Category Archives: New Utopia

Private homes in Poundbury, on the western edge of the town. Photo:View Pictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

POUNDBURY, England If you follow the Queen Mothers gaze, youll find that it lands on the Duchess of Cornwall pub, where a 17.45 Venison Bourguignon or 17.95 Roasted Barramundi awaits you. Too pricey? Perhaps youd prefer the hummus flatbread, at a princely 9.50. Or, if none of those sound appetising, youre in luck theres a posh supermarket just across the road.

This is the geography of the centre of Poundbury, an experimental planning project in southern England that lies within the Duchy of Cornwall, a huge estate that up until last week was owned by King Charles III. A huge statue of Queen Elizabeth IIs mother, after which this square is named, stands at one corner of what is essentially an enormous car park flanked by a wine shop and Waitrose, a high end supermarket chain loved by Britains middle classes.

When West Dorset District Council decided to expand the town back in the 1980s, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, became its champion. Poundbury would be an example of New Urbanism this should not be yet another soulless housing estate with a business park tacked on, he said.

Flowers laid at the statue of the Queen Mother following the death of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

On the train to Poundbury, I read that New Urbanism essentially means city planning around walkable neighbourhoods, but standing in this square between the pub and the statue, I could not say it feels especially walkable, as I was nearly run over twice by cars who are guided not by traffic lights or road markings, but simply by all of the bends that are supposed to slow vehicles down. It might be a town planned for pedestrians, but a lot of these pedestrians seem to be driving to where they want to walk from.

Elsewhere, pavements are huge and protective; covered walkways are expansive and feel European, far from the urban sprawl that the former prince so clearly disapproves of. Poundbury is not unpopular if you read the local press, and there is the sense of an attempted utopia to it as you try to unpick Charles vision. Roads spiral in pentagons around squares this walkable town was apparently inspired by Venus orbit, flowers and Islamic art.

About one third of the housing in Poundbury is affordable housing for rent or shared ownership, and the idea is that the social housing is indistinguishable from the private properties. But the chiropractor, the hearing care centre and the exercise classes for over-50s strongly imply that this is not a young persons town. Poundbury Magazine, published by the local community trust, advertises luxury car travel and wealth management advice. Census data from 2011 says 51.4 percent of residents here are 16-64 years old, and that 32.9 percent of them are over 65.

The then Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Camilla pictured before the Queen Mother's statue was unveiled in 2016. Photo: Justin Tallis - WPA Pool/Getty Images

I bumped into two locals from Poundburys neighbouring villages, who did not want to be identified because they thought what they had to say was too controversial. The town is equidistant between them, so they come here for strolls, but they would never live here: You have to be a certain type, one of the women said.

The then Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Camilla pictured before the Queen Mother's statue was unveiled in 2016. Photo: Justin Tallis - WPA Pool/Getty Images

They told me about the woman who was rebuked for having too many flowers in her front garden, and that they think many of those who buy private properties here are retired, eager to move away from cities. They think a lot of the workers here do not live in Poundbury, which might explain several of the cars, and ultimately this was not the aim of a town that was supposed to house homes next to businesses in the same street, self-sustainably providing work for its people.

A woman watches coverage of the Queen's death at a pub in Poundbury. Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

There was once a factory here, they said, that provided over 100 jobs, but that it had moved further away to the town of Poole. One of the women rather ominously urged me to, look at the house prices here, and find out what the rules are for living here.

Prices vary, but I saw a bunch of properties advertised above 700,000. A local estate agent gave me a 52-page booklet on the guidelines for living and building in Poundbury, where I learned that chimneys arent allowed to be inappropriately stout or dumpy, and that a lot of the ones I could see are in fact not remotely functional but are there for the traditional silhouettes.

The Duchess of Cornwall pub. Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage

Paving over lawns or artificial grass in front gardens will not generally be approved, and it is advised that things like doors and windows are repaired, rather than replaced. In some cases very specific material which is not the cheapest to maintain or renovate is advised, such as leadwork, which must not only be expensive for private homeowners but for the council paying for all the social housing.

A general view of Poundbury, which is due to be completed in 2025. Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

You cant deny that Poundbury is pretty, but its pretty in the way the suburbia of Edward Scissorhands suburbia would be if it had been filmed in England. Its twee and makes you feel like you cant talk too loudly. Poundbury has been described as a feudal Disneyland, but the monarchical references are heavily muted besides Queen Mother Square. Most of the road names have in-the-know royal references to the familys race horses or the Dorset Regiments battles in the 19th century but other than that, the only things here that suggest monarchist feelings is a lone union flag I found flown at half mast, bouquets of flowers for Queen Elizabeth II at the feet of her mothers statue, and the condolences sign outside Waitrose.

In the 52-page rulebook I learn that solar panels arent allowed if theyre visible from the street, and that emerging eco-friendly technology involving changes to external appearance or potential nuisance to other residents will require the consent of the Regulator. It does not click with the climate-change-fighting, renegade-royal Charles is known to be.

A playground being built in Poundbury earlier this year. Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Poundbury is unfinished; construction still rumbles on near the edge of the town which is expected to be finished by 2025. New housing is advertised in the local magazine. But this is no longer King Charles concern, as his son Prince William has now inherited the Duchy of Cornwall, and Poundbury with it. What Charles has inherited from his mother in turn is vast, and which he will not pay any inheritance tax on.

You dont see Charles name anywhere, and curious visitors might be disappointed; some German tourists lingered by the Queen Mother statue taking pictures, half to observe the period of national mourning in the UK, but half because theres not really anything else to take pictures of here, apart from the roads without markings, fake chimneys, and an incomplete vision.

Continued here:

Inside the Experimental Town That King Charles III Created - VICE

A sheet of blue light slices through the cavernous interior of Berlins Halle am Berghain. A handful of visitors move around spellbound, their faces illuminated in blue. Ducking beneath the pristine plane of light,disembodied legs appear to wander in the smoky dust of the world beneath. The ambient noise moves to a crescendo and you follow a series of thrilling, fast-moving spotlights to a cinema screen beyond

Imagine a future in which the internet could be enmeshed with our nervous systems, allowing us symbiosis with technology capable of living our lives more flawlessly than we, as imperfect humans, ever could.Set in a great anomic era, Ian Chengs Life After BOB invites us to envision a time in which AI cohabits our consciousness, exploring the perils and potential of artificial intelligence, mental health and existential fitness in the future century. The immersive exhibition is built around the first episode of the artists latest real-time narrative animation, allowing visitors an experience the atmosphere of the film while also interacting with potential-enhancing NFT-generating technology.

Episode one, The Chalice Study, tells the story of Chalice, a ten-year-old child who was implanted with an experimental AI named BOB (Bag of Beliefs) at birth by her neural engineer father, Dr Wong. Its a world where people get this implant like a neural link and, suddenly, you could experience a flow of data in and out of your brain and nervous system directly, Cheng tells Dazed. BOB can appear in Chalices head, like a dream or an inner voice. And Chalice can play these inner video games, while BOB is doing what we call droning her physical body doing tedious things for her in her life like dealing with conflict with her dad, walking up a flight of stairs that shes too lazy to walk up. So she can just escape and check out.

