Joerg Gleiter, Waseda University

Right from its first appearance the concept of the world exhibitions was far from being limited to the mere celebration of the newly emerging industries. It was Walter Benjamin (Passagen-Werk) who noticed that beginning with the London exhibition in 1851 the first world exhibitions were feverishly trying to recreate a museum like atmosphere mixing the latest machine production with the most beautiful work of contemporary and ancient classical arts. The world exhibition were aiming at legitimizing the latest in machine production by directly linking it to the European enlightenment an its humanist tradition. As such in the world exhibition openly emerged the dilemma of early modernism torn between a deeply rooted “nostalgia for antiquity! And a fanatic “belief in the machine age” (Horst Bredekamp). However, with the growing underprivileged urban proletariat and the deep cuts into the traditional societal order rather soon the severe shortcomings of the relentless industrialization efforts were hardly anymore deniable.

By 1900 the world exhibitions had turned into showcases of the ambivalences and antinomies of modernity, most visible in its programmatic differentiation into different theme parks for educational tasks , for leisure, for the representational needs of the emerging nation states and their overseas colonial ambitions. With the zoo like presentation of exotic people, the rebuilding of local ethnographic villages (which in real life were about to be extinguished by the fast technological development), the competition of the national pavilions and the presentation of the nationalized industries the formula of “nostalgia for antiquity and belief in the machine age” was replaced by the formula of “education and leisure” (Martin Wörner). Towards the end of the century the world exhibitions functioned increasingly as major events for the compensation of an distraction from the “pains of modernization” (Ken’ichi Mishima), thereby turning the newly emerging masses into objects for easy ideological manipulation by the political and industrial powers.

By focusing on the interaction between the various societal forces, i.e., the sociological, aesthetic, architectural and political implications the seminar will first study the 19th century world exhibitions as one of the most complex cultural artifacts of early modernism and its emerging culture industry. In the second part of the seminar Disneyland (US, Japan and Paris) will be analyzed as one of the most outstanding phenomena of 29th century postwar capitalism. Finally the seminar will turn to the present day Japanese theme park, like Huis-ten-Bosche or Little World. They will be analyzed in their postmodern ideology i.e. as the most advanced articulations of the dominant cultural logic of late capitalism (Fredric Jameson) in a globalized world.

Required Reading
A reader containing the reading material required will be made available to the students.

Additional Reading
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (1993), The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception from: Dialects of Enlightenment, New York 1993
(http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmF93/culture_ind.txt)
Fredric Jameson (1991), Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Last Capitalism
(www.marxist.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm)
Rem Koolhaas (1997) Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
Jörg H. Gleiter (1003), Exoticism Reversed – Japanese Theme Parks

Biography
Diploma in Architecture (Technische Universität Berlin); Master of Science (Comumbia University, New York); architect in USA, Italy and Germany; Ph.D. in Architecture Theory and Aesthetics (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar); Fellow in residence at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche (Weimar); he taught at Bauhaus-Univeristät Weimar, Universität Karlsruhe, State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Waseda-Bauhaus School in Saga; since 2003 Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Architecture at the G-International Studio of Waseda University in Tokyo. Author of The Return of the Repressed – Towards a Critical Theory of Ornament in Architectural Modernism (in German, Weimar 2003) and Venice Is Not Fallen From Heaven (in German, Tübingen 1988); Co-editor (with Gerhard Schweppenhäuser) of the book series Philosophische Diskurse (presently 5 volumes, Weimar 1999-2002); Editor of Dis-Oriented: Japan, the West and The Concept of Aestheticentrism (in German, Weimar 1998). Other publications include Exoticism Reversed – On Japanese Theme Parks (2003); Weltausstellungen – Die Erfindung der Architektur als Massenmedium (2002); Vom speechact zum sketchact – Architektur als Technik des Körpers (2002) „...Bis zum Umgekehrten hindurch...“ – Nietzsche unde die Physiologie der Architektur (2001); Japanese Theme parks (2000). Forthcoming Nietzsche: Nihilism, Décadence and the Physiology of Architecture.