It is quite hard to like chandeliers... They are pretentious, bourgeois, pathetic. They claim "imperial" attributes at a time of democratic levelings.
A chandelier emits light for a group of people, in a room whose functions cannot be but public, social. But how public and how truly "social" is High Capitalism, with its relentless glorification of competition and exacerbated individualism...?!?
A chandelier for a single person is a very sad event.
A chandelier above Kafka's head is a painful anomaly.
Its centralizing geometry, constitution, placement in the center of a ceiling, hanging from there with narcissistic "splendor," could easily make one sick, in today's world.
Are we really in a "crisis," economic and otherwise...?
And if so, how would a chandelier justify itself, today...?
We do not have emperors any longer and even the petit bourgeois is struggling... maybe a single bare bulb hanging from the ceilings of our rooms would do just fine, in today's world... Indeed, if Wolf Prix was right that "the world is more fucked up every day," as he claimed in his lecture at Columbia University some years ago, how would a chandelier fit into such a world...?!?
Isn't it kind of "schizo" to perceive the world as being "fucked up" and at the same time to "gloriously" hang from the center of our ceilings "splendid" chandeliers...?!? Could, in all honesty, a source of artificial light express adequately our present pessimism...?!? And if so, how would a pessimistic chandelier look like...?!?
So here it is a putrefied chandelier.... a chandelier that doesn't quite believe in its raison d'etre. An anti-chandelier, in fact...
A chandelier in the process of decomposition, hanging precariously from the ceiling, barely breathing, so to speak... Dead leaves and bats come to mind, with their ominous connotations... a death contemplating chandelier, so to speak... A chandelier for Thanatos.
Wouldn't this be a more honest representation of a function that is with very great difficulties tenable today...?!?
Wouldn't a putrefied chandelier better express our time, caught as it is between a desire to go on and a chronic inability to continue to do so...?!?
A Putrefied Chandelier
ReplyDeleteIt is quite hard to like chandeliers... They are pretentious, bourgeois, pathetic. They claim "imperial" attributes at a time of democratic levelings.
A chandelier emits light for a group of people, in a room whose functions cannot be but public, social. But how public and how truly "social" is High Capitalism, with its relentless glorification of competition and exacerbated individualism...?!?
A chandelier for a single person is a very sad event.
A chandelier above Kafka's head is a painful anomaly.
Its centralizing geometry, constitution, placement in the center of a ceiling, hanging from there with narcissistic "splendor," could easily make one sick, in today's world.
Are we really in a "crisis," economic and otherwise...?
And if so, how would a chandelier justify itself, today...?
We do not have emperors any longer and even the petit bourgeois is struggling... maybe a single bare bulb hanging from the ceilings of our rooms would do just fine, in today's world... Indeed, if Wolf Prix was right that "the world is more fucked up every day," as he claimed in his lecture at Columbia University some years ago, how would a chandelier fit into such a world...?!?
Isn't it kind of "schizo" to perceive the world as being "fucked up" and at the same time to "gloriously" hang from the center of our ceilings "splendid" chandeliers...?!? Could, in all honesty, a source of artificial light express adequately our present pessimism...?!? And if so, how would a pessimistic chandelier look like...?!?
So here it is a putrefied chandelier.... a chandelier that doesn't quite believe in its raison d'etre. An anti-chandelier, in fact...
A chandelier in the process of decomposition, hanging precariously from the ceiling, barely breathing, so to speak... Dead leaves and bats come to mind, with their ominous connotations... a death contemplating chandelier, so to speak... A chandelier for Thanatos.
Wouldn't this be a more honest representation of a function that is with very great difficulties tenable today...?!?
Wouldn't a putrefied chandelier better express our time, caught as it is between a desire to go on and a chronic inability to continue to do so...?!?
- Ion