We call it “destructoporn” (since 2007, according to Urban Dictionary) and it comes, unbidden, via digital media. Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram. [...]
The dailiness, even hourliness, of social media makes it a perfect vehicle for documenting each thump of the wrecking ball, each crunch of the backhoe. Its visual slant is ideal for activism wrapped up in pictures.
— newyorker.com
18 Comments
This is bonkers. How is this article titled "Saving Buildings with Social Media" with a picture of the Folk Art Museum... huh? What buildings has Twitter saved to this point? The only lesson we have learned thus far is that Social Media has a very clear limit.
Too bad the "critics" are too busy looking down at their phones to try to exact any kind of real change. "...something more beautiful will have to go. I hope that social media will be there to document that painful moment." Super bizarre how critics are now sitting at their chairs waiting gleefully for the destruction of buildings instead of figuring out a way to save them. It's frightening that architecture critics talk more about social media than architecture at this point. But I guess that is what sells.
Alexandra Lange is not a cynical critic. Its an interesting article that identifies a major change in they way that the architecture community organizes itself and tries to drum up interest in a particular cause. It failed for the Folk Museum but I think that has a lot to do with the specifics of the folk museum.
Darkman, I don't know why I'm bothering to give you a response, but Amelia's title specifically includes "(or not)" which is clearly addressing the huge #folkmoma movement that didn't succeed. Looking for a social media campaign that did succeed? The Mapa movement started on Archinect, by Archinectors:
http://archinect.com/news/tag/384688/mapa
http://archinect.com/features/article/54565/virtual-activism
http://archinect.com/features/article/57732/grosse-pointe-central-library-efforts-toward-conservation
Now, I'll let you get back to your avid negativity.
Obviously, I'm referring to the New Yorker article .... not your editorial choice (or not).
Avid negativity? Try being a little more critical... I find many of the points to be disingenuous, especially the idea that she only saw or knew about the destruction of the Folk Art Museum from Jerry Saltz Instagram. Really. Really?
Maybe the Folk Art Museum would have been saved it weren't for the numbing effects of Twitter. I never saw anyone protesting outside, they were all hashtagging. If social media can save buildings, it has to be redesigned to do that. As of now, it is designed only for networking and self-promotion which Lange seems to be most interested in.
Darken, shut up, or learn some essential reading comprehension.
"Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram."
Did the NYT show any photos of the FAM building being torn down? No. Was Jerry Saltz a vocal critic of the building being destroyed? Yes. Alexandra's noting that social media hasn't had a lot of success, but that it can, it's a call to use social media, much in the same way social media has been effectively used in countries to fostering regime change. Unless of course that was all about hanging out, and getting shot and tear gassed.
This, from the NYT, on Bill Cosby:
“Social media is many things, among them it gives people a belief of what people are talking about,” he said, “which is something larger than what they see on television or read in the papers.”
This, this is what Alexandra seems to be longing for.
I think part of the problem which allowed many of the recent demo's to proceed is that only a fairly narrow group actually had affection for these buildings - with maybe the exception of the Folk Art Museum. Unlike Penn Station, few of them were the kind of public spaces people used in their everyday life or had special memories as a place to experience. Social media can help broadcast a message, but only to a receptive audience.
Where social media could play into this would be to get a gauge of what buildings are broadly appreciated - ie, what buildings get tagged in lots of photos by ordinary people. It might help architects frame the debate to see what people say about some of the buildings which get critical attention but not necessarily public appreciation - and vice versa.
Actually Jerry Saltz has had a complex and interesting reaction to this process. He has always hated the FAM building as an example of flawed architecture unsuitable for viewing art. Essentially his position is that MOMA is tearing down a terrible building to build a worse one - he feels they are replacing one iconic gimmick with another - and leaving MOMA without sufficient gallery space. He isn't protesting the demolition so much as the process and the future plans by DSR. Any architect interested in how the art world views museum architecture should read his writings.
Several years before MOMA was at all involved in this he wrote a strong critique which concluded: "AFAM should just sell its building to MoMA. MoMA could then either tear it down and build something new, or transform it into offices."
Saltz by no means represents the whole of the arts community, but he is an influential and respected critic. The fact that he (and some others) found little value in the FAM building as an art space is a reflection of what condemned it. When buildings don't work for the owners or the target audience, it's hard for architects to persuade for preservation.
Oops. My bad. Thanks for the correction.
Sorry D-man.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/business/media/uber-emil-michael-sarah-lacy.html
"Mr. Carr agreed. “When I saw these puff pieces from other so-called journalists, I thought to myself, Why won’t they do basic journalism?”
I'm gonna wait and see what Jerry Saltz and the fellow bourgeois is doing.... Since that is all that matters! A true radical who...oh yeah gave MoMA the idea to buy and raze the folk art. Or I could actually go outside and do real journalism...
The media has a serious case of Twitter-itus.
Call me crazy but I'm with the artists of the world who aren't quite with this devaluing of art via the short attention and moneyed interests of social media--until it is redesigned. Uber, spotify and Twitter all want the same thing--dominance of your time. What happens to artists, buildings, drivers and people is not their concern.
Even archinect is social media, but it's all in the design--wrapped around stories, though even it is too rapid fire to keep up with.
Either way, Lange is always good to read when you want to know exactly what the p.c. conventional wisdom is after everyone else has spoken--like the Tom Friedman of design.
^BTW I don't think what I posted in any way contradicts Beta's point. There is a role for social media in reflecting on the value of architectural works to the public. Saltz's criticism was just an interesting angle that goes towards explaining why the FAM didn't get full support from the arts community.
If we are really with the democratization of social media than it shouldn't be private companies
"Lange is always good to read when you want to know exactly what the p.c. conventional wisdom is after everyone else has spoken--like the Tom Friedman of design."
I don't disagree with this statement entirely. Her criticism seems to come from a decorative arts/crafts/interiors/consumer perspective which tends to be less critical and less about larger societal concerns. Historic preservation is where the relatively apolitical, middle class, south brooklyn bubble connects with broader societal concerns. I think she is definitely on to something by examining online Archi-culture, and I hope other critics will follow her lead.
I don't have a problem with crafts and decorative arts, and I would like to see an architectural answer to social media, but instead I see the devaluing of buildings in favor of a design that only fits on your iPhone. Kind of a patronizing view of the world--a recent architecture show that proposes fish nets and wifi as a solution to inequality in Africa. Ok. I think everyone wants to live in better designed buildings....not these ad hoc "tactical urbanisms" that make the twitterati and design types feel so clever.
This is a view not uncommon among design and advertising types. The postmodern view that the label or image on social media matters more than the reality. So we get a lot of debates about labels instead of architecture--like connecting crafts with feminism or 3D printing or whatever.
Of course there isn't much left to do after the modernists invented and built everything. But it certainly makes you feel so righteous when you can "protest" from the comfort of your chair instead of that tough work of going out there, or designing and building. Why even be a designer when I can tweet all day instead?
"Armchair activism" 101
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