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Students

# LITERATURE /// Science Fiction as an Inventor of 

Dilemmas / From Utopia to Apocalypse by Peter Paik

Posted on June 16, 2011 | 1 Comment

picture extracted from V for Vendetta by Alan Moore (Vertigo)

The subject of this article, science-fiction as an inventor of dilemmas is directly inspired by the reading of a very interesting book written by  Peter Y. Paik , associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin and published by the University of 

Minnesota Press. Its title,  From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science-Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe reveals a bit too much in my opinion the author’s tone all alongthe book. Indeed, P. Paik’s thesis can be summarized by a strong doubt for any sort of complete, total and absolute ideology of any kind. This assumed skepticism is for me a littledisturbing when the object of the book is so brilliantly pointed out. Science Fiction proposesin fact dilemmas that should not be considered as less problematic and important than theones that were introduced by the Greek Mythology. One could even argue that thosedilemmas are even more crucial than the antic ones. In fact, when the Greeks wereintroducing problems concerning nation and family (Antigona, Orestes…), the dilemmasproposed by certain pieces of science fiction involve humanity in its essence. In fact, theXXth century would have invented the administrative murder and this way, managed tomake responsibility unavoidable. If there is one thing to keep from the work of Hannah

 Arendt, it might be that Nazism has been only possible because of the participation -or theno refusal- of every single cog of the administration which was implementing it.

In order to introduce such problems, P.Paik has chosen five literary and cinematographic works that belong to the realm of what is commonly called science-fiction:- Watchmen   by   Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (1987)-   Save the Green Planet    by  Jang Joon-Hwan (2003) (which I did not see)-   Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind  by  Hayao Miyazaki (1982)-  The Matrix     by   Andi & Lana Wachowski (1999)- V for Vendetta by  Alan Moore (1982-1989)

Fiction

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# LITERATURE /// Nakagin Tower Manifesto by Michael

Vlasopoulos on Abitare

Posted on March 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Michael Vlasopoulos, Greek Architect at Harvard recently published on  Abitare a very interesting (sci)-fictitious Manifesto for Tokyo’s  Nakagin Capsule Tower designed by 

Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972. His narrator speaks at the first person and developsan ambiguous praise of his life conditions since he moved in one of the tower’s capsule.

I copy the text here, but it could be read directly on Abitare associated with beautifuldecontextualized photos of the cells (by M.Vlasopoulos himself maybe ?) and a ton of hyperlinks:

 DAY ZERO I never forget the day I bought my capsule. The money could buy me a Toyotacar but, instead of a breeze on the face, in a seat of a sports-car, I decided to claim astagnant volume of air as my own. I left behind my movable furniture, along with my family’s history ingrained in them. Everything had to fit inside two suitcases; this is the

maximum volume of stuff my capsule can handle. Unencumbered by the weight of old lifestyles, I engage in a new one. SLEEP The ascetic kernel of my new home gives me the perfect excuse to live my city as lavishly as I always wanted -with clear conscience. I cannow flow freely in the generic space of consumption of the urban outside, having alreadyreserved a point of return. As long as the city sustains my eccentricities, my desires, my food habits and my plastic impulses, my house constitutes a purgatory for my sleep. Sleephas become a secular version of confession, an act of neurological purification of memoryin a mass consumption culture. Oblong, because it is designed for the horizontal of thelying body, the capsule is endowed with a white plastic rigidity. During the unconscious faze of sleep, the bed is the only tool we keep wrapped around or attached to our dormant bodies. It can always be seen as a cave, a suit or a cryogenic shelter for the sleeping body. It is the only stasis a nomad can afford. Inside the capsule I become whole again, anothercomplete cyborg; it’s the same kind of disciplined comfort that I find in my suit and tie.Outside, I’m another nude animal.Continue reading → 

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# LITERATURE /// Untitled Narrative #002 (Feral Garage) by

Martin Byrne

Posted on March 20, 2011 | 1 Comment

I recently published the post-professional thesis project of my good friend Martin 

Byrne, Feral Garage . This beautiful Ballardian architectural project is actually

associated with a short story written by Martin as a parallel medium to describe the

narrative of a building which, by a dysfunction of its technological system develops a

feral condition that the narrator of this story experiences.

