The Concrete Dystopia pictured by novels of JG Ballard, a reality increasingly questioned by the western world in the 1970s- the realization of where we have come and what we have created for ourselves out of the modern movement, came to an end with economic woes and unemployment rising, became ruined by gangs of vandals and finally abandonment. The Post-Modern movement sought to demolish this world, and reinvigorate it with glitz and color and excess- to take apart the social contract and deregulate and let go and live a free-wheeling lifestyle of endless partying and to sprawl our cheap gingerbread house nightmare outward in all directions and live a life of materialistic consumerism. Once that movement finally ran aground, we've been left nowhere but sitting with the empty world of parkinglots and traffic jams and again- unemployment. The youth gangs have retreated indoors to play games on the internet. What was the difference between the modernist world and the post-modern one? The first was a vision of progress, of equality, of social responsibility, of full employment and of hope. We believed in science and provided healthcare, we distributed vaccines and eradicated leprosy and smallpox. We built upward.
The second was based in mockery, of cynicism, of carelessness, of greed and complacency. People lead directionless lives and feel bored and empty, and drive around in idiotic looking cars that are too big- from parking lot to parking lot to purchase plastic-wrapped merchandize imported from China out of huge warehouses festooned with giant cartoonish signs. The material world proved to be a useless one- so what happens if we go back to the modernist one? Can we reimagine the modernist utopia rising full of hope embracing the sunset? Can we take down the cartoon signs and tear down the horrid strip malls and bulldoze the parking lots and plant grass again? And build towers that reach to the sky?