Banham’s Lesson

In the silent, completely empty desert of contemporary criticism, to see once again the smiling, black and white image of Reyner Banham riding gaily on the saddle of his little folding bicycle over the hard, salty surface of Silurian Lake in California causes confusion. It catches us unawares, particularly if we think that this apparently childish gesture, included in the visual records of his book, Scenes in America Deserta, in 1982, was part of a series of proper critical actions. He needed these Situationist Derives through the boundless American landscape in order to understand the region that was so completely alien to the cultural context of his homeland: “Swooping and sprinting like a skater over the surface of Silurian Lake, I came as near as ever to a whole-body experience equivalent to the visual intoxication of sheer space that one enjoys in America Deserta“