dismantling sites of power: the void remains

^ Split, Croatia: Roman Emperor Diocletian’s Palace and the densely populated city in 1912. [images via American Urban Architecture & wikimedia]

 

^ Berlin, Germany: the medieval monastery, the Baroque castle, the communist Palace of the Republic and the shopping mall replicating the Baroque Stadtschloss. [image via stadtentwicklung]

^ Mexico City, Mexico: the pre-Colombian Tenochtitlán pyramids overlay the Conquistadors’ cathedral and governmental palace. [image via skyscrapercity]

^ Córdoba, Spain: Roman temple – Visigoth church – Muslim Mosque (8th century) – Catholic Cathedral inserted inside the Mosque (13th &16th century). The minaret turned into a bell-tower.

< the mosque’s lamps were melted down to make new bells for the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, 800 km to the north. This probably seemed only fair, since the lamps had themselves been made from Santiago’s original bells: when the Moors had conquered the city in 997 they had dragged the bells to Cordoba and melted them down into lamps. > [source: Bevan, R 2006. The destruction of memory - Architecture at War. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Image via otraarquitecturaesposible]

Published on January 30, 2012 17:46.
Filed under: ersatz, forensic destruction

2 years deconcrete!

^^  21/01/2010 Deconcrete is born: 1st post about Franco dictator’s ship Azor fell into disuse as Motel Azor. Photo by deconcrete.

^ 20/01/2012: Fernando Sánchez Castillo_Síndrome de Guernica. Installation at Matadero Madrid. Azor ship transformed into pressed scrap as a demystification of symbols of power. Photo by Paco Gómez.

 

 

***2 YEARS AND OVER 380,000 HITS!!!

Thank you all!***

 

 

 

Published on January 22, 2012 16:45.
Filed under: forensic destruction

A Paris Made to Be Destroyed

Before Radar was invented warfare tactics could rely on visual tricks and trompe-l’oeil as a means of passive defence. The half-accomplished project of a Sham Paris outside Paris (Faux Paris, 1918) was a fake city to be largely exposed and to attract the most attention from German bomber planes flying above at night. Sham Saint-Denis, sham Aubervilliers, sham Gare de l’Est, and sham Champs-Élysées…

< The powers that were in Paris at the end of World War I tried to […] create a Sham Paris located on the outskirts of the real city – it was to be doomed, offered with confusing lights and displays that would disorient German aviators into bombing and destroying it rather than the real city. […] There were to be sham streets lined with electric lights, sham rail stations, sham industry, open to a sham population waiting to be bombed by real Germans. It is a perverse city, filled with the waiting-to-be-murdered in a civilian target. […] Sham Paris is a city of created murders to save the innocent. > 

Manipulating aerial views is a tool that has lately been empowered by Google Earth. In 2006, ecological activists denounced regional authorities in the Spanish Canary Islands for providing Google with out-dated photographs. Hence, irregular urban developments destroying the coastline could be hidden from the public eye.

Contrary to Sham Paris that built a new territory to be destroyed, the tactic in the Canary Islands was to build a new image of a sham coast in order not to be destroyed.

[text & images from the Illustrated London News, 6/11/1920 via Ptak Science Books]

thanks tito!

Published on December 2, 2011 14:20.
Filed under: forensic destruction, invisible cities

decay

 

< The sculpture La Fisiología del Gusto [The Physiology of Taste] by Adán Vallecillo presents the contradiction between the stainless steel tray, from the world of gourmet cooking, and its content of hundreds of corroded teeth. This macabre recipient alludes to the foreign medical teams that have arrived at the indigenous communities in the poorest regions of Honduras, extracting the decayed teeth of the inhabitants. Vallecillo exposes the waste and precarious living situation of these groups, while shedding light on the accumulation of this extraction, and the need for a remedial politics. Physiology – the science that studies the organs, including the functions of taste – operates in this work as a critical metaphor to identify the socially approved and the rejected. The tray with the teeth therefore provokes in the viewer a physiological and social distaste, generating a moment of awareness and recognition of the violence involved in these politics of extraction. >  [text> Venice Biennale 2011]

[1> Adán Vallecillo_La Fisiología del Gusto [The Physiology of Taste], 2010. Carious teeth and stainless steel tray, 3 x 44 x 25 cm. via vvork] [2> Adán Vallecillo's installation representing Honduras at the Venice Biennale 2011 by daniel fernández pascual]

Published on November 30, 2011 16:21.
Filed under: forensic destruction

terrorist-marked places

Three weeks ago Basque-separatist ETA terrorist organization declared the definitive cessation of its armed activity after 43 years of existence.

But the crime scenes where they perpetrated their assassinations still remain marked, as journalists Guillermo Abril and Álvaro Corcuera compile today in a very recommendable article in El Pais (Lugares Marcados). The article is not going through the whole history of ETA terrorist organization. Neither is the whole list of attacks included, nor the 829 victims of its terror. But it does show a series of 40 spaces where the terrorist organization left its trace in landscape.

Eduardo Nave has photographed some years later the crime scenes at the same hour and date as the assassinations occurred.

