The Arcades Project - Operi

mation, actualization of the object but rather assume, for its part, the configuration
of a rapid image. The small quick figure in contrast to scientific complacency.
This configuration of a rapid image goes together with the recognition of the
"now" in thingS.57 But not the future. Surrealist mien of things in the now;
philistine mien in the future. The illusion overcome here is that an earlier time is
in the now. In truth: the now the imuost image of what has been.
For the flower section. Fashion journals of the period contained instructions for preserving
bouquets.
The mania for chamber and box. Everything came in cases, was covered and
enclosed. Cases for watches, for slippers, for thermometers-all with embroidery
on fine canvas.
Analysis of dwelling. The difliculty here is that on dle one hand, in dwelling, the ageold-perhaps
etclual-has to be recognized: image of that abode of dlC hmnan being in
the matenml womb. And then, on the other hand, this motif of primal history notwithstanding,
we must understand dwelling in its most extreme [ann as a condition of nineteenth-century
existence, one with which we have begun to break. The original fann of all
dwelling is existence not in the house but in the shelL TIle difference between the two:
bears quite visibly the impression of its occupant. In the most extreme instance,
the dwelling becomes a shell. The nineteenth cenlury, like no other century, was
addicted to dwelling. It conceived the residence as the receptacle for the person, and it
encased him, with all his appurtenances, so deeply in the dwelling's interior that one
might be reminded of the inside of a compass case, where the instrument with all its
accessories lies embedded in deep, usually violet folds of velvet. It is scarcely possible
nowadays to think of all the things for which the nineteenth century invented etuis:
pocket watches, slippers, egg cups, thennometers, playing cards. What didn't it provide
with jackets, carpets, wrappers! The twentieth century, with its porosity and transparency,
its tendency toward the well-lit and airy, has nullified dwelling in the old sense. Jumpingoff
point of things , like the "homes for human beings" in Ibsen's Master Builder. Not
by chance a drcuna rooted inJugendstil, which itself unsettled the world of the shell in a
radical way. Today this world is highly precarious. Dwelling is diminished: for the living,
tl1Tough hotel rooms; for the dead, through the crematorium.
Dialectics at a standstill-this is the quintessence of the method.
"To dwell" as a transitive verb. For example, "indwelt spaces"-this gives a sense of the
hidden frenetic topicality of dwelling. This topicality consists in fashioning a shell.
Kitsch. Its economic analysis. In what way is manifest here: the overproduction
of commodities; the bad conscience of producers.
Fashion. A sort of race for first place in the social creation. The running begins
anew at every instant. Contrast between fashion and unifornl.