Hello! My name is Curiosity. I still haven't figured out the CSS properly, so this is raw HTML as I write it. I'm definitely going to fix that once I have the time, but right now, we're looking at Rem Koolhaas ad his text on "Junkspace." What a trip!
It actually makes a lot of sense if you read it slowly enough. In fact, I haven't even finished reading it yet. But I do have thoughts. Rem says that Space Junk is the residue of humanity in space, and Junkspace is the residue of humanity on Earth. Instead of waste in space, here we're talking about waste of space. It's the consequence of architects-- or rather, those exerting great power of control over space-- not properly understanding what space is. Filling your projects in flowery concepts and the mentality of "more is more". He talks a lot about shopping malls, though he doesn't see them as inherently negative. He even comes to state that you find "true, real Architecture" in "the subtletly of the shopping mall. But Junkspace is an issue of abstraction, of dissociation.
Back from trying to fix the CSS. (The unpadded text is really unappealing to me. I can't even make the background black!) I still can't quite make sense of Junkspace, but we're at least somewhere. I hope.
(Nov 3rd)
But what if there is no "making sense" of Junkspace? It's a definition that is confusing and undefined at its core (like the bubble bath purgatory metaphor Koolhaas uses in his writing). I love especially the comparison he makes with multiple towers of Babel.
(An intriguing image for an intriguing article)
Perhaps this hits the point easier for me as a religious person, but once you understand the connection it makes where arrogance strains direct communication, the idea that Junkspace's less-than-humble "More is More" attitude is a new form of Babel becomes a little clearer.
I don't mean to say that is all there ever is to be understood about Babel or about Junkspace. But let's talk about capitalism for a second and wonder if the promotion of one's self (in the image of a trademark) doesn't perfectly line up with the exorbitant prices of airport commerce and the hollow bombardment of shopping centers, two of the most common cases of Junkspace. the regular frequenter of Junkspace is overwhelmed beyond reason or patience, fed with dopamine and movement to the point of dope. What Koolhaas describes feels to me like the physical form of brainrot.
Brainrot is a term often used on the internet nowadays to define that which is too far removed from reality and real meaning. We speak a "brainrot language" that is often entirely comprised of new words, too many new words at once for one to keep up with, especially someone outside the generations born during the era of information, the so-called "digital natives". Of course, played up almost as a joke, by the incredible saturation of meme-born terms such as 'sigma' and 'skibidi', used as adjectives and subjects and any other way you can imagine with little distinction.Would you call that a Tower of Babel scenario?
New words have always existed. New forms of using space, as well-- architecture itself is an invention. But when does 'new' become too much? How little footing in the past is too little?
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