< These empty places make one think of the tragic moment when they were filled with death. > [Helena Taberna]

^ Murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco_Lasarte-Oria (Guipuzkoa)_16:50_12/07/1997

^ Murder of Estanislao Galíndez_Armurrio (Álava)_08:45_26/06/1985

^ Murder of Manuel Broseta_Valencia_10:15_15/01/1992

^ Murder of Carlos Arguimberri_N-634 Km.40_11:30_05/07/1975

Published on November 13, 2011 11:27.
Filed under: forensic destruction

oma/amo & the spectacle of failures

In a world of perfection and appearances, we become more and more eager to peep at failures. Specially, we enjoy finding out that celebrities and myths also belong to our everyday realm. With irony, sense of humor and a great dose of Dutch transparency, emergent Rotor collective has just curated the work of OMA/AMO for barbican under the title Progress. But far from being a standard show of chronologically ordered fetishized projects, we are delighted with a labyrinth of things that could conventionally been regarded as failures. They are however celebrated here as part of a successful trajectory to generate spaces. Walls are recycled from former shows without repainting; everyday objects are shamelessly displayed with a honest attitude towards the audience.

Tired as we are of overabundance of glamorous and glossy representations of OMA/AMO’s projects, this exhibition provides a representation of reality through images mediated by failures. Hidden stories from processes of building a building are rescued; politically incorrect tricks behind-the-scenes are simply revealed. Therefore, labels underneath every piece of work become even more important than the physical work itself. This exhibition of exhibits resembles a cabinet of curiosities compiled by some enlightened collector; but every item is here for a specific reason. Thus, they make a close connection between the visitor’s experience and the everyday reality at OMA/AMO.

Rotor collective debuted in Venice Biennale 2010 with a brilliant exhibition on users wearing out building materials and leaving trace evidence (Usus/Usures):

As a trace of use, wear reminds us that most of the time other users have gone before us, and still more will follow. In some cases, wear even provides a valuable clue as to the nature of these uses. In this sense, traces of wear play a vital part in our ability to read our environment and, by extension, appreciate it. […] Wear is always about situations.

One of their most relevant study cases when tracing back how building environment mutates was their photograph Blue Limestone Plinth (Brussels, 2010). It automatically unveiled how an area of the city was informally used:

The traces of wear on the plinth shown in this picture reveal the activity of prostitutes leaning against it, on a strategic corner in the centre of Brussels. The darkest marks show a polishing of the stone’s surface by different parts of the women’s bodies, while the lighter marks are scratches caused by their high heels. An analysis of the different traces of wear on the entire wall reveal the most popular spots, either because they are in full view of the street or because they offer slight protection from the rain.

This approach to architecture is what made them been commissioned for a similar curatorial concept. The unusual tandem at barbican composed of a curator that is not a great fan of the curated has made the collaboration even more thrilling. In words of Rem Koolhaas: This exhibition was a risk for us and we multiplied the risk by suggesting Rotor for curating it.

In addition, and following OMA/AMO’s current research on Preservation, the exhibition has opened up the Gallery West Entrance for the first time in history after completion of the building. A dead end has been turned into a public path, where pedestrians are allowed to see (only) part of the show free of charge.

[images 1-13> OMA/Progress, Curated by Rotor. barbican art gallery London 6/10/11-19/2/12. By deconcrete2011] [14> Blue Limestone Plinth by Rotor 2010]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published on October 5, 2011 18:00.
Filed under: forensic destruction, invisible cities, mutant

Travellers

Dale Farm is a territory of contradiction, where a legal border divides a community. Two adjoining sites, 30-min-train away from London, used to be scrapyards that were turned into living quarters. The first estate was self-established as a nomad settlement for Irish Travellers and Gypsy and Roma families some sixty years ago (45 plots). The other one is an extension that dates back to 2000 and is composed of 52 plots. The former is authorised, but the latter is not. These ethnic minorities purchased both sites and legally own them. Prefab-houses and caravans are scattered along the lanes. However, after many applications, the most recent one still lacks any building permission, whereas the neighbouring one was built in a formal way in past decades.

Consequently, conservative-run Basildon District Council decided to carry out the demolition of the second settlement, the largest eviction in UK history, with a total cost of £18 million for the clearance and without providing any other site for the resident families. Today, the Court should have decided the final fate for the settlement. Activists had already started a protest camp inside (“Camp Constant”), and built several barricades across the inner lanes of this community together with the residents by applying the wittiest military resistance tactics. But the verdict has been postponed till Monday, so dwellers are returning some of the caravans that were brought to the legal site in case of eviction back to the illegal one.

Irish Travellers minority used to share with gypsies a nomad lifestyle. Today what remains is still their seasonal working schedule. Activists have referred to the eviction as “ethnic cleansing”. But personally, I do not think it is a matter of cultural identities, but aporophobia and fear to the unstable. The contemporary spatial habits of Irish Travellers are just a direct result of social exclusion. Their cultural identity is very much influenced by the fact of being “out of established society”. That’s what joins them and makes them configure a strongly tied community. Unfortunately, it is the society that they cannot belong to what eventually gives meaning to their identity.