Cheng who first studied cognitive science before becoming an artist created this complex, beautiful film using the Unity game engine which is an unprecedented feat. Nobody has produced a film of this kind before, using Unity to produce the building blocks for an entire cinematic universe, explains Amira Gad, Head of Programmes at LAS (co-commissioner ofLife After BOB: The Chalice Study) and curator of the exhibition. Screened live in real-time in the exhibition, the film uses a specially conceived algorithm to generate and randomise details of the onscreen world, conflicted feelings about technology, and whether he anticipates a future dystopia or utopia.

I wonder if you could maybe begin by just introducing with, in your own words, the world in which the story takes place?

Ian Cheng: It started with the idea, What if we were in a world where the internet goes to your nervous system? I could share my dreams with you, or maybe half a dream, a sensation of my finger, some fragment of a thing from my memory. I could share them with you and you could share them back, it could be this kind of telepathic dream language. So started from this crazy premise, in terms of the world, and then that became fertile enough for me to situate all the characters and imagine father-daughter scenes, but set in this new world in a much more tricky way.

I love the way you allow the possibilities and perils of this technology to play out in the story. Could you tell us what you feel is the purpose and the value of storytelling?

Ian Cheng: So much of what we experience in terms of ingesting information or news or just understanding the world is non-narrative, its just talking to the conscious part the left side of your brain. I think our attraction to storytelling is its ability to allow us to become unconscious. Watching Netflix or at the theatre, its so joyful to become unconscious for a moment, because it bypasses the conscious part of your brain and suddenly youre able to accept and dream about really complex stuff and its easier to digest.

You can tell a story about something complex and you can actually argue it out. When you have to write factually about something complex, you almost have to have made up your mind about it already, or feel like you understand it before you can start writing. The characters help get you there, the way a dream kind of helps get you somewhere. And so I think this is a very important form of technology that weve cognitively developed. Moviemaking and storytelling are more a kind of mediation of your dream world and trying to actually make it coherent.

What if we were in a world where the internet goes to your nervous system? Ian Cheng

I found the experience of the exhibition was so much like a dream. In your introduction to the film, you invoked the idea of Disney World as an inspiration when you were thinking about how to present the screening in an exhibition context. Could you tell us more about that?

Ian Cheng: So many of the movies I loved growing up things like Spirited Away, you watch it and its a coming of age story but the world its set in also seems like a great place youd just like to hang out in. I wish someone would create a theme park of it.

I was so struck by that movie because I wanted to revisit it for all those details that are non-dramatic. I saw it again recently with my daughter and theres a gang of little fat ducks having a bath you only notice maybe the fifth time watching it, but you can track them across the film and they are doing something coherent. Its so beautiful to discover this detail.

I think theres so much potential now for a story to really unfold the world and not just use it as a background or scaffolding. There are probably people in the audience who want to explore that, like me. And its a different temporality, its not so dramatic. It's not so adrenaline filled, you dont feel the stakes are very high. And I think that activates a different part of you thats happy to watch ducks having a bath but find it really thrilling.

Without wishing to sound too essentialist, to what extent do you feel the world you have created is dystopian or utopian?

Ian Cheng: Writing a story about the future of AI, naturally, my mind when its in storytelling mode wants to argue both sides. So you create a character that is overly interested in AI, like Dr Wong. He wants an instrumental reason for AI its going to help you with your future, its going to parent you. Then you have Zee whos into it for all these tangential possibilities.

So I had to argue these different positions about AI and create dramatic tension. And so, naturally, youre forced to argue all sides of a very complex topic. I dont know how articulately I did it or how persuasively by a new in writing, I had to touch on every single point of view that I could imagine about AI. Who wins? Im curious to know your response.

I went in with more of a dystopian outlook but now, after having been to the exhibition, the whole issue of AI feels more complicated than before. To what extent do you think your work might be prophetic?

Ian Cheng: I think it might be too arrogant to say that its prophetic. Maybe the most hopeful outcome as an artist I would have is the reaction you had, where it becomes greyer. I havent necessarily changed your mind with this film, but maybe Ive shifted you and youre less certain in your original belief. As an artist, I couldnt hope for more.

I think theres so much potential now for a story to really unfold the world and not just use it as a background or scaffolding Ian Cheng

For people like myself who are slightly unfamiliar with the technology you use, I wonder if you could explain why its pioneering to use Unity?

Ian Cheng: Unity is used for building mobile app games or video games. Angry Birds is a super popular game built in Unity.Its unusual to use Unity to try to make narrative films. Before this, I think the longest Unity film has been like 10 minutes. And so it was a huge challenge for us to try to do something like this.

Despite being a pioneer in this field and doing something relatively new, I wondered if there are any particular artists you look to for inspiration?

Ian Cheng: I used to work for a French artist called Pierre Huyghe, I loved his work. Like, hell create an aquarium with species that really don't belong with each other in the same ecosystem, yet somehow hell make it work. Or an entire ecosystem for a huge park. I was so struck by this ethic of allowing things to be entropic and chaotic. His sculptures get overrun with grass or weeds. He had a sense of aliveness in his work and I wanted so much to achieve a sense of that too, but through visual means.

So much art is very static painting and sculpture. As an artist, it tends to make you become a perfectionist because youre moving toward a very fixed thing. Id prefer to approach it more like a gardener, tending to something and maybe it's not perfect. For me, this is a very liberating way to work, it stopped the perfectionist in me and activated a kind of parenting instinct. And I suppose thats why Unity really lends itself to that process and being able to dive in there and change things. Its like movie-making becomes a form of software with new updates released all the time. I love the idea that software is an evolving object. It can become kind of endless for me, yes. But the trade-off is that you can make really alive work.

Ian Chengs Life After BOB (co-commissioned by LAS) is running at Berlins Halle am Berghain until November 6 2022

Read more:

Ian Cheng imagines a world where the internet inhabits our nervous systems - Dazed

In recent years, tributes to Shaker culture have also found the form of a collective celebration that, cultivated over time, has taken on the value of an immersion in the legacy of the American sect. This is the spirit in which Furnishing Utopia, a group of 28 international design studios, launched a series of exhibitions from 2016 to 2018 that offered a comprehensive reinterpretation on various scales of the Shakers corpus of artefacts. Offsite, the first debut at New York Design Week in 2016, tackled the restyling of some pieces through the use of updated lines and colour keys. Also exhibited at Hancock Shaker Village, the museum site of an old and now extinct Shaker community, Furnishing Utopias collection expanded the following year to include storage furniture, textile creations and series of objects often reinterpreted as an exploration of a given typology. Hands To Work, from 2018, explored the metaphor and value of household cleaning objects, whose instrumental function is combined with the idea of a tool for spiritual elevation and enlightenment.

See more here:

The aura of Shakers, the influencers of good design - Domus

The children of 12th Street from 60-12 Club, the streets newsletter | Courtesy of the Trachtenberg family

The word utopia, coined by 15th-century English writer Thomas More, is based on the Greek words eu-topos, which means a good place, and ou-topos, which means no place.

The term was meant to show the idealized, just-out-of-reach nature of a perfect place. Certainly, a place that appeared so faultless could not possibly exist without a catch or shortcoming.

