PERCEIVING THE CITY IN A LOOP Experiencing the present: the past and present are disjoined in the city. There are monuments to the past, but everyone either lives in the now or for tomorrow. Society remains seg-
regated, although an image of unity and prosperity is projected - there is a discrepancy between what this city is and what this city claims to be. Thus, this imaging of the city is not cor-
responding to the present. If a possibility for a future lies in the reconciliation of the past with the present, in which strata layer of the city this that can be found? Is it in the air,
lucent amongst the sky-scrapers, where the outlines of the buildings meet and the eye follows, or perhaps it is hidden on the ground surfaces, where people clash and cross paths?
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I, THE MEGASTRUCTURE The present becomes apparent: forces related to Capital push for a land devaluation of the city center. The State also supports towards further depreciation/appreciation of land values of the city center by implementing policies that lead to evictions of poor people from their city residences. The evacuated buildings are condemned to decay due to a ‘newly acquired’ temporal - but in
reality ‘permanent state’ - of transcendence, as a result of the state’s bureaucratic manipulation and maneuverability. But this ‘frozen’ state allows for no ‘real’ action on the site by the individual, the collective or the State itselF. People are left with the illusion of change/changing city, but the majority of the city space is deteriorating and the buildings are left unattended
and un-attending of people. The real image of the city becomes apparent. A ‘new’ system of capital’s domination will emerge over the ‘old’ one. The latter will be left to complete its course, since the ‘logistics’ of Capital dictate the following rational approach: it is preferable to create a new order of relationships than to sustain a dysfunctional one. The expression of this more aggres-
sive strategy of Capital finds solid ground in the architecture of Mega-structures, through a system that can extend itself perpetually; over the city-gridscape and over the land-scape (unconditional development). The domination of the capital is total and literal; it ‘reigns’ over the city and the people.
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Meanwhile, the land is worked and reworked (as in the mines etc.); to the point that all these transformations of the land have a visual impact; the changing image of the city scape becomes a spectacle for the ‘ones above’. They can witness in real time the evolution of the city, the evolution that they have determined as their creation, thus, they can intervene in its evolution.
This observatory offers view over a rather brutal scenery: drugs, prostitution, killings on the streets; the everyday interactions projected crude as the moment the are provoked as realizations of actions; a real-life, real-time spectacle for the few with an inborn taste for this kind of ’delicacies’. The real image of the city becomes apparent and a question is raised: can we pass
through a state of unconditional development of the city-scape to the one of conditional development? An action generates an equal re-action: The over-oppressed inhabitants of the city center and the pressedaside inhabitants of the periphery react violently to the current state of being (order of things). The rupture of society finds expression through CIVIL WAR!
The monuments are destroyed first and their materials are used for the cause of rebellion; the monuments exist no longer as entities but they can be found instead scattered in the streets. The Megastructure collapses from within.
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CIVIL WAR!
IMAGINING THE CITY ON CONTINUITY Reconcile the present with the past: The fragments of the friction that was produced can be found on site; fragments of the recent past, which constitutes the basic matter in order to construct the (new) present. A present in which the past is embedded; past and present are one. During that stage the possibility opens for the constitution to be holistically implemented. There is no need for monuments and other reminders in the name of equality and liberty; no ‘souvenirs’ of the past, because the past can be found there, as a part of the present; the constitution is in the place and the place reflects back the constitution. There is no past, present or future, they are one, they are now. The now, in that sense, it is framed under a continuous dimension of time and space. Continuity as a topos(=place) becomes a shared (u-)topio(=scape) of being. A new matter: The space is didactic and the people ‘open’. Travelers pass through or they come to; whichever the case is, they bring along with them their stories; individual histories outside the limited collective history of Johannesburg. Since history may be embedded into space, the ‘new matter’ to build becomes the stories that each one carries with him; critical histories and personal views are embedded also into space, during this second phase of (re)constructing the place. This is an additive process to the system and takes place in a most temporal structure (tempo=time): a scaffolding! that runs throughout the city’s latitude and longitude. The functionality of this structure for a city being re-appropriated is double: statically, it holds the parts (deteriorated buildings) of the urban block from falling and socially, provides the frame for new inhabitations.