virilio

Virilio’s Overexposed City

Virilio is discussing a new kind of way of understanding the boundaries of the city. He claims they are no longer understood in terms of their geography or physical territory but have become spatially accessible only through an immaterial series of interfaces. He reflects on what the architectural implications of this phenomenon are; a nullification of space (near and far no longer exist) and the replacement of stone and wood with walls of light and transparent materials. He speaks of the urban wall as giving way to “an infinity of openings and ruptured enclosures” and surface becoming an osmotic membrane, an interface.
Due to this dissolution of the physical relations of things, the city has in fact lost its edge. Populations are leaving the centers and the borders are no longer distinguishable. But our new way of living has not only disrupted our understanding of space but has taken on a new temporality, one which is instantaneously exposed. It is no longer dictated by the physical reality of the day but, according to Virilio, by “commutations” which have no connection to real time at all. He claims this temporality takes on the attributes of the old spatiality: work time is the time center and vacation time the suburb of time.
This collapse of everything into placelessness leads him to question what it would take to break inside this new city. He equates the “door without a city” to the American military technology used to cause instantaneous destruction and wonders if one will be able to tell the difference in the future between the nature of recessions (in which buildings will be demolished for fiscal gain) and the nature of war. This parallel evokes a haunting and stark vision of the unfolding future….


If Virilio is correct in implying that space has given way to time and spatial boundaries no longer exist, in what respect are we capable of mapping our environment? And if it is possible to do so, who has the power to make sense of such a topography?

If the ways in which we understand the unfolding of events start to take on multiple meanings (as in Virilio’s example of signs of war and signs of recession) what are the implications of this on how we understand, and more importantly how we communicate, the present in respect to those who come after us? Will this free historical narrative from its implicit linearity? Can we really think of time without thinking of the consecutive unfolding of things?