ON THE POST-CITY (CUTS/NOTES)

“As the Enlightenment and ‘modernity’ were increasingly called into question,” writes Peter Wollen, “a process accelerated by post-1968 disenchantment, French intellectuals turned away from ‘knowledge-based’ approaches to the humanities and towards the more speculative domains, urging a decentralized vision of ‘dissemination’, ‘rhizomes’ and ‘molecular’ microstructures. Godard also abandoned the centre, breaking his narrative down into a mosaic of micro-elements.”

A 2008 article for Le Monde entitled “Portrait de l’intellectuel en DJ

A recent list of the most exciting architects in Icon magazines included practices like Mexico’s ToroLab, a group that inhabits the space between art and architecture and which has been involved in designing types of food.

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Debord: “It is in these conditions that a parodic end of the division of labor suddenly appears, with carnivalesque gaiety, all the more welcome because it coincides with the generalized disappearance of all true competence. A financier can be a singer, a lawyer a police spy, a baker can parade his literary tastes, an actor can be president, a chef can philosophize on the movements of baking as if they were landmarks in universal history. Each can join the spectacle, in order publicly to adopt, or sometimes secretly practice, an entirely different activity from whatever specialty first made their name.”

“True competence”

Debord, the sometimes theorist, games designer, film-maker and revolutionary leader.

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