New Babylon: The Antinomies of UtopiaAuthor(s): Hilde HeynenReviewed work(s):Source: Assemblage, No. 29 (Apr., 1996), pp. 24-39Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171393 .Accessed: 19/01/2012 14:29

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1. New Babylon, group sector, 1962

Hilde Heynen New Babylon: The

Antinomies of Utopia

Hilde Heynen teaches architectural theory at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. She is preparing a book entitled Architecture and the Critique of Modernity from which this work is drawn.

Assemblage 29: 24-39 @ 1996 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

New Babylon is the name of a long-term project by the Dutch artist Constant that originated in Situationist experi- ments. By the time that Constant embarked on this project he had already acquired a certain reputation as a painter and member of the COBRA group.' The event that marked the

beginnings of New Babylon was the meeting of a group of

avant-garde artists in Alba, Italy, in 1956, where Constant delivered a lecture entitled "Tomorrow Poetry Will Be the House of Life." The meeting in Alba was instrumental in

setting up the Situationist International, which, from the

merger of several avant-garde groups, principally, the Interna- tional Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the Lettrist International, was officially established in London in 1957.2 In the first years of its existence, most of the activities of the new group were directed toward a program for a "unitary urbanism." This was a vigorous critique of contemporary modernist urbanism. Unitary urbanism rejected the utilitar- ian logic of the consumer society, aiming instead for the realization of a dynamic city, a city in which freedom and

play would have a central role. Operating collectively, the Situationists sought to achieve a creative interpretation of their everyday surroundings and they organized "situations" that would subvert the normal state of affairs.

New Babylon can be understood as Constant's concretization of the goals of unitary urbanism. A vast series of maps, models, sketches, and paintings give shape to a utopian scheme for a new mode of dwelling and a new mode of society. New Babylon simulates a situation of total liberation - an abolition

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of all norms, conventions, traditions, and habits. Radical- izing and idealizing the transitory aspects of the experience of modernity, New Babylon is a world in which all that is fleeting and transient has acquired the force of law. It is also a world of collective creation and absolute transparency; everything is exposed to the public gaze. In New Babylon imagination is in power and homo ludens is sovereign. At the same time, the project testifies to the paradoxes and contra- dictions inherent to visions of this kind. In New Babylon, the tragic character of utopianism surfaces as well.

Unitary Urbanism as Critique The key text to describe unitary urbanism dates from 1953 and was first published in June 1958, in the inaugural issue of Internationale situationniste, the periodical of the move- ment.3 Written by Gilles Ivain (the pseudonym of Ivan Chtcheglov), the essay was originally intended as an action program for the Lettrist International and it became a guideline for the Situationist International in its early years. Condemning the utilitarianism, and consequent boredom, prevalent in standard urbanism, Ivain devised strange im- ages of urban scenes, magic sites where the imagination would be stimulated. A new architecture is called forth, no longer a cold and functional architecture but an ever- changing d6cor of adjustable walls and flexible spaces: The architectural complex will be modifiable. Its aspect will change totally or partially in accordance with the will of its inhabitants. ... The appearance of the notion of relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL aspect of the next civilization .... On the basis of this mobile civilization, architecture will, at least initially, be a means of experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying life, with a view to a mythic synthesis.'"4

According to the manifesto, in the cities of the future there will be ongoing experiments in new modes of behavior. Architectural forms will be charged with symbols and emo- tions. City quarters might be built to harmonize with spe- cific feelings: the Bizarre Quarter, the Happy Quarter, the Noble and the Tragic Quarter, and so forth. The inhabit- ants' most important activity will be a constant loitering and aimless movement.