Some of the former residents of East Oak Lane would beg to differ. Hugged between North 11th and Camac streets on one side, and Marvine and 13th streets on the other, the 6000 block of North 12th Street was home to about 50 families, most of them Jewish, in the 1940s and 50s.

The residents remember the neighborhood the same way: Children addressed adults as aunt and uncle; no one locked their doors; everyone had a part in the annual Chanukah performance; and the street on a hill was transformed into a sledding haven in the winter, when the streets fathers stood at the top and bottom to block off incoming cars, and the children spent the later afternoons and weekends treading through mounds of snow.

Eighty years after the cohort of residents moved to North 12th Street, the surviving children, now septuagenarians and octogenarians, will gather for a reunion on Sept. 10 in Rittenhouse. The meet-ups theme, 12th Street: Myth or Reality, puts the neighborhoods utopic status to the test.

All of us think that everything wonderful happened on 12th Street, said Joan Cohen, 79, a former 12th Street resident. Anything bad or negative that happened in our lives happened after 12th Street.

The group of 30-40 surviving residents last convened in the early 2000s, and the cohort believes that the upcoming gathering will be one of the last opportunities to meet and share stories of a unique upbringing.

We are all brimming over with memories, Cohen said.

Cohen and her sister Alice Fisher both were born and grew up on 12th Street, the children of young parents looking to settle down during a tumultuous time in United States history. On the eve of World War II and following the Great Depression, many couples found refuge in the less-developed East Oak Lane section of North Philadelphia and had children at around the same time.

As the children grew, the trees grew that kind of thing, Cohen said. It was a new street, and I think they all wanted to be friends. Most of them had lived in different neighborhoods, whether it was South Philly or Kensington. They came from many different neighborhoods as single people prior to getting married.

The neighbors, according to former 12th Street resident Steve Trachtenberg, were relatively homogeneous in age and religious and cultural backgrounds. The commonalities laid the groundwork for the kids and parents to grow close.

There was going to be interaction from the beginning, from 2-year-old birthday parties up to bar mitzvahs X number of years later, Trachtenberg explained. The result was that associations, for whatever sociological reasons, were formed, and they just happened to be particularly close. Whether or not the war brought them together, the Jewish background brought them together, the common age brackets, the common socioeconomic brackets it wound up producing a series of people who sought and got the company of the rest of the street.

Fisher remembers playing hopscotch and jump rope with the other neighborhood children. She recalls a mother in the neighborhood who was musical and wrote an annual Chanukah show, giving each child a small part, and fondly remembers the annual Memorial Day picnic at what is now Breyer Woods. Cohen still remembers her neighborhood talent show performance of Im Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair from the Broadway show South Pacific.

In their childhood naivete as well as in the streets culture of not speaking ill of others Cohen and Fisher were raised to believe that any differences among the streets children were inconsequential.

Growing up, in our house we never talked about anybody, Fisher said. I didnt know who was old, who was young. I didnt know who was rich, who was poor. Everybody was the same. It was like a family.

What surprised the surviving 12th Street residents most about the neighborhood connections was that all the parents got along, particularly the men.

The parents had an unusual association, Trachtenberg said. The men played cards every Friday night, alternating between the homes. The woman played their card game; they were playing once or twice a week. The street, as a whole, did things together.

The adults maintained a newsletter 60-12 Club, which included weather forecasts, letters to the editor and results, with photos, of the streets Halloween party and costume contest. Men took their wives on vacation to Grossingers or Concord in the spring. On Shabbat, though families belonged to different synagogues, many would walk substantial distances to attend services together.

On the High Holidays, extended family would move in; the neighbors would still have personal connections with others aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmothers, who would cook the Rosh Hashanah meals for each household.

The whole street smelled like brisket one time, Fisher said.

In hindsight, however, Fisher and Cohen did notice some financial differences among the families that were not clear to them when they were children. While some households had a new Cadillac parked in their driveways, others had old cars.

Im safe in saying that nobody knew or cared enough, Trachtenberg said. It just was the way it was.

Though the former residents of 12th Street unanimously remember their time in the neighborhood fondly despite socioeconomic differences, they were not untouched by tragedy or troubles.

The polio epidemic of 1952 pervaded the summers of Cohen and Fisher, who attended sleepaway camp at Kittatinny. One year, the campers had to stay on the campgrounds for 10 extra days; a 14-year-old girl from the neighborhood had died of the virus.

The sisters knew of a couple in the neighborhood who would argue with one another. In one instance, Fisher and Cohens next-door neighbor became upset with them one summer day when Cohen was 6. With the windows and screens in all the homes open, the woman sprayed her hose into Fisher and Cohens living room window.

That was like the worst thing I ever remember, Fisher said.

However, the neighborhood children, though their memories are self-admittedly softened by time, endured real hardship.

Fisher and Cohens mother died young at age 50. Steve Trachtenberg and his brother Drew lost their father when Drew was 4.

Though they remember the sadness of the losses, Fisher, Cohen and Trachtenberg also remember how the families lifted each other up in times of devastation.

My mother was a very strong person internally. She had a strong sense of family, Trachtenberg said. Everybody recognized she was as capable as anybody would be at handling the loss. The amount of support that she got from the neighbors throughout that period of time was just extraordinary.

Nobody was alone in their troubles, Fisher added.

Though tight-knit for about two decades, the golden era of 12th Street came to an end in the 1960s, when the children of the neighborhood left for college, though many ended up staying in the city and continued to keep in touch over the years.

The parents, more financially comfortable and with emptier houses, relocated to the suburbs, with many families moving to Wyncote.

The conclusion to the cohorts time in the neighborhood felt natural, with everyone going their separate ways, though the time left a lasting mark on the residents.

I never mourned in any way or grieved at all about the passage of 12th Street. I never did, Cohen said. I always felt that it had endowed me with tremendous strength and warmth and understanding and caring and just relationships that seasoned during my whole life It was my foundation.

Those two decades on 12th Street remain even more anomalous because of the period in which they existed.

Today, Trachtenberg said, the grandchildren of the residents want to attend college outside of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Nobody stays in one place anymore, he said.

As young people move around more to seek out economic opportunity, theres less of a chance of a group of people, especially majority Jewish, settling into a neighborhood and collectively raising their children there. Recreating the environment of 12th Street is near impossible, Trachtenberg believes.

For now, the 12th Street of the 1940s and 1950s will likely remain as a memory for the few dozen who lived in the idyllic neighborhood. Though Sept. 10 will likely be one of the last times a large group of former residents meets in person, the reunion attendees can take solace in sharing stories, knowing they didnt take their upbringings for granted.

Even the 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds were aware, at some level, of the fact that not everybody was going to a Chanukah party at some restaurant that was attended by virtually everybody on the street, Trachtenberg said. And not everybody was going to have a street where all the parents went to the Poconos for a weekend during the summer.

We had a sense of the uniqueness then that was a valuable part of the memory, he added.

