...despite its exemplary urban structure, designed according
to a strict concept of welfare, the crime figures increased constantly.
The authorities, unable to understand the reasons for this phenomenon,
felt that they had to take harsh steps. The town’s prison was already
overcrowded and its structures were unsatisfactory to accept the new
waves of inmates forecast. The prison hill seemed to become the only
cancerous place in the town. Its metastases threatened the vision of
a collectivism that up to now was so united, destroyed the belief in
a diligently created urban organism.
Already total groups of the population showed the interest to isolate
themselves, they fled from the inner city which were in the neighbourhood
of the prison and once were considered the most secure for its vicinity
to this majestic monument of law and order. Victims of a common and widespread
sentiment of thread (which was hitherto without motivation) the first inhabitants
started moving towards the town’s outskirts and at the same time were
more and more suspicious towards their neighbours.
A NEW PRISON WAS CONSTRUCTED
It was an identical copy of the old one; at present the authorities did
not possess a different model. No one, except the architect, knew that the
identical reproductions in fibreglass of the facades of the eighteenth century
and the surrounding fences were just scenery. Like sets in high-class western
films they made believe that there existed an internal disciplinary organisation,
which in reality not existed. As it was a high security prison, the new
complex was off limits to outside visitors, and this helped to keep its
secret. The whole landscape if Prison Hill, beyond the buildings was reproduced.
Not on an island, as would have been logical, but in a different central
part of the town. The islands were as a matter of fact the preferred destinations
of the fugitive inhabitants, whereas on the new hill (the eighth of the
town) dominated the symbol /the fetish of law and order regained in the
neuralgic heart of the community. The hill, totally fenced and isolated,
could, however, been observed only from a certain distance.
Chapter 1: The Dream
Life in town went on like every day, without great disturbance. The dim winter
light determined the hours of activity and life: shopping at the market, playing
at school, visits to friends. For some time, however, as if the inhabitants were
living under some strange burden: a dark and silent presence that made everyone
move with more care, made everyone stifle the voice and made everyone walk slowly.
Everybody knew that some time ago the council of the wise men had commissioned
the architect to take care of the old prison, but for months no one knew what
would happen.
In the narrowest streets, in the walls of the house and in the darkness in bed
the inhabitants imagined and dreamed of the future project, interpreting their
wishes and expressing their fears.
There were those, perhaps because they had lived there, that the likelihood of
the fibreglass model that was kept in town, that only the harmonious eighteenth
century facades would be maintained and that the terrifying prison machinery
hiding behind it would be destroyed.
There were those who dreamed, and those were the rich and romantic, that the
building would be left as is, abandoned, prey of the wild nature and the time,
symbol of past and irretrievable times.
Those more solitary and introvert, however, thought to use the huge building
as a support, to append their own house distant from the other, more distant
and higher, where they could be isolated and could observe, like modern hermits.
There were those more realistic and pragmatic ones, who thought that they could
use the outer shell and fill the inside with new functions, without real using
the sad existing spaces, old fashioned and uncomfortable, but only the large
walls and pillars as support.
There were those who wanted to cancel any internal trace, make use of the beautiful
facades and the healthy structures to transform this blemish into a new place.
The more wise, however, knowing the town’s necessity to put this enormous
space to a new use and not wanting to wipe out the memories of this place, thought
of a solution which would put a great part of the building to a new use according
to necessity and the state of the art and to preserve one part as a memorial
that could be observed from a distance and on which one would be able to reflect
the past.
It was the architect himself, being, among other things, an expert in
programmatic coercion methods, to suggest the panacea for the inhabitants
suffering from the syndrome of insecurity and the give them back the
faith in the Town.
In a vivid reunion of the council of the wise men, during which one
of the older representatives had to be sedated and tied to his seat,
he declared that the obsolete programme of the old prison caused the
real problem. The old architectural structure could work perfectly,
but periods of imprisonment would have to be drastically reduced by
introducing a directed and efficient programme of reintegration into
society. Having browsed some of Foucault’s
writings he recalled that while in a mass society the control through force
might work, which in turn would create mass, the new individualistic society
could only be controlled by seduction techniques. With a refined semantic
outburst – as it can only be created by an architect – he
proposed to get away from the mass-age by returning to massage.
Chapter 2: The Beauty Farm
THE CELLS
The dimensions of the prison cells are considerably smaller as those
of the prison before the restructuring. They are really isolation cells.
The space taken away from the physical mobility is in reality occupied by
a diffuse and advanced technological infrastructure, which is inserted entirely
into the separating walls between the cells. All the technological apparatus
is invisible but its effects are tangible. Even though the vicinity of inmates
has not changed, the effect of privacy is surprising. The sounds from the
cell next door cannot be heard, the vibrations cannot be felt, odours not
be smelt. But the functions of the new capsules are not limited to this,
a whole system of ultra violet lights, different temperatures, intoxicating
scents is administered to the inmates who are free to move between the cells
looking for new psycho sensuous sensations The specialised prison personnel
completes the treatment by human contact.