In this respect, a significant practice of the Situationists was the derive, or aimless drifting. This technique of traversing frequently changing urban environments was converted into an instrument for investigating the "psychogeography" of cit- ies. Psychogeography, stated Guy Debord, explores the influ- ence of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The term suggests that one might make a relief map of a city indicating the constant currents, fixed points, and vortexes by which urban environments affect the psychological state of inhabit- ants and passers-by. Debord provided detailed instructions for carrying out a derive correctly: it should take a fixed amount of time (preferably twenty-four hours) and involve a small group of people whose path is determined by a combination of sys- tem and randomness, conscious choice and chance. The aim is to move through the city without purpose, thus provoking unexpected occurrences and encounters.5

In "The Declaration of Amsterdam," a manifesto of 1958, Constant and Debord described unitary urbanism as "the uninterrupted complex activity through which man's environ- ment is consciously recreated according to progressive plans in all domains."'6 Unitary urbanism is the fruit of a collective creativity of a completely new kind. It cannot be produced by the activity of individual artists; in fact, the individual practice of any branch of art whatsoever is obsolete and reactionary. Rather, synthetic in character, unitary urbanism calls for the combined efforts of all creative personalities. This will bring about a fusion of scientific and artistic activity, in which the creation of transitory small-scale situations is accompanied by the development, on a larger scale, of a universal, relatively permanent ambiance marked by playfulness and freedom.

With New Babylon Constant was offering a specific response to the aims of this manifesto. But although the project was conceived and initiated under the umbrella of the Situationist International - the first articles devoted to New Babylon were published in Intemationale situationniste7 - it was apparent that Constant and Debord were moving in different directions. Constant, for his part, considered the critique of the existing urbanism - which he saw as the clearest manifestation of the deficient societal structure - to be the most urgent task of artists and intellectuals; and the construction of a well-elabo-

26

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rated alternative was, for him, the most appropriate strategy for developing this critique. Thus he put all his energies into

devising New Babylon as a concrete model of how the world would look after unitary urbanism was realized. The group around Debord, however, thought that Constant was con- cerned too exclusively with what they called the "structural

problems of urbanism." For them, urbanism was but one of the many fields in which to activate subversive impulses, and too narrow a focus on what were becoming technical

problems removed the critical sting from the project. For Debord, unitary urbanism was only a point of departure, a potential catalyst in the struggle for a total social revolution, which he believed was waiting just around the corner. To develop a critique on various fronts, moreover, it was neces- sary to involve not only artists and intellectuals but also students and proletarians. New Babylon, conceived of and elaborated in artistic terms and media, was, for Debord and his partisans, clearly limited in scope. They even accused Constant of functioning as a public-relations officer for capi- talism, in that his project tried to integrate the masses in a totally technified environment.8

Increasingly, the Situationists moved away from artistic activities to elaborate their critique of urbanism through writings and political actions.9 They saw it as their first task to free people from their identification with their surround- ings and with codes of behavior imposed by a capitalist society. The existing practice of urban development, in their view, organized life so as to discourage people from thinking that they might have anything of their own to contribute. Through an emphasis on transport, they argued, contemporary urbanism isolates people from one another, keeping them from genuine participation. Instead, Attila Kotinyi and Raoul Vaneigem would write in 1961, they are offered the spectacle: That participation has become impossible is compensated by way of the spectacle. The spectacle is manifest in one's residence and mobility (personal vehicles). For in fact one doesn't live somewhere in the city; one lives somewhere in the hierarchy.'0

As part of the spectacle, individuals become passive, alien- ated from their own existence. Unitary urbanism therefore involves a permanent critique of the manipulation exer-

cised by existing urban structures, a critique activated by the tensions and conflicts of everyday life. The goal is to provide the basis for a life of continuous experimentation. At the same time, unitary urbanism must avoid the creation of certain "experimental zones" that would be isolated from the rest of the world. For it has nothing to do with designing yet another

holiday resort. Just the opposite: "Unitary urbanism is the

contrary of specialized activity; to accept a separate urbanistic domain is already to accept the whole urbanistic lie and the falsehood permeating the whole of life.""

In this regard, a fertile strategy in the critique of urbanism was that of deliberate distortion, the detoumement. This technique presents preexisting materials or conditions in a light other than

officially intended, so as to expose their fraudulent character.

