Ruins. An Aesthetic Hybrid

Zucker, Paul

doi:10.2307/427461

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A long and thick literature exists in the humanities on the contemplation of ruins in literature and art, from Renaissance through Romantic-era European fixations on the remnants of Greek and Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages (Daemmrich 1972;Goldstein 1977;Hughes 1995;Janowitz 1990;Riegl 2004;Springer 1987;Woodward 2001;Zucker 1961; for a rare consideration of ruins in the American literary imagination, see McNutt 2006). Prominent genres treated by culture theorists and critics are the French and German romantic tradition in literature and the British landscape tradition.…”

Section: Ruinsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity

Dawdy¹

2010

Current Anthropology

268

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. This essay identifies the potential of an emerging archaeological turn for anthropology-and for archaeology itself. I argue that despite the critiques of the past two decades, the temporality of modernity and a belief in its exceptionalism still structure much of anthropological thought, as exemplified in the division of archaeology and ethnography and in the subfield of historical archaeology and its dystopic treatment of modern urban ruins. But alternative temporalities and analytical possibilities are also emerging, ones attentive to the folding and recycling of cultural elements that Walter Benjamin described with such philosophical depth. On the ground, Benjamin's insights can be put to use by paying greater attention to the spatiotemporal dynamics of capitalism's creative destruction, to the social life of ruins, and to projects that challenge the linear divide between modernity and antiquity. Releasing anthropology from progressive time necessarily entails a reintegration of the subfields and a direct engagement with recent ruins. What! Ruins so soon! (Alexis de Tocqueville (2003 [1835])Alexis de Tocqueville was speaking of a ruined log cabin he stumbled on in his exploration of the woods of New York. He marveled at the restless American frontier and was enchanted by the oddness of new ruins. Until recently, such enchantment has been rare. More often, Western observers of recent ruins have found them banal, tragic, or noisome. Romantic views are usually reserved for the ruins of a more distant past. One of the unique attributes of Walter Benjamin was his ability to turn romanticism on its head. His aesthetic contemplation of the recent ruins of the shopping arcades of Paris and the artifacts they housed in dusty whatnot shops inspired him to rethink the temporality of capitalism and the dialectic of history, among other things (Benjamin 1999;Benjamin and Tiedemann 1999). The resurrection of Benjamin as a philosophical provocateur in the present intellectual moment is not unrelated to a growing aesthetic sensibility that shares Benjamin's and de Tocqueville's fascination with recent ruins. Nor does it seem unrelated to a growing cross-disciplinary interest in archaeology, a practice grounded in the study of ruins. Intensely personal encounters, both mediated and immediate, with large-scale recent ruins such as those of 9/11, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, and the blooming global rust belt of postindustrial cities may also feed this preoccupation. In Benjamin's terms, ruins ar...

show abstract

Section: Ruinsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity

Dawdy¹

2010

Current Anthropology

268

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Construction sites, in this sense, are like historical ruins; Paul Zucker asserts that "devastated by time or willful destruction, incomplete as they are, ruins represent a combination of man-made forms and of organic nature." [2] As a tribute to and resting on this statement, the more incomplete the "construct" is; the more organic life gets, the more surprises and the less boundaries we have.…”

Section: Architecture and Constructmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redesigning Architecture Through Photography

Germen

2008

Electronic Workshops in Computing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper focuses on the possibility of (re)designing architecture virtually with the help of one of the most important representation tools: Photography. Various digital processes like stitching multiple photos together and mirroring images in imag e editing software like Photoshop, allow this virtua l architecture to take place in virtual environments. Photography can be utiliz ed i n the process of 'constructing' a new space-that we can call 'narrative space'-from an existing spatial body. This narrative space can also be defined as a 'manufactured metaspace' which is a space beyond reality and representatio n: A constructed reality that exists solely in digital realms like Second Life. ARCHITECTURE AND REPRESENTATION Depending on facilities and technologies available at various periods of the world history, architects used various tools like drawings, paintings, miniatures, models, computers, fine arts platforms to represent their design before and after construction. EVA 2008 London Conference ~ 22-24 July Murat Germen _____________________________________________________________________ 96 dynamic process of establishing the relationships between reality and the signscreated to symbolize this reality. In this process, reality becomes thinkable, and its meanings are symbolically assigned." [1.1]

show abstract

“…The discussion in this article is not only oriented towards the standard preoccupations within aesthetics, such as visual language, but also relies on Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic theory (1970) and the relations between art and society. Moreover, through the lens of Paul Zucker (1961), ruins are hybrids in which he sees the ambiguous emotional impact that is aesthetically neither in the realm of art nor in the realm of nature.…”

Section: The Aesthetic Value Of Architectural Remnants or Ruinsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, ruins, or their evaluation through perception, are identified as the dysfunctional elements in the urban memory of Sarajevo that evoke a positive aesthetic experience. Therefore, to understand the current drawbacks in the urban develop-ment and planning system of Sarajevo, the complex relations between the visual manifestation of architectural legacy, ruins and various psychological attitudes (Zucker, 1961) must be taken into consideration. After defining the major issues of today's urban perception of the Sarajevo cityscape, the urgency and the need for exploration of new alternatives is recognised, which could potentially arise from the multi-layered city environment.…”

Section: Urban Memory Shaping Aesthetic Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

The environmental aesthetics of Sarajevo: A city shaped by memory

Husukić¹,

Zejnilović²

2017

Urbani izziv

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article discusses aesthetic singularity in present-day Sarajevo and shows how time generates a social response to the visual quality of space. Acknowledging the metamorphosis of the cityscape with regard to the identity reformulation of postwar Sarajevo, it examines the sensory engagement of people with the urban environment in relationship to the traumatic events and shifting realities imposed by globalisation. The hypothesis is that the environmental aesthetics of postwar cities are defined by the traumatic memory of physical and social destruction. This article offers insight within a broad range of theoretical discussions on the changes in the visual language and aesthetic quality of urban spaces in postwar Sarajevo. In particular, it presents the notion of urban memory and its role in shaping the aesthetic experience in postwar cities. Finally, the findings show that architectural remnants, or ruins in the urban fabric, instead of being unstable entities, have the potential to become drivers of a continuum. Ultimately, this article accepts the values of incompleteness and opens new perspectives towards playful experimentation, which potentially relieves the aesthetic experience of a rigid and monotonous urban image.

show abstract

Ruins. An Aesthetic Hybrid

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity

Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity

Redesigning Architecture Through Photography

The environmental aesthetics of Sarajevo: A city shaped by memory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About