V

Wim Nijenhuis
City Frontiers and Their
Disappearance

Wim Nijenhuisis Professorof Urbanism In our culture the disappearanceof the frontierplays an
te Groningenin Delft.
at the Universiteit importantrole. Modernitywas characterizedby the system-
atic demolition of strongholdsand the increasingdysfunc-
tionality of fortresses,city walls, and city gates. This
tendency was stopped for a moment by the desperate
undertakingof the Atlantic Wall during World War II and
by the erection of the Berlin Wall in the 1960s, but now,
with the most recent developments in EasternEurope, this
late relic of the Middle Ages has fallen, too. The demoli-
tion of the wall is not an incident but an integralpart of
the great accident that has affected the territorialfrontier
since the Renaissance. From the Renaissanceon, the
temptationsof distance and the journey (trade, contact,
communication) have gained the upper hand over the
medieval stabilitas loci - the inert fixation to a place.
And, further,the materializationof the distinction between
these two has slowly become obsolete.
For Paul Virilio, the disappearanceof the city, and later
the national, frontieris not an autonomous phenomenon.
Around the frontier,Virilio distinguishestwo orders:that
of place, characterizedby a stabilityof form, and that of
speed, characterizedby the fading of form. Within the
1. Balawat Gates, detail great historicalplay of these two orders, the disappearance
of the Berlin Wall is merely a manifestationof the disap-
showing an episode in
Shalmaneser IIll'scampaign of pearance of the frontieron all fronts.
858 B.c. on the Levant Coast.
The king is seen in his chariot, But are we witnessing a uniform disappearance,or is
moving on to other conquests; something reappearing,too? Does the frontierreturnwhere
his camp (bottom left) is left we do not expect it, dressedin another cloak?Would it be
empty. possible to see the disappearanceof the frontieras part of a

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metamorphosisor perhapseven a reversal?And of what
would this metamorphosisconsist, or where and how
would this reversalmanifest itself?
Certainly, the theme of the disappearanceof the city fron-
tier is not new. The whole discourse of the symbolic
movement within urban planning addressesit, implicitly or
explicitly. From its emergence at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the discipline has been founded on the
disappearanceof the urban frontier,that is, on the gradual
effacement of the self-evident and uncontested city form
for which the "gestalt"of the looming, fortifiedcity was
the model. From the firstcivil attemptsin the eighteenth
century to control the city (a city that had become licen-
tious) by means of cartographicand cadastralmeasure-
ments to the actual draftingof regional, master, and city
plans, urban planning has legitimated its existence with the
promising search for the lost form. It is the discipline of
the lost frontier,which is both its obsession and its motive.
But I want to leave this lamentation about the loss of form
and identity. It causes too much panic. By looking at the
disappearanceof the frontierfrom a somewhat greaterdis-
tance, perhapsa more philosophical distance than is habit-
ual for most architects, we can snatch ourselvesaway from
the negative passion that is the effect of the disappearance,
and so also from the unremittingdesire for a fixed form
(which is, after all, an arbitraryand historicallydetermined
desire). And I want to ask again, Wheredoes the border
reappear,after it vanishesfrom its familiar places?To
investigatethis, we need to determine the principlesthat
inform and in-form the border,the boundary,the limit
itself.
Since Aristotle, Western thinking about bordersand limits
has been prescribedby the so-called hylomorphic schema
or the form-mattermodel. This model has been particu-
larly importantin characterizingthe process of individua-
tion - the becoming "something"and the "beingthere"of
"something."But where Aristotle, in his famous example
of the manufactureof a brick, saw the clay as the matter
and the wooden mold (that is, the border)as the form,
modern information theory says that both the clay and the
mold are engaged with matter and form. The limit of the
form, consequently, is not abstract,immaterial, or imma-
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assemblage 16
nent, but material, solid, and differential.Information
theory now describesthe clay as a metastablestate that
possessespotential energy- unevenly distributedenergy
capable of effecting a metamorphosis.This quality of the
clay is the source of its form. The mold places a limit on
the expanding form of the molecular organizationof the
clay as it fills the mold. The mold does not passivelyform
the clay, but communicates a resonatingaction throughout
the clay that alters the clay's molecular organization.Thus
the individuation of the brick- the processwherebythe
clay assumes a specific stable form - should be described
as follows:the malleable clay, initially in a preindividual,
metastablestate possessedof potential energy and capable
of assuming any number of stable shapes, interactswith an
external milieu (the borderof the mold), which sets up an
internal resonance within the clay and allows the clay's
uneven distributionof energy to assume an even distribu-
tion, a stable shape. The form, then, is the effect of the
limit; or, the limit in-formsa substancein a metastable
state, which subsequentlyassumes a stable form. Accord-
ing to Gilles Deleuze in Differenceand Repetitions, this
metastablestate of the clay can and may be generalized
towarda principle of realityfrom which emanate all acts of
individuation, all appearancesthat are the manifestations
of a process of becoming (that is, metastableand preindivi-
dual). Metastability,for Deleuze, is difference in itself and
individuationis the process in which differencedifferen-
tiates and explicates itself.
In relation to the city, as Virilio articulatesit, this meta-
stable substanceis the original state of nomadic culture,
which wanderedwithout direction or goal, guided by the
time limit of the day and the seasons- the transmigration
of ancient times. An interpretationcommonly advancedto
mark the firstdifference in the endless field of nomadic
transmigrationis based on the anthropologicalconception
of territoryand the humanistic myth. From the firstcrys-
tallizations of tumuli and sanctuariesthrough the storage
of grain, the conception of defensible space begins to form
itself. This space would then be differentiatedfrom its sur-
roundingsby means of a palisade. The crystallizationof
this place is geographicallydefined and becomes a pure
spatialdifferentiationwithin an undifferentiatedfield. This
difference immediately establishesa higher and a lower
44
 Nijenhuis

