Posted by Marshall Weber on October 10, 2001 at 12:52:18:In Regard to Towers of Light proposal by Creative Time
Beyond artist/publisher Christopher Wilde's astute critique of the Tower of Lights as an intense source of arrogant light pollution is the related phenomenon of the light pollution itself as an
abject repetition of the initial explosion- that is an attempt to better the soldiers violent military operation of Sept. 11, 2001 in an a reflected act of violence against the 'natural' environment. Thus the Towers of Light is an aggressive act that is certainly in line with the unadorned, anti-Romantic, and anti-environmental macho aesthetics of male dominated Modernist architecture. A spectacle of environmental violence to one up the initial act of war. This is also in line with contemporary corporate and academic architecture's ongoing non-critical support of military, and anti-environmental projects.Certainly Creative Time must realize that this solaced sculpture is a direct plagiarism, reiteration and affirmation of nothing other than Albert Speers "Towers of Lights/Catherdral of Lights" installation for Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies.
Have the architects who proposed this amnesiastic travesty forgotten their own architectural history due to some sort of misplaced nostalgia or are they actually trying to subliminally engender an affirmation of fascist aesthetics?
Despite the fact that contemporary corporate architecture has instrumental in validating and excusing Speers by often celebrating, utilizing and extending his modernist aesthetics in their corporate and governmental structures (including, ironically, the WTC
Towers themselves) I can think of no other time when the reaffirmation of fascist architecture in any way would be more inhumanly inappropriate. We perch on the brink of world war in part due to the monumental arrogance of the architectural imperialism of
corporate capitalism; let us not indulge in phallic monumental spectacle. Now is the time to reaffirm the human scale, the provision of housing not office space, the intimate, not the abstract, the balanced not the invasive; and, at the risk of being interpreted as
simplistic, it's time to affirm the female not the male, the creative not the destructive. As Luce Irigaray writes "The sky isn't up there, it's between us."Certainly some sort of memorial is in order, perhaps one on a more human scale such as the oft proposed simple act of preserving a piece of the destroyed structure on the actual site.
While the sublime (read aesthetics of power, thrill and death) aspects of the Towers of Lights are tempting and beautiful in its simplistic affirmation of male prerogative, the symbolic realities and historical associations of the project will become the subtext for the substantiation of further violence.
Towers of Light in its powerful doubled phallic rape of the night sky will stand the risk of becoming an icon for revenge instead of a memorial for peace.
Marshall Weber
|
Search
ArchWeek
Buildings
Architects
Types
Places
Pix
Free 3D Models
Store
Library
|