According to Kotinyi and Vaneigem, it is possible to subject the lies in urbanist theory to a ditoumement in order to counter its alienating effects. This involves a reversal of the rhythm of the discourse of urbanism so that its power of persuasion is subverted and the resulting conditioning diminished. Urban detoumement is best deployed through the creation of situa- tions, which liberate currents of energy that permit people to make their own history. Unitary urbanism is therefore also indissolubly linked with the revolution of everyday life:

We have invented the architecture and the urbanism that cannot be realized without the revolution of everyday life - without the appropriation of conditioning by everyone, its endless enrichment, its fulfillment.12

Constant, meanwhile, did not expect a total revolution to take place in the very near future and saw his design for "another city for another way of living" as a sort of strategy for survival in hard times."3 In the course of 1960 the clash of opinions within the group intensified and that summer Constant re- signed from the Situationist International.14

New Babylon: Utopia and Negativity "It is a matter of achieving the unknown by a deregulation of the senses": that Constant chose this sentence of Arthur Rimbaud's as a motto for his description of "the New Babylonian Culture" is no coincidence."5 He deliberately situated himself in the lineage of the avant-garde that linked

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upheavals in art with social and political revolution. If the distinctive feature of the avant-garde was its critical struggle against the existing culture, then, in the contemporary situation, artists were to pave the way for an emergent cul- ture of play.16Accordingly, Constant based his model for a future society on transparency in human relationships, creativity, love, and play. New Babylon illustrates the living conditions of homo ludens, who has finally seized the baton from homo faber. It takes off from the idea that the thor-

oughgoing automatization of production will reach a point where work becomes unnecessary, enabling the masses to

enjoy unlimited free time. Sequences of "sectors," gigantic structures built on high supports, gradually cover the sur- face of the earth. They tower over a landscape that is de- voted to a fully mechanized agricultural industry and crisscrossed with lanes of fast-moving traffic. Life in the sectors is one of total liberation. People inhabit an environ- ment that is entirely free of oppression and over which they have full control. With the press of a button, they can adjust the level of temperature, the degree of humidity, the den-

sity of smells, and the intensity of light; with a few simple operations, they can alter the shape of a room, decide whether it is to be open or closed. They can choose be- tween a large number of "atmospheres" that can be end-

lessly manipulated. Specific areas are given over to erotic

games, to experiments in filmmaking or radio, and to scien- tific testing; others are set aside for seclusion and rest. New

Babylon is a dynamic labyrinth that is always being restruc- tured by the spontaneity and creativity of its inhabitants, who lead a nomadic existence based on a continual rejec- tion of convention and of any form of permanence:

The sectors change through all the activity within them that is constantly evolving in form and atmosphere. Nobody will ever be able to return to a place that he visited previously, nobody will ever recognize an image that exists in his memory; this means that nobody will ever lapse into fixed habits."'17

In New Babylon Constant gave primacy to public space. In a passage from Opstand van de homo ludens, he stated that public space is where people meet each other and thus the arena for play. Without public space, he argued, no culture is possible: the forum in classical times, the market squares in the Middle Ages, and the boulevard more recently - this is where cultural life developed.'8 The covered, large-scale structures of New Babylon are clearly conceived as a continu- ation of this tradition. Implicit here is that Constant sees New Babylon as a fulfillment of Lefebvre's "droit 'a la ville," an expression that refers less to a definite physical city context than to the presence of an urban atmosphere that involves freedom, complexity, and limitless possibilities."9 In placing himself in a tradition of urbanity characterized by the invest- ment of public space with collective meaning and cultural

significance, Constant opposed the tendency toward the "hol-

lowing out" of public space being effectuated by the regime of the spectacle.20 His collective spaces are not imagined as

spectacular sceneries where one comes merely to spend some leisure time or to see and be seen. In New Babylon public space is where one really lives. It is the focus of all activities and the carrier of all meanings. Private space is only available to those who are ill or otherwise unable to participate in col- lective life.

