I posted this article on the 15th October; with hindsight it is possible that I wrote with too much haste about articles I had recently read and so thought I would correct this oversight.
There is a tendency when reading articles through the means of the internet, distanced from the physical publications in which they were originally printed, that not enough consideration is given to them as they become part of the cyber space of disposable literature.
I am including the first chapter, as it were, to see how my attitude can be progressed with time.
'What is the reality to which this crisis is spectacle?’ - Alain Badiou
Interview with Zaha Hadid - Jonathon Meades for Intelligent Life
On first glance there is little to link Alain Badiou and Jonathon Meades. The articles they have written target different audiences, were originally written in different langauges and consider different topics. Both however are a discourse on modern day life.
A financial, all encompassing, crisis and a female architect marking the planet in her own manner.
Alain Badiou, author, journalist, and political commentator writes of the financial crisis, his piece conveying the sense of abstracted reality associated by many with this 'spectacle'. A cinematic metaphor running through his ironic view of the disaster, it is tongue in cheek writing with Badiou appreciating the far reaching consequences and opprtunities that the financial collapse had and arguably still has. An opportunity for people to recapture reality.
Jonathon Meades' article is an interesting foil to Badiou's. It is about an individual who is very present - not simply a spectator; her work part of the fabric of modern day life. It can be argued however that it is also an article which suggests a particular brand of architecture that is distanced from reality - similar to the financial crisis.
Chpt 2
In retrospect it should be stated that Alain Badiou’s article is an incredibly interesting and thought provoking piece. It considers as previously stated a very specific moment in history, printed in Le Monde, in a week when the then French premier warned that the world was ‘on the edge of the abyss’, the week that an emergency summit of EU leaders in Paris was called to establish collective ways of restoring confidence in a failing, and flailing, financial market. Badiou takes no prisoners with his attitude. It is an article which is possibly short of a closing scene where a flag flies behind the ‘saviours’ of the free world - or maybe one which should be accompanied by a series of Gerald Scarf illustrations . It is nevertheless a challenging article and one which I suspect may be interpreted in a variety of ways; mine is an opinion at this moment in time.
It is possible that it is not an article about a financial crisis at all - the crisis is merely a useful back drop which may be used as a platform to discuss the apathy of modern day life. Badiou writes of the ’rich, their servants, their parasites, those who envy them and those who acclaim them’ but not of the protestors; of the spectators not the fighters. Yes, Badiou does write about the main characters who are involved with the banking crisis but not as worthy protagonists - more like puppets, controlled. There seems to be a covert point to the article about the need for the public to become involved, active with life. The cinema metaphor one could view as an encouragement to leave the auditorium, as watching a film does not require societal participation.
Admittedly whilst reading this article I could not determine whether Badiou was in the audience with us or whether he was observing us from the projector room. As mentioned this article originally appeared in Le Monde, a French newspaper, ‘who serve[s] these governments’. It may be for this reason that the article is never explicit, suggestive and provoking yes but never overtly proactive journalism. Neither does Badiou alienate his audience by suggesting that it is life that needs bailing out, but I think that maybe he implies it.
Jonathon Meades’ article is still, as before, an interview with Zaha Hadid. Like Badiou’s piece it is an article displaying clever journalism and one which may be interpreted in a variety of ways. It was published in ‘Intelligent Life’, a quarterly magazine from ‘The Economist’, and not in an architectural journal. This is possibly critical as it gives Meades a ‘fair’ platform on which to disseminate a character. I suspect no English architectural journal would have published this article. It is also written by an individual who is not an architect and so not blinkered by mystique, but maybe this fact also causes a callousness on the part of the interviewer. In many ways it made me think of a game of chess or, strangely, a pack of lions by a watering hole occasionally yawning and bearing their teeth, leaving the observer to wonder when, or if, they may pounce. Is it an article about superiority, an outsider trying to penetrate a ‘smugly hermetic world’. The hermit, hermetic. Regrettably it is an article which does little to open up architecture for the masses. Hadid’s comment that she is actually an artist seems appropriate when many people today claim to have difficulty responding to art. Therefore does this article also carry a covert message that ‘normal’ people are unable to respond to architecture as it has been removed from the public consciousness by individuals who refuse to speak frankly about their work? An art form with too much of an aura surrounding it, where even those at the centre seem vague about the discipline.
Again just a thought.
