In The City
March 29th 2007 09:20
They said “we are bored in the city” and believed the stifling functionality of urbanity curbed the individual’s creative capacities. They were concerned with the uses of the city space and thought Paris was too monumental. They wanted to completely destroy churches, graveyards and other rigid monumental sites, and believed “you cannot take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past” (Internationale Situationniste #1).
They put forward a proposal “For The Radical Improvements To the City of Paris” (Potlatch #23) including suggestions that would allow more playfulness in the streets, such as:
- The underground should be opened at night, after the trains have stopped running. The passageways and platforms should be poorly lit with dim, blinking lights.
- Aesthetic objects should be overruled … beauty, when it does not hold the promise of happiness, must be destroyed. And what could better represent unhappiness than this sort of monument to everything in the world that remains to be overcome?
- The rooftops of Paris should be opened to pedestrian traffic by means of modifications to fire escape ladders …
- Public gardens should be remain open at night, unlit…
- All street lamps should be equipped with switches; lighting should be for public use
- Train stations should remain as they are. Their rather moving ugliness adds much to the feeling of transience that makes these buildings mildly attractive
- Museums should be abolished and their masterpieces distributed to the bars…
In today's cities, many of the same concerns prevail. The international Critical Mass organisation, with it’s planned cycling rallies, draws on a spirit reminiscent to that of the SI, who hated cars and city traffic, believed in a more social way of life; better interaction; more playfulness; free use and transformation of the urban environment, and contact with the natural world. On the Critical Mass website they ask: “Why is there so little open space in our cities where people can relax and interact, free from the incessant buying and selling of ordinary life? Why are people compelled to organise their lives around having a car? What would an alternative future look like?”
According to the Situationists: “freeways break up the dialectic of the human milieu in favour of cars,” and “the mistake made by all urbanists is to consider the private automobile … essentially as a means of transportation. Such a misconception is a major expression of a notion of happiness that developed capitalism tends to spread throughout society. The automobile is the centrepiece of this general propaganda, both as sovereign good of alienated life and as essential product of the capitalist market…” (Internationale Situationniste #3).
Never Work - Situationist slogan used in May '68 riots
They said that “Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons by air conditioning; night and summer are loosing their charm and dawn is disappearing.” (Internationale Situationniste #1). Decades later, we are moving towards a colossal number of people living in built urban environments, and an increasing alienation between mankind and the natural world. That might be something to think about in relation to the Earth Hour initiative this Saturday night, with all Australians being urged to switch off their lights for one hour at 7.30 (I’m hoping for darkness at V Festival...)
A city’s energy and vitality and life are generated in it’s streets, not it's skylines. When life occurs in vertical built spaces there is no interaction, no exchange of ideas, no meeting places and no uprising. The SI said cultural development isn’t possible without new conditions in our everyday surroundings, which always impact on our feelings and behaviours.
“Those who believe that the particulars of the problem are permanent want in fact to believe in the permanence of the present society”
(Potlatch #9)
| 67 |
| Vote |
