'Social space' from 'The Production of Space' by Henry Lefebvre

To be honest, I had a great difficulty getting through the text partly because I am reading not on the native language, partly because the language Lefebvre uses is way too complicated. I found myself lost in complex ideas described with even more complex language structures. What I gathered out of this particular chapter is that social space is not 'a thing among other things, not a product among other products...' There is a great diversity of objects contained in this social space at different scales. But, for Lefebvre 'repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness'. I would say that this observation of repetitiveness in the capitalist city echoes the concept of 'Generic City' that emerged in 1990 through Rem Koolhaas 'S,M,L,XL'. The social space should be a product of singular character, politically instrumental.

In the text Lefebvre used Venice to try and explain his meaning although his descriptions of the city where not factual. The way the city functioned was very well documented describing how the location of different businesses evolved around the city in order to make their businesses a lot more lucrative.of different businesses evolved around the city in order to make their businesses a lot more lucrative.

Lefebvre makes a huge distinction between 'product' and 'work'. He moves from a 'thing in space' to the 'actual production of space'. Building upon the Marxist idea of 'production' he acknowledges that the space itself is an 'active moment' that needs to be 'actively produced' and not just left to its own devices. He goes on to say that humanity is killing off nature with signs and images, and labour and products. When talking about social space he describes it as the outcome of a sequence, and set or operations, and so cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object, but at the same time there is nothing imagined or unreal about it.

Personally I believe in the transition of spaces, their multifunctionality. 'An existing space may outlive its original purpose and the raison d`etre which determines its forms, functions and structures.' I don`t really have any specific conclusion on this text as I think there is a real skill in being able to convey a complicated idea in a way that makes it more easily understandable. This relates closely to our profession - to turn a complicated idea in your head into a language that anyone can start to understand. I’m sure many brilliant theorists would disagree with me argueing that what Lefebvre writes makes perfect sense, but I just think that writing in the way he does gives the impression that he is hiding in words.

‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg and ‘The Job’ by W.S.Burroughs

Both texts represent the Beat movement, its values, logic (if there was any) and attitude to life generally. In ‘The Job’ we see the assault upon language, traditional values, and the controlling system. We see the picture of paranoiac, mad and maddening view on the world. I assume William Burroughs is one of the many from WWII generation to see and feel the world like he does. People are loaded with psychological problems, insanity is in the air. What we read between the lines is a warning to become a part of the machine. More and more people’s minds were thinking beyond the conventional and they were questioning and objecting to their previous generations’ ways of thinking. In that aspect, ‘Howl’ is an important poem as it stated a debate as to what was acceptable to write about, and gave new ideas to how it could be written about, it essentially expanded creativity. Ginsberg writes a continuous flow of thoughts, feelings and impressions of what he sees happening around him.

LSD was being used to experience new things, appearance of hippies and all what 60-ies are usually associated with was kind of an expression of so much wanted liberation, freedom, and escapism from the context to smth more real, true and genuine, released from the superstitions of everyday life and so-called morality of the society. People were not able to sustain the pressure of that modern world and were seeking for comfort in things that opposed to the regime, which was a machine of false consciousness. Everyone was ‘doing his own thing’ not to become part of it. William Burroughs writes on the subject of freedom: ‘Free man does not exist in anyone`s books, because they are the author`s creations. I would say that free man don`t exist on this planet at this time, because they don`t exist in human bodies……’ The main thing that I took from this was his idea of images and words being used as an instrument of control. Moreover, he says that if one takes the TV image with one politician talking and overlay the voice of other - it would still make perfect sense. That illustrates the extent to which society is brainwashed.

Off course in Architecture that found the reflection in all the futuristic ideas that were floating around. Architects were no longer trying to rationalize, on the contrary, freedom of forms, personal language was flourishing. Archigram were one of the examples of creating such Utopias. By introducing new rules of design they were exploring the possibilities, searching for new perspectives.

Unfortunately I think that NOW we are totally depressed by the machine, totally corrupted in our minds and thoughts and totally controlled. And what is worse, we got ourselves in this state obediently and without any questions.