Continuous drift

Quoting from Ivan Chtcheglov

city through fence
photo by amze emmons

Ivan Chtcheglov wrote “The Formulary for a New Urbanism” in 1953 when he was nineteen years old, under the pseudonym Gilles Ivain. An abridged version of the essay was published in 1958 in the first issue of Internationale Situationniste. The rest of this post consists of lines drawn from that essay, with lines drifting outward via various links. 

For example:

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun.

The poetry of the billboards lasted twenty years.

We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past.

Some sort of psychological repression dominates this individual [Le Corbusier] — whose face is as ugly as his conceptions of the world — such that he wants to squash people under ignoble masses of reinforced concrete, a noble material that should rather be used to enable an aerial articulation of space that could surpass the flamboyant Gothic style.

The urban population think they have escaped from cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of their dream life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized in it.

Everyone is hypnotized by production and conveniences—sewage systems, elevators, bathrooms, washing machines…Presented with the alternative of love or garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.

The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS DRIFTING.