Dale Farm is located in the middle of the countryside, about 10 km away from the nearest village. One can only wonder why it is so important for authorities to evict the settlers living in that remote site lacking building permission.

Why did the Council even provide the needy families on-site with tax benefits if their dwellings were not legal?

If their mere existence makes villagers feel so uncomfortable, why not directly promote the eviction of both sites?

Why has their application for allowance to build on the site they legally own been constantly denied?

Authorities argument that the illegal site lies on a green belt land, but at the same time, there used to be a scrapyard in the same area only 10 years ago.

The only way for us to reach Dale Farm from the nearby railway station was by taxi. And maybe the only explanation to these questions, as absurd as coherent, was revealed to us in a conversation with the extremely prejudiced driver, who took us to the nearest crossroads to the site from the station (he refused to drop us off at the very entrance):

You will understand it when you grow older.

 

 

 

[1-8>Dale Farm Protests by deconcrete2011][9> Dale Farm_aerial view via bbc]

Published on September 23, 2011 19:17.
Filed under: forensic destruction, nomads, protest & critical space

cars on fire

After two intense weeks of cars being set on fire at night in the streets of Berlin, yesterday was calm again. Since January 2011 more than 530 cars have burnt, but the pyromaniac series has been going on for 4 years now. And there is still no clue for the actual reasons behind the incendiary crimes: youngster vandalism, cheating insurance companies or straight discontent among Berlin citizens.

Only two perpetrators have been arrested so far. However, if we take a look at the areas where they have taken place (see Brennende-Autos map above), a dozen are only to be found in the East Banlieu (Marzahn) and some dozens in the well-off neighbourhoods on the West periphery (Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf). Whereas in the central districts inside the inner ring, are to be count in hundreds. The more gentrified these neighbourhoods have become; the more social protests have broken out in the past 5 years. Collision in public space usually has a political background. Graffiti against Mieterhöhung (Rent increase) and Yuppies (specially from wealthy Southwest Germany) are to be found on many façades. Former working/ethnic districts Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauerberg and Neukölln have experienced an unprecedented rise in rents, which has forced locals to leave their affordable dwellings and move out somewhere far away.

Gentrification is still a double-edged weapon. Contingents of Turkish people among others were invited to immigrate and raise a city in ruins in past decades, but their city seems not to need them anymore. Obviously for Chancellor Merkel, multicultural society has utterly failed (“Multi-Kulti hat ausgedient”). But there is rage against the machinery.

[1> Cars on Fire in Berlin 2007-2010 via Brennende-Autos] [2> by Enrico Vogler] [3-5>Cars on Fire in Berlin via der Taggespiegel Berlin] [6> by Steffen Tzscheuschner via elpais]

Published on September 1, 2011 11:13.
Filed under: forensic destruction, protest & critical space

collision in public space, a chronology

When appropriation of public space happens, it happens at two levels. Protesters reclaim a physical site, but at the same time they appropriate a symbol of political identity. The outbreak of rioting or violence always shows civil unrest amongst certain groups of population. London has a long history experiencing them, dating back to the Peasants’ Revolt (1381), the Gin Riots (1743) or Bloody Sunday (1887). As featured yesterday in socks-studio & il post, here is a visual chronology of London’s history throughout its rioting in public space since 1915: communist marches, clashes between leftist and extreme right, disadvantaged neighbourhoods, racially motivated protests, against cuts or increased government taxes; anarchists, environmentalists, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist…

 

*1915: Destruction of a German shop by Londoners, Poplar High St.

 

*1936: Brit bobbies destroy a communist-built barricade near Mark Lane, opening the street to Oswald Mosley fascist supporters. Communist parade in the East End.

 

*September 1958: Racial turmoils, Notting Hill.

 

*March 1968: Pacific demonstration against war in Vietnam, Grosvenor Sq. (US Embassy).

 

*November 1970: Bobbies free Houghton Street from barricades built by London School of Economics students. They protested against traffic noise.

 

*September 1976: Notting Hill blacks vs. white turmoil.

 

*August 1979: Bobbies during racial turmoil in Notting Hill

 

*April 1981: Brixton turmoil.

*October 1985: Tottenham clashes arrests

 

*March 1990: Trafalgar Square’s protests against Poll Tax introduced by Margaret Thatcher.

 

*April 1993: Anti-nazi protests in front of BNP’s headquarter in Welling, South-East.

 

*April 1997: Environmental and anti-globalisation protests in front of Downing Street.

 

*November 1999: Aftermath of a parade against privatization of the railway system and against WTO, Euston Station.

 

*April 2009: Police hit by an egg during an anarchist, anti-capitalist and environmentalist protest the day before the G20 in London.

 

*November 2010: Students turmoils against increase in education taxes, London center.

 

*March 2011: Bobbies in front of a barricade in Jermyn St. after a parade against Governmental cuts.

 

 

Published on August 12, 2011 12:21.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, forensic destruction, protest & critical space

houses resisting sacrifice

There is a constant negotiation between cities and watercourses. If architecture wins, rivers may be expelled to the invisible underground. But if waters win, buildings are subjugated to vanish under the flood.