THE SWIMMING POOL
Having been used to the vast connecting corridors between the prison
departments, the inmates limited to the smaller walking spaces surrounding
the swimming pool, which are crowded by the swimmers lying down to dry
themselves after the bath. As they consider them – without any motive – insecure,
they frequently prefer to unite forces in a swimming contest or in simple
horseplay in the pool even if it is only to move from one cell to another.
While swimming it is inevitable that the inmates meet in a lighter way.
The shock created by these encounters counter effects the stiffness produces
inside the cells.
THE ENCLOSURE
The function of the vast enclosing wall of he ex prison is more illusionary
than concrete. It produces a landscape that provides the inmate the illusion
that there is some kind of "outside". At the same time this landscape
also becomes the unique imagination of the outside shared by the inmates.
Its role is, among other things, the creation of the appropriate distance
between those inside and those outside. The enclosure includes the park.
The park has a function similar to the yard of the old prison, but instead
of having to limit themselves to the hour of fresh air a day, they may
walk in the park whenever they want. By the fact that they find themselves
in that kind of limbo, by some inmates is interpreted as a premium, by
others as a punishment, the humour oscillates constantly between those
two poles. This frustration suffices to prevent them from escaping, which
is demonstrated by the fact that there is no system of control. This
condition creates the effect that the new prisoners are no longer classified
as inmates but as entertained.
Chapter 3: A Dialogue
" – You are healed; are healthy, finally purified, a different
man, definitely accepted. You are ready to start a new life – blah,
blah, blah, I can't take it."
"He doesn't do anything but his job. What do you want, that he prescribes
a new cure?"
"Don't know I did not feel well. I never really needed a cure, I only
wished I could live in a different place for some time."
"Your are going to get out of here. Do you think you're ready?"
"The personal trainer told me to put on this, but only for the first
days."
"What's this? Seems to be a helmet to adapt oneself to the atmosphere
of another planet."
"In a certain sense it is. It is part of the new outfit. It is an environmental
transformer: it shall protect my senses of the excessive reality I shall
encounter in the near future."
"You don't seem to be over-enthusiastic."
"To tell the truth, I have been so well here that I'm not sure I want
to go away."
"I think you'll miss the massages after swimming."
"Don't be silly. It's the continuation of the beneficial programmes
I shall miss the most: it organized my day. Sauna and Turkish bath, ozone
therapy and solar shower, acupuncture and aromatherapy. It made me feel
happy."
"I don't think you are the only one to be seduced by experiencing the
cure. It's comforting, totalising, absolutely individual and at the same
time uniting, private, but collective. Somme affectionate guests of the
centre, once they are outside, created a committee to propose the construction
of new housing in the free spaces near the buildings of the centre. Seems
they live in a dependency of the rehabilitation machinery of the cure
and that they project on its circumference walls the wish of a form of housing
able to re-create the well being experienced in the beauty farm. The
wall, which for generations of inmates represented the right distance to be kept
from the society, which at the same time reproduced an identical landscape,
the only possible for the inmates, now attracts us relentlessly."
"Right."
"….."
"Yesterday, in the changing rooms at the swimming pool, someone came
along to suggest I buy a capsule in the new settlements. Might have been
an ex-inmate but I have never seen him before. And it's now nearly a year
that I am here…"
"And, would you do it?
"What?"
"Would you live in a capsule?"
"No. At least not right now." I think I'm perfectly able to renounce
for some days the vicinity of the Beauty Farm."
"You should not be too sure of that. The beauty machinery has worked
on you for a long time, slowly, day for day. Up to now you only went
out to the garden and, as all of us, only hoped to be able to go back."
"That is – at least – a strange experience."
"I met the architect who designed it: he spent some time in the central
block. He told me that when he began designing the external spaces he
became quite obsessed with the idea of the capsule and its elaboration."
"That explains the existence of the bubbles. Seems to be the garden
of desires… Yes, each bubble includes one, but none is allowed to
enter: the only thing you are allowed to do is to continue desiring.
To always be confronted with your desires is one of the most severe means
of education you may undergo."
"The architect explained to me that the idea of introducing the alterità which
nature represents inside the walls was a way to make the individuals
undergoing the cure accept the disadvantages caused by the monastic daily life
in Beauty Farm."
"But the therapeutic isolation inside the capsules has itself become
a wish and – hardly outside – each of us wants to go back inside. … The
architect will have tried it himself."
"Really, the only goal of the desire was the only one not shown in
the bubbles: it was the voluntary imprisonment. If they would take over
the ideas of this Beauty Farm, the totalitarian systems of the future
would be servile and obliging, but it is not for that that the locks will be
less tight.”
“There is no hope in your words.”
“No… its only that finally we will understand how suffocating
it is having become so dedicated to moderation and mediocrity. We are
middle-of-the-road: the sub-urbanism of the soul has destroyed our planet, like
the plague. We will have to recover, but in order to be able to do so we need
the cure: beauty is the only possible salvation. And further, those who are in
power are fully aware of that.”
