AURELI, Pier Vittorio - A Teologia Da Tábua Rasa (LOG)

5/19/2018 AURELI, Pier Vittorio - A Teologia Da T bua Rasa (LOG)

1/11

7>

7447

4599


2/11

EDITOR

Cynthia Davidson

MANAGING

EDITOR

David Huber

ASSISTANT

EDITOR

Luke Studebaker

EDITORIAL INTERN

Marielle Suba

PROTAGONISTS

Denise Bratto n

Tina

Di Carlo

Catherine Ingraham

Manuel Orazi

Julie Rose

Sarah Whiting

WWW.AN.YCORP.COM

This year promises to be a good one for architecture, in part because

exhibitions on Henri Labrouste and Le Corbusier are coming to the

Museum of Modern Art, and because og will

mark

its tenth anniver

sary with a September conference, called ln Pursuit of Architecture,

also at MoMA. Together these events represent architectural thinking

and practice across three centuries. On March 28, MoMA will stage

a Labrouste symposium to explore

how

aspects of his 19th-century

work are relevant in the 21st. One

of

those surely needs to

be

the cre

ation

of

ennobling public space in the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve

and the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris, which opened the doors

of

knowledge to all French citizens, a society then in the throes of radi

cal change.

The role

of

architecture in the making

of

cities

is

a subject

of

constant debate. Thisis particularly 50

in

Berlin, which was the focus

of the Achtung Berlin symposium at the

Yale

School of Architecture

in mid February. Addressing an overflow audience, historian K urt

Forster spoke

of

his adul t love for Berlin, and how a city grows in

creasjngly attractive as we recognize its faults. Perhaps here he meant

its dark side. Certainly the Berlin

of

national socialism,

of

post-World

War II destrU/;tion and occupation, and then

of

Cold War division,

was unique in the 20th century. But

as

Rem Koolhaas later pointed

out (via satellite), the fall in 1989 of the wall dividing a democratic

government from a communist one was also the beginning

of

the

1055 ofBerlin's very aura. Once the barrier between the Brandenburg

Gate and the Tiergarten was toppled, two vast public spaces were re

united, and city plannerswent to work transforming Potsdamer Platz

with corporate logos and Pariser platz with oflicious national embas

sies. For wh en the people

of

Berlin, East an d West, climbed the Berlin

Wall, they also struck down ideology. Twenty-four years later, Berlin

is

a city seemingly striving for a populist equilibrium.

As

the ongoing

Humboldt Forum project attests, architecture in Berlin no longer has

symbolic powerj rebuilding the historic baroque Berliner Stadtschloss

on the site of the former GDR's glazed Palast der Republik strips Ber

lin not only

of

ts divided history, but also of the possibilities

of

a new

architectural symbol going forward.

There were no conclusions to be had at the Berlin conference,

nor should there have been. Cities are perpetual works in progress,

both overcoming and succumbing to the architectures and popula

tions that constitute their being. Today the challenge

is

the politically

correct, populist urban thinki ng, which,

in

its ambition to be all

things t all people, teeters on producing a banality worse than bore

dom.

Too

often this process only leads to the usual private develop

ment of homogenized landscapes for a heterog eneous populatio n,

bundled into 50 many glazed towers and brick bungalows as to lose its

differences.

Is

that reall y a city we can love? -

CD

Log 27 Copyright 2013 Anyone Corporation. Ali Rights Reserved.

ISSN: 1547-4690. ISBN: 978-0-98l6491-5-1. Printed in USA. Log is published

three times a year y Anyone Corporation a nonprofit corporation in the State of ew

York

with

editorial and business oflices at

41

West 25th Street, 11th Boor,

New

York,

NY

10010. Subscripcion for 1 ssues: $l6

US;

$40 CAN/ MEX; $72 Internacional. Distributed

by Ubiquity CUS) and Idea Books Cworldwide). Single issues

are 15

plus shipping. The

opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the protagonists

or

of he board of

the Anyone Corporation. Send inquiries letters and submissions to [email protected].

