Futures From Ruins

Neuropolis: Our relationship with cities from Mumbai to Manhattan. As our cities change, they inspire a change in us: "A new generation of explorers, cyclists and psychogeographers are remapping urban landscapes through non-places. In this expanding urban maze, waymarks — as ever — are key to community cohesion ." Cities are described as "an immens... See more

Can the presence of a high-rise structure truly create such a threatening atmosphere and social tension, culminating in murder, decay, destruction and even anarchy? The series, “A Future City From The Past” is based on this mystifying vision of a radically aggressive urban dystopia — an uncompromising design in the brutalist dogma. All buildings an

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What we are facing over a decade is a decade of emergency rescue, of resiliency, of attempts at sustainability, rather than some kind of clear march toward advanced heights of civilization. We are into an era of decay and repurposing of broken structures, of new social inventions within networks, a world of 'Gothic High-Tech' and 'Favela Chic' (as ... See more

We are in a period which I think is dominated by two great cultural signifiers. An analog system that belonged to our parents, which has been shot full of holes. It is the symbol of the ruined castle. "Gothic High-Tech." The ruins of the unsustainable. And the other symbol is the favela slum, "Favela Chic," the informalized, illegalized, heavily ne... See more

What is finally at stake in Futurism’s explosive myth is thus, paradoxically, the power of presence—nostalgic and times, but also ironic and even grotesque— within chaos. For if the dark night of Futurism can be figured alternatively and all at once as anarchism (the destruction of political ideology and artistic convention), nihilism (the destruct... See more

We need individuals and communities that serve these liminal times by calling them into being with the fullness of their senses and with a compassionate dedication to realizing instances of these new futures in the present. Transforming fragmentation into cohering fragments of integral futures. Doing the difficult work that is both material and spi... See more