As I wrote in this previous post, the project that applies the conclusions of his

research starts from the observation of IBM recent advertising for “a smarter planet”,

 full of sensors and interactivity. One understands easily how IBM can be economically

interested to propose such a vision of the world and also how the various institutions can

 see in this program a new way to control a bit more society. Martin’s building is thus a

 garage and a server tower in Mid-Town Manhattan (in front of the Apple store from all 

 places !), that dialogues with each other. Both have been designed for IBM and the server 

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tower remains a pristine universe but the over-magnetic charge of the sensors in the

 garage building made the latter go back to a feral state, in which unexpected forms of life

 starts to develop. Humans are then invited to negotiate with their own fear to enter this

building that developed its own form of uncontrol.

(He does not have a publisher so if somebody want to talk to him about that, I’d be happy

to transmit the message !)

UNTITLED NARRATIVE # 002 by Martin Byrne

# 001

 April is the cruelest month.

Sitting rigidly at the far end of the thick clear plastic conference table – enameled and

embossed with desaturated flickering figures, charts, and graphs – nervous little Eli Warring

was sweating under the weight of the expectations recently laid upon him. Only six weeks a

freshman at the firm, he had yet to witness such a large and encompassing responsibility

delegated to someone as unsullied as himself, regardless of the sufficiency of the intellect

within. Wiping the moisture from his palms onto his Bergdorf-patterned knees, he tried not to

look at the flexing, intelligent walls streaming with data like rivulets of pixilated water – wary

that they may register some sense of the fear he was attempting so desperately to hide. Continue

reading →

→ 1 Comment Posted in Heterotopic Architectures, Literature, Pratt Institute, Science Fiction, Students

# CINEMA /// Never Let Me Go by Mark Romanek

Posted on March 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

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 Never Let Me Go is a 2010 film directed by Mark Romanek and adapted from the novel 

 by  Kazuo Ishiguro.It appears to me that there are two types of good science fiction movies. Those which visually invents a world either speculative or metaphorical which strike us for itsinventivity; and the others that do not allow any kind of special effects, and introduce a plot within our world which thus moves us for the proximity of this depicted society. Never LetMe Go is part of this last category, probably the hardest and mastered, in my opinion, by  Fahrenheit 451, the Francois Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel of the samename.

The film starts in the 1970′s in a country school boarding school separated from the world.Classes and the general atmosphere is similar to what we know of boarding schools at thistime, except that we very quickly understand that all those children do not have parents and

are destined to become organ donors until they  complete (die) after a certain amount of donations. The story thus follows three of those children in their youth, experiencing loveand friendship just like any other human being.

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The others are actually very rarely present in this movie, and one could see in this fact, thelost of humanity in those who created, in order to serve them, un-humans who end up beingthe only representatives of humanity. This film illustrates the institutionalization of theproduction of exclusion in which Michel Foucault was eminently interested and that heinvestigated in several of his books like The Birth of the Clinic in 1963 and The Historyof Sexuality in 1976. In this case, the exclusion is even more vicious as it is re-included

 within the system in an absolute scheme of exploitation from one category to another. It isinteresting to see that this same exploitation is integrated and accepted thanks to a shift of terminology. Those donors do not die, they  complete and they are said to donate theirorgans as if they actually chose it. Of course, the fact that this society does not necessarily implies a new architecture seems to be less interesting for architects; however this shift of terminology interests us as citizen as this occur on a daily basis in our current society; alsoone should be careful about the way architecture is dealt with in this film. It is very subtle but the heterotopic Victorian Boarding School to the austere (yet really intriguing I have tosay) post-modern concrete hospital via the typical English coastal houses reproducedseveral time along the street, without being inherently linked to this specific system, carry  very appropriately the dehumanized space of this society .

