Project Team:
Metahaven (film, direction, design) with Brian Kuan Wood (words). With the original models by Constant [Nieuwenhuys]
Constant’s New Babylon (1959-1974) was a proposal for a city of the future where work would be automated and citizens would engage only with creative activities, based on their disposal, interests, and desires. With more time allowed for joyful encounters and emotional ties, a new urban economy would emerge. Fueled with intense creativity, this new economy and society would be able to utterly change everyday life. And it could. But, visions of the future sometimes are realised in the most controversial ways. Metahaven’s City Rising takes New Babylon as a starting point, and tells the story anew, from a contemporary perspective. It underlines how in times of crisis, a point has been reached that all and nothing is work. All and nothing, therefore, becomes driven by and from love, which is at once honest, barren, and capitalised. In City Rising, different forms and aspects of affective labour are tackled, while we are being invited to think about our bond with this condition, and its promises and compromises.
City Rising, 2014, Metahaven