In May 2011, the Mississippi River has obliged the Army Corps of Engineers to deliberately flood part of the surrounding rural territory, in order to prevent a higher disaster in larger urban settlements. They alleviated the main course of the river by inundating automatically Missouri farms and acres of fertile land at the Lower Mississippi delta.

Thanks to the Morganza Spillway, an emergency infrastructure used only twice since its completion in 1954, waters gained mostly rural areas. This time, main cities managed to survive. As a result, artificial levees needed to be dug out in order to protect dozens of farmhouses. Bucolic residences were turned into sunken walled islands.

“For thousands of people forced from their homes by the rising Mississippi River, life has become a tedious waiting game: waiting for meals at shelters, waiting for the latest word on their flooded homes, waiting for the river to fall.” [The Huffington Post]

[1-7> Mississippi River and affluents flood, 2011 by Scott Olson/Getty Images via TheHuffingtonPost][8> Diagram of the flood by US Army Corps of Engineers via wikipedia][Flood scenario by US ACoE via TheWashingtonPost]

Published on May 28, 2011 17:37.
Filed under: forensic destruction

re-enactment of a crime

In a historical moment when scientific evidence apparently makes showing the picture of Osama bin Laden’s corpse unnecessary, the scene of the crime becomes more relevant than the body itself. The strategy to make people believe in the events goes through carpets with bloodstains, DNA tests and witnesses reports; but the mansion that he dwelled represents the most terrifying evidence of the events that took place inside.

As part of the lecture held yesterday at Goldsmiths, Milica Tomic presented the project Container (2004-2011) dealing with Forensic Performance and Dislocated Events. Tomic is part of the collaborative Grupa Spomenik, who questions the idea of how to dedicate a “Monument” to the victims of the war in former Yugoslavia, in the context of a society whose members still cohabitate with former killers next door. The work of the group almost applies a psychoanalytical therapy to prepare society before building any absurd sculptural institutionalised memorial: first openly discussing and visualizing massacres from the past to later work on peace, understanding it rather as a possible reconciliation. Once this is hypothetically achieved, I wonder whether there would be still a need for a tangible monument or the memorial has already been constructed during this psychological process.

Tomic linked Container to the three categories in which Alain Badiou classifies images of war: the ones presented by both sides of the conflict, the ones presented by one side and the ones that are never shown. She adds a fourth type dealing with a fictional image of a real event implementing Badiou’s classification. A scenography was produced according to the evidence of a crime in Maazar i Sharif in 2001. The massacre was announced in the media only two years later but no single image appeared.

<Container project is a reconstruction of an atrocity that took place in Northern Afghanistan, the massacre of thousand of Taliban prisoners of war by the Northern Alliance, directed by the American invasion troops. Taliban war prisoners were put into container trucks. They were kept without water and air for several days during their trip through the desert. When they started begging for air, the Northern Alliance troops fired upon the containers “in order to make holes for the air to get in”.>

The simulated conditions produce a non-existing war image. The first re-enactment of the Afghan crime took place in Belgrade, Serbia. Members of a local shooting club were hired to impersonate the role of American soldiers. A container was brought to the sports club where 3 of those professional shooters used Kalashnikovs with special bullets to open holes in it. Then, 100 people of downtown Belgrade were invited to enter the “well-ventilated” container.

The type of bullets used (AK-47/7.62×39 mm) had been produced in Bosnia in 1988 and were also used during the war in Kosovo until 1999. “The same bullets were used when bodies of killed ethnic Albanian civilians in freezer containers were transported from Kosovo to Serbia and later dumped into the Danube river.”

By re-enacting a crime in Afghanistan, another invisible crime in Kosovo came automatically visible.

The reconstruction of Container took also place in Armenia and Sydney revealing each time local connections to the global network of violence.

[source&image> Milica Tomic, Container 2004-2011]

Published on May 14, 2011 09:56.
Filed under: ersatz, forensic destruction

invisible mass graves

05/05/2011 the Spanish Government released the long announced map of mass graves of Dictator Franco’s regime. It is an open-source archive detailing the position of the 2,232 sites and their current status. Most corpses have not been touched yet (green); others have been already completely or partially exhumed (red) and others are disintegrated or bodies are still missing (white). Thus, there is a remarkable amount of yellow sites showing the corpses that were transferred to Franco’s Mausoleum at El Valle delos Caídos (outskirts of Madrid). This hybrid between a cemetery and a monument aimed to praise the victory over his adversaries by taking as many remains from the mass graves as possible into his “valley of the fallen”.

The map is to be found on the Government’s website, and it is possible to search victims by name, surname, year or town. The exact coordinates of each site cannot be openly accessed, so that relatives do not try to exhume the remains themselves and anticipate to a forensic team (as it has been reported in recent years). Not only does this map show the hotspots of a past conflict, but it also reflects the current grade of collaboration of the different autonomous regions, either willing or unwilling to carry out effective action in order to prove the evidence of crimes from the past. It is an invisible piece of 20th Century in Spain that lies on the ground and a series of events that urge to be clarified.

