Latest / The Nation Podcasts / The Obama Center as a Tomb of Neoliberalism w/ Kate Wagner / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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The Obama Center as a Tomb of Neoliberalism w/ Kate Wagner / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Grasci, I will hook of you to the type of monsters for a test.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by the nation magazine.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm G.T.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: here.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a writer for the magazine.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: my guest today is also a writer for the magazine.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's Kate Wagner.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's the architect critic for the magazine and she recently wrote a very lengthy piece, quite hilarious of the Obama Center in Chicago, which is where she's recording in right now.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, welcome to the program.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll link to the piece that I would really encourage people to read out.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one thing I learned, I had it that's if we clear my mind, which is that this is the Obama Center in Chicago that you're writing about.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not a present to live or even in the sense of, you know, the sort of present to live or ease of Nixon or LVJ.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: which as you say are, you know, spots of spectacle and commemoration, but actually do as he holds papers.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this maybe gets at the sort of, like, emptiness of us.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's something we're going to probably see more and more.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we just already talk of a Donald Trump, I guess, center, which is going to be a hotel in Florida.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, like, is the era of sort of present to archives and libraries,
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: over and are these things, just this sort of weird survival, it's from an earlier era, like as if dinosaurs still walk the earth.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is that presidential libraries have always been a kind of strange phenomenon.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gets a really kind of mid-century idea that has been, you know, there are now, like, presidential libraries from far in the past in of different presidencies.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That, of course, like we're an originally erected during those times.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this sort of love of the museum piece, I think, is a huge part of it.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that the kind of broader picture here is that I think the library as an institution is kind of dead.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not necessarily the libraries that we still have, but like the idea of the library as a philanthropic goal that, like in this, in the way that it was for like the Carnegie S. for example, in the 19th century, like mass literacy is a concept.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: really kind of struggling, we can say.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it makes a lot of sense for an anage that doesn't see the library as a public good for like the larger public figures to really be asking questions as to why would I have one?
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Trump obviously doesn't read, like, I don't think we need to go into into great detail there.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that, you know, once you start to choose the spectacle over the ostensible learning undercurrent of a presidential library, that the first step was has already been taken.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if he wants to make it a hotel, like, okay, you know, that's, that is actually legible as part of his legacy.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is who he is.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's a hell who tell die.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So is it really so dishonest?
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, so I think it's kind of, it's kind of fascinating to me.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what do these institutions even mean anymore in an age where no one reads?
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like a, it's kind of a sad question.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, and it's a sort of sad question, but there's I guess this need that presidents have to commemorate themselves and Obama seems to have taken quite a role in the building of this sort of monument.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe like to just give listeners a sense of what this is all about, we can sort of situate it.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, uh, first has a place and then, uh, as a space.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So so where exactly is it in, uh, Chicago and, and why is these sort of, um, uh, of the space that it's occupying a subject of controversy?
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the Obama presidential center, I won't say library, I'm better than that, is located in Jackson Park, which is a very famous park on the south side of Chicago.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is a Frederick law on Stit Park, at least I think so.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to double check that, but I'm free to use.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you had that in your piece, so I'm sure that's been fact checked.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is, okay, good, good.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so one of the great civic monuments in Chicago from the era of the world's fair, and so this was a controversial site to build because it's obviously monumental part by a very famous landscape architects, but it's also a part that was public, if it's a public park that was accessible to residents on the south side of Chicago.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if there's a long learning lawsuit that I think ended only like last year this year trying to get stop the Obama presidential center from privatizing the park essentially.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And technically they lease the land from the city but essentially in ways that any way that matters it's a private park now.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was a really, really, really contentious battle.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, the center as like a place of tourism has caused rents to skyrocket.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think somewhere in the piece it talks about like a partnership that the OPC and Airbnb have for Southside residents to teach them how to better monetize their homes and something like 60% of those people.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: who did who opened their houses as an Airbnb help them keep them in their apartment.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay, you know, it's just a little on the nose, you know, with the whole deal of ruralism thing.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and politically it was, yeah, it's, if you go to the space, you know, they say that it's like open to the public and in many ways it is like a very successful publicly interfacing private space.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The playground is nice, the grounds are nice, you can walk through them, but the idea that you can just go out there and chill and have a barbecue and the way you could when it was Jackson Park is totally ludicrous.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, as you say, the idea of a private public partnership that is also engaged in sort of gentrification, displacement of people driving our brands, I mean, like, this is something like maybe a critic of Obama might say is his legacy in Monument.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very curious to see that Obama and his supporters are enacting one of the
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The other sort of anachronistic element which I think your piece really brings out very well is both the architectural firm and the sort of type of this type of public private project, which as you say is now becoming less sort of common.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you want to talk a little bit about the sort of anachronistic features of the library.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I called the building the last major building of the 2010s, which I think is true.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a period of architecture, the 2000s and 2010s were really defined by large scale, very expensive civic projects.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Projects that were private, but that they were generally, like civically minded, like concert halls, galleries, art museums, museums.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: presidential libraries, that kind of thing.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this type of making architecture is not really feasible anymore in the way that it was back then.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: One land has become too expensive isn't it one and second of all.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The nature of architectural production has changed as, you know, the economy is bad, right, you know, people are less interested in spending, like some of these buildings cost like 700 million dollars, right, and there is that money is not there, and it's never coming back.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we had like a zero interest rate phenomenon, and I think in architecture as well.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's interesting about the OPC is that the architects involved, Gleumchenchen, are these very famous New York-based architects.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're famous for this very nuanced, very beautiful and simple architecture that involves a lot of dramatic lighting and a lot of really intricate and textural stonework.