'Architecture is in exile now'

"While the whole system is pushing every community to act under the rules of market, capitalism, consumption, there have been appearing situations that show something is going wrong. Under a fictional goal of global economic stability, the IMF has been applying its own ideology based upon the Western economy, where production and income are more important than human relations. This fact has led to situations where every man is not perceived as a citizen but as a salary man, and his home is nothing more than a product determined by financial rules rather than relational links."

Cities of Tomorrow as ghost communities of today, the end of Spain's housing boom, and the art of Emilio López-Galiacho. "Not even God lives here." Via dpr-barcelona.

'We entered the forest, followed its winding paths, and emerged blind.'

The Blackest Ever Black label have a new mixset available, via the recent guest podcast over at Pontone. As with past editions, it's a mix tracks of both bygone and recent vintage, all of it geared toward a particular sort of mood(iness) that the fledgling label embodies. Early '80s proto-goth, industrial and cold electro, to more current artists who work in a comparable vein, and even a brief something from the Ghost Box catalog. Most surprising inclusion for me is to see a track from the 1980s Spanish outfit Mecanica Popular, whose track "Daguerrotipo" sounds like 23 Skidoo in neo-tribal/urban gamelan mode remixed over a lopsided Burial-style beat.

I'd missed the label's previous mixtape, The Scold's Bridle; but it's still available from the label's blog, here. Comparable to the above item, and it includes a couple of curious overlaps to a mix I posted here some months ago.

Related, BEB flagship artist Raime also have a new mixset that's streaming at Sónar. And extended version of the set will supposedly be available for download and lmt-ed release later in the year sometime.

Those guys versus Dem guys

Thought I'd read somewhere that Raime were aiming to release a debut full-length sometime in the coming year, but now I'm thinking that may be incorrect. Not sure. At any rate, there's the matter of Demdike Stare, whose releases made it onto a number of people's Best of 2010 year-end lists -- even on those by some critics who previously hadn't seemed all that enthusiastic about the duo's EPs. So I was amused when Loki at Idiot's Guide to Dreaming recently popped up with his assessment, if only because it more or less echoed what I'd been wondering for months. That being: what's with all the excitement? Judging from the responses, seems I was hardly alone. And Simon also jumped in and concurred. (I'm not sure, however, if I follow Simon's verdict of DS doing hauntology-by-the-numbers, if only because I think Simon's take on the whole hauntological aesthetic might be somewhat broader and inclusive than my own. Not sure.)

At any rate, my previous conjecture on the matter was that Demdike Stare (et al.) must be bringing something to the table for certain listeners, providing something that's been overwhelmingly absent from the musical palette in recent years -- hence the reason some people are getting so worked up about them, greeting their output so eagerly. As for myself, it's not that I dislike DS. For all intents and purposes, their work falls very squarely in an area -- in a particular niche or type of sound -- that I've long gravitated toward, Still, I've found much of their output rather wanting in many respects. Firstly, there's the fact that I find them covering territory that was already pretty thoroughly explored by experimental electronic artists not too many years ago (say 10-15). That being the case, I hear very little to suggest that DS have decided to re-engage that marginal 'nuum and push it forward or in a new direction, to pick up where it left off before the audience for such "dark" fare dwindled. Rather, it just seems like someone's just reusing the same old shopworn boilerplate. One part 'isolationist ambient' to one part Muslimgauze's Hamas Arc.* (Or, to make a more contempo comparison, it's like a dark, droning, cavernous inversion of Pantha du Prince's tinkly, en plein air pastoralisms.)**

Add to the above that it seems that most everything I've heard by the outfit sounds like it could've used a little more time up on the blocks. Underconceived and underdeveloped, sometimes falling a little short of seamlessness in its execution, often failing to build on its base elements or iddeas. Not sure if this impression of patchiness and slightness is an intentional aesthetic move on their part, or could just be attributed to them being a work in progress and farting out too much product a little too quickly. Either way, it ends up coming a little too close to being audio wallpaper.

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* As I believe one commenter at Idiot's Guide may have pointed out, Shackleton's been covering very similar ground recently, and achieving far more engaging results.
** Which in itself could, in turn, be described as not much more than Wolfgang Voigt with a set of windchimes.


Post title taken from this. Thanks to wood s lot.

Auto-Environments, II

Despite my glib remarks of earlier -- yes, there are certain sensibilities (aesthetic, cultural, temperamental, etc.) that are very specific to their era. Possessing an character whose "aura" can't be revived or duplicated via any degree of retro- recycling, can't be fully accessed or comprehended once its moment has passed and faded. It's what we talk about when we use the term zeitgeist -- the distinct and definitive hallmarks of a given epoch, and how they were formulated or embodied across the spectrum of cultural artifacts (be they archetypal or anomalous).

The images featured here and in the previous post are from the portfolio of the Archigram group, a firm of designers who were active in London throughout the 1960s. Plenty more where those came from in the Archigram Archival Project, here.










It was an problematic decade for architecture, the 1960s -- a pivotal decade. One could argue that it was the decade in which modernism's momentum began to run aground. Sure, plenty of modernist architecture was still being designed and erected. But by this point, it had settled into orthodoxy and redundancy -- as manifest in rote, unimaginative reiterations of standard formulae and a proliferation of bland, by-the-numbers designs.