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CATEGORY ARCHIVES: SCIENCE FICTION

# LITERATURE /// By Revealing the Existence of Other 

Worlds, the Book is a Subversive Artifact

Posted on March 25, 2012 | 2 Comments

Excerptfrom Le Processus by Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Delcourt 1993)

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Following the three last articles in which I was preparing my reference texts in addition of those that I have been already writing in the past, this following article is an attempt toreconstitute the small presentation I was kindly invited to give by Carla Leitão for herseminar about libraries and archives at Pratt Institute. This talk was trying to elaborate asmall theory of the book as a subversive artifact based on six literary authors that have incommon a dramatization of their own medium, the book, within their books. The predicate

of this essay lies in the fact that books are indeed subversive -and therefore suppressed by authoritarian power- as they reveal the existence of other worlds.

Continue reading → 

→ 2 Comments Posted in Books, Essays, History , Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Science Fiction

# (SCIENCE) FICTION /// La 2,333e Dimension & Le

Processus by Marc-Antoine Mathieu

Posted on March 23, 2012 | 2 Comments

(1)Excerpt from Le Processus by Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Delcourt 1993)

This article is the last one in order to list and archive my references for the talk I gave thismorning about the book as an object (see the recent posts about Borges and Bradbury).Once again, the universe(s) invented and drawn by Marc-Antoine Mathieu in his graphicnovels fascinate me enough to write another article about them. This time, two stories, La 2,333e dimension (The 2.333th dimension) and Le Processus (The Process) that I willintroduce more in detail in this next article. Until then, the following images are few of the beautiful/amazing/amusing/interesting/evocative frames that can be found in those two books. Once again, I feel sorry that only one of them has been translated in English and inGerman. I translated the ones presented here.

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See the other links about Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s graphic novels:-   Mémoire morte (Dead Memory) (Delcourt 2000)-   La Qu… (Delcourt 1991)-  L’Origine (Delcourt 1990)

Note that L’Origine, La Qu…, Le Processus, La 2,333e Dimension as well as Le Debut de laFin are all part of the series  Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisonnier des rêves(Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisoner of dreams)

Continue reading → 

→ 2 Comments Posted in Literature, Science Fiction

# SCIENCE FICTION /// The Brutal Art of Enki Bilal

Posted on March 10, 2012 | 4 Comments

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoï des Associés, 2002.- And that, what is it? What are we walking on?- Canvas. White canvas… The walls and the ceiling are covered with it- It’s very nice- Nike, I would like to introduce you to my friend Milorad Zivokovic

The Beast Trilogy (The Dormant Beast, December 32nd & Rendezvous in Paris), graphicnovels written and drawn by  Enki Bilal introduce a charismatic character in the person of 

Optus Warhole who claims to be the inventor of the  Art   Brutal . This terminology resonates with the notion of  Art Brut  in French (Outsider Art  in English but obviously the

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resonance is lost here) invented by Jean Dubuffet in 1945. The three pieces presented inthis trilogy by the Andy Warhol’s quasi-homonym, are indeed brutal as they celebrate thecreativity of destruction. Such artistic paradox reminds us of the book  On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts  written by Thomas de Quincey in 1827 or morerecently of the remarkable character of the  Joker  in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight in2008 (see  previous article).

The three pieces I was evoking above can be described as followed. The first one consists inan entire apartment covered with white canvas and in which few dozen of people dressed allin white wildly massacre each others thus providing the paint of the piece by the red of the blood spurting all around. The second one materializes in the form of a sort of acid raincloud, drifting with the wind, and whose drops pierce any matter encountered . Eventually,the third one consists in another cloud composed by millions of red flies which dissolve the building that they originates from. The implosion of the latter is said to have provoked a brutal sound rupture, a sort of anti-vibration that absorb all sounds and creates multipleauditory injuries. ‘You are mad ‘ says Nike Hatzfeld to Optus Warhole in December 32nd.‘ No, I am an artist ‘ he answers.

Continue reading → 

→ 4 Comments Posted in Fine Arts, Literature, Science Fiction

# SCIENCE FICTION /// Declamatory Constructions and

Destructions

Posted on March 8, 2012 | 1 Comment

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam by Carl Boese & Paul Wegener (1920)

 A short article today, in order to link four narratives (coming from science fiction or not) which shares a common link in which they express the power of the word or/and the sound.

