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Sunday, July 31, 2011

INVISIBLE CITIES XXI -- Cities and Desire: ZOBEIDE

(Zobeide -- perhaps from the Arabic "Zubaida," a female name for "elite" or "prime")
  1. Smacks a bit of Christopher Nolan's Inception, doesn't it--this dream sharing?
  2. What is Calvino getting at when he describes the city as having forgotten the dream of its ... err ... inception?
  3. The later men who had shared the dream of the running woman: did they have the dream and seek out the city, or did they stumble upon the city coincidentally?
  4. Why is the city so ugly?

M.C. Escher -- again

2 comments:

  1. 2. I think the city is just a type of project that starts out with ambitious designs, much like many other, more normal cities, and then eventually becomes just like every other city on the map.
    3. I think that they also were seeking it.
    4. Possibly because it's a failure. The entire city was designed as a museum for this one artifact, but that's missing, so there's really nothing left to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 4. But that's the problem I've got with it. For me, it's not a "museum" (I guess I don't know to what extent your applying the word), but a trap, and a failed trap at that. But I've been in cities so convoluted (in Italy) that it's impossible not to get lost, but they're beautiful! Ugly cities, to me, are places without character and nooks and crannies and history and without stories--industrial cities, really. Doesn't this place have all those?

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