Published on May 10, 2011 16:37.
Filed under: forensic destruction, invisible cities

tourist colonialism

72,000 bottles of Turkish Efes beer arrive to the capital of Germany. Cyprien Gaillard in The Recovery of Discovery [Berlin, 2011] turns them into a mock pyramid monument inside KW contemporary art museum. A piece of Ephesus is encapsulated in Berlin through their local beer, as it is in most history museums through relocated fragments of ancient temples. However, the monument does not start to exist until visitors begin destroying it, by climbing to the top and drinking beer from the cardboard boxes that configure the even steps they are standing or sitting on.

The installation explores “the absurd aspects of dystopic architectures and their remaining ruins through such strategies as dilapidation, destruction, demolition, preservation, conservation and reconstruction of architecture. In doing so he always departs from the process itself.” [source> KW] The monument progressively desintegrates evidencing human use and waste. Free alcohol is consumed, producing a physical hangover that afftects body, mind and architecture. The same effect regarding existing ruins and current architectural perservation is what Gaillard criticisizes: “Preserving a monument goes hand in hand with destroying it. In order to preserve architecture, cultural monuments and relics, they are often re-located, thus abolishing the original context.”

Gaillard questions the contemporary role of tourist colonialism. Nowadays, leisure visitors are individuals who adopt the former role of national armies when invading a strategic country. This impact is also what The Recovery of Discovery visualizes in form of a new discipline. In Gaillard’s words: “My work starts where and when archaelogists left off” [mono.kultur]

[1,2>Gaillard's installation before and during usage via We Find Wildness][3> after 3 months by Anastasia Loginova]

Published on May 5, 2011 15:48.
Filed under: forensic destruction

nuclear metronome

Nuclear Explosions “1945-1998″. by Isao Hashimoto

2,053 nuclear explosions occurred between 1945-1998 in US, USSR/Russia, France, UK, China, India and Pakistan territory. (North Korea excluded)

Data visualized by Isao Hashimoto in 2003. One month is scaled down to one second. A year becomes 12 beats. Each national explosion acquires a determined tone. Time becomes the tempo, and nuclear tests its metronome. Between attraction and aversion, one watches both years and explosions passing by; the Pacific, empty grasslands, vacant deserts and the vast underground experiencing a weaponized world. Holes on the ground may remain the only trace of a former existing terrain.

thanks, miguel!

[video & image via ctbto.org]

Published on March 23, 2011 11:20.
Filed under: forensic destruction

japan grows 4 metres

Japan earthquake 8.9 Richter enlarged the country size:

Northeastern coast shifted 4 metres (13 ft) towards America.

Earth’s Axis shifted 16,7 cm (6,5 inches).

Rotational speed of the Earth increased, making a day 0.0000018 seconds shorter in duration.

Nautical charts, topographic maps and property boundary definitions will need revision.

3月11日地震　東京都スーパー店内の様子

[video via jonfr][sources> bbc news & elpais]

Published on March 15, 2011 08:29.
Filed under: forensic destruction

building the trace of emptiness

Before WWII some 1.3 million people lived in Warsaw (10% of them Jewish). Some 900,000 did at the start of the Polish resistance uprising against Hitler and just 1,000 lived amid the ruins in 1945.

CITY OF RUINS (Miasto Ruin, 2010) is the result of several months of graphic virtuosity and two months of continuous rendering. The Warsaw Rising Museum (Piotr Śliwowski) and Platige Image (Marcin Kobylecki), together with a team of history consultants and 40 specialists, have created an unusual 3D film that documents the shocking sea of rubble that Warsaw was reduced to during World War II, as seen from an imaginary flight with an Allied aeroplane at real speed.

CITY OF RUINS was released to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the resistance uprising that led to the fatal German bombings. Still affected by moral controversy, some Polish regard these rebels as national heroes, whereas others blame them on the utter destruction of Warsaw.

Five minutes flight over a perfectly ruined city to the utmost detail.

The team started the work by taking a helicopter flight over contemporary Warsaw to film base material. They filled it in with detail from some 1,600 historic pictures, films and paintings to recreate Warsaw as it was after the war. The result is a computer simulation that shows collapsed bridges along the Vistula River, whole districts of roofless, burned-out houses and the completely erased Warsaw Jewish Ghetto (its Catholic church still standing), all frozen in time. It seems as if the old Soviet utopic plan from late 1940s aiming to leave the rubble untouched as a war memorial gated island – starting the city anew somewhere else – had eventually been carried out. Unfortunately, what happened was an even more hilarious literal reconstruction process; delirium supported and celebrated by UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Today, pedestrians can enjoy a 100% original Disneyficated medievalesque city.

[watch trailer]

[all images> CITY OF RUINS via miastoruin]

Published on March 6, 2011 23:15.
Filed under: forensic destruction

debris weapon



2th Feb 2011. 10:38 am EST / 5:38 pm Cairo. The number of government forces throwing heavy debris from rooftops have increased dramatically through the past hour. [the Atlantic liveblogging Egypt: day 6]

Cairo’s rooftops have long been filled with debris by their inhabitants. Some versions attribute this phenomenon to the lack of public service taking this kind of waste away; while others blame on the government for destroying hundreds of pigeon cages while the bird flu, leaving all the rubble on site. Or maybe it is a low-tech thermal response to mitigate the scorching summer temperatures inside the last floor dwellings.

