ABCD Lars & Roemer

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Roemer van Toorn in conversation with Lars Lerup  chameleons capable of turning any color. My personal loss has been considerable, leaving me with an ever-returning melancholy for a lost paradise. First, I found an American Utopia That Never Fails to Disappoint the European in Me, and simultaneously Sweden faded in favor of that Utopia’s constant volatility. So I became a navigator in search of a harbor. And at all my landfalls, I have found unusual acts of both cruelty and kindness in all populations regardless of their status. When I look out my office window here at Rice University, I know that most of the Mexican-Americans that cleaned up the campus after Hurricane Ike have no power at home, no ice and no water, and no schools open for their children. As in New Orleans, FEMA is doing a spotty job. Hovering over their heads is also a set of anti-immigrant policies recently evolved in a country that would not exist without immigrants. Clearly absurd. During a recent visit in Sweden, I saw rows of idle Iraqi immigrants twirling their worry-beads, amply supported by the Swedish welfare system and worrying about the demise of their own country. Clearly absurd. Here is where I resort to pensiere debole, or weak thought, suggesting that human existence – immigrant or otherwise – is a cold that we can never overcome but must learn to cope with until it kills us. The notion that either of the Left/Right political duality has some dormant potential to solve our deeply imbedded weakness is, of course, absurd. Consumerism will heal all wounds, at least momentarily, while catastrophes like Ike will awaken us – at least momentarily. M as in Myth   16 
Roemer van Toorn in conversation with Lars Lerup  I think there exists an unbridgeable distance between arguments, which appeal to our capacity to become enthusiastic, and our feeling for concrete, practical aims. A growing mytho-aesthetic dimension has made our Western culture inoffensive to an extent we have never seen before. Of course, says Franco Moretti, “inoffensive does not mean useless. But here it is a usefulness with a different function from that usually attributed to culture.” The usefulness of architecture produced by the cultural industry includes the theories (discourses) of academia, the many exhibitions, the endless mappings of reality as found, the never ending talks about everything and nothing avoiding judgement , and the publications and symposia on architecture and the city, etc. In our civilization, we do not use culture to orient ourselves – for good or for evil –but instead we live in order to consume culture. And I agree with Moretti, who says that “this consumption is no longer useful to assure a ‘consensus’ centering on the values capable of directing the individual’s behavior in those fields which we consider fundamental – political life and, especially, work – but rather to empty those fields of all symbolic value: to reduce them to mere means lacking all intrinsic value. The frantic vogue-driven curiosity which dominates within the system of mass culture is symmetrical and complementary to the bored and slightly obtuse indifference nourished with regard to work and politics.” 2 We seem to enjoy the fruits of late capitalism as a sort of miracle without asking too many questions. The gap between culture and politics has become grotesque. The Right acts big, while the Left has lost its hopes and aspirations to give significance to the world. Do you agree with me that this “talking shop” culture is a rather disquieting state of affairs? Aren’t we in need of alternative forms of social, political, and ethical engagement: experiments and experiences that are useful and even offensive in character? Shouldn’t we develop another “Mythical Method” that can be useful for the world? Perhaps you can speak of examples/ideas/methods that work toward this direction today (a fruitful mix between myth and reality; if I remember well, the last chapters in your new book are about this too).                                                          2 Franco Moretti, “From the Waste Land to the Artificial Paradise,” in Signs Taken for  Wonders (London: Verson, 1983).    17 
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ABCD Lars & Roemer

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