[emailprotected]

Read more:

Utopia Revisited: Residents Reunite to Share Stories of 12th Street Childhood - Jewish Exponent

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If wonder is the beginning of wisdom, lets listen to all that inspires. Coming into spring, as the southern hemisphere blossoms, so should our sense of awe bracing ourselves for all the possibility that is yet to flourish. We say salut! with Salut and their trackAir, which feels like we are being carried like blossom on a breeze into Roger DoylesSpring is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth, a pleasant reminder to eat more fruit and that above all else, [we] want to be loved.'

Once mechanical synths have decayed away, we are grounded by more the more organic guitars of Half Japanese, in their wonderous world of wonderous wonder, giving us a brand new start for a brand heart. Cass McCombs follows with his take on a new earth, birds return to their homes and junkies are reborn as a new utopia comes to us after a very, very bad day. We fall into theMoonshineof Nightlands and visit Paris in 1985. HAAi embraces the wonder of bodies of water, whilst Puro Instinct remind us of the subjective nature of awe after all, its whatwesee that give us a sense of all-encompassing beauty.

From the magnetic fields of Alex Chiltern, to the Mother of Pearl of Scribble, then to the Wild Flowers of Mark Lanegan, this playlist should promote diverse sensations, speaking to all aspects of amazement. Angel Olsen takes us to a fascinatingDream Time,followed closely by Poly Styrenes version of a surreal and lo-fi dreaming.

As we ground ourselves in a spring that is being sprung, we realise that Louis wasnt wrong, as we think to ourselves, its a wonderful world.

Looking for more 'Wonder' content? Get to know our 'Wonder' cover star Yilan Hua.

Go here to see the original:

'Wonder' Playlist: The sounds that inspired our new issue - RUSSH

"This Building Belongs to the People": Cape Verdes New Centre for Art, Crafts and Design

Facebook

Twitter

Mail

Pinterest

Whatsapp

Or

There are two ways to get to Cape Verde, by sea or sky. Either way, we are surprised by the landscape of immense rocky masses sprouting from the Atlantics navel before setting foot on land. Unpopulated until the middle of the 15th century, the volcanic archipelago is made up of ten islands, nine of which are currently inhabited, with unique characteristics in each one of them some more touristy, like Sal, others more rural, like Santo Anto and a version of Kriolu Kabuverdianu, which is not the official language (Portuguese occupies this place), but which is by far the most widely spoken.

So Vicente is the second most populous island in the country and makes up the northern insular group called Sotavento, along with Santo Anto, Santa Luzia, So Nicolau, Sal and Boa Vista. Its largest city, Mindelo, has a port vocation and has historically been the point of departure and arrival for people and goods. Marked by traffic, the city is a place of passage and intense cultural exchanges. It is also home to the first museum built in the country, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design CNAD.

+ 18

Opened at the end of July, the new CNAD is the result of a long process that had the support of the Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries of Cape Verde and the Federal Government. In addition to the new museum built from scratch, designed by the local firm Ramos Castellano Arquitectos, the project also includes the rehabilitation of Casa Senador Vera-Cruz, one of the oldest buildings in Mindelo, started in 2019.

The project was entirely financed by the Government of Cape Verde and cost 120 million Cape Verdean escudos (about US$1.1 million). With a collection area, exhibition rooms, library, and space for artistic residencies, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design seeks to become a reference as a platform for sustainable cultural development and promotion. We sowed utopia to reap a brand new verse, says Irlando Ferreira, Director General of CNAD, after years of work managing the demands and needs of government bodies, artists and artisans.

If today the institution extends its arms over arts and design, it keeps its feet firmly planted on crafts. It was created from it, in 1976, as Cooperativa Resistncia, a group formed by artists and teachers led by Manuel Figueira, Lusa Queirs and Bela Duarte. The group was dedicated to the experimentation, investigation and promotion of Cape Verdean handicrafts, in particular weaving, seeking in traditional and popular knowledge transmitted by master artisans, such as Nh Griga and Nh Damsio bases to foster the development of new artisans and artists.

Bonding with the population is embedded in the origin of CNAD. The reason of this building is to belong to the people, being close to them, comments the architect Eloisa Ramos. In other words, we wanted to break down all possible barriers, allowing people to move around here at will, without distancing themselves. The result is this building that, despite being imposing, does not create distance, she concludes. Eloisa, born in Santo Anto Island, is one of the architects responsible for the rehabilitation of the old Casa Senador Vera-Cruz and for the design of the new CNAD building, together with the Italian Moreno Castellano. Together they form the Ramos Castellano Arquitectos studio, based in Mindelo, which has in its portfolio Terra Lodge Hotel and Casa Celestina, both in the same city, and Aquiles Eco Hotel, in So Pedro.

For the CNAD project, they sought inspiration from a material that is common in everyday life on the islands of Cape Verde: the bidons, or cylindrical drums made of metal or plastic. Almost all the goods that arrive on the islands, sent by relatives of residents who went to look for better economic conditions in other countries, arrive inside these drums. With 560,000 inhabitants living in the archipelago and almost a million living outside it, it is conceivable that the influx of drums is quite voluminous.

After traveling the sea bringing goods from other continents mainly Europe and North America, but also South America and Asia these metal containers are recycled and incorporated into the daily lives of residents in a variety of ways. It is not unusual to find tin houses made with the metal plate of the drums, or pans and other tools made from parts of them. There are countless uses, and we find traces of drums everywhere, especially in communities far from urban centers.

The drums end up revealing a social, cultural, and economic dimension of the country, comments Irlando Ferreira, and here they were re-signified to constitute the second skin of the building. The lid and the circular bottom of the drums were used to compose a mosaic that envelops the new building. Set about a meter away from the glass faade that encloses the internal spaces, and accessed by a narrow service corridor, this skin works as a screen against the strong Sahelian sun. An elaborate manual mechanism allows the drums to be rotated, controlling the level of brightness and insolation in the interiors. There is no air conditioning, the environmental comfort systems are all passive, reveals Eloisa.

What stands out the most, however, are the colors of the building. Each of the hundreds of lids is given a color, and in this palette is encoded a musical score composed by the Cape Verdean multi-instrumentalist and conductor Vasco Martins. A color for each note (the intervals are also painted) and the rhythm of the faade is literally given by the music. In front of this score, the Casa Senador Vera-Cruz, now without walls, opens up to the city. Between the buildings, a rectangular square provides additional space for the CNAD program and connects the side streets, serving as a shortcut through the urban fabric of Mindelo.

Open to the people, the city and the world, looking at the past and the present, the new CNAD stands in Mindelo as a dream for the future. But not just any future, a future that brings us the past, being diaspora and island, comments Abrao Anibal Barbosa Vicente, Minister of Culture and Creative Industries. Indeed, the National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design seeks to honor the institutions past as a promoter of popular knowledge the exhibition Cape Verdean Creation: Routes, curated jointly by Irlando Ferreira and Adlia Borges, bears witness to this. However, it avoids sinking into nostalgia, and keeps its focus firmly on the development of young artisans and artists.

The fulfillment of a project of this importance in a country with just over half a million inhabitants is an admirable achievement; program maintenance, in turn, will continue to be a challenge. It's a utopia, adds Irlando.

