Materialismus
'Jameson! Brown! Postone! Rowbotham! Apocalypse! Crisis! Red Planets! Derivatives!' Thus runs the heading for the email I have received asking me to promote the Historical Materialism conference at SOAS from November 27-29. Frankly, this appears to be its own argument, but if more convincing is required, there is some more info available here. Speakers include the aforementioned Fredric Jameson and Sheila Rowbotham, plus Nina Power, Mark Fisher, Benjamin Noys, China Mieville, and all sorts of other exciting people. It will also feature me giving a paper at a panel on the Weimar Republic, entitled No Rococo Palace For Buster Keaton. Gold star to whoever guesses the reference.
posted by owen hatherley at 1:24 pm
4 Comments:
Erich Mendelsohn, from a text written in 1926 for the opening of the Kino Universum building-ensemble on the Ku'damm in Berlin:
"...Also kein Rokokoschloß für Buster Keaton. Keine Stucktorten für Potemkin und Scapa Flow. Aber keine Angst auch! Keine trockene Sachlichkeit, keine Raumangst lebensmüder Gehirnakrobate. -Phantasie!..."
...and much, much more in that heroically nutty vein.
(Please give the gold star to a charity of your choice. I already have so many I don't know what to do with them.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaub%C3%BChne
Excellent, and in German too. Gold star donated to the Hungover Freelancers Fund.
No slices of wedding cake for [Battleship] Potemkin and Scapa Flow...(the reference is to the self-destruction of the German High Seas Fleet there in 1919 - maybe there was some now forgotten classic flick about it?)
yorksranter, it's not "Stück" but "Stuck". So, "no stucco gateaux for Potemkin and Scapa Flow" - i.e., no wedding-cake frippery in cinema architecture.
And yes, Scapa Flow was a German film, produced in Berlin:
http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/filme/f015266.htm
(Date of release, curiously: 1929/30. Presumably Mendelsohn knew it was going to be made. He must have been a big movie fan.)
Post a Comment
<< Home