Mass Identity Architecture
I’m not sure why, but during the stresses of my MA I couldn’t read this book for long before it gave me a headache. However, now that I have some oxygen I am realising the relevences that are being drawn by the late Jean Baudrillard between architecture and society. There is a fantastic chapter called “The Rise Of The Object: The End Of Culture” which is thought provoking enough. The detailed passages explore normally mundane places like the drugstore and how it’s an archetypal representation of the consumer society. I have yet to read it thoroughly, but I find that I am always hit in the face by Baudrillards descriptive poetics that are a pleasure to read. I am also reading his book “America” on and off and this too stops you in your tracks on a regular basis as you consider and digest the mind-bomb that you have been handed.
——————————————————————————————–snip——————————
A decade or so ago I might not have given books such high approval. Since deciding to withdraw myself from the comma inducing Television by actually choosing to disconnect from this particular service of media distribution I’ve realised the level to which TV viewers are being dumbed down (for want of a nicer phrase). It seems that even the method of presentation of programmes like the Money Programme and Panorama are often biased, badly researched and worst of all inconclusive. I found myself questioning the narrator pointing out the biased points and asking the TV “what about x and y”. (Don’t even start me off on the format of Question Time!)
