Beauty is Nowhere

Ethical Issues in Art and Design

Saul Ostrow, Susan King Roth, Susan King Roth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135231019
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

This book is an important addition to the discourse on contemporary ethical issues in art and design. Beauty is Nowhere makes a timely contribution to the necessary explanation of the relationship of ethics to art and design practice, and the ability of the arts to matter as we approach the next millennium. From informal discussion to formal essay, distinguished theoreticians and practitioners of art explore issues of political space, user- centred design, the social responsibility of the artist, design legislation, cultural hierarchy, modernism as colonialism, and the ethical opportunities and minefields of postmodernism. This volume grew out of a thematic lecture series: Ethical Issues in Art and Design sponsored by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Art and Design, College of the Arts, The Ohio State University.

political space part I: moonmark

jeffrey kipnis

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU GATHERED all of the nuclear weapons on earth, some fifty thousand warheads each averaging the explosive power of one hundred thousand tons of TNT, put them on the moon, and blew them up? What, that is, would be the effect of the explosive equivalent of five billion tons of TNT detonating on the moon?

• • •

Before addressing this question, allow me to shift my attention from the moon to space; I shall return. What is space? An ancient question, a question as old as any in the form What is? The history of the meditations on space constitutes some of the most profound, troubling, and poetic thought in Western civilization, from Plato to Einstein.

As Henri Lefebvre recounts in The Production of Space, along a certain trajectory of this history, the notion of space has been progressively denuded of social and political texture. Space has been objectified (Descartes’s res extensa), neutralized (Newton), and treated as ideal ur-category (Kant). More recently, this trajectory has thrown the proper contemplation of space into the realm of mathematics, where it has become even further abstracted and specialized (for example, four-dimensional space-time, Hilbert space, phase space, infinite-dimensioned vector space). The metaphoric emanations from this trajectory draw upon the increasing abstruseness of space to energize such narrative exotica as hyperspace and cyberspace.

This progressive technicalization of the notion of space has left the disciplines of architecture and urban studies in a frustrating position. As the discourses of these disciplines confirm, some effective conception of space is essential to both. Yet, operating against a rationalist background in which the notion of space is regulated by the scientistic objectivity of geometry, the use of the term occurs in these disciplines almost euphemistically, fluctuating along a spectrum of meanings from something like “void with aesthetic or perceptual qualities” to something more mystical like “the ineffable je ne sais quoi of a particular circumstance.”

This euphemistics occurs despite the fact that architects, urban designers, and others operating in related disciplines know fully well that a neutralized, geometrical concept of space is wholly inadequate to account for the texture of effects engendered by programmed material-form in an urban field. Because even the most important of these effects are to some extent unstable and unpredictable, they do not lend themselves to a formulation modeled on empiricism or mathematization or scientific reproducibility. Yet neither can such intuitive surrogates as ambience, atmosphere, and aura grasp what is at stake in these undisciplined effects. Thus a tacit agreement arises to refer to them broadly under the auspices of an increasingly empty term, space.

In cultural discourse, a great deal has been written over the last twenty years about reformulating the notion of lived space, which (with reservation) I will term political space. Such authors as Jameson, Deleuze/&/Guattari, Virilio, and Hollier come immediately to mind. But architectural design theory in the same period, particularly in the U.S., has concentrated primarily on various treatments of the architectural object as a source of meanings.

This focus has occurred for important reasons that can be traced to the legacy of premodern and modern design, and it is not my intent to impugn such an emphasis. Nonetheless, whether in its structuralist, poststructuralist, phenomenological, or existential modes, whether its disposition has been progressive or conservative, radical or reactionary, design theory during this period has for the most part implicitly treated space as a determined aftereffect, a product of an object. With some notable exceptions (Koolhaas, Tschumi, Diller & Scofidio, and also Hejduk, though this aspect of his work remains largely unconsidered), few designers of influence in the U.S. have couched their work in terms of a reconsideration of design’s inflection of political space. Those who lay claim to a notion of space as a social condition do so in terms of establishing a fixed (and usually traditional) social geometry.

If we take political space to be the particular dynamic matrix that stages and conditions the flux of personal, social, economic, and political encounters at varying scales in a provisionally framed zone, then such space must be conceived as an indissoluble manifold of material-form, context, and event. Because it is engendered within and by boundaries, political space is always finite; this finitude is the source of material-geometry’s traditional preeminence in the theorization of political space. Yet because the boundaries are always constructed not only by material-form but as well by event and context, political space is always unstable; this is the source of the increasing inadequacy of geometric formulations in certain zones.

Some care must be taken here, for event and context are not reified conditions, that is, stable and decidable. Events are the disjoint episodes that emerge from a context as discrete, discontinuous manifestations. Context is a generalized notion of background and includes not only proximate influences such as existing physical conditions, languages, values, community compositions, myths, and mores, but remote influences as well.