But the real fact is that these former pieces of furniture and walls are being thrown down to the civil population protesting in the streets below.











[1,2>via leblogvoyage][3>by kestrelokes][4>by smurfie_77][5> via travelpod][6>by jeneeg][7>police forces throwing debris to the crowd, via theatlantic]

Published on February 3, 2011 18:07.
Filed under: forensic destruction

food as geopolitical subjugation*

*Post series commissioned by Nicola Twilley (edible geography /foodprintproject / GOOD Magazine) as part of FOOD FOR THINKERS – An online festival on Food and Writing (18-23/01/2011)

Can a grotesque portrait be revering and sarcastic at the same time? Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s whimsical works – depicting faces out of fruits, vegetables and roots – are still replete with ambiguity. Did this 16th century Court portraitist for the Habsburg dynasty love or hate his imperial employer? Could his food collage trigger any hidden skills for domination? A graphic enigma…

Geopolitics describes the phenomenon of taking advantage of political power to control a given territory. The case of Nauru Island, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, represents an extreme where economic exploitation has led to a decadent nutritive landscape. Nauru is the world’s third smallest nation, and used to experience golden decades of economic development, thanks to its soil rich in phosphates. But foreign interests pierced this Pacific paradise to extract them all. Four fifths of the island have been mined out and there is “no arable land, no permanent crop, no permanent pastures and no forests. Practically everything is imported from cans of spam to fruit and vegetables, cars, fuel and building materials. Even water was imported before a desalination plant was set up.” [source> janeresture]

97% of men and 93% of women are overweight or obese on the island, due to a complete dependence on a stereotyped Western lifestyle provoked by Western mining companies; intentionally or not.

A convalescent territory, whose most valued treasure nowadays is a series of internationally successful weightlifters.

People who once subsisted on fish, coconuts and root vegetables now eat imported processed foods that are high in sugar and fat; […] it is proving difficult to wean people off processed foods such as tinned beef and mutton; […] in Nauru, a popular snack is a whole fried chicken, washed down with a bucket-sized beaker of Coke. [source> Independent]

Paradoxically, fast food can also generate social development on the other side of the globe. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel cuts small pieces of the Turkish fast-delicacy par excellence. Döner Kebab in Berlin is a remake of Istanbul’s variety, more appropriate for the German taste. Highly beloved and highly widespread. The city reinvented this course, and it has progressively led to a symbolic reunification between both communities. Thus, Merkel needs to perform a political rapprochement that proves the relevance of coexistence. Döner Imbisses are like strategic urban colonies that have replaced traditional Berlin Corner-bars as meeting places.

In Nauru Island, a destroyed landscape led to a dreadful diet. In Berlin, a dreadful diet has generated a new cityscape. Can also a diet boost the invention of a rural landscape? El Ejido (South Spain) was detected as an ideal production site for the healthy Mediterranean diet. Or maybe, it was actually the reinvention of an extremely deserted territory what boosted the consumption of fresh vegetables?

Anyhow, the resulting fact is that El Ejido Plastic City learnt how to profit from its huge reservoirs of underground water in the 1960s. Today, 36,000 hectares are endlessly covered with greenhouses, configuring the world largest surface under plastics. By introducing optimal Israeli methods of drip-irrigation and by covering the soil with sand to keep humidity and avoid erosion (Enarenado technique), the desert was eventually reclaimed.

But El Ejido phenomenon also has its side effects, apart from aquifers vanishing. Recent studies are trying to measure the scope of neuropsychological damage on greenhouse workers because of long periods of exposure to pesticides inside these capsuled environments. Revering, sarcastic or simply grotesque?

[1> Arcimboldo's portrait of Emperor Rudolf II via jack rusher][2, 3, 4, 5> Nauru Island via everyculture, janeresture, independent, the first post][6> Merkel at a Döner Kebab Imbiss via derSpiegel][7,8,9,10> El Ejido Plastic Greenhouses via carabassi, alpujarra sostenible, Victor Castelo]

Published on January 22, 2011 16:21.
Filed under: forensic destruction, hybrids

overprotection relics

“A protective space for every Swiss” was since 1954 the national aim for the protection of the population. And thus 270,000 civil bunkers were built, which should protect 95% of the population against war, physical disasters and terrorist attacks. Till this day they did not need to meet their real purpose. Nevertheless, the Swiss developed unusual concepts for the use of these endless square metres of concrete. [Anders bunkern! - Sandra Siewert]

During the Cold War, a parallel reality of fear adopted a physically built form in the underground. The obsession of overprotecting citizens has left a vast architectural heritage open to their imagination. Today, as Sandra Siewert documents in her photo essay, these bunkers are used for accommodation for wanderers, building miniature railway models, fitness gyms, DIY brewery, youth clubs, retiree clubs, rehearsal rooms, or simple storage cellars.