Log

WINTERjSPRING

2013

Marc Anglil

Car:;

Sirei r

Pier Vittorio Aureli

Tom Daniell

Malal? Helmy

Timothy Hyde

Tom

Kovac

Chri rtoph

a

Kumpu rch

Marl? Morri r

Emmanuel Petit

Franoi r

Roche

julieRo re

Peter Trummer

Mechtild Widrich

Lebbeu r Wood r

Hajime Yat rul?a

General Ob rervation r:

Cover

Stor:;:

7

87

111

21

105

67

43

137

128

10

97

59

51

81

144-

3

Observations on architecture and the

contemporary

city

Cingapura: Cities in

Circulation

The

Theology of Tabula

Rasa: Walter

Benjamin

and

Architecture in

the

Age of

Precarity

Nothing Serious

The

stupid matter,

or, some

thoughts

that rhyme and don't

Piles, Puddles, and other

Architectural

Irritants

100YC [100-Year

City]

The First and the Last

Two Hundred and

Eighty-Eight

Lines

Projects

for the Post-Ironic City

Le pari(s)

de BKK

Hong

Kong's Shifting Grounds

The City as an

Object:

Thoughts on

the Form of the City

Spatial Implications of the Monument to Freeedom and

Unity

in

Leipzig

Light

Pavilion

Urban Project as Thought

Experiment

On urban models 42 On SimCity

50

On hugeness

58

On

orientation

80

On

micro-housing

96

Maribor

Mutations

Postcard image:

Hernan

Diaz Alonso

/

Xefirotarch,

2012.


3/11

10 . Artemy Magun,

The

Work ofL eisure:

Th

e Figure

of

Emp'Y Time

in

the Poetics

of

Holderlin a

nd

Mandelshtam ,

MLNl18 .S

( 2003

):

11S2- 1176. Project MUSE,]anu ary

2013.

See muse.jhu.edu.

11. Ali, Sons of eaches .

12 . Georges Bataille, a reader

of

Sade:

On cnjoyment

as

an expression

of

force,

Iodepaper.pdf.

MALAK HELMY

IS AN ARTIST

BASED

lN CAIRO .

lN

2011 SHE WORKED

lN

ALEXANDRIA ON A SERIES

OF

PROJECTS

CALLED CORDS FROM

TH

E

TED TE

AN ONGOING ANALYSIS

OF THE

BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL

RHYTHMS OF

A

SITE OF LEISURE ON

THE EGYPTIAN

COAST

and being - a pause of l o k ~ d time, a caesura - a pause in a

rhythm on the threshold of which meaning

is produced. ln

this caesura one comes to know themselves amidst this bein g

outside of time - in a momentary pause - it is the source of

labor, the

birth

of meaning.

10

And he who then becomes

Maestro can

control

that meaning.

handed the baton lik-e a Maestro

to

wave and direct the

tempo

rhythm

nuances

and dynamics of Eppt spoliticai

orchestra

that

plays

to

an

8J

-million strong theatre.

11

8.

FORCE (AN

EXALTATION)

ln this sense

of

being

overwhelmed

with the stream

of

energy,

united

with

nature's principIe, one encounters enjoyment on

the brink

of

the disappearance

of

their subject into this force.

t is perhaps

the

experience

of the

sublime in which the subject

is

overwnelmed

by

an

objectj it - the subject - dissolves and

becomes one

with

the object in a force

of

exaltation. ln this

world of

relations, to enjoy is not a transitive ver b, he says, in

which one enjoys the other

or

the

thing,

it is

another

relation,

it is beingpossessed

by

the force that creates enjoyment, the

pleasure of disappearing into the stream of the indifferent,

inhuman

object,

of

a unified stream that is

shared

and

contin

ues,

that

always was,

and that commandsY

110

Pier Vittorio Aureli

The Theology

o Tabula Rasa:

Walter Benjalllin

And Architecture in

The

Age

of

Precarity

Since the 2007 economic recession, the culture

of

architecture

has

witnessed the

rise of activism

and

participatory practices.