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The first one is the myth of the Golem (which much later inspired Mary Shelley to writeher Frankenstein), this creature who, from a model of clay became alive when his creator,Rabbi Loew inscribed the word Emet (reality in Hebrew) on his face. When later, the Golem went berserk, Loew simply erased the first letter of the word and thus killed him ( Met means death). This episode is illustrative of the Kaballah, this branch of Judaism thatdedicates all its efforts to the research of God through the esoteric holy scriptures and their

mathematics.

Continue reading → 

→ 1 Comment Posted in Cinema, Literature, Science Fiction

# SCIENCE FICTION /// The work of Philip K. Dick: Between

Paranoia and Schizophrenia

Posted on March 4, 2012 | 2 Comments

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Teaserposter for Michel Gondry’s upcoming adaptation of Ubik (Heath Killen)

In an obsessive sense of categorization, one might divide science fiction in few types. Themachinist fascination would be tutored by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the epic interstellarnarratives as well as the speculative robotic would be lead by Isaac Asimov, the descriptionsof what could not be possibly described (!) would follow the work of Stanislaw Lem…etc.finally the co-existence of overlapping worlds and the entropy that those worlds aresubjecting to would recognize the paternity of   Philip K. Dick .P.K. Dick’s novels and short stories have indeed this common link; they dramatizes theabsolute uncertainty of the main characters for their identity as well as the tangibility of the

 world that surrounds them.

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Continue reading → 

→ 2 Comments Posted in Cinema, Literature, Science Fiction

# SCIENCE FICTION /// Over Populated Cities / TheConcentration City, Billennium, L’Origine & Soylent

Green

Posted on March 3, 2012 | 2 Comments

 L’Origine by Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Delcourt, 1991)

This article is the first one of a short series I will do about the worlds dramatized by sciencefiction which gives me the opportunity to create a new category ‘science fiction‘ on the blog which already counts 42 articles.To describe those worlds, we can use the notion of dystopia, thus following Liam Young’sexample, but what is important to consider with these future situations that appear to us as

horrible is that they only consist in the exacerbation of the present ones. In other words, thepresent as we experience it could probably be described in a narrative read in a ‘better world’ (following Philip K. Dick’s belief for the existence of other worlds) and appear asparticularly horrible.

The first chapter of this series will explore four worlds dramatizing over-populated cities which offers a new look at the way we inhabit our urban environment. Those four worldsare depicted in the two short stories, The Concentration City and Billennium by JamesGraham Ballard, in the graphic novel L’Origine by Marc-Antoine Mathieu and in the filmSoylent Green directed by Richard Felischer.

Continue reading → 

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→ 2 Comments Posted in Cinema, Literature, Science Fiction

# GREAT SPECULATIONS /// Gamma by Factory Fifteen (in

Chernobyl and Baikonur)

Posted on February 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Factory Fifteen (see previous post) just released their new film that they shot during Liam Young and Kate Davies’  Unknown Fields 2011  in Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Baikonur

(Kazakhstan). Gamma  is a sort of short pseudo documentary depicting a future in whichnumerous zones of the earth needs to be deradiated after a decade of nuclear war. As alwaysin a capitalist world, this kind of public health operations are achived by private actors, herea company called Gamma which developed a type of roots that would absorb radioactivity.The film introduces the testimony of a survivor who describes how, very quickly, this root became autonomous and out of control, invading little by little his city.

The witness’ testimony talks about war machines to describe the vessels sent by Gamma,thus assimilating their action on the city as a sort of military invasion. In 1985, RonaldReagan was claiming that the nine most terrifying words of the English language were ‘ I’m from the government and I’m here to help‘, we might want to paraphrase his claim againsthim saying that the most terrifying words are ‘ I’m from a company and I’m here to help‘.

The Fukushima experience clearly showed how private interests mixed with politicalcorruption were leading to this kind of catastrophes.