The new normal: a goodbye to language

Van Toorn, Roemer,1960-Umeå universitet,Arkitekthögskolan vid Umeå universitet,Architecture Theory (author)

The new normal : a goodbye to language

We are at the beginning of a new renaissance, a new modernity, of which we are far from sure what it will bring or could enlighten. As an institution, architecture has always directed our sensuous experiences and conceptual understandings of the worlds we live by and look out for. The power to create images is a good partial definition of architecture's competetence. In my opinion, architectural imagination - and that very much includes the image - can be a staging ground for action, enlightening indviduals and cultural movements. An enlightenment not as universal trugh, but as temporality, one of provisional possibilites and lines of flight. Instead of disqualifying the spectacle - as the classical left used to practice in the safe haven of academia - we should investigate how ethical spectacles could be created. To do so is not simple. A spectacular culture is most often designed to manipulate people and take their money, not to set the stage for democracy. But at the same time, we have to recognise that popular culture - its crafted fantasies and stimulated desires - speak to something deep and real within us. The challenge is what these ethical spectacles could consist of. This urgent question is by no means an easy one, but without a framework of understanding and alterantive theory, any means of instrumentality will be futile.

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