Accelerating modernity: Time-space compression in the wake of the aeroplane

Journal of Transport History

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 98-117

  Simonsen, Dorthe Gert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

Author keywords

Aviation; Futurism; Le corbusier; Speed; Time space compression

Indexed keywords

AIRCRAFT; SOCIAL IMPACT; SOCIAL THEORY; TRANSPORTATION HISTORY;

EID: 33749489062     PISSN: 00225266     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.7227/TJTH.26.2.6     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 110, 9.
2. The terms 'timing' and 'spacing' were developed at the conference 'Timing and Spacing: Rethinking Globalization and Standardization', Palermo, 1-3 November 2001, arranged by Bruno Latour and colleagues.
3. Of speed as a virtue in American society see Christian Gelzer, 'The Quest for Speed: an American Virtue, 1825-1930', Ph.D. dissertation, Auburn University (Auburn AL, 1998), UMI Microform No. 9920204, 1999.
4. F. T. Marinetti, 'Destruction of Syntax - Imagination without Strings - Words-in-freedom' (1913), in Futurist Manifestoes, ed. Umbro Apollonio (Boston MA, 2001), p. 96.
5. Marinetti, 'Destruction of syntax', p. 96.
6. Marinetti, 'Destruction of syntax', Ibid., pp. 96-7.
7. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge MA, 1983).
8. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: the Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley CA, 1986), p. 34. Schivelbusch quotes the journal Quarterly Review.
9. Joseph Corn, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950 (New York, 1983), offers an account of the enormous enthusiasm surrounding the advent of the aeroplane in the United States.
10. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, chapter 4.
11. Regarding the development of the Olympian gaze in relation to skyscrapers see David Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge MA, 1999), chapter 5.
12. Le Corbusier, Aircraft (London, 1935; Paris, 1987), caption of picture No. 96.
13. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, 1990), p. 240.
14. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change Ibid.,p. 240.
15. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change Ibid., p. 306.
16. Paul Virilio, La Vitesse de libération (1995),
17. trans. J. Rose, Open Sky (London, 1997), p. 19.
18. F. T. Marinetti, 'Against past-loving Venice' (1910), in Marinetti: Selected Writings, ed. R. W. Flint (New York, 1972), pp. 55, 56.
19. F. T. Marinetti, 'Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' (1909), in Marinetti: Selected Writings.
20. Futurism's legacy has been dominated by Walter Benjamin's interpretation, which points to Futurism as a substantially Fascist manifestation. According to Benjamin in his 1936 essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), the logical result of Fascism is to render politics aesthetic - a process culminating in war. Benjamin quotes a manifesto by Marinetti, which glorifies the Ethiopian colonial war, and commends the manifesto as an exemplary clear account of Fascist motives and reasoning (pp. 48 ff.). Though the Futurism of this article was largely created in 1909-15 and hence before the Fascist Party was established in 1918, Marinetti's later alliance with Fascism is one reason why the early movement's significant scenario for the twentieth century's cultural modernism has been blocked from the collective historical memory. 'The relationship between Futurism and Fascism has caused embarrassment to generations of historians,' Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla note. 'The result has been a refusal to examine the context and complexities of a time when, in culture as in politics, the boundaries between good and bad, left and right, progressive and reactionary, revolutionary and repressive, were not so clearly perceptible. Shielded by the comfortable knowledge that Futurism shared at least three characteristics with fascism [glorification of the machine, use of violence against opponents, and infatuation with youth] generations of writers . . . have left it at that." (Futurism, London, 2000, p. 200.) Marinetti left the Fascist Party a year after its establishment but never attempted a break with Mussolini, who appointed him to the Royal Academy of Art after the First World War. Early Futurism should not be looked at in isolation from the movement's Fascist development, nor should one understate the Futurists' extremist ideas on violence, destruction and war. But their early ideas on speed, time and space deserve attention which does not simply reduce them to a 'Fascist aestheticising of politics'.