But Cape Verdeans are no strangers to this: I grew up listening to my father, who was a farmer, talking about waiting for the rain. You put the seed in the ground and wait for the water, and then you ought to have faith, because you believe the rain will fall. You have to believe in order to survive, Eloisa told me. It hadn't rained on the island of So Vicente for four years and the arid landscape testified to that. We have an expression here that says sow in the dust, adds Irlando, because the earth is so dry that it has already turned to dust and, even so, you put the seed inside waiting for it to sprout. I no longer knew whether he was talking about plantations in the countryside or the arduous work made by the institution he directs, but I felt that, after the sowing was done, we all myself included believed that the harvest was, at long last, possible.

Read the original post:

"This Building Belongs to the People": Cape Verde's New Centre for Art, Crafts and Design - ArchDaily

So, its over. Stop the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the hoards from nicking the pink pastel thrones. Notorious woman-centric members club and co-working space The Wing is dead.

Once billed by its co-founder and entrepreneurial it-girl Audrey Gelman as a womens utopia, and your throne away from home, The Wing opened in 2016 to a flurry of fanfare and media attention. On the surface, the concept was simple: charge professional women between 170 and 240 a month for access to luxurious, maximalist, millennial-pink spaces where they could work, network, and eat poached egg dishes called Fork the Patriarchy. Its first outpost was located in New Yorks Flatiron district, in the historic stretch known as Ladies Mile its where well-off women shopped in the 19th century. Within weeks, it had found its place among the Lena Dunham-adjacent coterie of New York City, counting Alexa Chung, Tavi Gevinson, Emilia Clarke and Cara and Poppy Delevingne among its founding members. By the end of 2019, The Wing had 11 locations, including a five-storey townhouse in Londons Fitzrovia.

For The Wings members, the end came abruptly. An email sent out on Tuesday (30 August) announced that all Wing locations would be closing permanently, blaming an inability to recover financially from the Covid pandemic and increasing global economic challenges. Members access halted with immediate effect. Within hours of the closure being made public, the company appeared to have deleted Instagram comments from members asking about previously booked commitments at Wing locations. Then it locked comments on its photos altogether. At the time of writing, there has been no acknowledgement on the platform of the shutdown its most recent grid post is from a fortnight ago, urging ladies of luxury, leisure and well-heeled creative labour to treat [themselves] to a personalised tour of The Wing and stay the day! What a difference two weeks makes.

Yet, for those looking in from the outside, The Wings demise didnt feel so sudden. Indeed, when the announcement came, it seemed inevitable. Even overdue The Wings kitsch corporate playgrounds had already begun to look like fossils from a bygone era. Turmeric lattes. Egg chairs. Colour-coordinated bookcases. All now as distinctly late 2010s as inflatable furniture is to the late 1990s.

In retrospect, The Wing seemed to neatly express the micro-epoch in which it was founded encapsulating both the fetishes and deficiencies of girlboss feminism. The writing was always on the wall, attached as securely as the portraits of Hillary Clinton, Mary Beard, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Amal Clooney and other #inspirational industry leaders and feminist pin-ups that lined The Wings hallways. Truly, The Wing simultaneously slamming the locks on its Instagram comments and the clubhouse doors is too perfect an emblem for the last nails being hammered into the coffin of the girlboss. And so, let the next round of discourse proclaim: The Wing died doing what it loved, a neat symbol until the end.

Its funny, the things that come to represent certain cultural landscapes and pockets of time. The Wing always garnered undue levels of attention, given at its peak it hosted just 12,000 members across its 11 locations. A not insignificant number, but last year Soho House another notorious, overdesigned, expensive and exclusive club for like-minded creative thinkers comparatively had 119,000 members across 27 houses in 10 countries. Even when it comes to cold hard cash, The Wing wasnt an outlier. Membership to its London Soho outpost cost roughly the same as its nearby club competitor, with an annual fee of 1,836 to Soho Houses 1,300. Plus the 400 registration fee. Though it was practically budget when held up against the 3,250 annual rate (plus 1,750 joining fee) for Mayfairs Marie-Antoinette-cum-British-colonial-soft-play club Annabels. Supposedly the only nightclub the Queen has ever stepped foot in, Annabels proves that, when it comes to girlbosses, there are more rungs to be climbed than the average Lean In/Goop/Glossier/Lululemon/Lena Dunham/ But Her Emails cap-wearing girl could ever dream of.

But it was never really just about the money. The thing that distinguished The Wing and launched a thousand column inches and cemented its status as a millennial burlesque was the very public nature of a supposedly private members club, and its worthiness. At heart, both amounted to hypocrisy.

Audrey Gelman interviews Jennifer Lawrence at New Yorks The Wing Soho in 2018

(Monica Schipper/Getty for The Wing)

The Wing was founded on a paradox. Its business aped one of societys most elitist institutions the private members club while its brand was steeped in the language of feminist emancipation and empowerment. Theyve tried to make it mean a million different things, said Scarlett Curtis, Wing member and editor of Feminists Dont Wear Pink (And Other Lies), in 2019. There were mums with side hustles, and journalists, coders and people in tech. Curtis claimed that The Wings ethos was more of a political stance. They are left wing: very pro-diversity, pro-inclusivity. Its very intersectional feminism.

Except, of course, it absolutely wasnt. How could it be? Exclusivity was as essential to The Wing as the marble chips in its terrazzo tables. When a racist incident at The Wings West Hollywood location came to light in 2019, it set off a spiral of revelations about the company that, while not exactly surprising, undermined its intersectional feminist ethos to the point it was unrecoverable. Asha Grant, the director of the Free Black Womens Library of Los Angeles, reported that she had arrived at the groups Hollywood location only to encounter an angry white woman in the parking lot, upset that Grant had snagged a spot she felt belonged to her. Grant alleged that the woman a guest at The Wing followed her inside yelling insults and threats. She also added that, after the harassment, Wing staff didnt ask the white woman to leave, telling her they didnt feel empowered to do so. It was another example of White womens comfort prioritised over Black womens pain, Grant said.

Yet, while this is plainly and evidently true, there turned out to be some further truth in the claim that Wing staff didnt feel empowered. Indeed, many subsequently reported that the companys working culture was rooted in fear and exploitation that working class, immigrant and Black staff were disrespected, underpaid and used for marketing clout. In June 2020, Gelman resigned from her role as CEO. Shortly after, staff organised a digital walkout in protest over The Wings prioritisation of public appearance over working practice. Roxanne Fequiere, who took part in the digital walkout before resigning from the company, said that The Wings response was at once affirmative and lacklustre, as though our leadership couldnt be bothered to convincingly feign any more enthusiasm for accountability.

The Wings closure hasnt changed this pattern. Naydeline Mejia is assistant editor at Womens Health but previously worked for The Wing. The morning after members received the shutdown email, Mejia tweeted that she was just thinking about all the immigrant, non-rich & non-white women who ran that place that are now without jobs. Women who had been working for the company quickly replied to Mejia, thanking her for acknowledging them. One said that, after Tuesday nights email, she found herself randomly unemployed without a plan. Again, a neat symbol until the end now of malpractice and the avoidance of accountability.

