Imagine Moskau: “Iron in clouds”: A zone of intensity

The picture “Iron in clouds” (above) is a photomontage of an idea by El Lissitzky. It has become known for its structurally daring and futuristic aesthetics. El Lissitzky began the project in 1925. Eight identical horizontal skyscrapers were planned to be centrally located in Moscow. Each skyscraper would consist of a flat three-story, 180-meter-wide L-shaped slab raised 50 meters above the street level. Even if the building concept did not manage to get off the drawing board, it would be wrong to dismiss it. Its bold design in form of atmospheric drawings, photomontage and models offer inspiration and something to marvel at.

It is told that Kazimir Malevich developed Suprematism, a new, non-objective form of painting. If so, El Lissitzky made these ideas three-dimensional, not only in picture books for children and posters but also in architecture. Lissitzky was one of the leading figures in the Russian avant-garde. His work has not influenced the Soviet Bauhaus movement but also Walter Benjamin who took up his idea of the committed gaze in the essay Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1935). Drawing from the concept of urban intermedia, stressing the idea of the performative embodied gaze we could describe Claud Iron's special charm as a special form of aura, inviting the observer into a “zone of intensity” (Führer & Kraus 106).

Aura is an ambiguous concept. The concept has been linked to a discussion about copy versus original. Such a discussion is based on an ideal of translation where one and the same content can take on new expressions without changing. The term takes on a slightly different meaning when Walter Benjamin uses the aura to describe the thing's ability to 'look back' (den Blick aufzuschlagen). This performative understanding of aura goes beyond a purely aesthetic model stressing our embodied entanglement in the things around us.

Benjamin, Walter (1935/1980) “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1935)”. Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften. Band I, Werkausgabe Band 2, Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980, S. 431–469.
Führer, Heidrun & Anna Kraus (2019) “Leaving the white cube of Ekphrasis : Gordon Matta-Clark’s conical intersection” Lars Elleström oc Niklas Salmose. Transmediations: Communication Across Media Borders - Communication Across Media Borders, Routledge, 97-117