Do Paul Virilio's writings get frequent publication miles?

As part of his resolution to get on with his research, Whitebait was today scoping an edited collection, ROAM: Reader on the Aesthetics of Mobility, lent to him by one of his colleagues. It is one of those extremely funky design/cultural theory crossover publications that feature only small but sections of pointy-headed discourse (often molto pretentious), and lots of groovy graphics and images documenting thematically related art projects.

‘The airport’ is central to the book as an organizing symbol of the different forms of mobility that characterise urban and spatial experience today (ie, the growth of transient 'non-spaces' like airports which at least seem to be more rooted in global flows of people, goods, and information rather than local histories). The book even dispenses with a pesky conventional contents page and uses airport ‘gates’ instead.

Also included is a reprinted version of Paul Virilio’s article ‘The Overexposed City’. Virilio is a French, mega pointy-head who writes about architecture, media technologies and the city. He regularly scores a ‘touchdown’ in terms of his visionary style (big claims about the way the world is going which can often simultaneously seem unbelievably simplistic yet scarily on the mark). Also, as a pointy-head friend of mine would put it, ‘he gives good aphorism’. This piece, originally written in the early 1980s (in French), starts by talking about the way that the traditional ‘entrance’ to the modern city is no longer, for instance a central train station (which replaced the gates of forts), nor an airport, but a whole series of electronic auditioning technologies like radars and scanners that check passports etc. and ‘overexposes’ the urban. It is a good piece to get you thinking and Whitebait keeps going back to for his own work.

How many times, though, should it be reprinted? Whitebait has lost count of how many collections it has reappeared in. Whitebait wonders if it collects more frequent flyer miles than the author himself. Fortunately, though, this version is redeemed here by being part of a successful mash-up. And a rather cool one at that. For Virilio's chapter here is interspersed with stills from one of the bait’s favourite recent music videos - Royksopp’s ‘Remind Me’. Top song and animation. It seems to mix with the prescient Virilio piece in terms of the bigger themes of the increasing electronic integration and networks that provide and link the conduits of our everyday city life. Whitebait likes to dance to it too. (It also reminds him that despite a fondness for the aphorisms of Elvis Costello, Whitebait never did buy that performer’s famous line (or was it?), that writing about music made as much sense as dancing to architecture in terms of being a stupid thing to want to do).

(Footnote for interested readers. Philadelphia is the category here as Virilio opens his piece with a reference to a proclamation by the city's mayor back in the 1970s (I think). Don't have the piece with me at the moment but will update with more detail tomorrow at work. Try to hold on as the excitement takes hold of you).

UPDATE: So this is the reference which is actually Virilio's opening sentence. 'At the beginning of the 1960s, with black ghettos rioting, the mayor of Philadelphia announced: "From now on in, the frontiers of the State pass to the interior of the cities." While this sentence translated the political reality for all Americans who were being discriminated against, it also pointed to an even larger dimension ...'. Yep, kind of nicely sums up his argument and style.