For my new boyfriend, scroll to bottom
I just got back from London and I’m overstimulated and tired and refreshed and renewed all at the same time. What did I see? Everything. The magna carta (yes, the fucking magna carta), a guttenberg bible, DaVinci notebooks, Mozart’s diary, slutty girls in shiny nude pantyhose, guys in impeccably tailored suits, old art, new art, inside of Selfridge’s, lovely french patisseries, hare krishna indian food, Jerry Springer- the Opera, more shoe stores than I could drool at (why, why didn’t I buy????), the list goes on and on… I spent the weekend jacked up on capuccinos and I think I wore out the soles of my Diesels I walked around so much…some highlights (click on the thumbnail to see better):
Culture:
Went to the National Gallery and the Tate Modern and the British National Library. Reaffirmed my love of Gaugin and Vermeer, Mondrian, and really appreciating Giacometti, Picasso nudes, and what the Protestant Reformation did for western art- no more Madonnas and Child, thank you Jesus, which were endless. Of course, some of the best art was not in the museums.
Also, there was Jerry Springer- the Opera. Remember how you reacted when seeing Team America? Similar response to this.
http://www.jerryspringertheopera.com/jerry_opera.html
listen to: mamma gimme smack on the asshole, chick with a dick, this is my Jerry Springer moment.
The urban landscape:
This is Millenium bridge, a stupid name, but a beautiful piece of architecture. Apparently the handrails were designed so that the wind is redirected over the heads of the pedestrians as they cross. I love the juxtaposition of neoclassic/ultra-modern architecture in this city. Also, along the same vein, Westminster Abbey with its flying buttresses.
Now, is this proper use of public open space design features? Heck, yeah. This wouldn’t fly in Irvine, would it? You would have to get a code variance for that. And signatures from four adjacent neighbors.
Boyz:
Meet my new boyfriend: Jeremy Bentham. He doesn’t say much, but he’s loyal, and won’t be taking off on me any time soon. This is his real body and clothes; because his head did not preserve well, they stuck a wax one on. His real head is in a box somewhere. As you remember, he’s the one who developed the idea of the Panopticon which Foucault beat to death in Discipline and Punish. He also wrote an essay saying that the best use for dead famous people was to preserve them and use them as garden ornaments. Adaptive reuse, anyone? I think I’ll send a picture of this to Raul and Marlon, no caption, think they’ll get it?
From Foucault- PART THREE: DISCIPLINE 3. Panopticism
Bentham’s Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.
