Greetings and welcome to
Nicholas Jakari’s: UniCity Set
This may be a little different to anything of mine that you have read before and is associated with the setting for my next story which takes place in Post-Apocalypse Jozi… beyond Edge city.Some inside some outside the Dome.
The SET of pieces that follow this opening exposition, which I call the UniCity Set, represent a Poet outsider’s Interpretation of speeches made, by random engrossing speakers, at a launch of a new book by a City University’s publishing arm. The publication concerned: “Changing Space, Changing City”*.
The event dealt with questions relevant to the development of our specific city over the next century and was principally concerned with matters relevant to the [so-called] “Built Environment”: iow, everything that is built in some way.
I was there to acquire a discounted launch copy, for reasons unassociated with the mechanics of the Built Environment, albeit it is an industry with which I have some small measure of familiarity. Nonetheless the ideas being presented at the launch were certainly not part of my standard fare, and took some gulping down.
Many parts of the work I sought deal with issues arising from: a need by the State Authority responsible for municipal/local development [In this case the Greater Johannesburg Authority] to maintain control over output and growth, versus the barely controllable nature of Private, Capitalist style market based expansion.
It [the Big J, UniCity] is exploding in ways that make large-scale community transportation problematic, and road infrastructure immensely complex.
An interesting side show for a non specialist was that issues outside the built environment’s brief received no mention: nor were ever raised. So for instance the question of whether an exploding out type UniCity, such as Jozi is, matters to a “connected” society in the “connected” age; was never discussed.
Similarly the idea that a city reflects its ‘times’ was also never mentioned. For instance ancient cities invariably grew up around a central focal point to which everyone could relate: often a harbour, or a religious facility, Later arrivals on the Cityscape centered around railway stations while the liberated era, represented by private motorized transport, facilitates development of a city’s extensions around roads; and roads, as we all know, go pretty well everywhere.
So in short where does a City go that simply follows electric impulse: i.e. ‘The Konekted’ [sic] Environment.
Then also the internationally standard mandatory sub-text is that somehow Private Capital rudely ignores the Poor and aggrieved: This is understandable since the ‘poor and aggrieved’ have limited purchasing power and Private capital’s function is to generate a positive return, greater than the cost of servicing the money that may be invested.
Additionally Public Capital does not have a particularly solid track record, in dealing with problems besetting the poor and aggrieved, which does tend to aggravate the core disequilibrium between affluent and non-affluent residents.
Thus in short: the almost old fashioned, perhaps naive impulse to Socialist inspired Kollektivism via “Ze detailed Central Planning” vision versus pragmatic market based individualized singularity, is at the core of the debate over the City’s propulsion. Which way Jozi?
I enjoyed the speakers, notwithstanding that they maintained their distance from the above-mentioned topics; they were two from two of the most prestigious of our Universities; and one from the City authority. All eminent persons, with their different perspectives and I learned many things and had some ‘aha!’ moment’s, so thank you all to they and the organizers and team for a congenial evening, notwithstanding [again] that I did feel like someone invited to a great feast at which the hors d oeuvres were presented as the main dish. I am equally sure that this was not intended, so for a poet’s reasons they [all who may possibly have been quoted] shall remain anonymous
For offshore readers the City that is the subject of the evening launch is Johannesburg, the legendary “City of Gold” aka “The Big J”, JoBurg, and most recently, post ‘Liberation’, “Jozi”.
So the evening remained resolutely, [and to my poet’s ear so routinely assailed with modernity], oddly, with ‘Johannesburg’: Provincial Capital, Provincial town or Evolving UniCity; in the region i call Mzansi, and specifically in the Urban State i call ZONE ONE.
In other words is it a city or is it more likely to swallow the rest and become the State/Province that I call ZONE ONE?
Disclaimer: This document contains many words and phrases taken verbatim from the speakers [as they spoke] that may [or may not] have been rearranged modified altered and otherwise dekonstrukted and then rekonstrukted in order for the work to emerge and the poet’s interpretation of what was said to be discovered. I make no claim to be quoting anything anybody said even if some of the stuff is in quotes. I do that because i know i never thought that particular thought; but have no idea who did. I suspect they all said most of what is here. So if some things seem contextually different to how they were imagined, blame my muse and me.
I am by inclination a Kolektor of fine words, and particularly enjoy capturing them as they fly past and interrogating their unfolding. And Wednesday 4th March, at Shikisha Café, Miriam Makeba Street, Newtown[a most congenial and certainly obliging place of nutritional pleasure], where the University of the Witwatersrand Publishing facility hosted their superb “Changing Space, Changing City” book launch, was something of a Sardine run.
Viva la Big J UniCity
15 March 2015
The Big J UniCity Set
1. An Exploding Edge City
And then we threw in a cliché
Or two, as we are wont to do,
Relating to “a couple
Of old [otherwise unac
Knowledged]
Chestnuts”:
And we ask…
Antithetical questions re
Garding existence
And bio
Logical stability.
So: Are we different?
The speaker demands.
What would the outcome have been:
Sans ’48:
Sans ’94…?
[New question]
“Is Jozi … [Speaker doesn’t actually say that,
You understand?
The kolonial name version is used,
representing
A past:
Not yet
Perhaps
Exploding Jo…ha nes…burg: Is it un
Consciously performed, In
Tensionally, auto
nomically in un
awareness? Or is it a
crafty subtle
plot
to link the name
to a theme]
Return;
“is Jo-hannes- burg
an exemplar of Pa
Rochial urbanity?”… What?
[Forgetting that I am an outsider
Eavesdropping on
Insiders at play]
What is this oddly loose-
Limbed
Empty phrase: presaging
Much
Signifying little…
What is “Parochial Urbanity?” Rhetorically
Questioning…
What is the nature of parochial
urban change?
