I posted this article on another blog on the 20.10.10 it relates to an earlier blog I had published on the 15.10.10. Thought it would be useful to include it on this site

In retrospect it should be stated that Alain Badiou’s article is an incredibly interesting and thought provoking piece. It considers as previously stated a very specific moment in history, printed in Le Monde, in a week when the then French premier warned that the world was ‘on the edge of the abyss’, the week that an emergency summit of EU leaders in Paris was called to establish collective ways of restoring confidence in a failing, and flailing, financial market. Badiou takes no prisoners with his attitude. It is an article which is possibly short of a closing scene where a flag flies behind the ‘saviours’ of the free world - or maybe one which should be accompanied by a series of Gerald Scarf illustrations . It is nevertheless a challenging article and one which I suspect may be interpreted in a variety of ways; mine is an opinion at this moment in time.

It is possible that it is not an article about a financial crisis at all - the crisis is merely a useful back drop which may be used as a platform to discuss the apathy of modern day life. Badiou writes of the ’rich, their servants, their parasites, those who envy them and those who acclaim them’ but not of the protestors; of the spectators not the fighters. Yes, Badiou does write about the main characters who are involved with the banking crisis but not as worthy protagonists - more like puppets, controlled. There seems to be a covert point to the article about the need for the public to become involved, active with life. The cinema metaphor one could view as an encouragement to leave the auditorium, as watching a film does not require societal participation.

Admittedly whilst reading this article I could not determine whether Badiou was in the audience with us or whether he was observing us from the projector room. As mentioned this article originally appeared in Le Monde, a French newspaper, ‘who serve[s] these governments’. It may be for this reason that the article is never explicit, suggestive and provoking yes but never overtly proactive journalism. Neither does Badiou alienate his audience by suggesting that it is life that needs bailing out, but I think that maybe he implies it.

Jonathon Meades’ article is still, as before, an interview with Zaha Hadid. Like Badiou’s piece it is an article displaying clever journalism and one which may be interpreted in a variety of ways. It was published in ‘Intelligent Life’, a quarterly magazine from ‘The Economist’, and not in an architectural journal. This is possibly critical as it gives Meades a ‘fair’ platform on which to disseminate a character. I suspect no English architectural journal would have published this article. It is also written by an individual who is not an architect and so not blinkered by mystique, but maybe this fact also causes a callousness on the part of the interviewer. In many ways it made me think of a game of chess or, strangely, a pack of lions by a watering hole occasionally yawning and bearing their teeth, leaving the observer to wonder when, or if, they may pounce. Is it an article about superiority, an outsider trying to penetrate a ‘smugly hermetic world’. The hermit, hermetic. Regrettably it is an article which does little to open up architecture for the masses. Hadid’s comment that she is actually an artist seems appropriate when many people today claim to have difficulty responding to art. Therefore does this article also carry a covert message that ‘normal’ people are unable to respond to architecture as it has been removed from the public consciousness by individuals who refuse to speak frankly about their work? An art form with too much of an aura surrounding it, where even those at the centre seem vague about the discipline.