BRAVE NEW WORLD Alessandra Galasso IL NUOVO MONDO

In 1932 Aldous Huxley described the advent of a New World in which all human beings, concocted in and born from test-tubes, would occupy their own specific roles in society. The Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons would love "their inevitable social destinations," raised and educated through hypnomedia, i.e. the repetition of truisms transmitted and listened to during sleep: "History is all foolishness."; "There is no civilization without social stability. There is no social stability without individual stability."; "It's better to throw away than repair."; "Never put off 'till tomorrow any pleasure you could have today."1 The New World's inhabitants would go to odorific cinemas and consume soma to alleviate unpleasant psychological or physical feelings. The only passages in the novel in which the author stops to partially describe a geographical place are those dedicated to the "reserve," the place in which "savages" still perform tribal rites and reproduce by coupling, and where old age, pain, and monogamy still exist. It's as though Huxley had foreseen that the places of modern life would be deprived of any specific characteristics that allow us to identify them. The generic and anonymous feelings characterizing a large number of places in the contemporary world have been skilfully analyzed by Marc Augè2. Augè identifies the anthropological place as one that is "simultaneously the beginning of sense for those people who live there and the beginning of intelligibility for one who observes it." These places have at least three characters in common, rendering them identitary, relational, and historical.3 Augè states that on the other hand, "supermodernity manufactures anthropological non-places." Non-places therefore represent the contemporary world: "aerial streets, railways, motorways, and mobile cockpits called 'means of transport' (airplanes, trains, autos), airports, railways, and aerospace stations, big hotel chains, structures for free time, malls, and finally, the complex skein of wired or cordless nets that mobilize extraterrestrial space in the name of a communication so peculiar that the individual is often in contact with only another image of himself."4 It's precisely this sensation of loneliness and estrangement that permeates so much contemporary artistic production. Urban spaces in which the human figure is completely transient. The absence of human figures allows one to simulate a technique which has been applied for years in cinematography: the unification and spatial-temporal transfer of the observer. The spectator is "transported" into the represented space, becoming the only subject. The effect this obtains amplifies the sense of loneliness. Alessandra Tesi's hotel rooms, Luca Pancrazzi's desolate urban landscapes, Thomas Strüth's uninhabited buildings, Luisa Lambri's solitary corridors, Jack Pierson's metropolitan outskirts, just to site a few-these are non-places inhabited by the one who observes them. Familiar, though unknown, these images arouse feelings of estrangement. An estrangement accentuated by the fact that we seem to recognize most of the places portrayed, but at the same time we are not able to connect them to any specific experience: places we seem to have already visited in person, or have seen on television, in the cinema, or on advertising billboards. It's as if our spatial memories are becoming more and more mixed in an atemporal magma that has no definite or reproducible contours. Historically, the notion of place has always had a few precise connotations. The concept of heimlich5 has always been justaposed to unheimlich; the idea of homeland-a familiar and therefore reassuring geographical place-has always been contrasted to that of an unknown place, accordingly hostile. The foreigner has traditionally been placed in the role of the enemy. The challenge facing contemporary society consists in deconstructing and attempting to dismantle the millennial association that foreign = different = hostile.6 These concepts don't mix well with the idea of a global market. Multinational corporations have comprehended for a long time (showing an acuteness and timeliness hugely superior to politicians and intellectuals) that speed and the facility to recognize spaces-wherever we are-as a consequence of their familiarity, is an essential tool in the conquest of markets on a global scale. Glimpsing a big yellow "M"7 while in a foreign country brings joy to our hearts as well as reassures us and makes us feel a little bit more at "home." The idea of European community has been reduced to a debate on the common currency, while intellectual and cultural unity seems to interest no one. The global village increasingly resembles a global market, where global food is eaten and free time is spent watching global entertainment. To achieve this miracle it is essential that cultural and geographical differences are bevelled, smoothed, and eventually removed. It is indispensable that consumers find themselves in pleasant and comforting environments in which they recognize all the signs, objects, sounds, and tastes. This is what the big corporations deal with. Nike, Blockbuster, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Mobil, Walt Disney, and IKEA are disseminating buildings that could be classified as corporate architecture all over the planet: places that have a similar design wherever they are, are easily recognizable by whoever is observing them, and use the same graphic signs, logos, colours, structures, and goods. A McDonald's must as immediately recognizable in Lima as it is in Seoul. "A small, one-story white building with a plastic red roof and the name Pizza Hut. You know what it means! And even if you haven't seen the product, you know what it looks like because there is one just like it down the street from where you live. The building is based on a corporate prototype that is exactly the same everywhere."8 Corporate: the magic word thanks to which we won't feel unheimlich anymore. If we consider the global marketing by a corporation such as Nike9, which bases all its communication on a highly sophisticated mixture of images, graphics, text, and design, to be what artists do today (with rare exceptions), it is comparable to the Camuni's stone engravings in Val Camonica! In order for the messages of artists to have an impact, intensity, and quantity similar to those of Nike, we must believe that it is still possible to change our perception of the world and re-appropriate the transformative and innovative powers of the image. Our melancholic, late-romantic look at the contemporary world must be replaced by the explosive strength of a positve thought which is able to build a new vision of the world and of the other. In the meantime, other entities are at work. It's a shame that their only aim is to empty our wallets. So let's just do it! Alessandra Galasso 1 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932 (Italian translation: Arnoldo Mondadori, Milan, 1933). 2 Marc Augè, Non-lieux, Seuil, Paris, 1992 (Italian translation: Nonluoghi, Elčuthera, Milan, 1993). 3 Augè, ibid. pp. 51-52. 4 Augè, ibid. p. 74. 5 A German term meaning 'familiar' and that includes the word Heim ('homeland' or 'home'). 6 With regard to this point see Julie Kristeva, Strangers to ourselves, Columbia University Press, New York, 1989. 7 The McDonald's logo. 8 Andreas Angelidakis, "International Style," in Purple Prose, n.12, Summer 97, p.112. 9 An American multi-national that produces shoes and sporting goods.