Constant's concern for urban space led him in the 1960s to collaborate closely with the Amsterdam Provos, who were

attempting to reclaim the street from the automobile, to rein- force the urban culture by enhancing street life. And al-

though Constant himself did not see New Babylon as a plan that was technically viable or apt for immediate realization, the Provos at one point proclaimed Amsterdam as the first sector of New Babylon.21

Constant illustrated his future city through an elaborate col- lection of maps, models, drawings, and paintings. His maps, which show the whole series of linked structures stretching out across the landscape, exist on various scales, starting with

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a quasi-European dimension (as, for example, with a map for the Ruhr area of New Babylon) and continuing with those that simulate the development of concrete cities or

city districts (Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, and so on). The

background into which they are set can be completely ab- stract and neutral or based on existing contemporary or historical maps. In one intriguing series of collages sectors are created out of parts of other urban plans. For instance, in a symbolic depiction of New Babylon dating from 1969

fragments of existing city maps are pasted onto a back-

ground that reveals some evidence of roads with thicker

parts for intersections. Street names can still just be read on the map fragments, so that they evoke specific cities. It is possible to discern a piece of London and a piece of Berlin, alongside a district of Amsterdam and an area of a Spanish city. It is as though Constant is suggesting, through this ditournement, that New Babylon will unite the qualities of all these cities.

In the initial years of work on his project, Constant also made ample models in a variety of forms. The first related to New Babylon dates from 1956 and was meant as a design proposal for a gypsy encampment in Alba. An umbrella- shaped transparent construction partially covers a space in which one can vaguely discern a spiral shape. With the use

of screens and palings the gypsies were invited to create their own site. Constant again took up the circular form with two "spatiovores" of 1959 and 1960. Resembling space stations

accidentally landed on earth, transparent shell-shaped struc- tures rise high above the ground, supported at only three

points. Inside the shell, sections of floor made of Perspex are

suspended in the air by means of rods and wires. Judging by the size of the objects on the ground in the spatiovore of 1960, these models must represent towering constructions that cover a considerable area. Nothing, however, indicates the precise function of these gigantic shells.

Formally, the spatiovores are autonomous elements, which makes them rather exceptional within the overall framework of New Babylon. The other models are instead conceived of as parts of sectors that can easily be linked to each other. For instance, in the model for the yellow sector of 1958 (which Constant described in Internationale situationniste) the con- struction is held up by a few massive pylons, with a sort of lattice construction propping up the floor and roof slabs. In one corner a circular structure has become separate from the rest; this has six floor slabs on top of each other with short gaps between, in contrast to the two slabs of the main struc- ture. The whole is held together by a flat yellow roof slab. On the different "stories," a collection of folded collapsible walls

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5. Spatiovore, 1960

can be used to demarcate different spaces. What matters here are not enclosed volumes, but interpenetrating spaces. Also striking are the models of labyrinthine spaces, such as the small labyrinth of 1959 or the mobile "ladderlabyrinth" of 1967. This last, made of brass, Perspex, and wood, recalls a wire model for one of Theo van Doesburg's counter- constructions with its floating surfaces and interpenetrating volumes.

Yet in none of the models for New Babylon can one ascribe definite functions to specific parts of the building, nor calcu- late with any accuracy the scale or other concrete detail. The real problem is that the tension between the larger structures that are fixed and the smaller-scale interior structures that are flexible and labyrinthine is not always fully worked out. Constant himself declared that "the real designers of New Babylon will be the Babylonians themselves,"22 but the mod- els fail to suggest this in any clear way. The atmosphere of an

airport is often brought to mind - something that occurs

explicitly in a model of 1959 that Constant dubbed Ambi- ance de ddpart - and thus perhaps a nomadic mode of life made possible by technology. What these models do give, above all, is a picture of an artificial world dominated by technology, in which artificial materials and ingenious con- struction techniques combine to make a type of structure that exists separate from the landscape and whose typical features are interpenetration and indeterminacy.

