deconcrete

Flash Urbanism in China is not only about building at an extraordinary speed, but also about erasing mistakes of the most recent present, not even the past.

There are dozens of cities much larger than Berlin or Madrid, with names that Europe rarely hears. But it is in these cities, where four-star hotels need to make place for five-star ones, and now. In this photo series of Chinese Buildings dying unnaturally, it is described how constructions sometimes are destroyed before even being finished, still as 1-year old babies or teenagers before reaching the 18-year old grown-up age.

Chinese pulse is more about first doing, and afterwards realizing. Complexes that are being built in flooding protected areas, towers that block landscape views, lots that change their use to profit from a tiny % more…

Almost like human lives, concrete structures are usually conceived for 100 years life span. However, neighbourhoods rise land price at a speed that eventually marks the rhythm of demolition and reconstruction.

[source&images> demolitions in China via chinahush]

Mind control replaced physical torture as a way of punishment long time ago. Foucault compared an 18th century execution with Bentham’s panopticum concept in his Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison.

In the panopticon prison the all-seeing warder would sit in darkness observing the inmates without their knowing. Eventually, the degree of control would be such that the watchtower would need no occupant as the inmates would behave as if under constant surveillance and discipline themselves. For Foucault, this mind control reflected the idea that knowledge is power and can be used to dehumanise the individual. [huehueteotl]

The same idea of dehumanising individuals is captured in Philipp Lachenmann‘s work SHU (currently exhibited at Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin). In his video piece, he records  a Security Housing Unit prison in the middle of Mojave Desert at night, in a static shot. This prison within a prison is as static as the video itself. Time only goes by through the extremely slow – and artificially added – movements of the stars, which are actually recordings of different aeroplanes from other American cities. The scene could resemble a perverted Walt Disney’s Castle surrounded by fireworks; they  are both two worlds so far away from reality as the dreams they do generate.

The Security Housing Unit (SHU) is a prison-within-a-prison, reserved for what the CDC calls “the worst of the worst.” SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6 by 10 foot cells, 23½ hours a day, for years at a time. People held under these conditions develop what is known as “SHU Syndrome” – the degradation of mental faculties caused by extreme isolation. [...] The California Department of Corrections operates four Security Housing Units in its system. Pelican Bay, Corcoran, California Correctional Institution, and Valley State Prison for Women hold 1,292, 1,204, 458, and 44 inmates respectively. [Trevor Paglen describes in his recordings of carceral landscapes]

[image1> still from Philipp Lachenmann video piece SHU via artnet][image2> panopticum-style prison concept in Stateville prison (USA) via uni münster] [image3> SHU cell from California Department of Corrections via americanradioworks]