INSIDE THE BRITISH PAVILION: A CLOCKWORK JERUSALEM SAM JACOB & WOUTER VANSTIPHOUT

摘要

A clockwork jerusalem explores how a specifically British form of modernity emerged from the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. It explores how responses to the industrial city combined with traditions of the romantic, sublime and pastoral to create new visions of British society. These visions looked simultaneously backwards and forwards, combining in one sweep science fiction and historicism to form ideological and aesthetic approaches to the contemporary city. The industrial revolution set in motion waves of rapid change across the physical, social and economic landscapes of Britain. A particularly British response developed in return: the strange text of William Blake's Jerusalem railed against the Satanic mills merging religious visions and paganism into dreams of social reform. Jerusalem, the stirring, unofficial second English national anthem - sung by socialists, suffragettes and patriots alike - can be thought of as the founding text of British modernity. From it springs a narrative of struggle with the forces of modernity that echoes down the centuries.