Mapping Utopias: From New Babylon to Black Rock City

Authors

  • Anna Novakov

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i12.163

Keywords:

Utopia, metropolis, nomadism, play, spectacle

Abstract

New Utopian plans for liberated urban spaces emerged during the post-war era with the work of the Lettrist (LI), Situationist International (SI), and specifically Constant Nieuwenhuys, a Dutch painter turned architect and sculptor who understood urban planning as intimately linked to nomadism, play and creativity. Influenced by the bombed detritus of European capitals and the possibilities of new technology, Constant’s plans for a future society were post-revolutionary, with unseen automated factory production and spaces for innovation that were elevated on stilts. Constant’s conflicting ideas are referenced and emulated in Black Rock City – a short-term encampment erected every year for the Burning Man festival in the desert of Nevada. These multileveled zones would allow for the blurring of public and private space as well as zones of work and leisure.

Author Biography

Anna Novakov

Saint Mary’s College of California
United States

Art historian, curator and writer, the daughter of noted environmental physicist Tihomir Novakov, she was immersed in the Ecotopian dreams of air pollution control from an early age. She was raised in both the Socialist Utopia of post-war Yugoslavia and the free speech, counterculture movements of Berkeley, California. Both radical movements had profound influences on women’s rights, new technology and the built environment – areas of study that would form the basis of Novakov’s creative practice. In 1992, after completing her doctorate at New York University, she came to prominence in Manhattan as one of the first art critics to write about the interrelationship between art, technology and Utopian spaces. The author of dozens of books, exhibition catalogues, newspaper and magazine articles, Novakov lives on both coasts and is currently Professor of Art History and Director of the January Term Program at Saint Mary’s College of California.

References

Andreotti, Libero. “Play-Tactics of the International Situationniste.” October 91 (Winter 2000): 36–58.

Constant. “New Babylon.” In The Theory of the Derive and other Situationist Writings on the City, edited by Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa, 154–169. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, ACTAR, 1996.

Constant. “On Traveling.” Studio International 185 955 (May 1973): 229.

Doherty, Brian. This is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004.

Goin, Peter. “Where the Pavement Ends.” Geographical Review 92, 4 (October 2002): 545–54. doi:10.2307/4140934. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/4140934

Gordon, Alastair. Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties. New York: Rizzoli, 2008.

Guoqi, Ding. “Art’s Commitment to Liberation in Marcuse’s Philosophy.” AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 7 (2015): 30–38.

Heynan, Hilde. “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia.” Assemblage 29 (April 1996): 24–39. doi: 10.2307/3171393 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3171393

Hughes, Trevor. “Burning Man lures techies with siren song of going unplugged.” USA Today, August 26, 2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/08/25/burning-man-lures-techies-siren-song-going-unplugged/32296633/

Kozinets, Robert V. “Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man.” Journal of Consumer Research 29, 1 (June 2002): 20–38. doi:10.1086/339919. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/339919

Maclara, Pauline, and Stephen Brown. “The Center Cannot Hold: Consuming the Utopian Marketplace.” Journal of Consumer Research 32, 2 (September 2005): 311–23. doi:10.1086/432240. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/432240

Prunet, Camille. “The Living in Art since the 1960s: A Deep Link to Politics.” AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 7 (2015): 57–62.

Salvestroni, Simonetta, and R. M. P. “The Science Fiction Films of Andrei Tarkovsky (Les films de science-fiction d’Andrei Tarkovsky).” Science Fiction Studies 14, 3 (November 1987): 294–306.

Zweifel, Stefan, Juri Steiner, and Heinz Stahlhut, ed. In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimmur Igni – The Situationist International, 1957–1972. Utrech: Centraal Museum, 2007.

On the cover: Irena Gajić, Paper Architecture

Downloads

Published

20.04.2017

How to Cite

Novakov, A. (2017). Mapping Utopias: From New Babylon to Black Rock City. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (12), 9–16. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i12.163

Issue

No. 12 (2017): Issue No. 12, April 2017 - Topic of Issue: Architecture with(in) Art and Theory

Section

Main Topic

License

Copyright (c) 2023 AM Journal of Art and Media Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

AM Journal of Art and Media Studies ISSN 2217-9666 - printed, ISSN 2406-1654 - online, UDK 7.01:316.774

Contact: amjournal@outlook.com

Publisher: Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia

Indexed in: ERIH PLUS, EBSCO, DOAJ, and in The List of Scientific Journals Categorization of Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia (M24 in 2021; M23 in 2023). Beginning with No. 12 2017, AM is indexed, abstracted and covered in Clarivate Analytics service ESCI.