Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture
14 David Harvey< Aesthetics of ethics seriously
What do we do when we get confused about life…. apparently we turn to aesthetics. When we are unsure about scientific and moral reasoning, gaps are created and we fill them in with aesthetics-good to know.
So is this in some form why we shop? Because images take over narrative and well, once there is no narrative, why not buy products that aim to fill in the gaps. And time, what about time…. now I am overwhelmed about time. Because there is a loss in the sense of time and space, I no longer know how to even locate myself within a hotel.
*As societies have pushed forward in time, a measurement of confidence in era has been signified and assessed by the “width of the gap between scientific and moral reasoning”- David Harvey, what does this mean. How can you measure confidence of an era if you did not belong to the era? Well how can you argue with this assessment when it is a theorization? Characteristically, as humans we fill in the gaps of unknown information because in some shape or form it follows a pattern. Similar to the patterns found on Mars I think…anyways… Maybe this assessment of an era's confidence has worked a couple times because the conditions were suitable for a meta-narrative capitalism. But how about now-current day- what guarantee do we have that this is even the right way to asses. I guess the question is what information is missing between scientific and moral reasoning that is linked to the past, present, and future. We need to fill in the gaps but not just one person all of us but how when we are only capable of retaining so much information.
Lets go shopping!
3 comments:
Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture
Response to Candace:
Hey Candace, I am going to take the opposite stance on judging the confidence an era: I don't think we can truly understand what it is we are doing in the present time; rather a period of reflection is required - take studio for instance: constantly we generate fragmented ideas, but can't understand them until we take a moment to look back on everything we've done, paying attention to how all the bits relate to each other, even if the relation was unintentional. (Remember when Eduardo mentioned in theory class that we should record what music we listen to, as even this will affect our work.) And that's a beautiful thing - finding something within your own work you didn't realize was there, but actually did exist! So, to judge the confidence of an era, I think we do need to look through an historical lens and try to understand it in relation to other happenings of the time.
Other Notes:
1) I understand the space-time compression to which Harvey first refers is in relation to speed and mode of travel - in taking less time to travel the same distance, the experience of space is compressed. I don't, however, understand the jump he makes from this discussion to that of aesthetics as relief of confusion. Here, there is a different sort of time-space compression; does Harvey mean an insatiable thirst for consumerism? The increasingly rapid 'rat race'? Does space compress without advancements in transportation technology (then wouldn't this suggest that space is not a physical construct at all, but solely an experience, more akin to time than to objects)?
2) Harvey asks, 'but what sort of condition is [postmodernism] and what should we make of it,' and in doing so posits postmodernism as a 'style,' which he insinuates is static and dangerous (it's dangerous for an architect to ascribe to a style that is outmoded yet outlived by the economic and political realms). I suppose this is a warning for architects to look ahead of, and not within, society when developing a style, or rather not to develop a style at all! But, is it possible to design without a style? If po.mo., as a 'fusion' of dissimilar parts can be considered a style, it would seem that there is no way to avoid being labeled. Even here at school we are already developing our own identifiable 'styles,' which seem to present themselves without any intention on our parts. Is style inherent? Or, do we ascribe labels (ephemeral and/or non-literal) in an attempt to understand each other, and ourselves (in the collective sense)?
David Harvey criticizes political power for being characterized by “spectacle, pomp and circumstance, demeanor, charisma, patronage and rhetoric.” With this characterization, what makes STARchitects any different? Frank Gehry’s work is often characterizes as a spectacle. Gehry’s claim to fame the Guggenheim museum in Bilbau was only so famous because of circumstance. I am sure his demeanor and charisma must have contributed to some of his commissions. What is architecture with out a patron? And I would say that any controversial design is supported by architectural rhetoric. Gehry obtained power within the field of architecture similarly to how a politician obtains power within the government.
There is also the aspect of mediatization that Harvey suggests sways the public optinion of political decisions. Harvey’s example was the negative effect of Nixon’s five o’clock shadow on the election results. The media plays an important role in the popularization of certain architectural events. Rem Koolhaus probably gained a popularity from his work for Prada not achievable through his other commissions. Because of his exposure to the public eye for whatever brief period it was, his name was out there and it was associated with Prada, this is one of the basic strategies of marketing: get your name out and make sure it is associated with something which will help the business build a positive image within the marketplace.
Don’t get me wrong I do not mean to represent Koolhaus and Gehry’s actions as wrong, but I believe that if we are going to question political leaders we should do the same to our architectural leaders.
I find that the description of “image” as it relates to our culture and our political opinions in the David Harvey reading are somewhat misconstrued. I think that it is just more apparent that our culture is an image based one, however I don’t believe that the cultures before us were any different. Image, whether it is political, brand or personal, is dependent on associations. It is simply a form of language. We often carefully select our words because they refer to specific connotations. We arrange them into sentences that reveal our ideologies. Image is no different, in the sense that it is the manipulation of references to things we would like to think provides an explanation through illustration. For some reason it is easier to label an image as shallow or misleading, when image is often embedded in text, regardless of the era. Harvey insisted that this dependence on aesthetics and image in the political realm was unethical, however I think it might be worthwhile to apply that same scope of vision to other aspects of our culture as well. Surely architecture is guilty of becoming an industry of “image”. Architecture speaks in a language of materiality and form, again with meaningful associations. However those associations are often chosen with a disregard towards actual meaning and rather chosen for a particular image or language of style, which may be entirely inappropriate. We seem to think that politicians are the only creatures guilty of ethical violations, that is just not so, they are perhaps less creative at hiding it.
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