Until recently, I had a show-off joke. When they asked me about my profession, I would pick one of my jobs and say "architecture critic."
After these words there was no end to the laughter ("buahaha, you criticize houses, and what do they say about it?", "he, he, he, critic of what?"). I might as well be a critic of inanimate nature, because, as I once wrote, Poles treat architecture as something that came into being on its own; like mountains, rivers and valleys. Ot, the work of chance and phenomena on which we have little or no influence. Another thing is that often our space looks like this. I laughed, too, but out of embarrassment: to this day I find the phrase architecture critic brassy. Unfortunately, other terms are lacking, "interpreter" or "analyst" would sound better, but an analyst could be market, marketing or finance. Unlike architecture, these are fields that are serious and grounded in hard reality, as evidenced, for example, by speculative bubbles and playing the stock market.
But with the laughs we're done. Show-off humor rarely works. It has reached some people as such, what types like me and dozens of other individuals in the country do. Well, and now I am stirring up concern. "What's it like to do architecture criticism today?" they asked me recently on the radio. They were clearly worried. And only my modest excess weight meant that they didn't ask if I was starving. "And better, and worse," I replied brilliantly to the radio question.
"Better," because they laugh less often at architectural criticism and there is a steady audience interested in space and architecture. The kind who want not only cute information about pretty buildings and places (a lot of that on social media), but also babbling analysis, being for and even against and other aspects that get in the way of a happy, uninformed life. "Better" also because nowadays, thanks to the Internet, one has access to as many photos and videos about architecture as the soul desires.
So why do I grumble about "worse"? Because most souls don't crave it. The need for deeper analysis is diminishing. Fewer and fewer people are used to reading or watching them. A few sentences, a picture and - that's enough. Thus, the chances are poor that the group of interested people will be fed by more enthusiasts. Research shows clearly: the 20+ generation does not bother with details and texts with ambiguous overtones. Well, and they rarely verify information. Artificial intelligence can't be wrong, after all.
My rather old hopes that architectural criticism treated as a joke would finally find a serious, permanent place in the popular opinion weeklies and electronic media have also been dashed. I had hoped that since literary, film, theater and music criticism had taken root in Poland, architectural criticism would in time join them. In general, I believed in the development of criticism as such, in the fashion for meaningful analysis of various phenomena and its expansion into new territories. I even dreamed of reviews of masses ("the priest's movements remarkably sprightly, he hits almost all the notes in an intriguing interpretation of "Winner of Hell." Organist sober").
Meanwhile, meatloaf. It's there, the old critics have joined the architectural one. They are weakening, coughing tuberculously, fading away and, I learn, few miss them. The head of one of the cultural portals tells me that people don't want to split a hair even in two, they don't miss analysis, doubt, background and panorama placement and other distractions. They are only interested in so-called recommendations: to go or not to go, to spend money on a book, theater or movie, or, however, on a, excuse me, unique culinary experience. Of course, after the recommendation of one of the numerous programs like "while eating about food and about the participants of the program" (unfortunately, the latter cannot be devoured). Anyway, "yes" or "no" is already too much. Recommendations are basically limited to one directive: go! read! watch! When the show is a dud, silence falls. At best, we get a slimy discussion. The base in it is the information that the premiere took place, and on it are built digressions about the author of the play or the social phenomenon that the play touches. Nothing about the staging. Slonimski would not make a living writing today, although in his own way he was a forerunner of critical reviews that do not exist. The shortest was "The first one came out." But a chasm yawns between those two words and the lack of words.
The gulf is also growing, I think, between old-type criticism and new-type criticism - yet to be defined. In the June issue of "Biweekly," Magdalena Ujma, author of the newly published book "On Criticism," spoke animatedly about the crisis of the phenomenon as such. She stressed there that criticism has found itself in a transitional period, which is connected with the fact that "we are observing the end of a certain cultural and civilizational formation, namely the Enlightenment. The problem is that we actually still don't quite know what this postmodernity of ours is supposed to be. [...] Capitalism is morphing into its new, frightening version, that is, cognitive capitalism, surveillance, tracking, monetizing our emotional reactions, ways of life."
Fortunately, capitalism is still a little short of omnipotence based on omniscience, since I still get ads for wedding dresses, cattle slaughtering tools and assault rosaries. In addition, the expansion of capitalism monetizing everything also encourages criticism of architecture. It arrives with a new task, just in time for the transition period: criticizing texts about architecture and investments produced by developers, city press offices and PR departments. Nothing more enjoyable than to take apart these blanket statements and translate them into language consistent with the facts. We'll pull this way for a few more years. Then everyone will ask artificial intelligence about architecture and housing: "Is it possible to live with four people in 8 square meters?". "Yes, it's a bit uncomfortable, but it's possible and an interesting experience, because it refers to the tradition of hutongs. Modern dwellings, by the way, offer more comfort, such as household appliances. If you have a small child, you can put them in the refrigerator for the night and save some space."
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