ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter lays the ground for the main argument underlying the investigation undertaken in this work. An elementary thesis is put forward in this introduction that goes as follows: Cinema as a genuine ‘mass art’, exemplified by the great films of Hitchcock and Godard, is dead. It has lost its function. But its ends persist. Architecture, on the other hand, as the oldest art of the ‘masses’ in the history of mankind, outlives cinema—because, as Walter Benjamin said, ‘the human need for shelter is permanent’. This permanent ‘mass art’ is exploited in the era of capitalist modernity by the dominant property relation, and at the superstructure level, by the cultural mythology of fascism leading to aestheticization. Given the denial of the primordial function of architecture under this exploitation, it is imperative that its ontology be rethought. To this end, it is the contention of this work that architecture must re-learn the lessons of early-twentieth-century cinema as a ‘mass art’ in order to regain its function as the genuine art of masses. This means that its practice must be brought back again to politics.