Each of these thousands of bunkers, where people should have waited until danger was over, awaits new implemented uses.

Another type of Cold War relics struggling to vanish are West German Trichtersperren. They consisted of interconnected 4-6 metre deep shafts along roads, filled with explosives, so that mobility infrastructures could be blown up in case of a massive invasion of the country. Then, troops would be temporarily hindered in their invasion. Russian tanks never conquered West Germany, so all these holes needed to be defused and covered with asphalt again. Today, the only remaining trace is a series of repeated patches along the road, signaling the spots of virtual cones that would have pierced the landscape.

[1-6> Sandra Wert's Anders Bunkern!] [7-12> already covered Trichtersperren via cold-war]

Published on December 20, 2010 16:56.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, forensic destruction

happy places

Last year, Ikea withdrew batches of goose-feather products from the market, since certain Chinese geese and ducks farms were plucking the animals while they were still alive. Customers who felt fleeced under their Nordic comforter could get their money back.

This year, the polemic of production sites of happiness commodities broke out in Shenzhen at the Foxconn factory plant. Manufacturers of Ipods,Ipads and Iphones, they also experienced 12 suicides in one year among their workers, who all jumped off the roof. Although the company is considering replacing workers with robots in the future, for the moment they have erected anti-suicide nets in its buildings; five-metre long steel poles have been bolted into the walls to support webbing.

“Foxconn is also raising its employees wages. And its brought in a host of experts including Buddhist monks to release the souls of the dead from purgatory and to flood the plant floors with soothing melodies.  It also has created “anger rooms” in which its employees can beat away their rage and frustration.” [source>DailyTech]

Apart from the salary raise, none of the measures seem to solve the main cause of the problem, but to reduce its side-effects. Furthermore, these built measures do not seem to scare new workers from applying for entering the plant. On the contrary, people are queuing for several days outside to get a job inside this schizophrenic working environment. Will this safety-nets trend end up in building single-storey factories, so that workers have no chance to commit suicide because of their dreadful working conditions? If everyone is aware of the actual situation, will Iphones have to include a warning sticker like cigarette packages do, saying that its consumption may provoke suicides?

[image1> via Boston and zoohaus] [image2>via the HR capitalist] [image3> via gizmodo]

Published on December 12, 2010 18:49.
Filed under: forensic destruction

hotel mozambique

“The dilapidated state of the modernist buildings that were erected in numerous African countries when they achieved independence, parallels the fate of that utopian ideal. [...] Today, many of these government buildings, luxury hotels and schools are decayed, empty or used for some other purpose. They have become monuments to long lost dreams.”

Avenue Patrice Lamumba is Guy Tillim’s photo-statement of Post-colonial modernist decadence. Many towns in the continent have a street remembering the name of one of Africa’s first elected leaders. However, most buildings of this promising 1950s-1960s period, such as the Grande Hotel in Beira, Mozambique, have a rich history of invented uses, initiated by a survival to that turmoil.

As featured in the BI blog, when referring to the topic VACANT, Erandi de Silva recalls the whole cv of the hotel, after Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975. During the civil war 1977-1992, the basement was used to hold political prisoners and the third floor lodged the living quarters of the policemen and army. It followed the use of the whole hotel as refugee camp for 1,000 displaced people. “As a result of social and political change in the context within which the building resides, periods of vacancy repeatedly mark moments of programmatic transition. The life of the space details the history of a place through its use.”

The end of the civil war brought informal squatters inside; after intense looting of every single piece of valuable marble, timber or appliance, landscape and vegetation are eventually the most powerful landlords.

[images> Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique. part of the series Avenue Patrice Lamumba by Guy Tillim via Art Tattler]

Published on November 9, 2010 19:25.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, forensic destruction

death before birth

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]

Published on September 25, 2010 13:19.
Filed under: forensic destruction

prison within a prison

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]

Published on September 10, 2010 09:41.
Filed under: forensic destruction

fighting arenas

Today Catalunya has fortunately approved to end bullfighting shows in its territory from 2012 on. Canary Islands already did it in 1991, but the topic is still provoking a huge controversy amongst Spanish most rooted sectors.

Most arenas have been used for pop concerts, acrobatic performances or commercial activities during the winter season as well; Barcelona already turned its main arena into a commercial shopping mall. Cartagena awaits for a contemporary art museum recovering the Roman Theatre above which the bullfighting arena had been built and abandoned.

The possibility that the whole country ends up closing these macabre spots of barbarian traditions opens a wide range of possibilities to come up with new uses for them…

[images1&2> abandoned Plaza de Toros in Cartagena, Murcia via skyscrapercity and ayuntamiento de cartagena] [image3>reconversion barcelona arena by josep toledo]

Published on July 29, 2010 10:30.
Filed under: forensic destruction, post-crisis

megaflooding

19 meters is the dangerous remaining gap until the water level of the Three Gorges Dam in China reaches its maximum limit. Since its opening in 2008, nobody could think that the reservoir could be filled up so soon.