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rrlll\ I: order.This place, then, is the elevation and exaltation of

the field and the palisade is the expressionof its jealous
.

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character.Such elevations into higher ordersof place and
the jealousies induced subsequentlyperverttransmigra-
tional culture into the excluded and the dangerous.
Finally, the fortifiedplace is the explication and unfolding
of a treasureand the will to conservation- defensive and
conservativeprinciples that produce a kind of fixism
inspiredby fear.
2. The city of Dur Sarrukin, Yet, as Virilio observes, even before the conception of ter-
721, plan showing regulation ritorychanged the characterof nomadic culture, there
of walls, gates, and streets existed the differentiationof speed. Between 2000 and 1700
B.c. the war chariot was invented in the Iraniansteppes.
This event desocialized a militaryelite of speed from the
nomadic tribes. During subsequentages, we can see the
conquest of rivercultures in India, Iraq, and Egypt.
...
__-
The first city-states,then, came into existence behind well-
equipped fortresswalls that were erected as emblems of ter-
f ? ritorialconquest based on the initial differentiationof cul-
: %hXS ture accordingto speed. In these city-statesthe elite stored
the robbedtreasuresof its conquests. In its origin, then,
-
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•,,i• c,
the city is a paradoxicalform. The city ground plans take
2-.-
their shape and meaning from the distinctiveopposition
. -• .. between city and land or center and periphery.But this
o'{-=C.
' '-r difference is secondaryand misleading. Primarily,the city
;/,J, , is formed and informed by heterogeneousspeeds- by the
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difference between inertia and traffic. The form of the city
is thus, finally, an unstable effect.
The city exists, then, through trafficin all its forms:the
movement of trade, the threateningflux of wanderers,pil-
grims, soldiers, the distracteddrift of invalids. The city is a
qualifyingdifference within the traffic. While the anthro-
pological thesis of differentiationaccordingto defensible
territoryis not untrue, it is misleading because it suggests
the possibilityof an autonomous space that receives its
quality from itself. The first heterogeneityof speed - that
of the herd and the horse - producedthe city frontieras
the effect of a politics of vectorization.Vectorpolitics organ-
izes speed into a dromocracy,the aim of which is to gain
the power to attack. This is true up to this day.

