Once more, let me have another go: this time in answering Benjamin Bratton’s elaborate comment. I am a fan of your accelerationist discourse BUT … the desire to collapse systemic distinctions that order society … like the desire for the FUSION OF ART, ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICS leads towards TOTALITARIANISM ! … I say YES to totalizing theories of society as frameworks of orienting self-localization and I say NO to totalising programmes of revolutionary action. Is my project “self-defeating”? No, rather: the failure to understand and reckon with these distinctions leads to self-defeating projects. The distinctions between art, architecture, and politics are not “timeless Aristotelian ideal realms”, they are reflecting the historically specific, current ordering of societal discourses/practices. Although you might wish to abolish or re-mix these categories ... society makes and reinforces these distinctions daily ... while philosophy hovers above these domains unboundedly ... (Luhmann was a phjlosopher ...so are you... i can also put my philosophers head on) ... activists and professionals are bound by them and for good reasons: society can this way parallel process a much more complex and accelerated evolution via the coevolution of autopoietic subsystems that stimulate each other’s evolution without being subject to a single master-discourse. So if you want to act you need to know whether your project is an art project, a sociology project, a political project, or a design project etc. This is a condition of effective communication/action in 21st century world society (btw i do not say architecture is architecture and society is society .... in Luhmannian terms i should have called my book the architecture of society) You feel the truth of my reflections if you switch mode from reflection to action the distinctions Luhmann identified are holding ... and so are the further distinctions I identified, i.e. the demarcation of architecture/design against art on the one side and against science and engineering on the other side, and against politics too. Politics is made by professional politicians in the communication medium of power within the political system, i.e. to have a voice you need to represent a segment of the electorate (via political parties, trade unions, other pressure groups, protests groups etc.). Who cares about an architect’s political position? You will be laughed out of the room or worse you make yourself “impossible” as preposterous, inappropriate. Radical political ambitions in architecture are farcical, the preserve of purely academic “critical architects” who can impress hapless/innocent impressionable students and rub against each other in conferences who pronouncements echo down empty corridors. Those who want push for political change must enter the political arena and debate with engaged political activists, politicians, policy think tanks ect. Winning an argument in a school of architecture means nothing here. Architects need to change architecture to fit in with the currently dominant or strongly emerging political forces. Architectural theorists need to grasp what is going on elsewhere in society and argue/strategize with designers about how to keep architecture relevant and allow it to participate actively with societal evolution via architectural contributions. The distinctions (between art and architecture and between architecture and engineering) I am identifying and making explicit are modern distinctions: they crystallized in the 1920s. One can witness this in the evolution of the Bauhaus from its early to its late period. By the late 1920s most artists had left the Bauhaus. (By the way, the heavy politicizing of the mid-twenties at the Bauhaus also came to an end towards the end of the 1920s.) However, older conceptions linger on and get in the way of gaining clarity about how our own discourse and practice is located within contemporary society. This lack of clarity hampers effective action. The evolved complexity of world society and the world division of labour cannot tolerate de-differentiation. Holisms break at this complexity barrier, as the catastrophic experiences of 20th century totalitarianism demonstrate. Of course evolution continues - in fact accelerates further - and further discursive differentiations might emerge … as well as re-differentiations. However, they are hardly initiated within philosophy … although I see an important role for philosophy as an exchange hub for (the analogical transfer of) concepts, conceptual schemata, methodologies, and turns of argument etc. This exchange hub operates above and between the various incommensurable autopoietic systems of communication. And here is also the place where totalizing theoretical accounts can be constructed and circulated. Luhmann’s system – for me – is by far the most comprehensive and compelling totalizing theoretical system, the only true heir to Marxism. You allude to the electronic and even robotic systems of communication as taking over from architecture. You say “what society used to ask of architecture it now asks of software” … yes, these media are partially equi-functional with architecture and can act as partial substitutes and thus unburden architecture to some extent. However, the demand for communication (as the prime arena for productivity gains in the 21st century) is intensifying to such an extent that we have to intensify all available channels simultaneously, and we do. As tele-communication intensifies, so does air-travel and urban spaces. I love facebook as much as I like urban spaces … both are multi-purpose spaces of simultaneity where many interactions take place … in view of each other … inviting participation. You can just observe like a voyeur, as well as draw attention to yourself, roam like a flaneur – seeing and being seen –provoke, debate, flirt, and be serious too. The fact that mobile devices unleash us from behind our desks generates a huge wave of urban interaction that challenges architecture. Also, the distinction between art, design and engineering also applies to the new media. Interface and interaction design (“communication design” as extrapolation of graphic design) belongs to the same discourse as architecture .. all design disciplines are unified within the autopoiesis of design. In fact parametricism flourishes in interface and interaction design, e.g. a lot of the animated graphic/interaction features you find on your apple laptop are parametricism. In fact I should have called my treatise “The Autopoiesis of Design”. This is the level of generality at which the relevant autopoietic subsystem of society is being constituted. (I say this much in my big book but the title “Autopoieisis of Architecture” was a strategic choice.) One of my theses: all design is communication design. The distinction between design and engineering also operates in the design discipline of digital interface and interaction design – facebook employs both designers and engineers – each category is distinct with distinct domains of competency and criteria of success. This distinction in no way hampers close collaboration … in fact it facilitates the process of innovation. This does not exclude that designers act as proto-engineers as many avant-garde architect do … and both proto-engineers and proto-designers utilize the platform of experimentation that the art-world provides, next to professional artists. Again this does not erode these distinctions. Individuals can also slip across these boundaries temporarily or permanently. Again, this too does not erode these boundaries: (the exceptinality of) exceptions corroborates the rule. (In fact there is not a single prominent double career spanning art and architecture since its differentiation in the early 20th century. Q.E.D. … Why? Because the criteria of success are now diametrically opposed.) A final point about my/our ambition to “remake civilization” … this is not my phrase … I am talking about the “total make-over of the physiognomy of the global built environment and the world of artefacts – all understood as interfaces of communication – ordering and framing communicative interaction”. And this make-over we are in charge of is only a part of total society. This make-over has to co-evolve with the parallel processes of change in world politics, world economy, world science etc. etc. So my ambition updates the ambitions of a Le Corbusier rather than the ambitions of a Lenin – the last credible but failed totalizing philosopher king (who inevitably had to morph into the murderous totalitarian caricature that was Stalin).
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:19:03 +0000
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