This book explores the visual transformation of the contemporary European city, focusing on the most emblematic and visibly wounded of all European cities – Berlin.
Taking as its subject the "intricately assembled, relentlessly disassembling metropolitan screen", it charts the virulent implosions of culture, the distortions and violence that give city-living its fractured and hallucinatory quality.
Provocatively written as a series of inter-locking poetic fragments, the text evokes the formation of metropolitan "identity" as it ricochets between the physical surface of the city and the vulnerable but manipulating consciousness of city dwellers.
Barber has discovered a powerful new vocabulary – a vocabulary charged with the visual and sonic impact of the cinema. Like the city, the text pulsates, creatively chaotic, raw and exhilarating.
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From the Back Cover:
This book explores the visual transformation of the contemporary European city, focusing on the most emblematic and visibly wounded of all European cities - Berlin. Provocatively written as a series of interlocking poetic fragments, the text evokes the formation of metropolitan 'identity' as it ricochets between the physical surface of the city and the vulnerable but manipulating consciousness of city dwellers. Stephen Barber travelled through the cities of Eastern Europe while writing this book between 1990 and 1995. His book represents a reinvention of 'travel writing' and will be of vital interest to students of European history, cinema and media.
About the Author:
Stephen Barber is professor in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture at Kingston University.
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- PublisherReaktion Books
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0948462663
- ISBN 13 9780948462665
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages108