Robin Monotti: Is There A Warning Message Behind The Virus?
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 568 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2021
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Italian architect, lecturer, film producer, and man of many hats Robin Monotti discusses the biopolitics and biosecurity implications of COVID19 and The Great Reset, something which has been pointed out by a number of thinkers, including Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Monotti refers to Umberto Eco’s “Ur-Fascism” (Eternal Fascism) on how fascism or totalitarianism is not a thing of the past, but an evil that is present in every generation and which must be identified, recognized, and fought back against. He examines whether there are such underlying themes and dangers hidden within the Davos crowd’s “Great Reset”.
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Show Notes
Giorgio Agamben https://www.quodlibet.it/catalogo/autore/272/giorgio-agamben
Umberto Eco Makes a List of 14 Common Features of Fascism https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Websites
Website http://www.robinmonotti.com
No Place Without Spirit https://nulluslocussinegenio.com
Twitter https://www.twitter.com/robinmonotti
Telegram https://t.me/robinmg
Gab https://gab.com/robinmonotti
About Robin Monotti
Robin Monotti Graziadei is a London based architect (Yacht House, Tbilisi Spiral Tower), designer (Watering Holes), architectural, urban, film & cultural theorist (writings available on this site and in international journals listed below) and commentator, published translator (Curzio Malaparte, Woman Like Me), former University lecturer (London Metropolitan University & University of Greenwich) and current film producer (The Book of Vision, produced with Terrence Malick) who was born in Rome, where he began his career by working with Professor Vittorio De Feo on projects which included the new Italian Embassy in Berlin. Work that Robin completed for De Feo is now held in the collection of the MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, some of it having already been restored. Robin obtained a distinction in the MA in Histories and Theories of Architecture from the Architectural Association in London where he studied the relationship of space to psychoanalysis with Mark Cousins, space and politics with Paul Hirst, and space and culture with Robert Maxwell, former Dean at Princeton. He worked in Milan with Gino Valle and Ennio Brion, client of Carlo Scarpa’s Brion cemetery, on the Nuovo Portello urban regeneration plan.
Robin taught a postgraduate Diploma Unit with Rik Nys from David Chipperfield Architects at London Metropolitan University between 2001-2007, and within this period also taught a Degree Unit at Greenwich University with Thomas Goodey and Ioana Marinescu. From 2016 to 2019 he acted as external examiner to the new Moscow School of Architecture (MARCH), on behalf of London Metropolitan University.
In 2006 thanks to a grant from the London Consortium doctoral program in Cultural Studies Robin wrote an introduction to and published the first and only English translation of Curzio Malaparte’s book Woman Like Me (Donna Come Me) (Troubador Italian Studies). Robin undertook this translation because he believes that to truly understand Casa Malaparte in Capri you have to read Malaparte, and especially this book as it was written as the house was being built.
From 2007 Robin also runs his architectural office Robin Monotti Architects. RMA won first prize in the International Drinking Fountain Design Competition 2010 held by the Royal Parks Foundation and the RIBA, and First Prize in the Interior of the Year Award in Ukraine 2013. RMA also won a 5 Star European Property Award 2013-14.
In 2016 Robin opened a film production company called Luminous Arts Productions and produced a feature film on the doctor-patient relationship in the history of medicine called The Book of Vision, executively produced by Terrence Malick directed by Carlo Hintermann, starring Charles Dance, Lotte Verbeek and Sverrir Gudnason. The film opened the International Critics Week of the Venice Film Festival of 2020 and the Warsaw International Film Festival 2020 and is sold by Celluloid Dreams of Paris.
Robin lectures on cultural sustainability at the International Society of Biourbanism summer school and beyond and is also a contributor to the Journal of Biourbanism, AD Architectural Design, Architecture Today, and Domus.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Geopolitics and Empire is joined by Robin Monotti, who was a world traveling architect, designer, film and cultural theorist and commentator, published translator, former university lecturer and current film producer. |
| 0:15.1 | It's quite a mouthful. |
| 0:16.5 | I somehow discovered him through Twitter where he has a large following and has been writing |
| 0:21.8 | prolifically on the absolute craziness of whatever you want to call COVID-19, which has, |
| 0:28.2 | in my opinion, caused untold harm. You know, the government policies have caused untold harm |
| 0:33.5 | through all of these lockdowns, quarantines, forced face masks, the destruction of national |
| 0:38.2 | economies and so much more, which we'll get into. So welcome to the podcast, Robin. How are you |
| 0:43.4 | doing so far in 2021? Thanks. Well, I think maybe in 2021, I feel personally less alone because when I started without really any intellectual breaks saying what I thought about the situation, it was all the way back in March 2020 on, as you know, on Twitter. |
| 1:09.7 | I think at the time of the people that I was in contact with, there would have been more. |
| 1:14.9 | But at the time maybe I could count in one hand at the very beginning, the people who were already sensing and speaking out publicly that were in my network, |
| 1:25.1 | that there was something that wasn't quite right about how this |
| 1:30.6 | situation was being approached. In my case, I think when the principle of the idea of the |
| 1:39.0 | lockdown came out, immediately I started looking at the idea of putting a human being at home. |
| 1:47.6 | My sort of training is an architect, so the idea of home is something that we have been |
| 1:53.1 | working on throughout our education. What does home mean? And what does it mean to be in the |
| 1:59.2 | public sphere, in the public dimension, in nature, |
| 2:02.3 | something which is becoming more and more relevant? And so all of these things together, |
| 2:07.9 | looking at them, it made, it begged a question, what do you do to a human being when you make |
| 2:12.9 | them stay at home in some ways, in many cases, against their will. |
| 2:18.2 | And it became obvious that you're doing the last thing that you should do, which is weak |
| 2:21.9 | in their immune system, partially because you're reducing their exposure to vitamin D from |
| 2:27.5 | the sun if you're in the season or latitude or altitude that you can get it from the sun. |
... |
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