We’re under pressure this week folks, the deadline’s been set the clock is ticking, oppressively loud volume, fractured thoughts and blind panic. It’s time to draw inspiration from dear Hunter S. Thompson and throw some gonzo at the situation, no time to mull this one over, it’s a one shot deal. Luckily that’s exactly what the subject matter calls for! We’re talking the other S. of the beat generation William S. Burroughs (the Job), throw in some Allen Ginsberg (Howl) and a touch of Archigram and all we’re missing is the mescaline!
The instant commonality with all these guys is their generation. We’re talking 60’s, we’re talking flower power hippies, LSD, on the road, don’t drop the bomb, purple haze, the magic bus, and the grateful dead.
The beat generation openly challenged the establishment and the inherent ideals of the ‘norm’ whether it was through liberal attitudes towards sex, drugs, music or through political ideas (hence counter culture). All this is set against a background of oppression; it’s all a direct response the Vietnam War and the draft of brave young men to fight. The civil rights movement is exploding all over the USA, the threat of nuclear war with those pesky commies looms large. I think what the beat generation were trying to say was ‘you guys had you you’re chance and you fucked us so let’s look at things in a completely different way.
In Howl Ginsberg celebrates ‘the best minds of his generation’ but these people aren’t doctors, or lawyers no no, they’re the hippies, drug users, musicians, drinkers, smokers and shaggers. These are the people who had the balls to say there might be a different way.
Burroughs agrees on the importance of the ‘hippy’ going as far as saying these are the people who will be able to solve world conflicts as they are able to talk to people from a non western background on a more human level free from political leanings.
Archigram’s stance is routed in the same rejection of the norm, hell in a letter written by one members daughter she says that he wanted to be the Burroughs, the Hunter Thompson the James Dean of the architectural world.
They even float the idea that maybe the correct response to an architectural problem is not a building! Now I know what you’re thinking because my bullshit meter is registering some pretty high readings too but Archigram do temper this somewhat. They talk about only holding onto influences as long as they are useful, now that sounds to me like it’s not a complete rejection of the norm, correct me if I’m wrong but that sounds like an admission that there may be use in things that have gone before.
I’m not alone in this assumption when Burroughs is asked about experimental writing he says it fails when it is purely experimental. Instead he talks about using his experimental techniques and returning and applying them to the conventional problem of writing a narrative rather than tossing the baby out with the bathwater and writing in a completely new way.
Problem with the extreme rejection of the norm in the beat sense is its been done, getting high at a music festival isn’t counter culture, now you can do it at any number of sites all over the world filmed in glorious HD by all the major media outlets and bookended by large corporate sponsors.
You could say the man fucked us again, he learnt from the new thinking quicker than we did brought into the counter culture packaged it, took those nasty edges off and then sold it back to us. There’s still more than enough for the current generation of students, thinkers and smokers to rebel against but mr badiou says there’s too much spectacle these days.
Architecturally speaking we’ve got: form making, unsullied by program. Mike Webb (Archigram)
So pull up a seat, light up a joint, turn on the TV and welcome to the spectacular Zaha Hadid capitalist void sponsored by pepsi brought to you by Murdoch in glistening HD.
Shame we could probably do with you smoking that joint meaning something.
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