Perhaps because the model-sculptures were a limited form of representation, Constant relied increasingly on drawings and paintings as his work on New Babylon progressed.23 The least appealing of the drawings are the architectural perspectives, such as the bird's-eye view of a group sector that dates from 1964. Fairly detailed depictions of large-scale constructions that form a sort of chain undulating through the landscape, they lack the poetic power and intensity of Constant's other sketches. A small group of drawings emphasize constructional aspects, the artist's aim apparently being to persuade the pub- lic of the viability of his proposal. Far more interesting are the numerous sketches that evoke the constructional principles of New Babylon rather than showing them in technical detail. One striking drawing plays two structural principles against each other: to the right, a lattice column covers a large area with its narrow connecting rods and points of intersection; left of center, an extremely slender element resembles a verti- cal version of the logic of a three-pointed arch.24 Whether the narrow structure is really capable of support is doubtful, but hardly to the point. It is the interaction between these two forms and the pattern of lines of force they suggest that gives this drawing its character. Similar remarks might be made about a sketch of 1962 that illustrates a lattice construction for a sector of New Babylon set in a hilly landscape, with a lift

(Aufzug) linking the inhabited areas to the ground.25 Here, too, there are slender structures and minimal indications of support points and lines of force.

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The prints and drawings in which Constant gives an im-

pression of the spatial character of New Babylon are also numerous. Features suggesting dynamism and mobility -

stairs, ladders, lifts, adjustable walls - are frequently em- phasized. At the same time, many of the interior views give the sense of a somewhat suffocating labyrinthine space, a boundless area in which one can lose one's way ad infinitum: staircases and passages that lead nowhere, heavily drawn shadows with Piranesian spaces outlined

against them. Now and then blobs appear that look roughly like human silhouettes. It is typical that these silhouettes never become individualized. One cannot discern their sex or age, nor see their face, nor interpret their expression. In

drawings where a larger number appear, there seems to be no interaction among them: these figures traverse the laby- rinth alone.

What most unites the drawings is, in fact, the tension they convey. Constant often creates this tension by opposing frag- ile shapes to compact ones, dark to light, dynamic lines to static volumes. Sometimes he produces tension through the

rhythm of the walls that give structure to the space depicted, or through the movement of the human figures across it, or

through the distortions of perspective. The viewer is subjected to a continual oscillation between impressions of liberation and of Unheimlichkeit. In many ways, New Babylon fulfills the expectations of an absolutely liberated space, where the individual is free to construct his or her own environment within a general structure that fully harnesses the poetic po- tential of technology. The movable walls, ladders, lifts, and

stairways can suggest the possibility of endless journeys and new encounters. But these drawings also betray a feeling of unease through the indifference with which the earth's sur-

34

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14. Ode a I'Odeon, 1969

face has been stripped, through the colossal scale of the structures that support the sectors, and through the endless- ness of the interior spaces that never seem to permit contact with the outside world.

The same tension inhabits the paintings that Constant produced during his New Babylon period. Initially, in his most radical phase, Constant avoided painting on principle, viewing it as a bourgeois and reactionary art. Nonetheless, he never entirely abandoned his brushes, even if he ceased to exhibit or sell any canvases. The paintings of these years

take up the themes and motifs of his project - labyrinths, ladders, homo ludens - but they are better not seen as direct illustrations of life in New Babylon. Rather, they constitute a reflection at a distance, accompanying the work on New Babylon. They might even be understood as a critique of the simplistic way in which the models and narratives present the society of the future, rendering visible many contradictions and incommensurabilities.

In some of these paintings the element of play comes to the fore in the form of carnival-like figures in scenes that teem

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with activity. In Fiesta Gitana of 1958 brilliant, fiery splashes of paint dominate, yet there is an unmistakably somber undertone, as though Constant were acknowledg- ing that festival and violence, joy and chaos, creation and destruction are ineluctably linked. Homo Ludens, a paint- ing of 1964, is exuberant in its range of color and its festive atmosphere. The figures are executed in garish colors that spill over into the surrounding areas. But here, too, a dark undertone is noticeable, both in the black background that rejects the expansive joy of the merrymakers and in the attitude of the human figures to one another - as though no real contact exists between them.

