Included in the photos, check out Buzludzha, the abandoned communist monument in Bulgaria’s Balkan mountains, which still draws up to 50,000 Bulgarian Socialists for a yearly pilgrimage. Human Planet’s Timothy Allen visited the structure in the snow and took some haunting photos. You will think you’ve stepped into a Bond film and one of Blofeld’s modernist lairs, but with somewhat Eastern Orthodox tile frescos of Lenin and Marx gazing out at you, abandoned to time, the elements and to nature.
For some reason, I keep being reminded of this poem by William Carlos Williams, that modernist and imagist:
Addition: As the reader points out, politically, Williams ended up a few ticks Left of ‘liberal.’
Addition: Yes, reader, that could mean ‘socialist.’ I’m working towards a theme so grand, even I don’t know it yet.
Pastoral
When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation
A structure in the desert…not even a city Update On LACMA, Michael Heizer And The ‘Levitated Mass’-Modern Art And The Public;
A Short Culture Wars Essay-Two Links On Detroit & ‘Ruin Porn’
See Also: They designed a city in the heart of Brazil that really doesn’t work for people: Brasilia: A Planned City