Exclusive, while preaching inclusivity. Sermonising about the value of womens work, while practising workplace exploitation. Claiming intersectionality, while allowing racism to go unchecked. The Wing modelled itself on Britains elite, old-money hang-outs, while also declaring itself an antidote to old boys networks and the politics of Trump; it wanted community and equality and to always, above all, be market-friendly; it was a confused, hypocritical recipe doomed to fail.

Gelman often told The Wings origin story roughly as follows: she was working as a press secretary, and later as an aide to Hillary Clintons election campaign, dashing from city to city and between meetings and parties. It was a lifestyle that supposedly forced her to change her clothes in the bathrooms of Starbucks and train stations, places she said she found semi-degrading. She dreamt of having a more dignified place to go, where like-minded women could find one another, get changed and charge their phones in peace.

Its a story that also reveals the roots of The Wings downfall, and the essential nastiness behind the glossy be kind facade of girlboss feminism. Today, Starbucks workers in the United States are fighting to unionise, while labour movements on both sides of the pond are reinvigorated. Yet here we have a story about a centrist it-girl on her way to a political party, detecting degrading conditions in Starbucks bathrooms and other public spaces mainly utilised by the working classes. Her big solution? To create an untouchable haven for herself and her social circle that would be as far removed from them as possible. What could be less radical, progressive or intersectional than that?

Go here to read the rest:

The girlbosses who girlbossed too close to the sun: The demise of womens utopia The Wing was long overdue - The Independent

Bjrk has shared the lead single from her forthcoming album, Fossora. Directed by Viar Logi, the Atopos video takes place in a fungal underworld, where a masked Bjrk, a bass clarinet sextet, and Gabber Modus Operandis DJ Kasimyn gear up for a rave showdown. Watch it happen below.

Bjrk wrote on Twitter yesterday that the track is kinda like Fossoras passport. The album, out September 30, was partly inspired by the pandemic experience and lockdown raves. Its title is a word that Bjrk made upthe feminine of fossore, which means digger, delver, ditcher, as she put it in press materials.

Fossora is the follow-up to 2017s Utopia. Bjrk recently launched a podcast called Bjrk: Sonic Symbolism. The first three episodes document Debut, Post, and Homogenic.

Check out Revisiting Bjrks First Film, The Juniper Tree, In Honor of Its Restoration over on the Pitch.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Read the original here:

Bjrk Parties at a Mushroom Rave in Video for New Song Atopos: Watch - Pitchfork

J. Bradford DeLong is an economist who teaches at the University of California Berkeley, and served in the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. He is the author of multiple books, including the just-published Slouching Toward Utopia, an economic history of the twentieth century. Observer executive editor James Ledbetter recently interviewed DeLong; this transcript has been edited of length and clarity.Economist J. Bradford DeLong (courtesy Basic Books)

Observer: So youve written a lot of books, most of them shorter than this one. What made you take on a topic this sweeping?

DeLong: It was a book I wanted to read and no one else was writing it. So I decided I should. I wrote a draft chapter or two, and then Tim Sullivan of Basic came along and said, why dont we put you under contract to do this? And then about every three years, theyd call me up and say, where is it?

How long was this?

One of my roommates claims he read a full first draft 30 years ago, but hes a liar. I wrote a chapter in 1998. And then maybe there was an outline in 2004. And there was maybe a semi-draft in 2012.

Give us a summary of your grand narrative.

Its mostly a Karl Polanyi narrative, its that in 1870, all of a sudden everything changed. For the first time technological progress became fast enough that there was actually a possibility that humanity could bake a big enough economic pie so that everyone could have enough. And that governance could be actually focused on making a truly human world, rather than governance being figuring out how to run a force-and-fraud machine on everyone else so that it alone could have enough. And indeed from 1870 to today, technological progress has been absolutely wonderful. By the scale of any previous century, they would say you have much more than enough for utopia. But while we have done a superb job at solving the problem of baking a sufficiently large economic pie, the problems of properly slicing and then tasting the pie, of making sure everyone actually does have enough and utilizing our wealth to allow us to lead lives in which we are healthy, safe, secure, and happy, that continues to totally flummox us.

What specifically happens in 1870 that causes this tremendous technological transformation?

In 1870, we get the coming of the industrial research lab, which allows us to discover and develop technologies at a very high rate; of the modern corporation that allows us to develop and deploy technologies; and then with full globalization, the opportunity to deploy and then to diffuse as other people copy what youve done becomes so vastly attractive. Someone like Nikola Tesla, who was borderline socially dysfunctional, but also knew better than anyone else how to make electrons get up and dance and advanced us all by himself at least a decade in terms of developing electric power, wouldve been totally useless without George Westinghouse to create the industrial research lab and smooth the ruffled feathers of everyone else working there and also the Westinghouse corporation to then take and deploy the stuff. And then the copycats Edison and elsewhere, and the financing from JP Morgan and George Fisherthose change Tesla from being someone who is not a big net gain to society to someone who moves one-tenth of the economy forward by 10 years. And since 1870 human technological prowess has at least doubled every 30 years. That means enormous amounts of Schumpeterian creative destruction: immense wealth, new industries, occupations, etcbut old industries, occupations, incomes, communities vanish.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that while the events and the trends that it discusses are relatively familiar, there are just constant surprises. For example, I wouldve imagined that most people attribute the strong and steady growth that Western Europe enjoyed after World War II to the Marshall Plan. But you argue that the Marshall Plan was kind of small potatoes.

Its one percent of US GDP, three percent of European GDP. Even if you say we get a 30% rate of return on these investments, as opposed to a normal seven, five or three percent return, thats just 0.3% per year on the growth rate.

So if it wasnt the Marshall Plan that led to those glorious years, what was it?

In some respects, it was what happened in Eastern Europe after 1990. Lots of people saying we see the future and its to our west. We dont care about what the political ideology is. We want to become a lot more like America. We want to do it now because theyve got it, and we dont.And that at least gives society and government a substantial direction. Plus the fact that the right had clung to Nazism for much too long and the far left was tied to Joseph Stalin and could not untie itself.

The chapter on inclusion is really important for the slouching part of your title. In other words, by the middle of the 20th century, the global economy has figured out how to provide a very good standard of living for a huge number of people. But definitely not everybody, not even in the most developed countries. Why didnt that happen?

The hope after World War II was John Maynard Keynes saying, put my technocratic students in charge of the macro economy. Everyone will have a job and labor will have substantial social power. Wages will be reasonable. And with a full employment policy, interest rates will be low, which means that returns on capital will be low, which means that if plutocrats want to exercise their social power, the only way they can do so is they spending down their capital. Hence they cease to be plutocrats. Hence there may be a lot of wealth inequality, but theres not a lot of income inequality. And so maldistribution is not an incredibly huge thingand have full employment, programs that redistribute income and wealth, progressive tax system, heavy inheritance tax, a lot of public provision of commodities, taking them out of the markets as well and provide parks and schools and roads and poolsthen you do have something that looks like a proper road to utopia. The he problem is this fails its sustainability test in the 1970s. Go and talk to Paul Krugman about it, he says if only we hadnt had the inflation.

Im going to come back to that. Related to the idea of inclusion or exclusion is North/South divide; one of the points you make is that something important happened around 1990.

