Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Political Economy of Isolation

Jessica Fenlon serves up the apocalypse stemming from the political geography of industrialization. Braddock's disconnectivity, the legacy of Carnegie's brilliant strategy to keep labor captive, is expressed in the haunting landscape Ms. Fenlon paints. Digesting the images, I still see a frontier landscape where the crippling isolation offers a perverse opportunity.

Destruction breeds creation.

This is the Rust Belt ethos that has captured my imagination. But I'm more drawn to what seems to be an unsolvable problem, urban decay juxtaposed with the splendors of globalization. For every Oakland, must there be a Braddock in Pittsburgh?

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