3. The hill city of Thyrins,plan Heterogeneityof speed also produces a distinction in the
of the acropolis psychology of differentsocial classes. The class bound to

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i
I
the inertia of residence is undeterminedand weak, to
which the whole theology of the oppressedbearswitness.
The militaryclass, on the other hand, is powerful. Its
moveabilityand speed, its refinement of economy, and its
organizationof the field of perceptionallow this class to
keep its power and will out of sight. (To this the warriors
of India and Egypt attest.) The dromomane,the warrior
with his chariot and later every power based on speed, is
"strong"because of his powers of evasion and elusiveness.
Meanwhile, the resident is "weak"because of his restric-
tion to place.
The dromocraticmilitaryclass rules over the city frontier.
Castles, palaces, and temples are located at the edge of the
city or on hills. The city in ancient and medieval times,
and the fortifiedcity prior to the eighteenth century, func-
tioned not as a "site"appropriatedby a group (it was not a
"territory"),but as a machine of regulationand calculation
where an oligarchy or aristocracyhad authorityover the
right and obligation to stay or be expelled. This power to
control the entrance is everythingin a universe in which
the opposition between outside (wanderingwithout reason)
and inside (safe dwelling) has become essential. The mili-
tary class controlled, as it were, a kind of class distinction.
Subsequentpopulationsdid not, at first, get their class
power from trade and industry,but from strategicsettle-
ments that inaugerateda "domicilefixe," which functioned
as the principle of the capitalizationof land speculation.
Capitalizationis the right to dwell behind the fortified
walls of the city and the right to security in the middle of
the fields, woods, and roadsoccupied by wanderers,
troops, and expelled persons (the swervedforms of the orig-
inal transmigration).The domicilefixe in the militaryfor-
tress endlessly delayed battle, which in the free field would
undoubtedlyhave led to a solution. The form of the cas-
tles and fortifiedcities demonstratevery preciselythe secret
presence of the quasi-permanentstate of seige by which
the city frontierwas determined.
In addition to the differenceproducedby speed, and the
repressedstate of seige, the location of the city is important
to the formation of the city frontier.At the strategicknots
in the endless flow of traffic, at mountain passes, at the
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assemblage 16
opening up of valleys, alongside riversor estuaries,the
importantcities are found. Location, city wall, and gate
are the result not of mythic but of military thinking, which
aims to control the flux of people, money, and goods. This
is why the stabilitas loci of the Middle Ages, the inert fixa-
tion to the place, is an illusion. Throughout history,the
power of the city equals its authorityover traffic. The city
is nothing more than an interrupter,a singularpoint on an
endless trajectory;it is a division, a dividing line in itself, a
bank that abstractswelfare and stabilityfrom an economy
of passageand delay - to which the innumerabletoll-
booths, barriers,frontiergates, city gates, and enclosed
harborsthat were built before the nineteenth century tes-
tify. The expressionpolis should not be understood,then,
as place but as police:trafficcontrol. A city is nothing
other than an inhabitablecirculation.
Looking at the borderareas in several seventeenth-century
Dutch cities - Vianen, Gorcum, Tile, and Zaltbommel,
for example - we notice immediately that their logic is
not purely geometrical. These borderareascannot be said
to be pure demarcationlines that articulatethe difference
between here and there. What we see is that city frontiers
are materialelements with a very specific appearance,a
spatialextension that undergoesa transformationof form
over time.
My proposition, at this point, then, is to formulatethe city
frontier,as it was during its historicalapogee (1700 B.c.
through A.D. 1800), as part of a machinic arrangement.A
machinic arrangementis a certain relationbetween a socio-
technological machine and a collective semiotic machine.
The main constituent of the collection of interrelatedele-
ments that forms the technological machinic arrangement
is a system of relationsbetween people, tools, and things.
If we take the case of the city gate, we notice the doors as
regulatorsof entry and departure,the walls as an obstruc-
tion of passage, the towers as possibilitiesfor view and
prospectas well as surveillancepoints. At the city gate,
taxes and tolls have to be paid, and there is a constant
milling about of people such as gatekeepers,innumerable
"marginals,"prostitutes,merchants, and hawkers.Near the
gate reigns an uncertainty.In the technological machinic
arrangementseveral heterogeneous series are interrelated
46