The African retardation ends. The post-World War II decolonization two decades are good for literacy and good for public health in Africa, but absolutely horrible for production. There are a lot of people who say that it really was 400 years of slavery and the resulting destruction of social trust at a very basic level. You could actually run an industrializing economy and a primary product exporting economy, as long as you could borrow your colonizers market network and trust that contracts will be obeyed. And that bureaucrats will be honest. But once they withdraw leaving nothing, then you have to try to build up the social division of labor nearly from zero in an environment in which governments with late 20th century means of coercion are able to exploit and corrupt a great deal.

That in Africa seems to come to an end in the 1990s. From the year 2100s perspective, people will say that neoliberalism and the global south actually unlocked a great deal of things that had been frozen in stasis in the post-World War II generation, under the influence of really existing socialism to various degreesnationalism and bureaucratization and so forth. Thats, I think, an important issue and not one I spend enough time on.

You obviously started this book well before the current bout of inflation that a lot of countries are experiencing right now. But what you say about inflation in the 1970s and how it spawned this political and intellectual reaction seems highly relevant right now.

When aggregate demand is too low, you have a lot of people who lost their jobs and cant find new ones and you have people who dont dare ask for a raise because then they think theyll be first on the block to be fired if something bad should happen. And those are relatively small groups of people, unless its a Great Depression. But with inflation, pretty much everyone finds they cant buy things at the prices that they expected. So the market economy has disappointed their expectations, and has done so in a way thats got to be the fault of the rulers. And thats a principal sign that we need a different group of rulers.

I recognize that your use of utopia is at least a little ironic. But its interesting that the period and the very developments that you credit are exactly the same period and developments that a lot of people would say is exactly when humanity went on the wrong path, that put civilization on a carbon-based path of global destruction. You talk about the environment a little bit in some places, but I wonder how you think people should think about the tradeoffs between economic growth and climate change.

Economic growth in renewables is politically, and Id say also humanly, kind of the only way to keep from cooking the planet. Technology is about the only thing that can potentially save us here. A carbon tax would be best and fairest, but large-scale public subsidies for renewables are a good second best. And we need to move there as fast as possible. As for the coal-based road to industrialization, thats the only way that we get from being limited by human and horse muscles to actually being able to use more power. I think if you dont do that, you will never get economic growth fast enough to outrun Malthusian pressures. And as long as you have a world of patriarchy in which women only have durable social power if theyre the mothers of surviving sons, you really need to get a lot of economic growth very quickly in order to get people rich enough for infant mortality to fall low enough for people to say, Gee, maybe we dont need to try for nine children in order to have two that survive. Without coal, you have a Malthusian world of medieval poverty. Unless you a figure out a way to get rid of patriarchy, which is a difficult thing to do.

Originally posted here:

Technology Is the Only Thing That Can Potentially Save Us: A Conversation with Brad DeLong - Observer

If Purdy does not have a very detailed plan, he has at least a plan for a plan. He wants to transform American life through mass participation in engaged and shared decision-making, of the sort presaged by Zuccotti Park. To get where we need to go, he argues forcefully for a reformed Supreme Court and a new Constitutional Convention every three decades, to rewrite the whole damn thing.

The familiar parts of Purdys polemic have familiar rejoinders. Occupy Wall Street was a marginal, not a mass, movement, never gaining popular support, and Sanders ran twice and lost twice. Purdy blames market colonization for the Supreme Courts reactionary decision-making, but the Courts most reactionary decisions have little to do with the desires of capitalism or, anyway, of capitalists: the Goldman Sachs crowd is fine with womens autonomy, being significantly composed of liberal women, and would prefer fewer gun massacres. And though the struggle to maintain democratic institutions within a capitalist society has been intense, the struggle to maintain democratic institutions in anti-capitalist countries has been catastrophic. We do poorly, but the Chinese Communist Party does infinitely worse, even when it tilts toward some version of capitalism.

For that matter, would our democratic life really be improved by a new Constitutional Conventionto which Alex Joness followers, demanding to know where the U.F.O.s are being kept, are as likely to show up as Elizabeth Warrens followers, demanding that corporations be made to pay their fair share of taxes? The U.S. Constitution, undemocratic though it is, is surely an additive to the problem, not the problem itself. Parliamentary systems, like Canadas, have also been buffeted by populist and illiberal politics, while Brexit, a bit of rough-hewn majoritarian politics in a country without a written constitution, shows the dangers of relying on a one-night plebiscite.

Purdys basic political position seems to be that politics would be better if everyone shared his. Those of us who share his politics might agree, but perhaps with the proviso that the kind of sharing he is cheering for has more to do with the poetics of protest than with politics as generally understood. Politics, as he conceives it, is a way of getting all the people who agree with you to act in unison. This is a big part of democratic societies. Forming coalitions, assembling multitudes, encouraging action on urgent issues: these are all essential to a healthy country, even more than the business of filling in the circle next to a name you have just encountered for an office you know nothing about.

But the greatest service of politics isnt to enable the mobilization of people who have the same views; its to enable people to live together when their views differ. Politics is a way of getting our ideas to brawl in place of our persons. Though democracy is practiced when people march on Washington and assemble in parkswhen they feel that they have found a common voicepolitics is practiced when the shouting turns to swapping. Politics was Disraeli getting one over on the nineteenth-century Liberal Party by leaping to electoral reform for the working classes, thereby trying to gain their confidence; politics was Mandela making a deal with de Klerk to respect the white minority in exchange for a peaceful transition to majority rule. Politics is Biden courting and coaxing Manchin (whose replacement would be incomparably farther to the right) to make a green deal so long as it was no longer colored green. The difficulty with the Athenian synecdoche is that getting the part to act as the whole presupposes an agreement among the whole. There is no such agreement. Trumpism and Obamaism are not two expressions of one will for collective action; they are radically incommensurable views about whats needed.

Purdys faith in collective rationality as the spur to common actionhis less mystical version of Rousseaus general willleaves him not entirely immune to what could be called the Munchkinland theory of politics. This is the belief that although the majority population of any place might be intimidated and silenced by an oppressive forcecapitalism or special interests or the Churchthey would, given the chance, sing ding-dong in unison and celebrate their liberation. They just need a house dropped on their witch.

The perennial temptation of leftist politics is to suppose that opposition to its policies among the rank and file must be rooted in plutocratic manipulation, and therefore curable by the reassertion of the popular will. The evidence suggests, alas, that very often what looks like plutocratic manipulation really is the popular will. Many Munchkins like the witch, or at least work for the witch out of dislike for some other ascendant group of Munchkins. (Readers of the later L.Frank Baum books will recall that Munchkin Country is full of diverse and sometimes discordant groupings.) The awkward truth is that Thatcher and Reagan were free to give the plutocrats what they wanted because they were giving the people what they wanted: in one case, release from what had come to seem a stifling, union-heavy statist system; in the other, a spirit of national, call it tribal, self-affirmation. One can deplore these positions, but to deny that they were popular is to pretend that a two-decade Tory reign, in many ways not yet completed, and a forty-nine-state sweep in 1984 were mass delusions. Although pro-witch Munchkins may be called collaborators after their liberation, they persist in their ways, and resent their liberators quite as much as they ever feared the witch. Of course, I never liked all those scary messages she wrote in the sky with her broom, they whisper among themselves. But at least she got things done. Look at this place now. The bricks are all turning yellow.

