A Nova Babilónia ou a rua como um happening non‑stop de comprido

Abstract

This article discusses New Babylon, the meta-city developed over a period of almost twenty years (1953-56/1974) by Constant Nieuwenhuys (1929-2005), arguing that it should be read as a kind of agit-monument, a public and anti-establishment manifestation of anti-art opposed to the routine undervaluing of “knowing oneself" and the fact that modern life demands increasingly less of people in terms of philosophy, critical awareness and political action as a means of changing social conditions. New Babylon, the Situationist supercity, is understood here as a society without spectacle yet essentially community-based, and as the historical arena in which the contrast between the existing and the possible is overcome, and where “the reunion of forces separated by the development of the market economy" takes place. What are these separated forces? The idea of community, the critical sense of living and being in the world and the subject split between political and economic spheres. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]