• Tuesday 22nd November
• 6.00 PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre
• Avery Hill, Mansion

This 50’s parody of ergonomic, techno futurism was made shortly after LeCorbusier promoted the notion of architecture being a machine to live in. It presents a world in which bodies have been tailored to fit objects, rather than vice versa, and thereby become objects themselves. The characters are fragmented and atomised into compositional ingredients then carefully slotted into plastic artificiality. This is a prophetic world prior to Big Brother which has completely structured itself around an omniscient camera, with the result that this fragmentation remains irreversible, and collectivity doesn’t consist of the human body so much as inanimate or mechanical objects. As a result, a great deal of the humour stems from the disparity between functional and compositional imperatives, such as the steel-and-glass efficiency of office, street and school are offset by the circuitousness that validates domestic architecture. Here the population had been streamlined; merely to be forced through a series of ridiculous diversions and tributaries. All of which is explicated by Hulot’s own wandering gait. “Mon Oncle” predicted our present times of circuitous bureaucracy and mechanical priorities. It suggests how we must today more than ever be at peace with our machines and not let our technology seduce us, or bully us either.