Accursed cities / Frédéric Sayer

“On the other hand, the myth of the accursed city came into currency in the 1970s. The singular feature of this myth is that it generates idols or false myths. These simulacrums are objects without history, the irrevocable breaking apart of sacred from profane. The accursed and universal blight of anti-myth, which feeds on its own substance in an orgy of self-destruction. This myth is cannibal.

Hence urban construction itself now lies under a curse. Hence the anguish that gnaws at our civilization. A curse that was conjured up when all hope was lost in technical progress, when the concentration camps came to light in 1945.  A universal malediction, that is the cannibalistic symbol of the loss of our ability to symbolize. Worse even than the curse of God raining down on the legendary city of shame, is the very absence of divine utterance — the deafening silence of urban noise. The background sound of the city is a fury that signifies nothing. The earlier image of the wall of silence is eloquent. So too is the image of the surface without depth. In sum, to be human is to have body, and yet be void. We occupy space, but are open through our orifices.”

Extract from Frédéric Sayer’s doctoral thesis, La Sorbonne, 2007

Image: FRAC Installation, Triptyque