with

the 1990s avant-garde architects on the decline

of

po

liticaI correctness, we are witnessing a new wave

of

socially

concerned architecture

. Symposiums, exhibitions, biennials,

magazines,

and

journals have amplified this phenomenon by

promoting

new

ways

of practicing architecture that

invest

design

with

a social

and

politicaI missiono

The

new genera

tion

of

young

architects feels

the urge

to focus

not on

aes

thetic and formal

concerns, but on

the

improvement

of our

urban

condition. ln conferences

and

discussions

about

ar

chitecture

one often hears

the

lament that in

the

past twenty

years architects have

overindulged

in useless

formal

acrobat

ics

and

irrelevant theoretical discussions and shown little

responsibility toward issues

such

as public space,

housing,

and other

socially

oriented

topics. paradoxically,

while the

recession is forcing many people to live in very precarious

conditions, many young, socially concerned architects see

the crisis as an opportunity for their creative acts. The crisis

is forcing the architectural discipline to be more inventive,

more

disposable,

more

astute

in

finding adhoc solutions for

our crumbling urban condition.

lndeed, there is a serious link b etween crisis and creativity.

The human is distinct from other species precisely because

of its creative impulse. This impulse is triggered by

humans'

lack of specialized instincts

and permanent

inner feeling of

not

being

at

home.

This

requires humans

to adapt to

their

environmental situations, even the most hostile. The creative

act is thus

the

act of

making

a

world

, that is, making

acceptable our

own living conditions

in any given

situation.

111


4/11

1

See Stefano Boeri, Farep u

con

meno

ideeper riprogettare i'Italia

(MiIan:

Saggiatore, 2012).

This

kind of

creativity

is precisely

what

capitalism has

seized as its main

labor-power.

From industrial to

postin

dustrial production, the

infinite resourcefulness

of the

creative subject is

the

fundamentallabor-subjectivity

exploited by capital. Economic crises and recessions are

moments

in which this infinite resourcefulness, the

urge

to

adapt

to new (and often more adverse) conditions, is

radicalIy augmented. ln this context popular slogans such

as

Doing

more with less,,,1 recently laynched by a famous

engaged Italian architect-cum-politician in order to

promote anticonsumerist culture, are involuntarily ironic

when used to define our new postrecession ethos. Doing

morewith

less is precisely what capital demands from us:

morf productivity and less welfare,

more

creativity and

less social security, because creativity becomes more produc

tive when our given conditions grow harder and

more

unstable.

The new socially

oriented

architectural

activism

poses a

dilemma

that

cannot

be avoided. Are these

new

practices

addressing the

possibility

of radical change

or

are they simply

confirming,

and to a

certain

extent

subli

mating,

the most

regressive effects

of the

crisis?

It

is useful

to

approach

this

dilemma

through Walter

Benjamin's

ethical

project,

which

has

found

its

most radical

formulation in

two short essays: The

Destructive

Character and

Experience

and Poverty.

1.

ln 1931 Walter Benjamin wrote a short piece titled The

Destructive Character. This smalI

Denk.bild

was written in

one of

the

worst periods in German and European history:

after the crisis of 1929, when European fascism was on the

rise.

Benjamin

writes:

It cou/d happen to Iomeone look.ing back. over hiI life that he real

ized that almoIt ali the deeper obligationI he had endured in iu

courIe originated in people who everyone agreed

had

the

traiu

of

a ((deItructive character. He would Itumb le on thiI fact one day,

perhapI by chance,

and

the heavier the Ihock. dealt to him, the

better hiI chanceI of repreIenting the dutructive character.

The

dutructive

character k.nowI only one watchword: mak.e

room. nd only one activity: clearing away. HiI need

for

freIh

air and

open pace

iI

Itronger than any hatred.

The

dutructive

character

iI

young

and

cheerful. For deItroy

ing rejuvenateI, becauIe

it

clearI

awt{)

the traceI of our own age;

it

cheerI, becaUIe everything cleared away meanI

to

the de

Itroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, o ut of

hiI

own

2

Log27

2. Walter Benjamin, The Destructive

Character,

in

Walter

e

njam

in

SeJ

c

ted

WritingI, Volume

2,

pari

2, 19J1

-

19J4, ed.

Michael WJennings et ai

,

trans. Rodney

Livingstone ( Cambridge:

The

Belknap Press

ofHarvard

University Press , 200S), 541

l. See Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin

( London: Reaktion Books, 2007) .

condition. Really, only the

inIight

into how radically the world iI

Iimplified when tuted or

iu worthineu for

deItruction leadI

to

JUch an Apolionian image of the deItroyer.

