Michael Hampton
Beyond Walter Benjamin’s Paris & Kenneth Goldsmith’s New York
Why in our globalised twenty-first century the idea of a world capital city is passé, 2018
This essay examines the hypotheses promoted by Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and Kenneth Goldsmith’s response Capital: New York, capital of the 20th century, that Paris was the unofficial world capital city of the nineteenth century—a mantle inherited by New York—and declares the model unfit for purpose in the twenty-first. Despite an apparent recrudescence of the nation state, the capital city as power base looks increasingly like a tribal relic, as digital technology rewires humans and our shared fate is thrown into stark relief by one ecological disaster after another. With the inexorable spread of the urban, pockets of sustainable business practice and hipster lifestyles suggest global capitalism is mutating from the inside, lured by the promise of an acephalic future.
Michael Hampton has been writing about contemporary visual art for many years, contributing to magazines such as Art Monthly, Frieze, and The White Review. He has written many catalogue essays. His book Unshelfmarked: Reconceiving the artists’ book was published by Uniformbooks in 2015. He has also worked as a Royal Mail sorter, and disabled support worker.
Michael Hampton has been writing about contemporary visual art for many years, contributing to magazines such as Art Monthly, Frieze, and The White Review. He has written many catalogue essays. His book Unshelfmarked: Reconceiving the artists’ book was published by Uniformbooks in 2015. He has also worked as a Royal Mail sorter, and disabled support worker.