A Landscape of Events

by Paul Virilio, Julie Rose (Translator), Bernard Tschumi (Introduction)

Introduction by Bernard Tschumi. In A Landscape of Events , the celebrated French architect, urban planner, and philosopher Paul Virilio focuses on the cultural chaos of the 1980s and 1990s. It was a time, he writes, that reflected the "cruelty of an epoch, the hills and dales of daily life, the usual clumps of habits and commonplaces."Urban disorientation, the machines of war, and the acceleration of events in contemporary life are Virilio's ongoing concerns. He explores them in events ranging from media coverage of the Gulf War to urban rioting and lawlessness. Some will see Virilio as a pessimist discouraged by "the acceleration of the reality of time," while others will find his recording of "atypical events" to be clairvoyant.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Architecture, History, Art, Politics, Essays

1 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military.

Reviews

[Realrich Sjarief · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Walter Benjamin once wrote, "A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet." [1]
Today this theological vision no longer belongs to the angel of history. It has become the vision of each and every one of us" Tschumi argued in his foreword of Paul Virilio's book titled Landscape of Events. The idea of this book shows a chain of events which resembles our culture, the fear of the future has been outstripped by fear of the past. He even accentuated, the recession of the history entails the retreat of knowledge, the retirement of progress. everything vanishes, Ethical and political ideals, the durability of societies. The book consists of ideas which are accidents, sadness, harsh truth, showing facts that shape our history.

There is a way of survive from Bernard Tschumi's clairvoyant of Virilio's A Landscape of Events, by looking at our spiritual self, cultivating whats good in our body and mind mastery, to spread our skill of shaping greater built environment. I believe architecture is powerful enough to change the events to the future its natural state of humanity which every people deserve to living peacefully.

Bibliography
[1] Virilio, Paul, and Julie Rose. A Landscape Of Events. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. Print.pp xii

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book changed my life...

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A guy writing about the late 80’s in the late 90’s in a style and subject matter common to the late 2010’s