by hand

The in-crowd of nothingness (Fasanella, quoted in Watson, 1973:50)
“A latticework of renunciations and mediocrity.” (Vaneigem, 1967:Chpt12)

People in desiccated space, devoid of flavour[1] or expression (Jinnai, 1995:64) climb the pyramid of consumer affluence. Survival Sickness. The big city is sliced into pieces, each of which is observed, purged, and equalized. The mystery of the STRANGE and the critical faculties of humans are removed[2]. Solitude of plenty[3], golf courses are all that is left of otherness[4]. Isolated individuals thrash infinite white balls in an inner-city cage; Without ever looking at each other men of all ages sit silently pulling levers to agitate steel balls[5]. We all nostalge for memories of a world where food was authentic[6] (Berardi, 2009b:144 referencing Tokyo-ga (1983) by Wim Wenders,; see also Kaufmann, 2001, as above).

A crowd of brainless conformists camp out under orders and do as they are told (Ellul, 1964:417), perfectly individualized, isolated, lonely. Reduced to empty containers of productive time, deprived of memory and of any form of heroism except for the silent one of productivity (Berardi, 2009b:145 referencing Tokyo-ga (1983) by Wim Wenders). Initiative and eccentricity vanishes (Ellul, 1964:417), replaced with corporate amorphous individualism/ a legal entity individualism/ of limited personal liabilities,/ a shadowy industrial monopoly,/ a secondhand dictatorhood,/ soulless (Buckminster Fuller, 1963:8). Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit and installed it in an empire of iceboxes (Chtcheglov, 1953; Bellow, 1963:69).

EMIC[7]

Welcome to our increasingly JUNK SPACE[8] (Koolhaas, 2002) of spiraling artificiality of social relations of consumption and decreasing interpersonal contact that is not within predefined situations (Jackson, 1998: 185; Smith, 1992, 1996 cited in Lees, 1998). IMPAIRED VISION, LIMITED EXPECTATION, REDUCED EARNESTNESS, stillbirths in every corner![9] Here, in cities where dead[10] space trumps spontaneous use and actively discourages life (Braiterman, 2010) whatever structurally does not fit the logic of the space is effectively filtered from culture (Illich, 1983; Ellul, 1978:esp 175[11]; see also Mike Davis in Bldg Blog interview).

Domiciles tend to agglomerations of similar-yet-unrelated consumer-based market segments (Kitayama, 2010b:19-21 also Stiegler) and movement curdled by synchronization[12] to the point that all differences are annihilated[13] becomes the last remaining form of public activity and contact (ironically, human scale design remains only in commercial spaces, where the objective logic of retail design overrides anti-human design ideology (Salingaros, 2010b:49)). Hotels make all other buildings redundant, and doubling as shopping malls are the closest we have to urban existence – under house arrest, there is no competing place to go (Koolhaas, 1998b:1260).

The overdetermination of the physical environment renders it hostile (Illich, 1973:40) consensus is the annulment of dissensus[14]. Surveillance by powers vast, cool and unsympathetic (C.G., 2000; H.G. Wells, 1898:1 quoted in Davis, 2002:15; Zerzan, 2008a) becomes the new participative democracy[15], and we are graded according to our ability to submit to it[16] (Illich, 1973:40 discussing education).

Hypersynchronization → Hyperdiachronization → Social Atomization, Total Disconnection.
(Stiegler, 2009: 50).

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[1] The world has been deprived of the right to taste – see Kaufmann (2001).

[2] Paul J. Tillich, quoted in Jacobs (1993:311)

[3] Illich (1978).

[4] Koolhaas (1998a:1251)

[5] Compare this to the medieval religious ceremony, where “the spectators were also the communicants and participants: they engaged in the spectacle, watching it from within, not from without: or rather, feeling it from within, acting in unison, not dismembered beings, reduced to a single specialized role.” (Mumford, 1938:63-64; quoted in Bookchin, 1974:48)

[6] The feeling of a common identity is a counterfeit of experience (Bauman, 2000:100).

[7] Vomiting. The ‘spitting out’ of the other, the strange, the alien. Extreme variants include incarceration, deportation and murder. Refined forms include spatial separation, urban ghettos, selective access, selective barring (Bauman, 2000:98~).

[8] Disjunctive inclusion (Negri, 2009:49).

[9] Jacobs (2004:42 referring to communities); Jacobs (1993:259 referring to metamorphic cycles of development (see later)), Koolhaas (2002: 176-7); Turner and Roberts (1975:132 referring to top down approaches to housing).

[10] More specifically stealthy (unfindable), slippery (unreachable), crusty (inaccessible), prickly (uncomfortable), jittery (unusable, unobserved) – Steven Flusty (2004). Also non-place – not prohibited but empty, inaccessible because invisible (Auge, 1995).

[11] “He who is unjust in the eyes of the state no longer has the right to live. He is punished not for a positive, carefully delimited crime, but because he does not fit the precise, delimited framework of justice. Because he does not agree with the rest of us, he is evil.” (Ellul, 1978: 175). The mobile vulgus – the inferior kind of people on the move, dribbling or gushing into places where only the right kind of people should have the right to be (Bauman, 2000:93).

[12] Shopping (Koolhaas, 1998b:1260, 2002; Salingaros, 2010b:44), public transport (e.g Vaneigem, 1967:Chpt 2).

[13] Stiegler (2009:41).

[14] “…the “end of politics”” – Ranciere, quoted in Swyngedow (2011:27)

[15] The ‘partition of the sensible’, the managerial approach to government – deprived of its proper political dimension (Swyngedouw 2011:27 quoting Zizek and Ranciere)

[16] Through the lens of ‘THE’ city and ‘THE’ (undivided) ‘people’ as a whole in a material and discursive manner, a politics of ‘the people know best’ (although the latter category remains often empty, unnamed) pitted against externalized and objectified Intruders (Swyngedouw, 2011:28-9)