An excerpt from The History of Future Cities courtesy of Strelka Press. You can read a review of this book. here.
On the first floor of the huge State Hermitage, away from the crowds of tourists stretching their necks to look at Raphael or Rembrandt, there are enfilades of rooms designed by a German architect in the middle of the 19th century. The combination of royal luxury and neoclassicism makes them look like a Greek temple, the construction of which was allocated an unlimited budget. Each room is a symmetrical space bounded by columns, arches and pilasters of polished marble, one dark gray, the other bright red, the third playful pink. In these pseudo-Greek halls, there are pseudo-Greek statues: Roman copies of Greek originals.
The inscriptions next to the sculptures proudly tell of their dubious origins: “Apollo, marble, 1st century AD. e. Roman copy of a Greek original, 4th century BC”; Eros, marble, 2nd century AD e. Roman copy of a Greek original from the first half of the 4th century BCE. e. "; Athena, marble, 2nd century AD e. Roman copy of a Greek original from the late 5th century BCE. e. ". In these neoclassical halls of the Hermitage, as in the neoclassic city around it, Russians, through mimicry, claim the heritage of the entire Western civilization, desperately trying to inscribe themselves in the history of the West. However, in these very sculptures we see the Romans, who seemed to be at the origins of European civilization, who are doing the same thing. By copying the masterpieces of Ancient Greece, they sought to present themselves as the successors of the Hellenes.
The fact that the Romans copied the Greeks does not mean that their civilization was fake. The Romans contributed to the Western tradition, far surpassing the Greeks in areas such as engineering and transportation. The fact that the Romans were copying does not mean that history is all about copying. It is clear, however, that copying is an integral part of history.
Even if the Romans had to work separately to become part of the West, what does the famous East-West dichotomy mean then? If the West or the East is a choice, not an immutable fact, then why attach such importance to these categories? And although the people's attribution of themselves to the East or West is perceived as an unshakable tradition, in fact, this is a deliberate decision, which only over time becomes an inherited characteristic of the national subconscious. Many of today's Egyptians and Syrians are descendants of Roman citizens, but at the same time reject belonging to the West and even consider themselves to be its opponents.
Meanwhile, the Germans, who trace their ancestry back to the barbarians who destroyed Rome, see themselves as the heirs of Western civilization. Berlin, with its neoclassical parliament and museums, is not very different from St. Petersburg in belated attribution of its inhabitants to the Western tradition. In Berlin, the artificiality of this maneuver is less felt precisely because it worked. While opinion polls show that only 12% of Russians “always feel like Europeans,” no sociologist would have thought to conduct such a study in Germany. The fact that Germans are Europeans seems to be obvious to everyone.
The opposition between Europe and Asia is mental, not geographic. It began with the ancient Greeks, who used it to mark the differences between themselves, civilized Europeans, and the Asiatic barbarians east of the Aegean Sea. Medieval scholars believed that there should be some kind of narrow isthmus between Europe and Asia, but nothing of the kind was found, and modern geographers chose the Ural Mountains as the dividing line.
True, this is a so-so border: they are no higher than the Appalachians in North America and they were easily crossed long before the advent of trains, cars and airplanes. At the end of the 16th century, Ukrainian Cossacks invaded Siberia, dragging their river vessels across the Urals.
Although the physical border is rather ephemeral, the psychological barrier between East and West has had the most serious consequences. Looking back, we cannot understand world history without this dichotomy, no matter what we think about it today. It is as if an atheist, studying the history of medieval Europe, completely ignored Christianity simply because he does not believe in God. However, if we want to build a better future for this world, we must overcome the notions of East and West that have separated us for many centuries. The principles of this division are arbitrary and were formulated in a world dominated by Europe - that is, in a world that no longer exists.