In the labyrinthine paintings this conflict is even more pro- nounced. Ode a l'Odedon of 1969, painted in shades of gray and beige brightened occasionally with white, depicts an unending Piranesian space, a wholly interior world dense with walls, palings, and ladders. Transparent screens, gridlike surfaces, and sections of floors are crisscrossed -

supported? - by horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. No definite perspective exists here, no central point from which the spatial organization can be grasped as a whole. In this opaque space human silhouettes wander aimlessly and with- out interaction. In Ladderlabyrinth of 1971, dominated by a yellow with orange hues combined with pink and bright yellow, the spatial organization is even more confused than in Ode a l'Oddeon: sight lines disappear altogether; the place- ment of surfaces and lines seems to foster a deliberate ambi-

guity. The two indistinct pink and gray silhouettes that form the focus of the painting, however, seem to be linked by invisible threads of desire, a sexual component missing from earlier work related to New Babylon.

Constant's gesture of farewell to New Babylon might be found in a painting of 1973 entitled Terrain vague. An almost apocalyptically vacated space is set against a horizon black as night. The foreground and edges of the visual field are patched and cut with lines. Barely recognizable in the dis- tance is a structure out of New Babylon. A few walls and screens point one's gaze toward the depths. On closer inspec- tion, the monotonous yellow-white surface that occupies the greater part of the painting turns out to overlay a more com- plex background collaged from newspaper and other imag-

ery. Is this a palimpsest representing the end of history? The painting's title means "waste land," but it is clear that this land is not really empty: it is covered with traces and scars that in- scribe a very specific history on the spot. Considering that New Babylon is elsewhere pictured as the place of an eternal present (because no place in it can ever be recognized by its inhabit- ants), this proves a strange compilation of images. One is tempted to see Terrain vague as emerging from an understand- ing of the incompatibilities between the reality of a waste land that is always occupied by hidden memories and the impossible utopia of New Babylon where memories and history are de- clared irrelevant. And one wonders whether, after all, Constant does not rather opt for history than for an eternal present.

New Babylon describes a world where people are liberated from all forms and conventions; where fixed patterns of social obligations and loyalties to family or to specific places are dissolved; where the law of the transitory prevails; where im- mediate situations have primacy over permanent structures. The commonplace - the ordinary, everyday framework that gives life its form - has been abolished in this brave, new world. With it, it would seem, the possibility of "dwelling" has also disappeared. For dwelling, inhabitation, has to do with developing habits, with habituating oneself to a certain pat- tern. This is precisely what Constant declared to be impos- sible in New Babylon. But does dwelling in a situation of pure indeterminacy respond to people's deepest desires?

New Babylon visualizes the dream of ultimate transparency that Benjamin detected in the avant-garde of the 1920s.26 It presents an image of a social form in which the desires of the individual and the needs of the community are inseparably entwined. As Constant described it, it is a society with no need for secrecy or possessions; it is an absolute collectivity in which the general interest coincides with the sum of indi- vidual interests. New Babylon, it would seem, is a society without power relations. But the internal contradictions of such a utopian vision, as has been suggested above, surface involuntarily in Constant's drawings and paintings.27

Failing to take into account the "micrology of power," the social theory underlying New Babylon makes an abstraction of the finely meshed interplay between the principles on which the social system is founded and the psychological mecha-

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nisms that guide individual behavior. And yet Constant, in some ways, seems to recognize the problem. The drawings and paintings form a sort of modification of his discourse of a

utopian world. In the complexity that one gets an inkling of from the drawings and that comes to full maturity in the

paintings, the "dark side" of New Babylon is clearly present. The drawings and paintings show a condition in which wan- derlust and freedom from permanent ties are untrammeled, but they also make evident that this condition is inseparably bound up with the death drive, with groundlessness and

indeterminacy. A painting, as Constant first said in his CO- BRA period, is an animal, a night, a scream, a human being, or all of it together. This notion continues to reverberate in his work on New Babylon. As a result, the paintings make visible something that Constant was still able to conceal in his models and narratives: the fact that this utopian world is not perfect and harmonious, that the dismantling of all con- ventions leads to a zero point of human existence in which the authenticity that is striven for is reduced to a torrent of

perceptions and sensations and nothing more than that - no longer an ideal but a caricature. Strikingly, in this sense, New Babylon provides its own multilayered commentary on the impossibility of giving utopia a concrete form: indeed, one cannot "dwell" in New Babylon.

