Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:07:03 -0600
Subject: Re: [a-g] Ivan Chtcheglov
From: Ann Klefstad <klefkal-AT-cpinternet.com>
To: <avant-garde-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org>


On 11/21/04 10:47 AM, "Alastair Dickson" <adickson-AT-stirmargrev.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

> Broadly:
> * Is avant-garde always located in the metropolis, the seat of power?

Such an interesting question! I've spent years thinking about the relation
of the rural to any kind of avantgarde, and it's interesting territory (I
grew up in a small isolated village, and currently live in a small city "on
the edge of the wilderness"). The urban is traditionally the home of the
avant garde, and that insertion of "traditionally" is key to the oddity of
the situation. In the tradition, the rural denizen who is too adventurous
for the ageold traditions of the countryside travels to the capitalist city
and brings her difference to bear on a situation that needs novelty, the
situation of the city, which, in order to thrive, needs to tear down the
temple of the sun every other year and build a new one. But that having
become the tradition, that is, the necessity of the avantgarde to the
continued existence of the status quo, then the situation of the rural--an
atavistic preservation of layered (humna, mammalian, plant-centered)
consciousness that reaches far back before the current system--can be
thought of as far more radical (and far more threathened) than any
relatively trivially new manifestation of the city's hunger for novelty can
be. 

> * What is the relationship of the avant-gardist to power: to supplant
> the current gang in power? Is the apparent rejection of their game
> merely tactical and temporary?

Latent in the above riff is the notion that the avantgarde has become
structurally necessary to whatever gang is in power, both as something to
define themselves against, and as a kind of R&D department, to develop
strategies and objects that are only possible to create in situations of
risk, and see what will be useful to the Gang.

> More narrowly focussing on the New City text:
> * Is the city the place of power or the place of imagination?

Power and imagination are intricately imbricated: imagination can take place
anywhere, but the plethora of information about other imaginary constructs
that gathers around centers of (economic) power tends to drive imagination
into the actualization of its dreams (and provides the means to do so).

> * Who are the carriers of power and the carriers of imagination?

Power is the ability to build, to instantiate. Everyone is a carrier of
imagination who either can afford to lose or who has nothing to lose. That
is, those who are less hobbled by fear. They need some relation to power in
order to build, on public scales, their ideas.

> * Who is it who should conduct the "intensive propaganda" in favour of
> "entirely new desires"? Who acts on whom?
> * In short, what is the class perspective? The New City text is one of
> the most resonant for New Class media operators (the Hacienda has been
> and gone!).
> 

And these I cannot address, as I haven't read the whole text. It is
available where?

Ann Klefstad




> Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106-AT-uni-bonn.de> wrote
>> On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Alastair Dickson wrote:
>> 
>>> You wrote
>>>>> A questions -- Ivan Chcheglov's _Formulary for a New Urbanism_ in the
>>>>> opening line refers to "We are bored in the city, there is no longer any
>>>>> Temple of the Sun." Any idea on the meaning behind the Temple analogy? Is
>>>>> this a occult/religious question?
>>>> 
>>>> I would think that "Temple of the Sun" here refers to a complex consisting
>> of,
>>>> on the one hand, a specific organization of society and, inseparably from
>>>> that, the role of architecture in that society.  It is a complex where
>>>> social unity, political power, religious power, and scientific knowledge
>>>> are inextricably linked together, and an architectural structure can
>>>> be the actual site and vehicle (and not just the symbol) of this linking.
>>>> 
>>> Chtcheglov's text is interestingly lacking in deployment of ideas of
>>> power.  It is strongly situated in Paris and speaking of existing and
>>> new avant-garde practices to be promoted by propaganda.  But agency is
>>> missing - an avant-garde blind-spot?
>> 
>> Isnt this temple of the sun just Campanella?
>> One of those utopists.
>> 
>> And sorry for my poor english, is "agency" what he is fighting for?
> 
> I should have been clearer...
> Broadly:
> * Is avant-garde always located in the metropolis, the seat of power?
> * What is the relationship of the avant-gardist to power: to supplant
> the current gang in power? Is the apparent rejection of their game
> merely tactical and temporary?
> More narrowly focussing on the New City text:
> * Is the city the place of power or the place of imagination?
> * Who are the carriers of power and the carriers of imagination?
> * Who is it who should conduct the "intensive propaganda" in favour of
> "entirely new desires"? Who acts on whom?
> * In short, what is the class perspective? The New City text is one of
> the most resonant for New Class media operators (the Hacienda has been
> and gone!).
> 
> 
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