“…At some point it was decided that reality was not the only option: that it was possible, permissible and even desirable to improve on it; that one could substitute a more agreeable product… The replacement of reality with selective fantasy is a phenomenon of that most successful and staggeringly profitable American phenomenon, the reinvention of the environment as themed entertainment” The Unreal America – Architecture and Entertainment, by Ada Louise Huxtable
Federal Series – The Way it never Was – Idyllic bedroom community
- Reproduce a certain era, class – HeyDay of yesterday to Tourism (no preservation, fake , developer) – a selective look at history
- Replica is accepted as genuine and the simulacrum replaces the source
- Illusion fuels the replica of historic nostalgia that caters to tourism that is a major part of our national economy
Boston Post Road Series (Route 1) – Diplomat
- Consumption / Economy – new new new
- Interested in dilapidated – something “real” about them
- Abandonment has its own meaning and message, a direct contact with what once was that disappears with restoration – one of these anomalies with no answer. In the restoration, what you see is what you get and what you get is not what it was.
