The Spectres of Modernism

High Rise, 2016, Michael C Coldwell

From the series

Spectres of Modernism 

In memory of the late great Mark Fisher

Here lie the artefacts of progress. As Derrida put it, "the time is out of joint."

That so-called Modernism should now reside so far behind us feels uncanny, a temporal disjunction if not a contradiction in terms. Brutalist buildings, these great concrete totems from that utopian future which failed to materialise, are now being destroyed and transformed on a mass scale - they are effaced and mourned, and also increasingly lionised. Park Hill flats are now protected. Some of this vast site is being renovated, but huge tracks are likely to remain abandoned - a meta-anachronism, a distant past future, forever in the present.