The project of the Gazprom tower in St. Petersburg was inspired not by Amsterdam, but by Dubai, where its author began his architectural career. In America's thriving Chinatowns, high-rise buildings, where offices are located above a karaoke club, a club above a restaurant, and a restaurant above a mall, bring the distinctive Chinese urbanism of the 21st century to American soil, just as Americans exported their architecture to Shanghai 150 years earlier. No one denies that skyscrapers are originally an American invention, but, as in the case of Art Deco, which emerged in Paris during the era of the previous peak of globalization, in a permeable world, styles easily leave their native places. In the coming century, the emerging trends in Asia will no doubt be exported to the West, and perhaps even imposed on it. There remains, however, the hope that as Asia rises, the opposition of East and West (“we think completely differently” and all that) will weaken, and we will move from rivalry and mutual claims to friendship and mutual understanding. But only those who are free in spirit can pave the way to freedom.
At first glance, the city of Shenzhen, spawned by China's booming economic growth, is not very promising. The freshly baked metropolis, where more than 14 million people live, has deliberately adopted all the most imitative from the colonial Shanghai of the 19th century. Among the high-rise dominants of Shenzhen - an exact copy of the Eiffel Tower on a scale of 1: 3, and there is even less new in it than in the chimes on the Bund, echoing the ringing of London's Big Ben. In a giant mural in a city park, Deng Xiaoping, who lived in France in his youth and founded this experimental city in his old age, admires the city panorama crowned with a fake Parisian tower, not without the help of photomontage. On the panel, kind grandfather Dan somehow manages to keep a serious face; Western tourists, contemplating it, as a rule, cannot cope with this.
A copy of the Eiffel Tower is the main attraction of the Shenzhen Window to the World Amusement Park, which attracts visitors with models of the world's architectural masterpieces. "All the world's attractions in one day!" - promises a poster at the ticket office. The park has become the perfect embodiment of modern Chinese kitsch. Visitors who are bored with architectural masterpieces can climb into a huge bubble of transparent plastic, similar to a walking ball for hamsters, and ride in it on an artificial lake.
But even in this park you can find food for thought. A copy of the Eiffel Tower is its most famous exhibit, but the wonders of Asia, including Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal, are given no less honorable place here than the sights of the West. In the section dedicated to the American capital, there is a plaque in front of a 1:15 scale model of the Lincoln Memorial “Completed 1922. The structure of white marble resembles the Greek Parthenon restrainedly reminds that the Americans, like the Romans and Germans before, had to work hard to fit themselves into the Western tradition. It is worth putting all the architectural masterpieces of the world on one shelf, as the differences between peoples become meaningless, and people experience a surge of pride in humanity as a whole.
Syrian-born professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nasser Rabbat said: “All architecture is the heritage of all mankind, although some of its works are more the heritage of one people than all others. It's all a matter of degree. But what does not exist in the world is the architecture of exclusivity, which declares to someone that he is completely alien to her. " Park "Window to the World" turns out to be an ode to miracles that have been created by all of us - not Chinese or Americans, not Asians or Europeans, but the entire human race. We are building our world - and our future. Russia in "Window to the World" is represented by a model of the Hermitage on a scale of 1:15, but a copy of one of the main masterpieces of the museum, a sculptural portrait of Voltaire by Houdon, stands separately in a sculpture garden located far from the crowds in the depths of the park. In the very center of the city of skyscrapers built at lightning speed by the will of Deng Xiaoping, an elderly philosopher sits, wrapped in a robe, and his old face is illuminated by an almost imperceptible grin. The sign, in slightly broken English, says: “By Antoine Goodon. Imitator: Yes Lusheng. Voltaire was the spiritual leader of the French Enlightenment. The statue reflects the humorous and harsh personality traits of this wise philosopher, who had to endure many difficulties. " Voltaire, a dissenter who has endured many hardships, silently gazes at the "democratic dictatorship of the people", where he has been brought. Judging by the grin skillfully captured by Houdon and skillfully copied by Da Lucheng, he would have appreciated the irony of his position.
As you know, after the French Revolution, Catherine the Great exiled Houdon Voltaire to the attic. But she did not succeed in completely expelling his spirit. Even in the midst of Stalin's repressions, the little marble man sitting in the Hermitage did not lose the sparkle in his eyes, and the crooked grin did not leave his lips. This ghost roams St. Petersburg to this day. And the fact that a copy of it now exists in Shenzhen means that, although this book is coming to an end, its plot is far from final.
