If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Law of Ruins

Graham Harman has posted an interesting excerpt on Roman statues. This reminds me of Albert Speer's law of ruins for Third Reich architecture. From White Noise (257-8):

he knew that Hitler would be in favor of anything that might astonish posterity. He did a drawing of a Reich structure that was to be built of special materials, allowing it to crumble romantically--a drawing of fallen walls, half columns furled in wisteria. The ruin is built into the creation, I said, which shows a certain nostalgia behind the power principle, or a tendency to organize the longings of future generations.


It also is evidence to extend being toward death to the architecture of (at least) a certain time and place.

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