Being the world largest water engineering facility, with its 185 metres high concrete wall, it might be currently waiting for a Solomon Judgement. Due to increasing rains and generally damaged soils, which can retain less superficial water, Yangtse River is menacing to flood either the high lands or the low lands. A decision needs to be taken, unless weather helps.

Providing that a radical situation arrives, should only one side of the dam become fully flooded? or rather both a little bit? which settlements would deserve being erased of the map?

[Source&images> Three Gorges Dam in Central China via der Spiegel]

Published on July 24, 2010 06:00.
Filed under: forensic destruction

coast(sky)line

Benidorm is the Manhattan of Spain. Having experienced its flash development à la Chinese since the 1960s tourist boom, it is one of the largest and most compact accumulation of high-rise in the Mediterranean coasts. Spain’s boom relying on real estate speculation during last decades has led to its current crisis. millions of empty apartments await now for tourists who cannot afford going on summer-holidays any more, dreaming that North European snowbirds, tired of such massive careless tourism, would dare to come back again.

Coastline destruction is a fact in Spain, nurtured by corrupted local governors and investors hungry for business. but i always wonder, whether extremely dense Benidorm is in fact more sustainable in terms of land consuming, than neighbouring towns with spreading disperse middle-rise towers… anyway, Greenpeace reports that more care should be taken in flash urbanisms so that a piece of natural coast might at least be still recognisable in the future, and keep on demolishing former developments which, from their very beginning, were breaching the Spanish Coastal Law.

[images 1-5> Benidorm - Marbella - Gibraltar - Mallorca - Oropesa. Before and After tourist boom, all by Greenpeace via el pais] [image 6>La Manga via lugares naturistas]

Published on July 17, 2010 04:51.
Filed under: forensic destruction, post-crisis

thin thin building

The thin thin building [楼薄薄] in Chinese Hainan island, a triangular pet-architecture housing 6 people, has been demolished. convicted of being “illegal”.

Requiem for 19 m2 of invented land!

[all images> thin thin building via chinahush]

Published on July 14, 2010 04:12.
Filed under: forensic destruction

artification

Bierpinsel is in danger!!! Built as  another UFO archifact of West Berlin 1970s, it is threatened now by gentrifying real estate artification.

After legal procedure for denigrating its heritage value, it seems that its inventors Ralf Schüler and Ursulina Schüler-Witte have lost the futuristic battle against the investors. Private developers prefer turning it into a contemporary Berlin guerrilla wannabe.

Premise Group desperately tries to increase the value of the building to attract new leasers, assassinating any trace of art in its purpose. Let’s only hope that the other Schülers’ UFO in Berlin, the International Convention Centre, is not curated by the same real estate corporation in any near future.

[images1&2> Bierpinsel before and after artification via kunstturm.de] [image3> ICC aerial view via detail.de] [image4> ICC hydraulic mobile seats platform by deconcrete2008]

Published on May 12, 2010 12:16.
Filed under: forensic destruction

domicide

Madrid is dismantling its chabola-settlements (Spanish favelas).

Although having only an average of 50-200 dwellers, each settlement struggles to survive on the urban-rural fringe. Based on recycling, food & retail informal sales, or drug-dealing activities, their dwellers are being relocated into new social housing blocks, as part of the official plan for eradication of chabolas.

With an eye on the Olympics candidate city, madrid’s social workers are giving protocol lessons about how to live and behave in a vertical formal housing community:

*do not dance and hand-clap during flamenco-singing at home, in the early morning.

*do not tear down structural walls.

*do not trick electricity meters.

*do not set up any laundry hangers or A/C in the façade

*do not throw away buckets of water from the window to the street

*do not use collective space to storage personal items

…The social working therapy should rather start by the architect himself, when planning their homes…

[image1> dismantling Las Mimbreras via el mundo] [image2>map of chabola-settlements in madrid by espormadrid] [images3&4> dismantling El Cañaveral via espormadrid] [image5> dismantling Santa Catalina by alvaro garcia via el pais]

Published on April 22, 2010 04:00.
Filed under: forensic destruction, participation

re-relocation

China flashes.

Between 2005 to 2008, 400 peasant families were relocated to brand-new villas in Wuhan. Their former fields were turned into high-rise development, and eviction was payed with a 240-360 m2 three-story villa for each household. [no need to mention the tremendous amount of money earned by the developer in the operation, to afford paying such compensations]

In March 2010, 2 years later, it has been announced that their new homes are to be demolished again. Not because of derelict state at all; spring/summer 2010 season this year just came with the planning of a bunch of new more lucrative high-rise blossoming on-site; quite trendy. Adjacent land price rates at 160 euro/m2, while built apartments are being sold at 600 euro/m2.

Wuhan has a population of almost 10,000,000 souls. But also it has one of the largest gated communities in the world, housing a whole of 200,000 families in free-standing villas. As Neville Mars and Saskia Vendel state in their Chinese version of the American Dream, the gated community has become China’s tried and tested investment model for minimum-risk residential development.

[Image1> Villas to be demolished at Mahu Xincun, Wuhan via china daily] [Image2> Mahu Xincun villas, Yangtse Business Newspaper via crienglish]

Published on April 10, 2010 02:45.
Filed under: forensic destruction