The gyratory system in many ways encapsulates the admirable spirit of Modernism. It is after all a by product of automobility. This series of functional concrete structures is at once monstrous and monolithic, and yet from the god-like perspective of the Moderns it is an intricate, delicate structure which hums with life, ambition and progress. It is simultaneously a beautiful and magnificent feat of engineering but also a nightmarish relic of an era which forgot the contingency of history and promised immunity from the future.
The gyratory system is a contrivance of the Moderns. One component of the Grand Project, it facilitates the structural coupling of what the Moderns have delimited as the liberal political and economic systems. The binary codes citizen/alien and creditor/debtor define liberalisms Modern individual: the Moderns now monopolise claims to universality, they invent and canvass a unilinear teleology, and consign opposition to the poles of relativism or despotism. In admiration of the Moderns we say “look at what they achieved…look at the splendour of the gyratory system”.
So where is the material expression of the Modern’s structural coupling?…of course, the automobile! In the automobile the liberated individual’s illusions of his own agency find their ultimate expression behind the steering wheel. Space and time, the only two obstacles to his transcendental aspirations, are now firmly under his control as he twitches and winks towards possibility. As he tries to comprehend this monumental redefinition of himself, the Modern imagines the automobile as his prosthetic, an extension which transforms his latent desire into immanent potentiality.
So, to the gyratory system. A structure? A feature? Maybe. An agent?! The automobile’s claims to ubiquity and necessity demanded the gyratory system. The gyratory system is a slave to the agents of automobility, it obeys the Moderns but it simultaneously ridicules their zeal and ambition. This is the gyratory system’s Unenlightenment; its challenge to the zeitgeist of its own creation. And what a marvel of self-awareness the gyratory system is.
The gyratory system’s critique is the Modern’s own self-realisation that he has built a monstrosity, but one which is beautifully progressive and utilitarian. “It was engineered in fine spirit! We should celebrate its Utility and learn from it”….this is “concrète” par excellence!