In a world of extreme
XTREME
Political Change …
[specifically referring to
POLITICAL change, seems
Inherently
Parochial? Was this irony?
Change is presently
Overwhelming mere politics
Isn’t it…? Isn’t that what the
Theme
Of the
Whole Launch
Evening is/was? An ex
Ploding eclectic insight into an
Eminent Evolving Urban
Conurbation?].
PERHAPS.
Do singular, albeit
Pivotal
Turning points
Really matter…
Again: rhetorically.
Really?
Does anything really change?
Speaker
Concludes.
Yes
Or
Was
IT
All
A foregone conclusion…
Aah
Are we hovering here on
Applied String
Theory involving
‘Somefellow’s’ Kat’s
Meditation
On practical realities? Surely
Some conclusions can be
foregone.
And what was
IT?
That nugatory word
Hidden, tucked: within the core
Dynamic of our evolving
Singularity:
thus…
Of history stop:
alt click re
Wind…
Herstory… ditto …
ITSTORY!
!NiK[15]
2.“Let us start a conversation”…
A motif
“We must have a
Conversation”, Speaker [S] said.
Empirically
Demanding that we
Needed
To have an
Engagement based on mutual
Affirmation:
That the road to
Redemption
Should be hard wrought;
While that, which adds value
Should be mortgaged.
We must have this scheduled
Engagement – S demanded
Eyes seeking the grasp
Of equanimity.
S then broke off and moved with socialized grace
To the banal end
Of all our random
Conversations
Grasping for that brief instant
At the fragrant odour
Of Kollektive passion, instantly for
Gotten through
Interlinking
Albeit rarely
Interactive
Corridors of freedom
And
Privilege transformed
And then
Transported.
!NiK[15]
3. What ‘They’ said. Does edge go UniC’
Or can it be slapped down?
At the heart of a newish old
Exploding out beyond Edge City… ‘Jozi’
… “The future arrives while you
Are so busy with the past.” S says
“That hardly anyone
Notices the Edge, so
Out of
Sync
With the heart”
That IT [presumably the
Heart but
Maybe the edge]
Sinks
In discordant time to
The rhythm of
Change.
And thus on a given
Moment in our
Newtown, Downtown between old
Facades and Nou
Veau arrivistes a sturdy
Book printed yesterday is
Served up
To pick over the City’s
Past
And embrace the
Certainties
Of Future Un certain in this
Grande gathering
Where those who
Profess
To
Know – the built environment –
Compare
Urban decay with
Urban renewal and simultaneous resolution
To a path that may be somewhere
Else
Entirely or
Altogether.
“We need to have a
Conversation
About the Privatisation
Of the
Municipal State”. S demanded,
Before
Moving
On
Immediately
To the “diversified com
Plexity that structures Urban ag
Glomeration and
Growth.
And as i thought, “this
Is where IT is:
While not knowing what IT was, S
Denounced
The concept, the idea, the dis
Membered
Thought.
“No.” he demurred?
IT is not that
At
All
Our City is, rather,
Urban dis
Agglomeration where estranged
Persons find themselves allied
With each other as scep
Tical
Colleagues in a message that pot
Tage
Disdains.
Thus it was the “Jozi to
The future” theme that documents
A nuanced tone to “mediate and simplify”
The cacophonic chiaroscuric
Confluence: where
State meets with Civil interests to mass
Age their mutual
Visuali
Zations of available
Remem
bered data and crashes into
Private Capital’s statistical
Evaluation of the
Self
Same,
Albeit as randomly remembered,
Data
Regarding an antithetical existence
Wedded to Bio
Logical stability.
And in conclusion: “How can we not ensure
That outcomes continually
Contradict covert intention
As Greenfield
Battles Brownfield”: that No
Exponential
Extensions
Of existence
Rush to over
Come
The order from dis
Order with better
More un
Fathomable
Disorder.
!NiK[15]
4.The Close
And then at the end
The space was
Engulfed
With the roaring thud
Of tangentially un
Structured
Conver
sations
As huddled strangers shared
Their many various
Opinions and
OPINions and
OPINIONSSSSSS for that
Brief
Enlightened instant
Together: that
Moment
Before each rushes
Off to their
Personally stratified,
Uniquely
Singular,
Oblivions
Done: Then do as we
Do. Commit to a national
Pastime:
Exit room. Press delete
Alt
Delete
Click.
!NiK[15]
5.Afterwards
Then filled with patterned
Visions of a
Dry Plain
NewSpeakly termed “Water
Fall
Estate”
And spontaneous tales
Of a city’s uniquely
Splendid songbird
Serenades
I drove down ‘loadshed’* Jeppe
Street… long after dark….
A blindness
Darkened street: through
The vomit
Of Urban Withdrawal.
No “muttering retreat” Thomas, but
Screaming
Symphonies of solitude: dark
Passages of remnant
Nihilistic debris.
No Nimbus signifying liberation
According to fervour
But rather: anxiety with anguish
Etched
In agonizing empathies with
Vandalized dis
Empathy
Past rows of
Shrouded bodies huddled in ranks.
Sliding shadows etched against
The headlights stretch piteously
For alms;
Some
Sucking ecstasy from plastic airbags
Filled with
Grope and
Horror.
Dead against hope
Passionate with
Inexpectancy
For yet another struggle to an
Intensified dawn
With its
Inexorable
Intolerable
Inevitable
Indomitable search for relative sustenance
Bereft of any purpose
Beyond
Survival.
!NiK[15]
*Loadshed: Electricity turned off by the supplier due to limited capacity.