Le Corbusier's scar / Boris Groys' time

This image accompanies Boris Groys' brilliant article 'Comrades of Time' from e-flux Journal #11.

In it Le Corbusier is painting designer/architect Eileen Gray's famous E-1027 house, which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.

In his article, Groys writes about 'the narrow gate of the here-and-now', which we must 'lower our expectations of the future' and 'abandon some of the dear traditions of the past' in order to pass through. He goes on to suggest 'the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable.'

I wholly agree with Groys and also like his theory of 'excessive time' a great deal: 'The loss of the infinite historical perspective generates the phenomenon of unproductive, wasted time. However, one can also approach this wasted time more positively, as excessive time - as time that attests to our life as pure being-in-time, beyond its value within the framework of modern economic and political projections.' He later paraphrases Georges Bataille's solution to the unproductive waste of time, or repetitive excess of it, as 'the only possibility of escape from the modern ideology of progress.'

Down with the ideology (read: dogma) of supposed progress. Bring on limitless, excessive time, bring on pure (even self-ish) being-in-time. Look at Le Corbusier. Look at him.