Alexis Benton The Meme Aesthetic in the Uncertain

The Meme Aesthetic in the Uncertain Present Of The Built Environment

Alexis Benton, M.Arch

...And the crowd goes wild.

In the Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere argues that the invention of abstraction in modern art extends beyond the innate flatness of the page, signaling an aesthetic shift that took form during the twentieth century in art and also in the way the world was perceived. 2 Looking at the twenty-first century, it is easy to argue life has “flattened” further with personal technologies acting as mediating devices between people and their environments. However, digital technologies and the resulting changes in communication and data consumption have had the opposite effect, acting as the physical environment’s lovingly chaotic pageant mom. Through analyzing this aesthetic shift, the idiosyncrasies of this new reality unveil its distinctly qualitative multiplicities towards an exponentially accelerating postmodernism. I will define this third wave of aesthetic experience by breaking down the qualities of this new aesthetic media (memes) and will begin to form a set of considerations which respond to their media with enthusiastic indifference. Thinking 1

1 Ryan Scavnicky “Ask your prof to explain their research agenda.” Instagram, October 20, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/B31-BAnp25j/

in the age of memes has become more complex and more convoluted, more niche and difficult to decode than any other pre-post-modern-anti-aftermeta-hard-to-define movement of the past, and designers must consider this evolution as a new addition to context without falling into stereotypical digital architecture tropes. How do designers mediate between the nuanced aesthetic and semiotic digital existences to create meaning while integrating and accepting architecture’s new role whether it be as a backdrop, air conditioning container, minion, or da bob? It feels trite to dwell too long on the history of memes or to argue for their relevance. Are memes the authority on contemporary culture? No. Memes here act as a device to demonstrate how we zoomers view the world: their freshness guarantees a loyal example of this experience as they could not and have not existed before. The memes of the early aughts have developed into images telling more complex narratives. The meme is never what appears on the surface, but a palimpsest requiring the instantaneous analysis of written and visual information layered with complex meanings and cultural references in order to decode them. Memes are the nervous laugh uttered after an offensive joke. They are the imagification of the unease associated with the terrifying political and social climate of the twenty-first century. The absurdity of the truth is frequently exaggerated, and irony acts as a knee jerk reaction to bad news. The root of all this humor is fear founded in genuine existential concern about the future. Climate change, economic instability, social unease, war. Like the postmodern architecture that peaked in 1970s and 1980s, parody and referentialism are present, however, the biggest joke of all today is not the surface level humor, but the fact that the whole joke is not a joke at all. In this sense, the meme aesthetic is modernism without a solution. By employing self referentialism, parody, irony, and surrealism, memes have formed jaded non-idealism idealism. This condition could be defined by the concept of metamodernism elaborated on in the work of theorists Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen in their essay “Notes on Metamodernism:”

Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between

naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern. 3

Humorously to the architect, the authors go on to describe metamodernism as a “both-neither” between modern and postmodernism. Modernist aesthetic practices depended heavily on visual sensibilities informed by the aesthetic dogma of learned “good taste” which still reigns in design education and practice today. In order to free interpretation from appearance, rejection of these tasteful terrors can act as a pathway to imbue political undertones within a piece of work. This can be seen in memes that are intentionally unappealing, in some cases, deep-fried. The “bad” design choices allow the work to extend beyond the visual manifestation and open doors to dialogue. If something is too pretty, would it still upset you? would you even notice it? would it look too complete? By employing double meanings and grandiose design decisions that exist outside institutional concepts of good taste, the prevailing aesthetic present in memes comes close to camp. Susan Sontag writes that “camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken.” Camp simultaneously acts as metamodernism’s foil and star student. While metamodernism uses humor to engage with a serious topic, camp “involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” 5 Camp is metamodernism plus extra joy. Or maybe despair. How is space interpreted in the meme era? Belgian artist Pieterjan Ginckles provides one contemporary example with what he calls “speed 4