and then quantified. Around the abstractprinciple of
"selectivepassage,"for example, circulate the interrelations
of power, welfare, visibility, identity, seduction, cunning,
and destruction.
The technological machinic arrangementof the frontieris
a regulatorof power and power relationsand the producer
of qualifiablequantities. Here the second component of
the machinic arrangemententers the game, namely, the
semiotic machine, or the regime of signs. I do not mean
by this only the placardsand documents that are placed
near the city gates or the heraldswho read the laws and
proclamations.More generally, I mean every enunciation
and every sign that signifies the quanta distinguishedby
the machine and that produces effects in consciousness
and behavior:the quanta of bodies, for example, that every
evening at the gate were divided into citizens and nonciti-
zens, "strangers" being excluded from the city by the lash
of the whip; or the torturedcriminals displayedat the city
gate to affirm a territoryof justice;or the lunatics locked
up in asylums or exposed to the curiosity of saunterers(fla-
neurs) to establish the reign of reason. Even more gener-
ally, I mean the signs postulatedinside the boundariesof
the community (say, the realm of the social and of reason).
The regime of signs gives the borderthe quality of a social,
cultural, and linguistic frontier.Thus the city edge is also
a boundaryof signification, sense, and identity.
The sociotechnological machine and the regime of signs
together constitute the machinic arrangement.This
arrangementcrisscrossesdifferentstrataand assemblages,
dividing and qualifying people, goods, animals, plants,
words, money, and images in more or less functional cir-
cuits that connect man with nature, the mechanical with
the nonmechanical, the organic and the inorganicwithin a
single sphere of interaction.
Just as the city frontieris a machine, the city itself is also a
machinic arrangementthat emanates from the city frontier.
The city does not radiatefrom the city but is formed from
the boundary.The limit is not the end of the city but its
beginning, in space as well as in time. The borderis not
passive but active. As sign/machine, the borderis the
active articulationof an indicative differentiationin speed.
The whole of the machinic arrangementregulatesthe
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Nijenhuis
.. .. .
exchanges between the inertia of place and the "perverted"
transmigration.Without this regulatedexchange of bodies
and signs a fusion/confusion would happen and, with it,
the possibilityfor identifiabledistinction would be lost.
In more than a metaphoricalsense, the authorityand con-
trol of exchange between place and transmigrationconsti-
tutes the history of the wall, the gate, and the form of the
place. The limitless exchange is writtenby the historyof
trafficand speed. Each history has a differentgoal and
incorporatesdifferenttreatmentsof value and capital. The
history of the wall, gate, and place aims at the mainte-
nance of the frontierand, with this, the power of distinc-
tion based on foundationalvalues and transcendental
difference. This is the jealous culture of the maintenance
of the form. From the border,forms and meanings reso-
nate by which bodies and signs function as conditions for
the possibilityof identity. This double figure in which the
body/form(the city) correspondswith its sign (the word
city) - the signified form that constitutesthe here and the
there, restrictedplace and infinity, orderand chaos, some-
thing and nothing, I and you - is constitutiveof the
panic relation to the other, to the excluded.
The history of trafficand speed, on the other hand, is that
of instabilityand the intangible/elusive.Its featuresare
capture, power, heroics, and delocalizations. The form of
the city distinguishesitself from its excluded surroundings
(throughthe history of the wall), but it also has a deep
affinityfor the excluded since without this excluded (and
its surroundings)it would not exist. Castles and cities were
necessarilysurroundedby the vectorizedforms of transmi-
grationalenergy. The defensive forms of these cities were
the explication/expressionof their relationwith that which
differs. They were the mirrorof the vector, a solidified
force of attack. The force of the defense and the force of
exclusion was, and is, reciprocalto the force of the threat/
danger. As machine, the solidified city frontiermarksthe
principle of a cautious insurance or security of the treasure
- the treasureof meaning and sense disguisedas conti-
nuity and the accumulation of wealth. Because of the
transformationof these two principlesand by a decisive
accident of defensive security and accumulation of wealth,
the city frontierrapidlydisappearedin the nineteenth
century.
47
 assemblage 16

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4. Claude Masse, Etude de

parement d'un bastion, 1687

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5. Charles-Renede Fourcroy,
Plan des attaques de la
forteresse de Gravelines,1764