ThiI iI

the great bond

embracing

and

unifying

ali

that exiIu. It

iI

a Iight

that

aifordI

the deItructive character a pectacle of

deeput

harmony.

The

dutructive

character iI alwaYI blithely at work..

It

iI

Nature that dictatu hiI

tempo, indirectly at leaIt, for he mUIt

forutall her. OtherwiIe Ihe will tak.e over the deItruction

herIelf

The

dutructive

character Ieu no image hovering before

him. He haI few needI,

and

the leaIt of hem

iI to k.now

what will

replace

what haI

been dutroyed.

FirIt

of

ali, for a moment

at

leaIt, empty pace - the place where the th ing Itood or the victim

lived. Someone

iI JUre to be

found who needI

thiI pace

without

occupying it.

2

To a certain extent The Destructive Character can be

read as a paradoxical ode to the sarne aggressive forces

- capitalism and fascism - that would threaten the life of

people, and especialIy the working class, in the 1930s. If the

1910s and '20s saw the

revolutionary

forces of socialism

and

communism

challenge the hegemony

of capitalism,

the

1930s were a

period

of

restoration of

capital through fascist

repression

in

Europe

and

the advancement

of

welfare

state

politics

in

the

USo

This project

would

culminate

in

a final

blow to workers: the 1939 pact of nonaggression between

Hitler

and Stalin. Benjamin's destructive character is thus

an

image of the destructive impetus

that would force many

lives -

including

his own -

to

be uprooted and

annihilated.

The essay is

thus autobiographical:

it

refers to the increas

ingly precarious

life

of

its

author,

who,

unable

to secure a

stable professional position, earned his

living by

writing

occasional pieces for

journals,

newspapers, and

radio

programs. On top of this he endured

an

excruciating divorce

from

his wife,

the

forced separation

from

his son Stefan, the

ending of his tormented relationship

with

Asja Lacis, and

constant

changes of domicile.

l

This

last seems to have been

one of the

fundamental

traits of Benjamin's life. Indeed,

there

is

no

other intelIectual, not even in the drama ic

decades of the 1930s and '40s - when milIions of people

were forced to move from their place of origin - who

changed address so frequently.

The beginning

of

the

short essay

clearly points to

a

situation

in

which the destructive

character

is personified

by unbenevolent figures: those to whom

we endure

alI our

deeper obligationI. With such a statement Benjamin makes

clear that the source of the destructive

character

is

not

a

3

Log27


5/11

4. Sec Tamara Tagliacozzo, Catastrofc,

distruzionc, rcdenzione. Sionismo e

messianismo apocalittico in Gershom

Scholem, in Le

vie

della

distruzione

Apartire da II carattere distruttivo di

Walter Benjamin ed. Seminario di Studi

Benjaminiani (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2010).

liberating

force, but

an

oppressive one. And yet for

Benjamin

it

is

precisely

the sudden realization

- the shock -

that our

life depends

on

forces

that are in

essence

destructive that

introduces

us to

the

use

of such

forces for our

own

sake.

This is

a

fundamental point in

the

way

Benjamin categorizes

destruction. Unlike the

art of

building,

which from

Vitruvius

to Alberti is identified

not

just as a technical expertise but

also

as having

ethical and moral value,par.r

de.rtruen.r

refers

to annihilating forces

and

thus to

the 1 55 of

any value,

of

any stable point

of

reference.

ln

spit

of

Benjamin's

early

taste

for romanticism,

and

later

for

the

hopeless pessimism

of

German baroque drama,

he

seems to have no illusion

about the

destructive

character

the destructive

character

can

ovJy be

embraced by

accepting it as a force inherited

from

'(hose who threaten

our

existence in

the most fundamental

way. There

is

no

doubt

that, albeit within a materialist

dimension, The Destructive Character

can be

read as

the

cusp

of

Benjamin's apocalyptic messianism, a negative

that

evolves throughout his

entire

oeuvre, as well as in German

Judaism in

general.

Commenting

on

the 193

edition

of

Franz

Rosenzweig's

Star o Redemption Benjamin's friend

Gershom

Scholem, a theologian,

remarked that the theory

of

catastrophes

implied

by

apocalyptic messianism

breathed

fresh

air into the tradition of Judaic theology in the

19205.

