OUGD501: History Lecture - 29/04/17

The Worlds Fair


Where big business funded predictions of the future. They were basically suggesting you consume your way to utopia, commercialism and mans evolution where products, etch and gadgets are at the heart, suggesting its our purpose to consume.

(Dystopianism in current attitudes)

Globalized capitalism is the end of the world (Francis Fukyanna) briefly, Fukyanna outlines the fact the communist ideal is dead, it is replaced with what the world has become.

'The Revolutionary Calendar', literally tore up time to create a new time. The months were renamed with romantic names echoing the soul of the season.


Walter Benjamin (1948) Thesis on the philosophy of history XV is a way of interpreting history to not be oppressed in the future. Benjamin says we need to develop a mental resistance and not forget the past. We need to recognise the flaws in humanity and learn to resolve them/not make them again (Trump/Nazis). We cannot be sold a lie and as a society we need to have a social consciousness and morality when participating in consumerism. 

Revolutionary time Jetztzeit, collapse time to the here and now to inform and animate the future. Homogenised liquid modernity (time of the status quo, smooth progress, time conscious for consumerism).

Georges Santayana

Georges Santayana was a philosopher, essay writer, poet and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated at Harvard yet remained European in soul. He is saying we need to understand what we did in the past to inflict change in the future, especially prominent in todays society when political figures such as Donald trump are threatening a Islamic Identification band, shadowing elements of design enforced by The Nazi's. Furthermore, Santayana defined beauty as "pleasure objectified"

History itself is political in what it leaves out of the stories and accounts through history, especially when regarding blacks/ women/ gays. The exclusion is political - Regan conspiracy in The 13 Documentary (2016), where he explicitly targeted young black men living in poverty to be thrown into the prison system, fundamentally privatising this aspect of US Government for huge profits to be gained. By creating the 'war on drugs' campaign criminalising people for tiny amounts of drugs, yet only stopping and actively, aggressively searching black men. This media frenzy was predominantly fuelled by the newspapers, yet cinema and other forms of visual pleasure were exclusive of certain groups. 

Map of Art History produced for the MoMA, hosting an American Abstract night. All art figures and movements mentioned are all creations of white history, showing only one or two figures which made it big in each 'catergory'. In addition, the curation of this by the MoMA for a purpose naturally lead the map designer to add an inference that art history is flowing in that general direction, corresponding to the point of the brief..