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Monumental Need in the Landscape of Abandonment

Beniamino Servino

Monumental Need in the Landscape of Abandonment
By Beniamino Servino -

01. ENUNCIATION/ANNUNCIATION
[Mary, you carry the son of the Lord] Violations for necessity. Violation [excess]. Bad use, excessive use [ruthless], unlawful use of a thing. I take too much room, I do that in an excessive [ruthless] illegitimate manner. Violation [Power abuse]. I illegally exercise the power of changing the landscape. De-sign [(de)-mark] the territory, or even a field. A shore. And while I illegally/illegitimately alter the place of my urge I make it vulnerable [the place, not the urge]. We are vulnerable together [me and the place, the active subject and the passive subject]. We cohabit vulnerably, admirably. Needful. There is no way I can withdraw from it. I cannot withdraw myself from a need. To abandon. To leave without a help or protection, to leave to its own weaknesses. Stop taking care of something. The landscape wants [wants!] to be abandoned [no more golf fields, never again!]. It is its vocation, its destiny. [Maybe time absorbs the need of abandonment, it absorbs the object through which the need manifests itself]. There is an assonance between the representation of need and the place of the representation. Between the script [of a play] and the stage. Between the spoken language and the architectural language. I close my eyes, I hear people talking, I hear a language, an inflection, an intonation. I can figure out the houses of the people speaking that language. I can envision the city built with those houses. It is a city that speaks the language of the people who live in it [the people who built it]. Not a simplified language but a poor language. A language that doesn’t tell a story of decay but a story with the arrogance of those who have no stories to tell. The spoken language and the architectural language are perfectly superimposed. If you walk [eyes closed] through this city and pay attention to the ugly noise of the voices you can guess [eyes closed] the shape of the houses. It is the language of relapse into illiteracy that returns swallowed and unchewed forms that are simply shat out like that. It is the city of the future. It is the all-against-all-city. The men-too-absent-minded-for-the-revolution-city. Essential vocabulary. Essential but hyperbolic [repetitive redundant noisy] language. Repetitive [full of rapid involuntary movements] language. So many little needs, all together, became a multitude [large-multitude-of-little-needs]. The large-multitude-of-little-needs aims to redemption. But first of all this crowd wants to be identified. I-den-ti-fi-ca-tion. I-den-ti-fi-ca-tion. I-den-ti-fi-ca-tion. First a whisper then a choir and finally a rhythmical [spelt] scream. The crowd chooses a monument that spring [originates] out of itself to be identified. A collective [manipulated dilated] form. A form which, while becoming a hypertrophic huge mammoth form, will still be recognizable as itself. A liberating [imaginative] anamorphosis. That’s the only way the large-multitude-of-little-needs can raise amazement [an amazement counter-Reform]. A wonder that inspires respect. A legitimizing wonder. The large-multitude-of-little-needs monument stands [in-vulnerably stands/admirably stands] in the landscape of abandonment.

02. EXEMPLIFICATION/SIMPLIFICATION
The Pennata is the popular manifesto of appropriation. It is the appropriation of archetypes [instinctively reproducible archetypes, instantly recognizable archetypes]. The Pennata is a timeless hut [without technology] and no aspiration to form. The Pennata is built to be temporary, to be removed when the police arrives [but the police never arrives!] L’éphémère est éternel. On the one hand the child-man builds a shelter for outdoor things, on the other hand the man-no-more-a-child builds [next to the former] a shelter for indoor things. The child plays [genetically driven] with the lightness of improvisation next to the man that, [for mimetic persuasion], gets back to formulas of social integration [as iconography of belonging]. Do you know, [you] men-no-longer-children, that those huts/half-huts/giant-huts that you built can be wrecked on a beach along with the Statue of Liberty?

03. ADMIRATION/DESTRUCTION
Proletarian occupation of monuments. Fires, bivouacs, windows and small ramshackle windows, pilings. The squatter feel awe/deference [that he does not want to admit] in front of the monument. He [the occupant] experiences a harmony [of the monument] he is not prepared to cope with, but he feels it [the harmony, the monument]. The occupier occupies the monument because he [the occupier] associates it [the monument] to a power that excluded him [the occupier]. The occupier acknowledges the monument symbolic value. The iconoclastic-occupier was first an excluded-idolater. 04. Type/cucumber/pumpkin/nest/Pennata That skyscraper looks like a cucumber. That auditorium looks like a pumpkin. That stadium looks like a nest. This is a Pennata.

05. TONE ON TONE/NUANCES
In spring time, let’s say from april to may, the landscape of abandonment is colored with a heap [that you can’t count the number] of different greens. A lot of greens. Never so many together. And every green has its place. It is an absorbing-green.

06. IDENTITY/INDIVIDUALITY
The identity of a place, of people. I belong to a place [I belong to the people] if I adhere to a pattern. Identity as a pattern. I belong to a place [I belong to the people] if I was born in that place [by those people]. Identity as a genetic code. I belong to a place [I belong to the people] if I find that place a familiar place [if those people protect me as a family member] Identity as a refuge. I belong to a place [I belong to the people] if that place leaves a little room for me and if those people welcome me among others. Identity as inclusion. I belong to a place [I belong to the people] if that place and those people recognize me among others [if that place and that people realize that I am exactly there]. Identity as a sum of individualities that brush against one another.

07. THE NON-CITY AND THE OBLIVION PEOPLE / THE NOT-CITY AND THE PAY-TV PEOPLE
The balance of the city prepares [recovers] its beauty. The recent city [the outskirts, the marginal city the enclaves in the heart of the dense city] is not against the non-recent city. It is not an against-city. It is a non-city. [It is not the against-city but an unborn fetus, a not-yet-calcified fetus. It is a not-yet-city]. … A prayer refrain … The non-city corresponds to the oblivion people / The non-city hosts the oblivion people / The non-city arises from the oblivion people / The non-city is built for the oblivion people /… The non-city and the oblivion people do not take part in the allocation of weights [the non-city and the oblivion people have a negligible weight]. Beauty and democracy [instead] are built on balance. [The aesthetics of the im-balance reflects the economical and social lack of balance] MONUMENTAL NEED IN THE IM-BALANCED CITY. The monument [to be shared and supported by the oblivion people] have to be recognized as their own. It [the monument] has to be represented in a form generated by their [of the oblivion people] linguistic repertoire. It [the monument] has to proudly show its genesis, it [the monument] has to assume a dilated hypertrophic huge mammoth-like but always recognizable size. A liberating [immaginative] anamorphosis. Only in this way the monument can give rise to stupefaction [a stupefaction counter-Reform]. A wonder that inspires respect. A legitimizing wonder.

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