appendix 1: new babylon

a p p e n d ix 1 : new baby l o n

New Babylon was the utopian vision first conceived in 1 956 by the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys (born 1 92 0 , died 2006) and eagerly adopted by the Provos, with his blessings, as their own. Constant i s generally referred to by his first name. In 1 947 Constant became a founding member of the COBRA abstract painters group, for which he was an important spokesman (see Chapter 1 ). He left C OBRA in 1 9 5 1 and resigned from the influential Paris-based Internationale Situationiste, an ultra-left artists group, in 1 960. He became identified with the Provo movement as it developed and was an important contributor to Provo magazine and a candidate on the Provo list for the Amsterdam City Council. Constant's utopia was imagined for a population that would come into being some 50-100 years after 1 965. Its citizens would pass their time in perpetual tourism living in hotel-like accommodations clustered every so many miles across the face of the E arth on platforms of 2 5-50 hectares (about 5 5-1 1 0 acres) raised 16 meters (50 feet) from the ground. The rest of the Earth's surface would be given over to agriculture, nature preserves, and historic buildings and monuments. (The whole concept has caused many commentators to shudder, foreseeing in its perpetual tourism only an unsatisfying, mandatory, eternal youth-hostelling.) · Constant's utopia furnished the Provos with the battle cry " New Babylon! " , which they used in their ecological white plans to campaign for a better and more livable Amsterdam and a better quality of life in general. It also gave them a model that contrasted sharply with the capitalist system and furnished them with a radical socio-economic critique of society on a utopian plane. Roel Van Duyn was especially enthusiastic about Constant's vision of New Babylon: a cybernetic paradise in which total automation of the means of production would bring about total welfare and a socialist-anarchist state in which authorities would be superfluous . People would be freed from work because labor would be

N done by computers and robots. " Living-time" would replace " work.� 'Cl time, " and free time and creativity would be optimally developed. i::: ai a. g. Humankind would be delivered from the drudgery of work to become the " Homo Ludens, " the playing man (a concept developed by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in a different context). In a long article entitled " New Babylon" that appeared in

Provo and was subsequently anthologized in Het slechtste uit Provo ( The worst from Provo - so titled as to avoid a lawsuit from the Dutch edition of The Best From the Reader's Digest), Constant sketched his classically technocratic utopia at length. Automated factories would be built underground in order to avoid pollution. Some human workers would still be needed because not all labor can be automated, but humankind would be collectively liberated from work and free to engage in creativity. Human potential lay in developing creativity, which Constant felt would be possible under such a new economy.

He stressed the fact that the technological development of the '60s made his vision feasible. " Use" would be replaced by " Play" once people were freed of the necessity of work. They would be free to roam the face of the

Earth. Fixed residence would be replaced by temporary accommodation. Transportation would become joy riding - Constant thought that the Proves ' White Bicycle Plan would evolve into a " White Helicopter Plan. " He characterized Robert Jasper Grootveld's Anti

Smoking Temple as an exemplary " anti-functional space, " a place where function no longer reigned but was replaced by play and the pursuit of " useless activity. " Constant viewed the Provo Happenings at the Lieverdje as an enactment of his vision of New Babylon on a miniature scale. It was his belief that automation would destabilize capitalism by throwing many workers out of work and, further, that socialism in the Communist nations was better able to handle the phenomenon of automation than was Western capitalism.