Purdys vision of democracy would, of course, omit the bugs in the Athenian model: the misogyny, the slavery, the silver mines. But what if the original sin of the democratic vision lies right therewhat if, by the time we got to Athens, democratic practice was already fallen and hopelessly corrupted, with the slaves and the silver mines and the imperialism inherent to the Athenian model? This is the hair-raising thesis advanced by the illustrious Japanese philosopher Kjin Karatani. In his book Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, Athenian democracy is exposed as a false idol. He does not see this from some Straussian point of view, in which Platos secret compact of liars is a better form of government than the rabble throwing stones at Socrates. On the contrary, he is a staunch egalitarian, who believes that democracy actually exemplifies the basic oppressive rhythm of ruler and ruled. His ideal is, instead, isonomia, the condition of a society in which equal speaks to equal as equal, with none ruled or ruling, and he believes that such an order existed around the Ionian Islands of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., before the rise of Athens.

If Purdy is susceptible to the Munchkinland theory of social change, Karatani is tempted by what might be called the Atlantis theory of political history. Once upon a time, there was a great, good place where life was beautiful, thought was free, and everyone was treated fairly. This good place was destroyed by some kind of earthquakeperhaps visited from outside, perhaps produced by an internal shaking of its own platesand vanished into the sea, though memories of it remain. The Atlantis in question may be Platos original idealized island, or it may be the pre-patriarchal society of Europe, or the annual meeting of Viking peasants in nightless Iceland. In every case, there was once a better place than this one, and our path to renewal lies in renewing its tenets.

Karatanis Atlantean view is plausibly detailed. The settlement around the Ionian Islands in the centuries after Homer (but before the imperial ascent of Athens) was marked by an escape from clan society; the islands welcomed immigrants of all kinds. Free of caste connections and tribal ties, the Ionians were able to engineer a new kind of equality. They didnt become hunter-gatherers, but they recuperated nomadism by the practice of foreign trade and manufacturing. Like fourteenth-century Venice or seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Ionia was a place where there wasnt much land to till, let alone a landed aristocracy to own and exploit the terrain and its tillers, and so people had to earn a living making and trading things. As a result, they were open in ways that mainland Greece was not.

A key point, in Karatanis account, is that Ionian trade wasnt captured by a state monopoly but conducted through networks of makers and traders. The earnings of trade, under those conditions, were more evenly distributed, and the freedom of movement put a limit on abusive political arrangements. The reason class divisions multiplied under the money economy in Athens was that from the outset political power was held by a land-owning nobility, he writes. That kind of inequality, and ruler-ruled relation, did not arise in Ionia. That is to say, isonomia obtained. If in a given polis such inequality and ruler-ruled relation did arise, people could simply move to another place.

For Karatani, working in a Marxian tradition, ideas tend to mirror the economic exigencies of their contexts, and he thinks that in Ionia they did. The line of philosophers who came of age around the islands, usually called the pre-Socratics, were notably unconcerned with hierarchy or with religious mysticism. They imagined the universe as governed by material, transactional exchanges. Thales, who lived in the Ionian city of Miletus and thought that everything was made of water, was making an essentially empirical attempt to understand the world without recourse to fate or divine supervision. (So, for Karatani, was Heraclitus, a century later, who thought everything was made of fire.) Karatani insists that the pre-Socratic physics is inseparable from an Ionian political ideology. Ionian physics posited an equilibrium of forces, not a hierarchy of them with a mystical overseer. Anaximander, Thales protg, introduced the principle of justice (or dik) as the law governing the natural world. The play of forces in the physical world, fluid and forever in exchange, mimicked and governed the forces in the social world. Isonomia was at the root of it all.

Isonomia in Ioniait has therhythm of a song lyric. One feels again the shape of a familiar and accurate historical meme: trading and manufacturing centers tend to be markedly more egalitarian than landholding ones. Democratic practices of one kind or anotherthough limited and oligarchic in Venice, bloodied by sporadic religious warfare in Hollandusually take root in such places, only to be trampled as power consolidates and an lite takes hold.

You said it. I heard it. Theres no taking it back, Harold!

Cartoon by David Sipress

Was Karatanis Atlantis, that utopia of isonomia, actually anything like this? Early on, he cheerfully admits that there are almost no historical or archaeological materials to give us an idea of what Ionian cities were really like. But he suggests that we can argue by indirect evidence and by drawing inferences in world history from cases that resemble Ionia. These turn out to include medieval Iceland, also a refuge for exiles, with its famous ingvellir, or meeting place, and pre-Revolutionary New England, settled by refugees as well, and marked by its isonomic townships and town meetings.

It is an odd way to argue history and has odd results. In Iceland, you can visit the ingvellir, where the Viking democrats gatheredand the next thing you are shown is the drowning pool, where women were executed. The drowning pool came into use later, to be sure, but is part of a similar social inheritance. Rough justice, the sagas make plain, is as much an Icelandic tradition as shared goods are. And one has only to read Hawthorne to have a very different view of life in those New England townships, especially for people who did not quite fit the pattern.

Karatanis historical approachprojecting his ideals upon an idealized pasthas other confounding consequences. What are we to make, for instance, of his insistence that the poems of Homer, the bard of Ionia, are not aristocratic? In truth, the force of the occasional protests against aristocratic practices in Homer are moving because of their rarity, rather like the cries of the peasants in King Lear. Blood will tell is pretty much the motto on every inspired page. But Karatani needs Homer to be isonomic and will make him so. More practically, how did Ionians resolve the perpetual fact of political conflict? Perpetual secession seems to be the answer; when things get bad, simply go to another island. (The old liberal huff Im moving to Canada! is more serious when Canada is just a rowboat ride away.) This is not always ridiculous advicea series of successive secessions in New England is how we got Rhode Islandbut it doesnt seem like much of a plan for settled modern countries.

Greek islands before the rise of Athens, chilly and isolated medieval Iceland, the New England townships of the Colonial era: these sound like oddly sparse and remote spots to build a dream on. Perhaps all such dreams can be built only so. Reading Karatanis account of ancient Ionia, one recalls the parallel dream of ancient Sparta, the militaristic state that so inspired authoritarians from Plato to Hitler. An isonomic Ionia is infinitely preferable to an authoritarian Sparta but seems of the same imaginative kind. We cant build back better from a place that didnt really exist. Certainly, from what little we do know, the Ionians seem not to have been egalitarian at all in the sense we mean and have gone far toward achievingthe aim of equality between the sexes, or among religious groups, or among ethnicities or sexualities. Yet the basic inquiry into the possibility of human relationships that Karatani undertakes is moving, even inspiring. Though he doesnt cite them, his Ionians most resemble the classic anarchists, of the Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman kind: repudiating all power relations, ruler to ruled, in a way that shames more timid liberal imaginations.

See the article here:

Cant We Come Up with Something Better Than Liberal Democracy? - The New Yorker