Rem Koolhaas at the South Bank Center

Here is the South Bank Center program:

"From personal memories to political milestones, this March the South Bank Centre presents ‘Stop the Clock: Writers and the Perception of Time’, a month-long series which brings an international cast of ten major thinkers to the London stage. In a wide-ranging programme encompassing writing on place, architecture, mythology and folklore as well as historical narrative and personal memoir, this seminal series will interrogate how we read the present through our collective past.

Tuesday 7th March, 7.45pm
REM KOOLHAAS + CEES NOOTEBOOM

The opening event in the Stop the Clock series presents two Dutch thinkers of truly global reach and renown. Named as one of Prospect magazine’s top 100 global public intellectuals, Rem Koolhaas is a radical and innovative architect whose buildings include the Seattle Public Library, the Casa da Música in Oporto and the forthcoming CCTV HQ in Beijing. A former journalist and screenwriter, Koolhaas’ books include Delirious New York and S, M, L, XL, which explores the relations between contemporary society, buildings and urban development. In 2004 Koolhaas received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and he has recently been commissioned to design the 2006 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London.

Joining Koolhaas will be one of the Netherlands’ best-known writers, Cees Nooteboom. Born in The Hague in 1933, Nooteboom is a poet and the author of prize-winning fiction and travel books, including Roads to Santiago and The Following Story, which won the 1993 Aristeion European Literature Prize. His boundless appetite for discovering the world is expressed in his new book Nomad’s Hotel, a distillation of a lifetime’s travel writing. The event will be chaired by author and cultural historian Patrick Wright."

Ok, so we went there. we paid. we were late, but still, we were sold a ticket. went to the entrance door, but could not get in before Koolhaas (word analogies are easy to make here...) would have finished his reading (so he wanted). went in for Nooteboom reading of his romantico-poetico- memory-i -am -60 -years -old- and- love- to -quote -Keats- and -Goethe, about Venice, Los Angeles, Berlin. then super moderator did not manage to get any dynamic out of a possible discussion, and would not invite those two 'writers' (cause koolhaas did not want fans in the place to ask him about architecture...) to talk about anything sensible. we had the souvenirs of grand pa totally rearview mirror oriented (well.. his only vision of the future was about the chinese touristic invasion of europe being turned into a gigantic museum) VS the agressive touch of mister double identity star architect floatting over the 21st century- cause apparently he shifted from being a non loved reporter to a quasi hated cultural pessimist (really?).

one was talking about form (aesthetic), the other about function. one was drawing on places, the other on spaces. the key elements of the idea of the city were there. but it just turned out to be a discussion about one and the other's own feelings, experiences and memories. nothing constructive. nothing intuitive.

then they kind of tried to understand how people could live today in so called atomized cities taking - oh god!- the example of china and the 'chinese people' ('those people') to illustrate the fact that if as Nooteboom was saying, some brand new cities like in china have no soul, no centre, no possible way of having a community life, 'those people' have a strong tradition of nuclear/ family life which makes them waterproof from the rains of atomization, wherever they live. Nooteboom, as if it was not enough, added something like: yes.. and it is true that those people really live on their own.. see, at every cornerin london there is a chinese restaurant.. and they don t need us to live... YEAH. as alain peyrefitte wrote in the 60s, when china wakes up, the world will shake.

i guess there were trying to discuss the idea of community or more precisely, the making of society through/in/ with the city, or more precisely again the very idea of citizenship in its first sense- CITY. and again, this is something which would have been interested to be discussed: how post national citizenship (again in the sense of the city-ship) is being experienced in an environment of possible multiple loyalties? isn't the city the ultimate place/space where democracy could be envisaged? a king of discursive model of society? huh?!