New Museum

I was cruising the city when she accidentally met an old professor with whom she had a dramatically good conversation. For three weeks she had given up speaking and connecting to the faint wauweling and selling of people that possessed nothing but, blinded by the shining of gold and soaked up by sticky possessions, through a funnel of apartments, decoratively smiling invited her into hell.

She and the professor didn’t drink coffee but spoke of how big musea were being built as supermarkets of culture for those who rely on public opinion to spend their day off. Ten smaller musea had been closed down and a selection of the art was shown in this impressive new building. People could come and see the best off all in one day. Spenders were expected to come from around the world, impressed by the landmark of dared architecture, that told them ‘we are economically valid’, a clever welcome in times when public debt have never been greater, when monumental financial constructions are failing and bureaucratic constructions and other wauweling could not remain unquestioned for much longer.

The building was impressive like a medieval tower and created electoral employment and amusement, prestige for decision makers and master builders (though they could only be accredited with the assembly of parts, built in huge, anonymous, underpaid Chinese workshops).

It was erected in the middle of a city area that was supposed to start booming. Expensive apartments and restaurants were already built. Prices were up. Moneymakers had invested heavily in old buildings, speculating they would turn into a posh location, as happened elsewhere in the city.

There was really nothing people could do but to accept what was being given to them. Everybody visited the new spectacle and for a moment enjoyed the view from the rooftop. The building would soon become boring, not in the least for those who had a more profound interest in the arts displayed and who paid a third or a fourth visit. But for a much longer period it would remain a surprising ruin and a worthy gravestone to society that paid for it. The master builders’ sons were already looking forward to the construction of another new building to gain valuable experience in their profession, the lucrative business of designing and controlling environment. And they were deeply convinced that this future project as well, whatever it would be, would create a unique opportunity for the worlds small people to make some small money.

If you met the city's decision makers, you would be surprised by their plainness. They were the kind of people who would never use a single ill-placed word but who would go on a holy war to be able to buy a car that isn’t smaller than their neighbours’. They were radical in their plainness. They were like all of us, except for the loose edge. They were the embodiment of our rules, like the dukes of earlier ages. They seemed like precisely these dukes, having swapped their aristocratic uniforms - with exaggerated contrast designed to attract and manipulate the eye –for huge machinery that their image passes through before being distributed.

Antwerp, 28 october 2011