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 Nijenhuis

.....
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The increasingfirepowerof canons, the introductionof

mobile war machines, the perfectionof militaryand civil
logistics, and innumerable other inventions made defensive
security and safety impossible to guaranteethrough the
inert and silent assistanceof the fortressmachine. Hence-
forth, attackbecomes the best defense. Attackis no longer
about the solidity of the wall and the regulatingpower of
PARI ". '"`
the gate - no longer about the reliable frontier- but
.._ about the ability to collect, streamline, and direct confused
forces, to vectorize them. The borderchanges its form
accordingly. It is no longer circularand surroundingbut
conductive and shifting. Within a vectorizedand logistical
system, the frontierequals an orbitaland continuously
rL•
shifting front;the frontiershifts with the column of attack.
The movement of war rendersthe territorialfrontier
obsolete.

Urban wealth was originallyfounded on an economy of

6. Georges-Eugene Haussmann, delay. The urban and militaryelite skimmed their wealth
plan of Paris,realized between
off the traffic. Tolls, taxes, entrance fees, and other charges
1853 and 1871 were the profit-makinginstrumentsof the endless transfer
and storageactivities of the staple market(such as the
medieval market).The place of this marketwas usually
just inside or outside the city wall, near the city gates.
With the rise of political economy, the economy of delay
came to an end. Political economy was not only an ideol-
ogy of the liberation of productiveforces, but also an ide-
S... . ..
ology of communication. Following the thinking of Saint-
Fn7W I Simon, political economy attemptedto liberatethe flux of
i
goods, people, and informationin order to bring every-
thing into contact with everythingelse.
In the nineteenth century, at the same moment that war
forces could be mobilized, traffic(and the "contact"
implied by traffic)became part of a new messianismof
peace, pursuing its aims through the railwaynetworks.The
loss of the economy of delay in a system that eliminated
distance and acceleratedcirculation without obstructions
eliminated the territorialfrontieras a principle of wealth
7. Plan for the Boulevard
and security. It reinstalledthe territorialfrontierin time.
S~bastopol, Paris
Today we witness the capitalizationof time ratherthan
space (land speculation, for example). The "regime"of
decision, anticipationand action, informationpower and
speed is a regime of time.

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 assemblage 16

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The machinic arrangementof the city frontierthat I previ-
ously describedhas been dismantledand delocalized by
this development. In 1800 the city frontierin Pariswas et
-
alreadybeginning to run wild. Mapping and the applica-
tion of beacons for measurementwere ways of attempting
to check, to some extent, the chaotic usury of building
practicesin the suburbs.After severaldecades of experi-
8. Arturo Sorio y Mata, plan of
mentation, the idea of a fixed, delimited city form was the "CiudadLineal,"Madrid,
abandoned, commencing an era of land registration(the 1882
cadaster),alignments, building regulations,and, finally,
plans for urban extension and urban renewal. The city,
then, is no longer seen as an uncontested and inert form,
but as a labile and mobile whole that changes over time
INA
and, in principle, develops itself endlessly. The city
becomes a metastablebody that must be guided in order to C-i
maintain fragmentsof form. City plannersseize at the
inner circulation, at the traffic, and the streetbecomes the
place where the once-eminent frontiernow becomes
immanent. The front door becomes the gate and the urban MEW

public space becomes the trace of the endless field that

once surroundedthe city. Urban planning replacesmilitary
surveillance. In the urban planning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the frontierbecomes the alignment of buildings and
the streetfaqade;the bordermarketbecomes the orbital
streetand new trafficvector.
This metamorphosiswas at work, for example, in the so- I"
called Coolpolderplandeveloped in 1858 for Rotterdam.
The city was growinggraduallyoutside its walls. Because
land prices were no longer dictatedby safetybut by use
value (accessibilityand so forth), it was also developing in
a linear fashion along the riverand towardnew sources of
welfare such as the harbor.Trafficwas threateningto over-
whelm the city. The Coolpolderplanattemptedto syn-
thesize the desire for form and the tendency towardits
VA9 /P
disappearance.By means of canal harbors,watertrafficwas
brought inland. In this case, too, the final instrumentto
force the growing, metastablecity into a form was the
immanent and conducting border,the alignment.

