Resumen de Misprisions of London
My interest in the relationship between London and its historical misprisions, by which I mean our failure to appreciate the city's identity. Two well-known early nineteenth-century examples are indexical of the ways that ruins can project social, political and cultural distinctiveness in an urban context. Joseph Gandy's "Bird's-eye view of the Bank of England" (1830) emphasizes the monumentality of Sir John Soane's design and the institution itself through the illusion of decay. Similarly, Gustave Doré's image of Thomas Babington Macaulay's fictive New Zealander resting on a broken arch of London Bridge speaks of the architectural devastation of the first city of empire. Images of architecture in fragments are undeniably powerful, but my interest goes beyond the aesthetic of the ruin. Using Walter Benjamin's idea that 'Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things', I read the ruins of London as a process. Ruination becames a critical tool trough which we can explore misprisions of London's past and future through fragments of (invented) memory.