In Aesthetic Theory Theodor Adorno stated that art's in- volvement with utopia gives rise to the most central among the antinomies that govern its present condition.

One of the crucial antinomies of art today is that it wants to be and must be squarely Utopian, as social reality increasingly im- pedes Utopia, while at the same time it should not be Utopian so as not to be found guilty of administering comfort and illusion.28

This is exactly what becomes apparent in Constant's New

Babylon. As a project that strives to be an embodiment of the utopian end situation of history, it is based on the nega- tion of all that is false and fraudulent in the present societal condition. The ultimate quality of the project, however, does not stem from its potential to offer a harmonic or idyl- lic image of this future. On the contrary, New Babylon does not lend itself as an instrument of semblance or consola- tion. Its truth lies in its very negativity and in the disso- nances that pervade the images of harmony.

Notes 1. For a recent monographic study on the whole of Constant's oeuvre, see Jean-Clarence Lambert, Con- stant: Les Trois Espaces (Paris: Cercle d'Art, 1992).

2. For the history of the Situationist International, see Jean-Franqois Martos, Histoire de l'Internationale situationniste (Paris: Gerard Lebovici, 1989), Elisabeth Suss- mann, ed., On the Passage of a Few

People through a Rather Brief Mo- ment in Time: The Situationist Inter- national 1957-1972 (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age (London: Rout-

ledge, 1992), and R. J. Sanders, Beweging tegen de schijn: De situationisten, een avant-garde (Amsterdam: Huis aan de Drie Grachten, 1989).

3. Gilles Ivain, "Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau," Interna- tionale situationniste 1 (June 1958): 15-20; English trans. in Ken Knabb, ed., Situationist International An-

thology (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 1-4.

4. Ibid., 2.

5. Guy Debord, "Theorie de la d6rive," Internationale situation- niste 2 (December 1958): 19-23; English trans. in Situationist Inter- national Anthology, 50-54.

6. Constant and Guy Debord, "La

Declaration d'Amsterdam," Internationale situationniste 2

(December 1958): 31-32; English trans. in Ulrich Conrad, ed., Pro-

grams and Manifestoes on 20th-

century Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990), 161- 62. French text: "L'urbanisme unitaire se definit dans l'activite

complexe et permanente qui

consciemment, recree l'environ- ment de l'homme selon les concep- tions les plus evoluees dans tous les domaines."

7. See Constant, "Une autre ville

pour une autre vie," Internationale situationniste 3 (December 1959): 37-40; idem, "Description de la zone jaune," Internationale situationniste 4 (June 1960): 23-26.

8. See "Critique de l'urbanisme," Internationale situationniste 6 (Au- gust 1961): 5-11.

9. The artists of the German sec- tion of the Situationist Interna- tional, the SPUR group, did not limit themselves to texts and pam- phlets. In 1963, for instance, they produced a SPUR building, which, like New Babylon, can be seen as

foreshadowing the future world of

play. The SPUR-Utopia, however, was never as elaborated as New

Babylon. See Wolfgang Dressen, Dieter Kunzelmann, and Eckard

Stepmann, eds., Nilpferd des hllischen Urwalds - Spuren in eine unbekannte Stadt - Situation- isten, Gruppe SPUR, Kommune I

(Berlin: Ausstellung im Werkbund- Archiv, 1991). 10. Attila Kotuinyi and Raoul

Vaneigem, "Programme el6mentaire du bureau d'urbanisme unitaire," Internationale situationniste 6 (Au- gust 1961): 16-19; English trans.

adapted from Situationist Interna- tional Anthology, 65-67. French text: "La participation devenue im-

possible est compense sous forme de spectacle. Le spectacle se mani- feste dans l'habitat et le deplacement (standing du logement et des v'hicules personnels). Car, en fait, on n'habite pas un quartier d'une ville, mais le pouvoir. On habite

quelque part dans la hierarchie."