The disappearanceof the city frontier,as I have already

9. Plan for correctingthe
suggested, means the becoming-absoluteof the rule of the street pattern around the
dromocracy.The dromocracyis the orderthat controls the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio,
road and mobility; it produces and controls vectors. Thus Florence,ca. 1890

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10. Aerial view of Venice
showing the Canal Grande and
the quay at San Marco
the quality of dromocraticsociety is mobilization. Every-
thing is mobilized: bodies, earth, fields of perception.
Under mobilization the human body becomes material(a
tool) and it fuses with the machinery of speed. Telegraph
and telephone, roads, canals, harbors,railwaystations, and
airfields- vital for the mobilization of contemporarywar
- also retain some of the traces of the original machinic
arrangementof the city frontierin the peculiar experiences
of passing, transition, widening that are part of daily life.
Dromocracyhas fragmentedthe city frontierinto an end-
less series and dissipatedit over the surface of the earth. It
turned it inside out, brought it into our living rooms,
installed it between people and at the entrancesof ware-
houses and airfields. By this proliferationand delocaliza-
tion of the frontier, the new machinic arrangementof the
diffused frontiershapes the city into a global object where
everythingis always inside, with no outside. The global
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Nijenhuis
object is urban. I use the adjectiveon purposebecause I
want to denote a pure quality, derived from form, without
a city.
Finally, there is the dromocraticcontrol of the overview.
The dromocracyoccupied and cleared territoryaround the
fortressto observe enemy movements. A similar field of
perception is called a glacis. The glacis is a bare field, an
empty space of vision, confined by walls and towers. It
anticipatesthe prospectof militarycontrol. In many Dutch
cities, the water serves as a glacis.
The firstwell-known transformationof the glacis in the
Netherlandswas the introductionof land surveys, registra-
tion, statistics,and mapping in the BatavianRepublic
around 1800. These projectsallowed the state to observe
and control movements and changes at a national level.
Subsequently,the foundation of Rijkswaterstaat- the
conquest and unification of inland waterwaysby means of
mapping and the establishmentof a monopoly over survey-
ing and maintenance - was an event motivatedby con-
cerns about security. The goal was the organizationof
visibilitywith respect to the water and watertraffic.
In its metamorphosis,the glacis does not deny its military
descent. The "wars"of the nineteenth century are less con-
cerned with material conquest than with the increase of
authorityover an immaterialand empty field of percep-
tion. Metamorphosisof the instrumentsof perceptionis,
then, a kind of technological warfare.From the empty
field to the perspectivalfield, from the map to statistics,
from perspectiveto photography,film, television, and
video, we observe the many guises of the metastablebeing
of the glacis. This war technique aims at a visual event
that implicates the creation of the glacis and the occupa-
tion of the senses. In this respect, film and, later, televi-
sion are visual weapons in which the screen is the glacis.
Just like the looming warriorwith his impressivearmor,
these images attempt to divert the eye and establisha trau-
matic fascination, that is, a pathologicalstate in the
spectator.
Since World War I, the spatialcontinuum of the perspec-
tivist eye proliferatedby means of cameras in military
aircraftand intensive aerial photographicprojects.The evi-
51
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dence of the photographsand films was more trustworthy

than occular sight on the spot. Photographyand film 11. Cameramounted on a
explode "naturalsight"into the heterogeneousfield of the machine-gun emplacement,
1918. Recordinginterfered
glacis. with the aircraft'sdefences.
The dynamic glacis of film is paralleledin the futuristic
experimentsin painting. Film is qualitativelythe last meta-
morphosisof the glacis, but it conditions all other qualities
*!
of the border. Film affects forms in space and time and
.o
establishesits illusions accordingto two principles:First, ? ,.