Context should not be confused with the term’s use in contextualism, where it means loosely the physical surrounds of a site. Always underestimated but equally important to context are its various and changing remote influences. The frustration arising out of an awareness of the import of context to design confounded by the impossibility of specifying the context is a well-known problem in architecture, emerging and reemerging time and again under the guise of such themes as zeitgeist, regionalism, genius loci, and so on.

In certain settings, such as smaller, homogeneous communities, context may be semistable and may approach site, while in other settings it can and does change precipitously and unpredictably. Indeed, for certain communities constructed entirely around technology-facilitated remote exchanges (fax, telephone, television, satellite, automobile, airplane, etc.) the proximate site component of context is almost negligible.

The effects of the recent coup attempt in the former Soviet Union provide a dramatic example of the dynamics of political space, as well as architecture’s significant but limited role. In the context of the democratic reforms and economic crises of the Soviet Union, the events associated with the coup unfolded in front of an international media audience—an unpredictable but essential component, therefore, of the context. The Russian Parliament Building conditioned the precarious inside/outside confrontation over Yeltsin’s position and the public square staged the assembly of offensive and defensive forces. But the political space of the episode was not embodied or latent in these prior material conditions, it was engendered in the conspicuous reframing of material-form by changing context and events.

We might well consider the transformation in political space engendered by the Thomas/Hill hearings. The most persistent effect of these hearings has been the widely reported change in the social texture of the common workplace. While in retrospect we might analyze it in semiotic terms, I believe the change in the texture of the workplace as lived experience is better described in spatial terms. In any case, the hearings clearly perturbed the manifold of material-form, event, and context.

Yet we need not rely on headlines to consider the role of material-form, context, and event in the dynamics of the production of space. Consider, for example, lavatories designed for the disabled. As the context changes, as the persons served by these facilities come to be understood not as a quasi-institutional collective but as possessing the characteristics of a genuine community, the space engendered by the clinical, stainless-steel fixtures typical of these settings changes.

Though a Marxist or other semiotic reading of the subtext of these fixtures is possible, it is important to emphasize that we are discussing a change in engendered space, an issue connected to but different from semiotic analysis. Clearly, as I have described it, space is inextricably linked to the semiotic field. Indeed, it is the very instability of the political space manifold that undermines the stability of any and every semiotics, an effect known as “reframing.” Yet, as the scene of readings, political space is lived, not read.

On the one hand, no reduction, no abstraction, no effort to isolate “for the moment” a spatial consideration from the material-form/event/context manifold can be free of political consequence. On the other, political space is fundamentally beyond any architecture’s thorough control. While the architect always works with a determined site, site is only a provisionally framed subset of the undecidable fluidity of context. While the architect always works with a specified program, program is only a provisionally framed subset of the protean indeterminacy of events. The limitations of the architectural component of political space are as important as its contributions.

In a certain sense, because this view emphasizes architectural design’s limited role in the engenderment of political space, it could be construed to support the position that architectural design has no political possibilities or responsibilities. Indeed, the argument of limited effect does vitiate those theories that seek to obligate design strictly to any single discourse, such as the social discourse, on moral or ethical grounds. Whether these theories derive from a Marxist or empirical tradition, they overestimate architecture’s capacity to concretize political space and underestimate the political force of aesthetics. Yet I believe the conclusion that the argument of limited effect immunizes design from the possibility of and responsibility to a political discourse is also incorrect.

The stylistic destitution and empoverishment of vocabulary that was the dominant legacy of architectural modernism in the U.S. has led recent design theory to be written in semiotic (and postsemiotic) terms, emphasizing the meaning-engendering function of architectural design and symbolism. It is, however, both possible and desirable to rearticulate the same concerns in spatial terms.

Outlined very broadly, such an argument would note that architectural design strategies at the turn of the century, those of the beaux arts, for example, were directed toward a space whose reified hierarchy supported received political, economic, and class distinctions and underwrote their systems of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement. European modernism, motivated in part by a discourse that emphasized commonalty and equality, rejected this stratified spatial hegemony and sought to produce a more homogeneous space, a space that was held to be universally enfranchising. Modernism’s optimism that it could exercise comprehensive, rational control over political space through architecture to an extent stemmed from a naïve understanding of the complex interplay of the components that produced this space, a naïveté partially born out of a confidence in the neutered, geometrical conceptualization of space.

As we have grown increasingly aware that any discourse of empowerment must respect difference, we have also grown aware that the homogeneous space aspired to by modernism was equally hegemonic in suppressing difference. The problem that faces postmodernist design in spatial terms, therefore, has been to reinvigorate the exploration of heterogeneous space. Some argue that premodern hierarchies are essential to spatial heterogeneity, others argue that genuine heterogeneity flows from georegional differences, while still others pursue a radical heterogeneity, one that supports the proliferation of differences without alignment and without allowing difference to sediment into any reified, categorical hierarchy.¹

It seems to me that this latter pursuit holds the most promise for providing architecture/urban design with an affirmative political direction that, at the same time, takes advantage of design’s limited contribution to space. Even if it never determines this space, insofar as architecture/urban design seeks to exercise increasing control, it suppresses the elasticity of political space.