It was a schizophrenic era as well, because a next-gen of theorists and practitioners were entering the field, many of who were dissatisfied with the status quo and viewed modernist ideas as obsolete and insufficient for addressing the dynamics of needs and dynamics of contemporary society. The problem with modernism, some argued, was that it was predicated on bygone notions of social evolution and a misguided faith in the inevitable course of industrial development. Like some of their peers, the architects behind Archigram viewed late-capitalist, consumer society with a degree of critical skepticism, yet still ventured to incorporate many of its vernacular elements into it own proto- postmodern style of designerly "adhocism." Concerned with the difficulties posed by an increasing concentration of urban populations, the Archigram architects envisioned solutions that emphasized a modular (and podular) approach to architecture and urban growth, for a future in which populations would become increasingly mobile and nomadic -- as exemplified in the group's noted designs for Walking and Plug-In cities.

Unabashedly "avant garde" and "visionary" in nature, many of the projects dreamed up and designed by some of this 1960s new breed were wildly speculative proposals, and existed far outside the realms of likelihood or viability. The work of Archigram -- as well as that of Superstudio and similar visionary design groups of the time -- bring to mind the following passage, recently encountered in James Wines's book De-architecture:

"Many of the functionalist considerations of Modernism survived the 1960s, but the sources of imagery had shifted away from technology and toward human values. Naturally the course of architecture and its attendant theories mirrored the social unrest of the times... While most design manifestos shared the decade emotional fervor and idealism, they also compounded its impotence. Youthful architects... [believed that architecture] should be reclaimed by the people as a statement as a statement of individual identity and ecological responsibility, reversing the trend of cities and suburbs that were devoured by the greed of industrial capital. ...

[T]he young revolutionaries of the 1960s never managed to find an architectural vocabulary that could both change society and offer viable schemes of construction. Instead, their work took the form of eccentric and exotic proposals, such as suburbs of tents and inflatables and horizontal megacities running for hundreds of miles. Like other charismatic radicals of the 1960s..., these designers had their hearts in the right place. But they left no sustained or profoundly influential philosophical heritage. Architects of the era asked many provocative questions and demanded revolutionary changes. Then, for reasons of choice, economics, or failed creativity, they built only a few conventional structures, or didn't build at all."

At the very least, all of this constituted a growing recognition of the changing course of social development (and, by extension, social and human needs). In retrospect, one might conclude that it was still unclear -- at the time -- in what ways society was changing. It could be argued that the idealism behind the work of groups like Archigram didn't constitute a sufficiently radical break from the utopian and futurist ideals of early modernism. Wildly imaginative in many ways, they also perpetuated some of modernism's most myopic attributes, chiefly its blinkered faith in technological progress -- unquestioningly presupposing an innate capacity for unlimited growth and copious resources, the assumption that the pre-existing arc of socio-economic progress would remain unbroken.

Auto-Environments, I

As sheer coincidence had it, among the first courses I took in a grad-school was a seminar on "Art of the 1970s." It was taught by a British expat who was something of a walking encyclopedia of Fluxus, and an active member of the international Neoist society. Early on, he informed us, "The period we will be covering is, thus far, incredibly under-documented and neglected in terms of scholarship and art history; so there's a chance that any research that end up doing into certain avenues might amount to primary research.

He also advised us, "One thing you have to bear in mind when you're researching anything from this general period or reading an artist's writings is that everyone was doing tons of drugs."

Which probably amounts to a sweeping generalization. Maybe, maybe not. Still, if that wasn't the case, looking back one does get the sense that those who weren't were operating by way of a pervasive cultural contact high.

More about the above shortly, in part two.

Everything's AOR

A little dearth in activity on this end, on account of being out of town, fighting off the threat of a seasonal malady, and just generally recalibrating on a few things. A few things for the outboard spots -- small, tangential, music-related. First, a casual overview of the work of James 'Blood' Ulmer, which was prompted by the big "guitar solo" theme they've been doing the past two weeks. (The a similar thing about guitar riffs last year.) Everyone's been joining into this one -- Carl, Wayne, even Dominic Fox, and Simon has (once again) run off with the ball on his own arc, going so far as to field a wide array of associates and musicians on the matter.

Additionally, a couple of choices from the 1970s punk canon, as well as some sidenotes on the whole matter of geetar solos (a and b).

Update / Addendum: Admittedly, this is all a little (as they say) "outside my comfort zone." For the most part, solos (in rock, anyway) have never been something I've gravitated to, ever given much consideration. I mean, I think the breaks or solos when they somehow manage to extend the energy or melody of a tune, yet somehow also do a little work with expanding upon or even compressing it. But I never regarded it as a thing-in-itself, regarded it in any other terms than in relation to the overall gestalt of a song/composition. Like I said, I often feel like I'm missing a key chromosome in this area.

So it's funny to read Simon more-or-less echoing some of my own ambivalence on the matter. There's plenty I might add in terms of the history of such stuff, but yes I believe he's narrowing in on the crux of it all by suspecting that Hendrix and the Brit blues-rock scene of the 1960s played a big part in steering things in a particular direction. As far as his remarks about such tendencies being largely absent in rock's early day, I'm not so sure. Having once (and very briefly) owned a copy of the album below, I'm inclined to say it was there (kinda, sorta...implicitly) in some form or another from the start...

...When you bring Jimi Hendrix and the blues-rock movement into the matter, however, a few problematic issues arise. Greg Tate addressed one such issue as it related to the former some years ago (and suffered a backlash from Hendrix worshipers as a result), and Phil Knight recently floated out a highly interesting, unorthodox take on the latter buried in one of his recent posts over at Faces on Posters.

Slouching Monuments

Yet another series of works of the Bunker Archeology variety. This time by photographer Guillaume Amat, from his "Nébuleuse" series of 2007.