inspired by some of the world’s great retailers in London, New York and Paris”. This is the architectural moment Caledonian Lane seeks to resist but actively participates in as it struggles to ‘appear’ critical of its captialistic subsumption.

Bonus (irresistible) image:

Marxian-capitalism-space-vortex: circulation | money-as-engine-fluid (credit-as-nitrogen-oxide). The finiteness of space = maxed-out credit-card. An early artist’s impression of the renovation of Myer department store. A romantic Koolhaas (2004) on ‘Junkspace’--his self-exclusionary rationale for architecture’s defecations--“…enforced derives, we meekly submit to grotesque journeys past perfume, asylum seeker, building site, underwear, oysters, pornography, cell phone - incredible adventures for the brain, the eye, the nose, the tongue, the womb, the testicles…facism minus dictator…”

Jameson, F., 2004. “The Politics of Utopia” in New Left Review 25(272), pp.35–54 Koolhaas, Rem, 2004. “Junkspace” in Content. Köln: Taschen. pp. 162-171.