In certain zones, contemporary circumstances call for a fluid political space of greater texture as populations become more heterogeneous and as communities established under the traditional dominion of the proximate exchange give way to new, authentic communities founded on the remote exchange. In these zones, the architect concerned to contribute to an elastic political space must explore the proliferating of potential effects through a disciplined relaxation of traditional systems of control, regulation, and group identity, without abdicating architecture’s relationship to these functions. Emphasis shifts from how architecture can be made to meet the obligations established by one or another discourse of social responsibility to how to increase the production and elaboration of architectural effects. While many discourses from the mundane to the arcane can contribute to and motivate such a study, no single discourse can dominate it.

The thematics of political space outlined here, particularly as it articulates the possibility of an unreifiable heterogeneous space, may provide an escape from the double bind that always arises in standard interpretations of the relationship between architecture and politics. For example, in “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism,” published in Assemblage 8, Mary McLeod paints a brooding landscape of the architecture of the 1980s with a familiar Marxist palette and social moralist’s brush. However provocative and insightful her reading may be, it is entirely conditioned by the conviction that architecture can and should determine political space.

Allow me to comb out a strand of her argument:

“The intersections between architecture and politics can be seen as twofold: the first involves architecture’s role in the economy; the second, its role as a cultural object.”

“The modern movement in architecture was deeply concerned with the first of these dimensions. The advocacy of standardization and serial production, the emphasis on housing as a social program, the concern for a mass clientele—all were examples of the modern architect’s attempt to redefine architecture’s economic and social role.”

“In the 1980s most schools stopped offering regular housing studios; gentleman’s clubs, resort hotels, art museums, and vacation homes became the standard programs. Design awards and professional magazine coverage have embodied similar priorities. Advocacy architecture and pro bono work are almost dead.”

“That contemporary architecture has become so much about surface, image, and play, and that its content has become so ephemeral, so readily transformable and consumable, is partially a product of the neglect of the material dimensions of architecture—program, production, financing, and so forth—that more directly involve questions of power. And by precluding issues of gender, race, ecology, and poverty, postmodernism and deconstructivism have also forsaken the development of a more vital and sustained heterogeneity. The formal and social costs are too high when the focus is so exclusively on form.”

There is much to commend in McLeod’s essay; whether or not one agrees with her analysis and/or her conclusions, her interpretation of a subtle collusion between one period’s various vectors of architectural speculation and the infantile indulgences, neoconservativism, and speculative economics of the same period cannot simply be dismissed. In fact, it was upon reading the underlying tension between McLeod’s work and Mark Wigley’s essay published in the same issue, “The Production of Babel, the Translation of Architecture,” that I began to explore the considerations that I preliminarily set out here. As I read the essays, I felt a bit like Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevya listening to a debate between two wise men of Anatevka. After hearing the first argument, Tevya declares, “That’s right!” Then, upon hearing the counterargument, he again asserts, “That’s right!” Another bystander points out to him that they cannot both be correct. Tevya responds, “You know, you’re right!”

(To be continued.)

• • •

Back to the moon (though, no doubt, some readers will contend I never left). Asking the What-would-happen-if question of many audiences in the U.S. and Europe, I have found, almost without exception, the answers to be something like “blow the moon to bits” or “knock it out of orbit,” physics notwithstanding. In fact, even were the devices arranged for maximum effect, the result would be a scar on the surface almost invisible to the naked eye on earth. We tend to misinterpret the threat these weapons pose to the fragile life on earth as extreme mechanical ability. This mistake, coupled with a casual relationship to the moon still colored by its perceived size, yields the distorted responses. The asteroid or comet that collided with the earth and caused the demise of the dinosaurs is estimated to have struck with the force of ten million times our combined nuclear arsenal. As of yet, we have not located its site of impact.

Some eight years ago during the resurgence of the nuclear disarmament movement, I proposed the Moonmark project as a disarmament solution. I considered mankind’s capacity to commit global suicide and to destroy virtually all life to be a stunning if perverse achievement. The thought of retreat, of simply disassembling all of those weapons, was not to be countenanced. Rather, I preferred to use them constructively; so, with the help of artist C. Glenn Eden, Moonmark wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction to the Series
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Beauty Is Everywhere Nowhere Everywhere
• Anticultural Positions
• What Is at Stake in the Culture Wars?
• Toward the Spiritual in Design
• Interview with Hans Haacke
• Round Table Discussion
• Political Space Part I: Moonmark
• Sex Objects
• Round Table Discussion
• Interview with Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds
• Design, Aging, Ethics and the Law
• Distributive Protocols: Residential Formations
• Painting and Ethics (or looking for painting)
• The Politics of the Artificial
• The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right Thing
• Notes
• Permissions
• Contributors