FRESH PERSPECTIVES

THESE BLOOKS ARE ABOUT ASPECTS OF PARIS THAT ARE  SKIPPED AND AN ECONOMIC APPROACH TO THE PAST THAT IS IGNORED

Why? Consider the ads that hover over great cities:

          The crossroads at the entry to southern Manhattan / Elisabeth Rawson

 The Châtelet crossroad at the center of Paris.

The people they show are cut off from an outside world that blank space represents. They have no connection with others and their happiness comes exclusively from buying the brand. No tangible reason for doing so is given and the message may not even say what product to buy. The images promote a credulity that accepts nonsense and follows a command. The omissions these pages show contradict that mindset. 

Deletion now attacks knowledge of the past itself, by gradually eliminating its physical aspects. Ads overwhelm facades... 

The 19th-century opera house, one of the most important buildings of its time.

And the giant, statue-encircled void on the side of the opera house, which reveals its real purpose, is camouflaged. Marie-Antoinette's prison cell is replaced by a tablet. The spectacular vestige of the rampart in which the medieval Louvre was ensconced is now the almost invisible backdrop of a pretentious installation. 

Globalized capitalism blows away whatever obstructs its profit, even the enfeebled past that distracts from lobotomy.

Harald Wolff

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The future is terrifying, but there is hope. A mural that recalls the struggle for the eight-hour day adorns the last stop of the métro line that links the Paris sports stadium with the southern airport: At every match, thousands of people pass a story of successful resistance to power. It was made in 2024.

At the same time demonstrations against billionaires are spreading, for reasons that are local but connected. The participation of usually a-political people is a sign of their depth: I used to see only a few dozen Americans at the (rare) Democrat-organized demonstrations in Paris, yet almost a thousand residents and visitors gathered at symbolic place de la Bastille for the "No Kings" rally of June 2025:

 

In revealing a manipulation of which we are rarely conscious, these pages are part of that movement. 

Harald Wolff

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End of the blooks.

I'd like to know what you think of them.

If you find their ideas useful

please pass them on.

Harald Wolff

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