Last week, visitors to Palm Springs’ “Modernism Week,” an annual celebration of modern architecture in the desert, could attend a public discussion and find out what Moby has to say about Modernism. As we all know by now, the former Grammy-nominated musician writes a blog on the “strange and beautiful architecture” of Los Angeles ever since he moved from New York to the West Coast, which apparently qualifies him for such a lecture.
“Weird, baffling, and random” are Moby’s three favorite words to describe his observations on LA architecture. The last word in particular is an apt description of his blog posts, often exalting photographs of random LA street corners as works of art. His texts, which read like Facebook status updates and often link to Wikipedia articles, have been talked up by critics as “idiosyncratic design observations in lowercase free verse.”
Yet to seasoned readers it can feel a bit sad or depressing to hear Moby, who himself describes his love for architecture as dilettantish and ill-informed, contemplate modernism from this self-satisfied vantage point. Talk like “the Eames House is filled with crap” is vaguely amusing – but is it at all thought-provoking or educational? Is it a valid argument that he’s rekindling public interest in architecture, or is that be comparable to the argument that “at least the Twilight saga gets kids reading books again?”
One bit of wisdom that the musician-cum-blogger has recently shared is that “you can cut up every space and do whatever you want with it.” This is hardly a surprising declaration coming from him, given that when redesigning his first New York loft apartment he didn’t have to deal with any preservation guidelines that would prevent, say, cutting out 15 skylights from the apartment’s ceiling. Statements like this entirely gloss over the complexity of issues like gentrification, historical preservation, and the expansion of private property in the US; for instance, we can only hope that the privileged Moby won’t approach his re-do of the John Lautner Guesthouse (currently part of his LA property) with the same reckless disregard for history.
It remains perplexing that institutions like the Getty pay attention to Moby’s opinion: the Getty-led initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents, which produces promotional videos featuring celebrities, has chosen the artist to launch its upcoming architecture exhibition Overdrive: LA Constructs the Future, 1940-1990. Lolling on a couch, dressed in his uniform – glasses, hoodie, three-day-stubble – he shares his “valuable” architectural knowledge while sentimental music burbles in the background. “L.A. has the most diverse interesting architecture of any city on a planet. L.A. is beautiful, L.A. is ugly.” Thank you, Moby. In contrast to last year’s architecture ambassador, Ice Cube, Moby clearly lacks professional knowledge...not to mention swagger.
All across Southern California, architecture institutions are panting to get celebrities involved as mediators between the public and architecture professionals. The “Moby Effect” clearly highlights a central dilemma today: the question of how architecture discourse can strike a balance between the didactic and the accessible. Yet surely Moby and his bland, banal commentary is not the answer. If California modernism really needs a populist, it shouldn’t be a musician whose fame has long been passé – though, to the jaded, this could be interpreted as an allegory for the state of modernism itself. Is the field of architecture really so insecure that it needs pop stars – no matter how outmoded and uneducated – to make things seem sexy? Is Moby so insecure about his own music that he needs an arbitrary side-job? If the particular celebrity himself is arbitrary, we might do better with someone from a younger generation.
Maybe it’s time to ask Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus for help.
-- Luise Rellensmann, Los Angeles
