[keywords]

efficiency,shrinking of the earth, reasonalbe absurdity, non functioning function

[background]

Discovering the imbedded and latetent logic of the functional processes of warfare and destruction is at the heart of an investigation into the 'Surrationalist' tendencies imbedded within wartime appropriation of means of production.War’s passion is efficiency[1], that operation by which all things move invariably towards their most effective state of being. From the means of production to the movement of troops to the procedures of daily life in the army all of these things undergo the pressures of efficacy. This is not true in all respects, as often times the rules end up hindering the movement towards efficiency and “miniaturization” thus creating a SNAFU. What is interesting here is the implementation, by those engaged in warfare, of Surrationalism; “the self conscious examination of the rational… its goal being the liberation of rationality from the encrusted habits of convention.” [2] The search for better and big and more efficient means of destruction is unending and is ultimately what drives a movement towards the ultra functional and eventually the absurd. It is in this field, the place of blurring between the fundamentally reasonable and the obtusely absurd that warfare has a life of its own.

[references]

1. Paul Virilio, Bunker Archeology (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1975): 18-19.

2. Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David Lewis, "Situation Normal...," Pamphlet Architecture 21 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998): 9..

Peter Barton, The Battle Fields of the First World War (London: Constable and Robinson Ltd, 2005):

barriers | landscapes of war | postcard | tourisms | reasonable war | american myth

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01. image of bullet proof observation post designed to look like a tree. Rational progams pushed to the limits of the "normal"

01. image of Sky Hook, a CIA program to air lift soldiers and opperatives out of the jungles of Vietnam with out landing the plan. A balloon is inflated and then caught in the hooks of plane thus jerking the subject off the ground and imediatly into the air. Absurd Rationality.

03. drawins of Sky Hook Plane