4

The

awareness

of

a

looming catastrophe supported the

idea

that there was

always a

potential for destruction within the

historical

time of the secular world. For

Scholem,

redemp

tion was

both a

liberating

force

and

a

destructive

one,

and

this issue

was

precisely

what many

Jewish theologians

had

tried

to avoid.

Such

theological desire for destruction

was

echoed

if not

inspired by the

politicaI, social,

and

economic

reality of the

Weimar Republic,

the

turbulence

and instabil

ity

of

which

was

for Benjamin

mirrored

in the hopeless

atmospheres of

the German

baroque

drama,

the acid sarcasm

of

Dadaism, and the desperate subjectivity of expressionismo

And yet,

at

the time of The Destructive

Character

Benjamin

was no longer

indulgent

of

the

melancholic

character

of

the

protagonists

of

baroque drama or

the anarchism

of artistic

avant-gardes

such

as Surrealism

and

Dadaism. After

having

analyzed

in pa.r.ragenwerk the

archaeology

of

his

contempo

rary capitalist metropolis, Benjamin

saw

no

room

for

roman

tic rebellion.

The destructive character,

the will to

destroy

established

forms and

values,

had

to be organized as

the

struggle of

the proletariat against capitalismo lndeed,

through

his observations

on

Paris,

Benjamin

discovered

the

114

Log27

). See Walter Benjamin, The Arcader

Projea

trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin

McLaughlin (Cambridge: The Belknap

Press ofHarvard University Press, 1999).

nexus that

binds together technology,

urban form, and

capitalistic power,

and

noted

that in

the 19th

century

the

arcades

introduced

a

new architecture made of the most

advanced materiaIs and forms. For Benjamin these crass

and

valueless

commercial

spaces

had the potential

to

threaten

the

reassuring

Gemtlichkeit of

bourgeois domesticity.

Even

the

urban

form

imposed on Paris by

the reactionary Baron

Haussmann

after the revolution of 1848 was, for Benjamin,

the

appearance

of a

new

and

radical urban

experience.

Haussmann's dramatically new circulation system of

boulevards

gradually

replaced the old medieval topography

of Paris with a landscape of endless runs of

the

sarne

kind

of

facade.

Even

if these transformations were

advanced

to

counter

the

threat of another revolution C hich

eventually

occurred in 1871), the

ruthless

character of Haussmann's

urban operations had the effect, as Benjamin

noted,

of

disorienting the bourgeoisie's trust in their

own

city.) Yet, in

Benjamin's opinion the dreamlike

scenario

in which

these

disruptive urban

transformations

took

place

had preserved

the

capital from

being

annihilated

by

its

own destructive

power. Seen from the

vantage

point

of 20th-century

Berlin,

Paris, the capital

of the 19th century, was

interpreted

by

Benjamin

as

both

a

warning and

a chance.

When Benjamin

was writing The

Destructive

Character,

Berlin

was

a

city

of both cultural emancipation and

regressive social condi

tions.

Benjamin saw Berlin

as both the

city where new

experimental

urban

projects were

being

developed by a

radical city planner like Martin Wagner - who,

with Bruno

Taut, designed the Hufeisensiedlung, the first r o ~ s i e d l u n g

in Berlin Britz - and

the

stony city,

harshly

criticized

by

Werner Hegemann,

where inhumane

housing conditions such

as those

manifested

in the

infamous

rental houses -

the

Mietka.rerne -

affected

the majority

of

the

urban proletariat.

Confronted with

this contradictory landscape,

Benjamin

saw

Berlin

as

the

place in which the destructive character

of

modern urban experience

could

be

radicalized

in the

form

of

a

tabula

rasa - a

messianic]etztzeit

- that would

turn the brutal

forces

of

capitalist

development

against

themselves

in the form of

a proletarian

revolution rising up

from the

most

reified human subjectivity.

For

its

own

sake,

this

revolution had

to assume

the disenchanted and cheerful

spirit of the destructive character and

turn it against

the

powers

from which it

originated.

A

fundamental

point

of

reference for Benjamin's

tabula

rasa

was

the literary

work of Paul

Scheerbart

and the theater

115

Log27


6/11

6.

Se

Documents

AURELI, Pier Vittorio - A Teologia Da Tábua Rasa (LOG)