Thoughts flux

- Yevgenia Petrova, The Origins of early twentieth-century russian art, in Origins of the Russian Avant-Garde

After reading much about American Architecture in the 20th century with a few references to Le Corbusier’s modern principles and the Athenes Charter, I am wondering if the intellectuals of this world will once think about changing the world in a more organic way, starting at the ultimate start point which I believe is the state of mind. I am here answering to the whole 20 and 21st century’s ideals where the masterminds thought that changing the living territory, mostly urban ones, would give the people a fresh image on which to base a new form of living. Frank Lloyd Wright, fort his part, Notably in his Broadacre City, considered that the new way of living would start in the family and in the house, and that the rest of society would organize itself through a natural and organic economical order based on the family’s creative work. Even though his ideal would’ve ask an automatic-almost-transcendental massive conversion process from the population because of the radicalness of his principles, where he failed the most is at building practical strategies to apply those well researched and strong values based principles of new living. He said it himself, if he had 80 years more to live he would've been able to change the world. Changing a world to a perfect world implies to reach the very base of every human’s functional system : the values. In a recent Roko Belic’s documentary “Happy”, many answers to happiness presented were similar to Broadacres ideals : family, creative work, nature, community life. Though the sources here are very short listed comparing the importance of the statement im making here, it is to say that I am mainly talking of out feeling and intuition. So I’m thinking, in this back-to-nature need we are experiencing now in 2016, has anyone thought of bringing back the principles of one of the greatest american architects of all time (FLW) and develop an applicable method to apply them to our contemporary needs ? ....Which would mean to create a social change by working with the values that create happiness, thereby creating a life that grows organically from strong bases instead of imposing re-directional massive buildings that, even though built from a humanistic approach and for a free-humanistic and better living objective, oppresses our liberty to develop a world we want, as humans. It was Oscar Niemeyer’s moto when he helped building Brasil’s new monumental capital Brasilia. He was not looking to shape a form of living, but to build a patrimony to which Brasil’s population would be able to identify. Thereby Brasilia and its monuments were symbols of the country’s emancipation and of the colonial years deletion. To him, life was more important than architecture. He said himself that Architecture can't transform society. To project a social architecture is an illusion, because a real change depends on revolutionary mouvements of economical et social systems in place. 

I just can’t keep myself from being outraged at realizing that we build conceptions and systems on an already underlying system that we don’t question because it is imposed to us as the way of life. The only part that bothers me really is the one where we are told to go to university as fast as we can to finish as fast as we can to make money as fast as we can. In that set of life, the human doesn't question his ambitions, wants, needs, interests. It just does what should be done. In other words, it EXISTS and WORKS for a system that isn't his instead of LIVING HIS life. 

Why is there Ivy league schools ? Why aren't we spending our energy in spreading the right form of teaching and knowledge to a larger scale instead of putting all great teachers, students, knowledge into only a few schools? Why is there a need to cultivate a higher class of education? Shouldn't the best education be available to all? 

TBC

Les institutions éducatives transformes d’excellentes prunes en excellent pruneaux (quoted by fishman p.106)

Il me fait rire d’entendre ce terme : les pays en voie de développement. N’est-ce pas une affirmation issue d’un esprit capitaliste de dire qu’un pays est défavorisé? Que celui qui ne peut manger est “pauvre” et que celui qui peut se permettre de gaspiller est “riche” ? Je crois fermement que cette vision du monde est issue d’une pensée capitaliste et qu’elle devient absurde pour ceux et celles qui prennent le temps de remettre ces termes en question. Loin de dire que la faim dans le monde est un phénomène naturel - quoiqu’il ne s’agit pas d’une idée aussi saugrenu que certain puissent le penser, et sans vouloir ignorer ce sujet je préfère ne pas m’y accorder trop longuement car il s’agit d’un phénomène trop complexe et tragique pour que je puisse m’y attarder dans un aussi petit texte. Ce que j’essai de dire ici c’est qu’il faut bien un monde dominé par le capitalisme et une démocratie faussée pour dire qu’un pays est défavorisé devant un autre qui est “civilisé”. Est-il nécessaire qu’un pays se construise un centre-ville, un port, un chemin de fer, un réseau électrique, etc. pour être développé ? Est-ce parce qu’il n’exploite pas ses ressources naturelles jusqu’à leur épuisement qu’il n’en retire pas une certaine richesse? Il me semble assez simple d’affirmer qu’il s’agit plutôt du malheur des pays capitalistes de ne pas être en mesure de conserver leur richesse. Car celui qui considère qu’un pays qui ne se développe pas n’est pas riche oublie de considérer qu’intacte et conservée est la richesse naturelle d’un pays non-civilisé. 

p. 156 ...L’homme trouve ne trouve son humanité que quand l’éclair lumineux de l’histoire lui apparaît, quand la force du passé est “utilisée au bénéfice de la vie”... Ibid. p. 98-99

There is, and I am convinced that by 2018, according to WGSN consumer’s report, this quest for meaning WILL reach it’s goal and become a norm. But till then I like to bring myself back to an imaginary of the past, and think about what it would be like to face pure artistic pulsion and talent without a market to consume it. What would it be like? I’ll let you picture that in your own imaginary world, I’ve just got to go on. David Howes, author of “Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society” gave a conference in my art history class back in October. The talk was about the need for humans to rediscover their senses in a society where only the gaze is sought - indeed, the human eye (the vision)  is the first and foremost solicited sens in our image-based society. He finished the conference by a warning : “Our feelings, pulsions, likes; everything down to the reaction of a neurone is studied by marketing and science in order to control our consuming behaviour. Thereby, if you feel or like something, keep it for yourself and do not “donate to science”  because they will use it to their own good and make it consumable, against you”. Indeed, our senses, feelings, needs are the most sought by dominant capitalist industries, but it is important to reverse this built-to-consume process. The need is not in a deeper research to understand how to manipulate a human being but to transfer all the efforts in producing meaningful and fundamentally significant art and products that last and serves the most of humanity.