3 Vermeulen, Timotheus, and Robin Van Den Akker. “Notes on Metamodernism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 2, no. 1 (2010): 5677. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677

trips.” In order to exist between fantasy and reality, students document their findings through ethereal modes that do not always tell the whole truth: Instagram, Vine (rip), haikus, Snapchat. The resulting findings create a “compiled portrait of the visited landscape: incomplete, speculative, superficial, disembodied and open to change.” 6 These hurried, fleeting modes of documentation hold more truth today than long contemplative sketchbooks from architectural education’s past (well, out-dated present). When visiting a place, the image held in the mind is always paired with a snapshot, a Wikipedia article, the content on your phone. These speed trips are of the new metamodern condition in that the researchers actively play a role in the place, but do not attempt to understand it in totality. The analysis of these Speed Trips differs from that of Learning from Las Vegas is that they are tied strongly to the subjective and highly personal form of documentation. The experience of a place is never one dimensional but like memes, multifaceted with the addition of your personal footnotes of experience. How do we ascribe value in this third wave of meme-entrenched aesthetic experience? The Blur Building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro serves as the most fruitful example of an architecture that extends beyond a singular perception. The pavilion acts at once as a machine championing human achievement, and a visceral sensual experience of foggy cloud-ness. From afar, the perception of either or both of these faces is dependent on environmental factors like wind. The dualities continue with the god-like hubris of creating a fantasy environment with the dewey dark reality of moving through the structure. The narrative told by the Blur Building is non-linear and complex, a common feature underlying architecture and art of this era is a narrative of complexity and ambiguity. The implementation of nuance should not forfeit the potential for additional pedestrian readings of a building. Sylvia Lavin warns of the slippery slope of base iconography in her essay “Practice Makes Perfect”. 7 Like memes, the references employed by architecture today should aim for suggestions in their readings rather than singularity. The value of one-liner buildings collapse when their message fails. The nature of employing overt or specific symbolism in buildings is usually

6 Ginckels, Pieterjan. Solar Safari. Art Paper Editions, 2018.

noon-democratic: the point of entry to appreciate and translate most buildings being much higher than what is falsely agreed upon within the architecture community. The (you would think uncontroversial) proposition here is that buildings exist in the world with people, most of whom have little to no architectural education; therefore, architects should design buildings for the enjoyment of all, placing equal value on function and poetic merit. While I am convinced, after some expensive and arduous architectural training, that Venturi and Scott-Brown’s Guild House is rich with meaning, I am completely unconvinced any person outside of this exclusive club would get there on their own. The answer to building in this meme era is not to build The Museum of Ice Cream or Heartherwick’s Vessel at every corner.

Every building cannot and should not be a monument. Not everything should be universally Instagram-worthy.

By learning from these structures, less egotistical buildings can find form. If the Bilbao Guggenheim is grapefruit juice packed with sugar, most buildings should aim to be Pamplemousse La Croix. In his essay “Awkward Position,” Andrew Zago describes how some architects, namely OMA, have chosen to “uncouple architectural production from assumptions of mastery,” 9 in response to the totalitarian dismissal of technique in architecture following the postmodern architectural movement. Zago defines architectural mastery in terms of how skillfully awkward and clumsy conditions are produced. Under this premise, successful buildings are “uglyhot:” not conventionally attractive, but appreciable for their strangeness. OMA’s Seattle Public Library is the Adam Driver of architecture. The building successfully acts as an icon, but this iconic form serves a purpose, shifting to hold different programmatic elements. 1

8 I made this I think it is kind of cringe tho lmk

A complete architecture may have been possible as recently as the modern era, but now it is time to step up, and step on up, and get stepped up onto the meme aesthetic train. By achieving a critical fragmentedness which can be read through multiple references of varying degree, architecture can be both minion and da bob. The relevance of architecture today exists in the relationship to the personal. It is not until construction is completed and a project is unveiled, that the final brick is laid; composed of jagged aggregate of intangible elements out of the architect’s control.