Tuesday 1 April 2014

Brutalism Appreciation Society


To be honest I don't know who these people are, but they keep popping up on my Facebook feed with pictures of almost anything concrete you can imagine. One of them has a picture of David Bowie's 'Low' as his profile picture, another looks strangely cock eyed, nothing wrong with being cock-eyed, but he's clearly not cock-eyed. I don't 'know' any of them to my knowledge, and yet they complain when I comment one shouldn't take the piss out of L-C's gravestone (since I do not consider it an item of amusement) they call that 'hectoring'. So why are these people so indiscriminately keen on huge lumps of concrete all over the world? And are they weird? 
Being a keen disciple of cause and effect, I don't think so. Dialectically speaking, as all that's solid melts in to air and we can't find our aeroplanes anymore and your toaster's packed up, with blackouts on the way and with Lloyds advertising as all you need is love it's not surprising that some people might long for a bit of value (metaphorically transferred to solidity). There may also be a little undoubtedly misplaced nostalgia for the USSR, but hell, that's to be expected, who wouldn't be nostalgic for a place you had never been to which assumed an actual idea other than ours ( I went to Bulgaria on a school trip once, and cried). Meanwhile some of them love the stuff like they can taste it, like they could lick the South Bank Centre clean. Those are salivating hounds deprived of a balanced diet.
What did David Geffin say of Don Henley? A malcontent. Indeed I suspect the majority of The Brutalism Appreciation Society (not the same as the Modernist Society based in Manchester, but affiliated for sure) fit the bill of malcontent, and there's a bit of wanting to be in Owen Hatherley's gang too. It is, sure as anything, a reaction, but I never see a plan posted, and I've yet to see some good old Paul Rudolf, or some Bertrand Goldberg. Probably then this is a UK phenomenon for now, representing the travel horizons and search preferences of it's affiliates, perhaps it was Zaha saying she liked the Tricorn (when almost nobody else did) that started it. If plans began to get posted I would of course re-consider.
Meanwhile I dread the resurgence of a bowelist tendency in studio, we've only just got over bloody parametrics. But I suppose one load of shit might just follow another.
Nice image above copyright Trevor Woods.  



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