Chapter 4: The Beauty Power
Someone, in the beginning not many, panicked when a slight thickening
of the waist became visible and the suntan vanished.
There was something that discomposed rapidly: it was Beauty Power. A
power acquired in the production of the new super heroes: the hyper-accepted,
the beautiful and attractive, and the absolutely ever-present.
The extreme hedonism transformed rapidly into a form of self-abusive
narcissism that suddenly blocked any potential action: The architect
of the new society’s plan seemed to have been perfectly successful.
However, the seductive control planned in such way in no time showed
an anomaly which proved to show a boomerang effect which would have absolutely
to be remedied: Beauty Power created addiction, and like each form of addiction
lead to hysteric phenomena in times of abstinence.
Thus those who had got out, those who had become liked and accepted,
suffered from convulsive psychosomatic spasms with diffuse muscular pains,
could do nothing but constructing a community of desperate isolated persons,
nomads of the precarious form of the structures they began to live in, but
inevitably and tragically sedentary, attracted by the one and only magnet
able to orient the sense of their lives; in no other part of the known world
there was a structure able to regenerate for the Beauty Power.
Those poor souls began to colonise the vicinity of Trittico Beauty Farm
{also known as TBF] a sort of Bermuda triangle able to swallow the human
willpower by rendering happy and beautiful.
For this reason, in an effort to confront an ever-increasing depression,
the camp was constructed in a makeshift and spontaneous way, reproducing
literally the housing model of the Beauty Farm: each individual tried to
reproduce the state of isolation and happiness that within had been a daily
experience, living in the welfare-capsules, sharing the radiation of positive
energies, which was guaranteed by the profound superficiality of life. A
continuous cruise vacation.
In no time the mass creation of the minimal housing units along the impenetrable
walls of the Beauty Farm generated a collapse of the infrastructure of
the whole settlement on the town’s 7th hill.
The authorities were obliged to develop a strategy to keep out the majority
of the ex-guests: the enclosure, the symbol of exclusion and separation,
could do nothing but keep out the rehabilitated, for a clear form of adherence
to social conventions that the prison could no longer maintain.
The Special Corps of the Beauty Farm’s technicians, the problem solvers,
in order to avoid a revolt of the incredibly beautiful, put in operation
a metamorphosis of the idea of the enclosure: a technical solution able
to transform it into a life stream. The new infrastructure permitted
via a simple plug-in to feed the capsules on the hill with energy and to
feed new hopes for a second, third or even a fourth salvation to the new
pilgrims. The steady influx of the ex-inmates, the movement towards a hypnotic
place, towards prison hill created a state of fibrillation amongst the ignorant
and honest inhabitants of the perfect town. At first diffident, one of
their typical attitudes whenever confronted with something new, then curious
and interested in the phenomenon, but treating it with a certain aloofness;
finally shocked by the revelation, illuminated by a ray of ultra violet
light, and moved by blind faith in Beauty Power, which they had never
experienced, they reconsidered their human condition reflected in the new
faith.
Finnish sauna and Thai massage became the new aces that designed the
icons of the new religion, the Trittico Beauty Farm, up on the hill, the
union, which everybody began to aspire.
Chapter 5: The Beauty Park
The Beauty Park became for a short time one of the places where the most
interesting people of the town came together to spend some time inside the
sauna cells or to swim in the thermal waters of the corridor swimming pools
in order to loose some weight even during the cold and dark winter months,
intellectuals, artists, entrepreneurs, politicians and ordinary people queued
in front of the entrances. After a short while the demands arrived in great
numbers.
During the fiercest electoral campaign ever remembered in the town even
the President began to regularly show up in an effort to loose some of the
fat cellulite cells accumulated over the years.
The results achieved permitted him to be re-elected and the Beauty Farm
became the new model for society.
Physical improvement and frequenting beautiful people soon became a vital
necessity.
The demands for bookings increased and added up to seemingly never-ending
waiting lists. Very soon the hill became the meeting point. The inhabitants
began to frequent the hill and practicing the most desperate physical activities.
Physical discipline and silence dominated the crowded place and soon created
the necessity for a new model for communal life.
Thus an effort was made to extend the spatial discipline that ruled the
interior of the Beauty Farm to the surrounding areas. The new social class
in power, also known as the Lifting Society financed the realisation of
a project that extended the norms of beauty to the whole of the hill: the
Beauty Park.
The Beauty Park thus became the new spatial manifesto of the new reigning
class that gradually became generally accepted through means of application
of power of beauty and physical hygiene.
The model that was applied in those years has now been developed; it
has been accepted in all highly developed states. The Lifting Society is
the dominating class of the planet and they meet in those new centres of
incorporation.
Everything that once was a town and all the waste that was accumulated
is now used to exclude the ugly and non-accepted persons, in the extreme
effort to make them self-educate themselves and thus re-create the process
that paved the way for the first Beauty Park.
In those years, when everything started, a well-known philosopher prophetically
called this process of segregation of the old town Uglytopia.
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