21. Kurt Möser, 'The dark side of "automobilism", 1900-30: violence, war and the motor car', Journal of Transport History, 24, 2 (2003), 238-58.
22. Quoted in G. Lista, Futurism (Paris, 2001), p. 166.
23. Gino Severini, 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism: Futurist Manifesto' (1913), in Futurist Manifestoes, ed. Umbro Apollonio (New York, 1973), pp. 124-5 (emphasis in original).
24. Marinetti, Balla, Bernadetta, Depero, Dottori, Fillia, Prampolini, Somenzi, Tato, 'Le Manifeste de l'aéropeinrure futuriste", in Manifesti, proclami, interventi e documenti teorici del futurismo 1909-1944 II, ed. Luciano Caruso (Florence, 1980), document No. 263. This French version of the Italian manifesto, which I have translated here, was published in 1931.
25. F. T. Marinetti, 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature' (1912), in Marinetti: Selected Writings, p. 84.
26. F. T. Marinetti, in Marinetti: Selected Writings, Ibid., pp. 84-5, 88.
27. Severini, The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', p. 121.
28. Severini, The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', Ibid., pp. 121, 125.
29. See also Umberto Boccioni, 'Absolute Motion + Relative Motion = Dynamism', in Futurist Manifestoes.
30. As suggested by the curator of the Tate Galleries, Richard Humphreys, in Futurismen (Copenhagen, 2000).
31. Marinetti, 'Founding and Manifesto of Futurism', pp. 41, 43.
32. Sant'Elia's drawings are printed in Pontus Hulten (ed.), Futurismo e futurismi (Milan, 1986), pp. 212-23. 'Airport and railway station . . . .' was published on the leaflet of Saint'Elia's 'Manifesto of Futurist Architecture'.
33. Antonio Sant'Elia 'Manifesto of Futurist Architecture' (1914), in Futurist Manifestoes, pp. 169, 170.
34. Antonio Sant'Elia in Futurist Manifestoes, Ibid., pp. 170, 172 (capitals in original).
35. Some researchers hold that this last section was added to the manifesto by Marinetti, only reluctantly accepted by Sant'Elia. See Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, p. 100.
36. For an alternative account of Saint'Elia opposing Kern's interpretation of the Futurist architect see Tisdall and Bozzolla, Futurism, pp. 124-33.
37. The relation between functionalism and Bauhaus is discussed in Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (London, 1935). The quotation is from p. 19.
38. Robert Furneaux Jordan, Le Corbusier (London, 1972), explores among other things Le Corbusier's apprenticeship in Germany.
39. Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (1923),
40. trans. F. Etchells, Towards a New Architecture (London, 1927; New York, 1986), pp. 107, 110.
41. Le Corbusier, Aircraft (London, 1935; Paris, 1987), caption of picture No. 8.
42. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 89.
43. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, p. 5.
44. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, Ibid., p. 12.
45. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, Ibid., p. 5, 11, 12.
46. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 117.
47. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, p. 12-13 (italics in original).
48. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, Ibid., p. 12. A famous photo of the Parthenon and an automobile in Towards a New Architecture compares the two artefacts to illustrate that other periods of history could find the correct architectural solution to the need of their times.
49. See Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 140.
50. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, p. 13.
51. Le Corbusier, Urbanisme (1924),
52. trans F. Etchells, The City of To-morrow, in Essential Le Corbusier: L'Esprit Nouveau Articles (Oxford, 1929, 1998), 10.
53. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, caption of picture No. 65.
54. Le Corbusier, The City of To-morrow, pp. 5, 12, 22.
55. Le Corbusier, The City of To-morrow, Ibid., p. 25.
56. On the precedence of the right angle, p. 21.
57. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, caption of pictures Nos 35 and 36.
58. Le Corbusier, The City of To-morrow, p. 85.
59. See Le Corbusier, Aircraft, caption of picture No. 25. Le Corbusier's views on aeroplanes and war, pp. 8-9. On the pictures of German glider camps, which by 1935 were organised and heavily promoted by the National Socialists, Le Corbusier comments, 'New machines, new men. They are filled with enthusiasm, the pleasures of daring, of breaking with current stupidities. Once in the air . . . they exult in the daring of their departure.' (Caption of pictures Nos 76-81.)