To Claudia LaRoccoNYC Futurism
Dear Claudia,
You evoke the memory of Futurism together with PERFOMA Director RoseLee Goldberg’s challenge to provoke the future. How should we greet “the confounds of logic”, the corruption of certainty, the monstrous mounds of information, the flatness of too much choice, the violent assault of unremitting, dulling images and incessant noise? The weighty debris of progress is isolating and immobilizing us.
New York is movement. New Yorkers don’t wait around for luck. New York is a city that loves work. We love to argue about who works the hardest. We kibitz about effort that beats the odds. Our future is in not fearing our industry. Yet, our work has become entangled with the production of too much stuff. We are bloated with over-consumption. We need less things and a new industry of connections.
Goldberg and Marinetti call us to continue to perform in the face of the unknown. To caress and revive what has been given up. Bricolage. To divorce words from sentences, work from things, actions from disciplines. To shed weary grammar that taps energy. To resist the signifier. To violate boundaries. To cross tongues. To reassemble. To scream so loudly, into the winds of change, that determined, rigid thought cracks, and pure sound pierces the heart with the kindness of unforeseen results.
Goldberg and Marinetti call us to be light, alert, engaged, to perform and to continue with eagerness and energy. Our action is what feeds the continuous renewal of the City.
2 comments:
"It is not the particular good but the common good that makes cities great." Niccolo Machiavelli is quoted to have said by Claudia Roth Pierpont in "The Florentine: The man who taught rulers how to rule." in the Sept 15, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. Architecture that inspires the widest participation and contributes to rather than destroys its environment can house this greatness. Empathy, in a building as in our hearts, makes life fuller, a city livelier, and understanding broader. Buildings, and leaders, that intimidate are not as great as those that are useful. Pierpont quotes Machiavelli to say, "The best fortress for the prince is to be loved by his people." This could be changed to say, the best building for the city is one its people love.
Of all the new buildings in London , the one the people love best ( not critics or other architects) is the London Eye.
It was built for entertainment and impact ( and was meant to be temporary).
But people have an understanding of the cyclical ( it is their lives) and it is not hierarchical ( like most of the Western world)and, so important for England , it is classless and inclusive.
The pods are quite obviously a necessary part of the whole, and a vision is shared.
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