11. Ibid. French text: "L'urbanisme unitaire est le contraire d'une

38

Heynen

activit6 sp6cialis6e; et reconnaitre un domaine urbanistique s6par6, c'est d6jai reconnaitre tout le

mensonge urbanistique et le

mensonge dans toute la vie."

12. Ibid. French text: "Nous avons

invent6 l'architecture et l'urbanisme

qui ne peuvent pas se r6aliser sans la revolution de la vie quotidienne; c'est-a-dire l'appropriation du conditionnement par tous les hommes, son enrichissement

ind6fini, son accomplissement."

13. See Constant, "Une autre ville

pour une autre vie."

14. See the report of Constant's re- treat in Internationale situationniste 5 (December 1960): 10; cf. Con- stant, "New Babylon na tien jaren," lecture at the Technical University of Delft, 23 May 1980.

15. Constant, "New Babylon, een schets voor een kultuur," in New

Babylon, exhibition catalogue (The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1974), 49-63, 57: "Il s'agit d'arriver a l'inconnu par le d6r'glement de tous les sens."

16. Constant, "Opkomst en

ondergang van de avant-garde," in

Opstand van de homo ludens: Een bundel voordrachten en artikelen (Bussum: Paul Brand, 1969), 11-48.

17. Constant, "New Babylon, een schets voor een kultuur," 60.

18. Constant, "Over normen in de cultuur," in Opstand van de homo ludens, 73.

19. Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit a' la ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1968), 132: "Le droit 'a la ville ne peut se concevoir comme un simple droit de visite ou de retour vers les villes traditionelles. 11 ne peut se formuler comme droit a la vie urbaine, transform6e, renouvel6e. Que la tis- sue urbaine enserre la campagne et

ce qui survit de vie paysanne, peu importe, pourvu que Turbain,' lieu de rencontre, priorit6 de la valeur

d'usage, inscription dans l'espace d'un temps promu au rang de bien

supreme parmi les biens, trouve sa base morphologique, sa r6alisation pratico-sensible." Whereas it is un- clear whether a direct relationship existed between Constant and Lefebvre, the links between Debord and Lefebvre are well documented and there is no doubt about the mutual influence between Lefebvre's writings and early Situationist theory.

20. Compare the argument in Thomas McDonough, "Situationist

Space," October 67 (Winter 1994): 59-77, esp. 75-77.

21. Virginie Mamadouh, De stad in eigen hand: Provo's, kabouters en krakers als stedelijke sociale

beweging (Amsterdam: Sua, 1992), 72-73.

22. Constant, "Autodialoog," in New Babylon, 71-72.

23. See Constant, "New Babylon na tien jaren," 3: "Apparently my models have sown confusion, rather than furthering any understanding of my efforts to imagine a world that differs so profoundly from the world in which we live or from any world that we have any historical

knowledge of. Finally, I resorted once more to brush and palette as the most appropriate means of ren-

dering the unknown visible."

24. The drawing indicated with the code T44-X-1974 in the Gemeentemuseum, the Hague.

25. The drawing indicated with the code T95-83 in the Gemeente- museum.

26. See Hilde Heynen, "Wonen in een huis van glas: Walter

Benjamins oproep tot een nieuw barbarendom," Benjamin Journaal 3 (1995): 103-19.

27. See Jeroen Onstenk, "In het

labyrint: Utopie en verlangen in het werk van Constant," Krisis 15

(1984): 4-21.

28. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic

Theory (London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1986), 47. For the

original German, see Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetische Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 55: "Zentral unter den

gegenwartigen Antinomien ist, dass Kunst Utopie sein muss und will und zwar desto entschiedener, je mehr der reale Funktionszu-

sammenhang Utopie verbaut; dass sie aber, um nicht Utopie an Schein und Trost zu verraten, nicht

Utopie sein darf."

Figure Credits

1, 2, 9-15. Collection of Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

3-8. Collection of the artist.

39