Fragments of the European City

by Stephen Barber

Overview

This book explores the visual transformation of the contemporary European city, focusing on the most emblematic and visibly wounded of all European cities – Berlin.

Taking as its subject the "intricately assembled, relentlessly disassembling metropolitan screen", it charts the virulent implosions of culture, the distortions and violence that give city-living its fractured and hallucinatory quality.

Provocatively written as a series of inter-locking poetic fragments, the text evokes the formation of metropolitan "identity" as it ricochets between the physical surface of the city and the vulnerable but manipulating consciousness of city dwellers.

Barber has discovered a powerful new vocabulary – a vocabulary charged with the visual and sonic impact of the cinema. Like the city, the text pulsates, creatively chaotic, raw and exhilarating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780948462665
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	08/01/1997
Series:	Topographics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Stephen Barber traveled through the cities of Eastern Europe while writing this book between 1990 and 1995. His book represents a reinvention of 'travel writing' and will be of vital interest to students of European history, cinema and media.