the technique of cutting and montage, togetherwith the

moving camera, eliminates the unity of place and replaces
I - ,
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'
it with an artificialunity of time - a shortenedtime . .
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.
shaped by the logic of chronology and trick interruptions.
Second, film falsifies and manipulatesdimensions. The
moving camera changes the spatialdepth of the perspecti-
val world into a phenomenon of time. Film evolves into
television, which gives us a cinematic and global view on
the world. Before our eyes this pan-movie createsthe 12. Photomontage of
successive shots showing the
chaos of images that in other times was hidden in nature,
gradual destruction of a farm
war, and transmigration. during World War I.
The heterogeneityof the glacis and the chaos of the
- -Y 'C
image-truthconfront us with a world that has lost its mate-
-
rialityand dimension and has been "de-realized."In his
book In StahlgewitternErnst Jiingertalks about the de-
realizationexperience of World War I: "In this war it was
more the spaces than the people that we kept under ;~;
L•,%~~
/,
fire. . . . I had a very impersonalfeeling, as if I was look- •?
ing at myself through binoculars [verrekiiker]. . . . I could o...
hear the zip of the smaller weapons, like they were passing
/
a dead object. The landscapewas a glazed transparency." /'
The experience of an absolute transparency,which Blr, •-•
includes the subject and the object, actually the whole
environment, gives us a representationof the disruptionof
perception.
The development and metamorphosisof the glacis, the
connection of plane/car and camera- the revolutionof
instrumentsof perception- has revolutionizedthe space- 13. Photoanalysisof a raid on
time of seeing. The truth of perspectivehas become the Weimar-Buchenwaldon 24
simulation of appearance.Again Jiinger,"The ability to August 1944. The dark-shaded
buildings were thought to be
think logically and to experience gravityseemed paralysed. severely damaged; the
One had the feeling of flying."This lack of gravity,this concentration camp (upper
elimination of normal experiences, points to the daily right) was not hit.

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 Nijenhuis

...

effects of missing a direct visible realityand its mediated

i
i? representations.
The dissipatedand immanent frontierthat informs the
"urban"together with the fusion of realityand nonreality
in perceptionsignify the rise of a new world frontier,
namely, the interface. Correspondingto the rise of the
interface is the rise of the global object, of which the city
is a part. The optical experience of someone travelingby
car or train who, in looking out the window, sees his own
reflection (or someone else's) montaged over the passing
landscape at high speed is the experience of the world as it
appearsin the second light of the interface. This is the
superexposureof speed - in effect, an unlimited seeing.
The panic we experience in the face of this light comes
from the apparentsolidity of words and concepts, from a
certain fixism of the regime of signs. This panic inspiresus
to understandand explicate everything.
14. Otto Dix, Lens wird mit
Bomben belegt (Lenswas Old words and images maintain our statusas re-cognizers
bombed), 1924 and re-viewers.If we want to escape from the panic of the
global object and the interface, perhapswe must think
about the possibilityof a new kind of gravity,or machines
of gravitythat understandthe relativityof the moment of
perception- a moment of seeing that is phantasmic, ob-
sessional, and creative.

Figure Credits
1. Seton Lloyd, The Archaeologyof 11-13. United States Army. Pub-
Mesopotamiafrom the Old Stone lished in Paul Virilio, War and
Age to the Persian Conquest, rev. Cinema: The Logisticsof Perception,
ed. (New York:Thames and Hud- trans. PatrickCamiller (New York:
::?:;::???: son, 1984). Verso, 1989).
:::::
:::-.:i
::- 2, 3, 6-10. Mario Morini, Atlante 14. Otto Dix und der Krieg:Zeich-
:~.;-~-i~h-ii---;_-_:--ii$:--
-:::-
i-:ii:---~-
-::i::i::--::ii
di storia dell'urbanistica(dalla nungen und Grafik, 1913-1924
-.::.._
:::
::-
:;::::
:-
preistoriaall'inizio del secolo XX) (Regensburg:StiidtischeGalerie
-:I::::
::
(Milan: Hoepli, 1963). Regensburg, 1981).
:::-:::
:s::
4, 5. Bruno Fortier,La Metropole 15. Photographiefuturiste italienne,
15. Fedele Azari, Sur le lac, imaginaire:Un atlas de Paris, 1911-1939 (Paris:Mus6e d'Art
1925 XIXe-XXe siecles (Liege: Mardaga, Moderne de la Ville de Paris,
1989). 1981).

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