Alternative
Modernisms: An Interdisciplinary Conference at Cardiff
University, 16-18 May 2013
Summary of my paper to be presented in Cardiff, UK
Title: The
Japanese were Never Modern
[Metabolist Contamination of Architectural
Representations]
This
research investigates the mix of art, architecture, urbanism, information
systems and ecology that emerged with Metabolist thinking and image production
during the 1950s and 60s. I will use the Metabolist
production to discuss the variable conditions for architectural modernity in
Japan. The Metabolists fed upon
and absorbed strains of European and American modernism, yet later processed it
through an elaborate philosophy that drew upon the life sciences. Unlike OMA’s
recent research ‘Project Japan’, which focuses upon the output of individual
architects, I will draw upon theories drawn from media studies and critical
theory of the image, archive and monument. A selection of Japanese films
relating to the urban devastation of the Atom bomb will also be used to
consider the alternative modernities developed by Metabolism. 