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so like many architects who are working at this scale and they work usually at the small and medium scale, they'll do small museums, like they did the Barnes Foundation and Philadelphia is one.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, and they did the interior renovations to David Gaffron Hall.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for a firm of that type where you're using expensive materials and you're using very specific pet architectural palette to scale up to the size of something like the museum part of the Obama presidential center.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we see this a lot with different architects where you have a medium size firm that's very skilled and when it comes down to building like a giant project they kind of crack a little bit.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that that is a little bit what happened with the tower the rest of the complex the.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have like the forum which is a you know like a multi purpose space and that branch of the library those are actually really nice buildings.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like my review gets picked on for hating so much, but I say multiple times in there that those are really beautifully done buildings.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's because it's within the range of like the architects competency.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you have the tower, which is something completely different, which I'm sure will get to in a second.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, I want to get to the tower because it does seem like that was the sort of big mistake.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, it does seem like also a necessary mistake like in the sense of, you know, you have this public park and if you put in the sort of human scale buildings that have function, then that's still in keeping with the neighborhood and the function.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, why is this sort of like the more monumental
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think this is an, the tower is interesting because it is the part that Obama almost certainly had a lot of involvement in as a guy he wanted to be an architect but you know Obama like if he didn't end up being you know president or whatever and it's like that's relatable to me like so did I you know and I didn't do it.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: but it is supposed to be like emblematic of forehands coming together, which is something I think that the architects are just saying.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think when they gave their presentation, it became clear that Obama just selected one of many shapes that they were offering them.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like a lot of the outside is very busy, you know, if it was just like a monolith without all of the detail like without the, you know, letters, without it, then it would be actually a very impressive piece of
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of what is on the outside seems to be sort of added as, you know, wanted as desired by Obama.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, there's ribbing on the outside.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's this like terrible stained glass window that I really find atrocious that looks kind of like Hello fellow kids graffiti, which I feel like is maybe uncharitable, but it's really bad.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The lettering on the on the
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: is I think quite nice actually, even though you can't read it from the ground at all, it's completely a ledger ball.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when you are on the inside of the building, it's very is a very impressive effect.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then of course inside the obamolisk is like this crazy museum to obama, which I'm just going to sort of run through.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, please do.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of it's a very confusing
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: there's like an entrance and you go through a security.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like nine or post nine eleven.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you go through a bright-lit room.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's like a security screening.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you enter into the lobby and the work is like, hope is there, but it's in ransom letter font.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then it's hard to find actually how you get into the building because it turns out it's just there's like a multi story lobby that doesn't make any sense and then you have to go to an escalator that's flat against the wall and is just like a giant it is very cramped and narrow and a little confining because the architects want it to open up into the space.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, like the first floor is like the floor where it pretends to be a museum.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you're greeted by these displays that have these things from like civil rights, these items from civil rights, from like women's movement, from the labor movement.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they're all kind of neatly displayed.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've copied their declaration of independence.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go, it's like all in a neat little part.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go to the next room.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then it was like Barack Obama was born.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like,
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: really is kind of a is shocking how much it just every all of that it's just like shoved as compressed as possible just to get to Obama and then it's just like Obama there's a lot of text to read which I find like kind of challenging
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything is a lot of video Obama talking and you have lots of interactive Obama activities.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are some things though in that first floor that I was at Obama's inauguration in 2009.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a very moving experience for me.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was 14 years old.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: and like going back to some of that, I was like that reminds me of like the optimism of that time and it is very touching to see all the campaign buttons and the merch and the things people did and how they were coming together to make that happen.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then like you go up to the second
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, that's he sees like a built for a disappointment, but but I mean as you describe me, it does seem like a sort of Monument in nostalgia, which is a point that you make in your piece, but perhaps it is sort of like an empty nostalgia And I thought there's a very good specialized word that you used in the piece if I'm pronouncing it right a Sennel Tap
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: a monument to a body that's very deltware.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like can you describe that sort of like that phenomena?
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think that that's, you get set the heart of what's going on here.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think as a scene at tap is an interesting term in architecture because it is kind of it's always been an architectural thought experiment.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, like how would you create like a like a like a grave essentially a monument to something that you have.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no body.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, if you're talking about something like neoliberalism whether physically obviously is no body.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then it becomes sort of even more interesting, interesting question like where is where is the body.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it feels, the whole thing did feel a little bit funerary to me, like I said before, here's all the things that I did and then you know, here's how I achieved like liberal world peace, you know, here's, we had gay people in the army, we had all of these things and it's kind of jarring to see because now all of those things are being taken away because we don't actually have the protections in the place to keep that from happening.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so there is something that's like very unsettling about it to be gloating about these achievements, which a lot of the more real achievements.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the fact that we had gay rights was a big achievement.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking as a gay person, however, I feel like just having it in this monumental sort of personalized way, it just makes it feel fragile somehow.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes it feel like that's everything is over.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a very end of history type of feeling.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's like here's like this era that's done and nothing bad ever happened after that.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's such a curious way for the Obama century frame things, because like on all these friends, they're at the house window regression.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you mentioned, gays in the military, well, you know, like Kegseth is actively preaching trans people from the military, as well as supporting the advancement of black service people and demo service people.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And on the issue,
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: of like women's rights that Roe v. Wade has been overturned the civil rights in general.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's basically gutted the civil rights act.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So does he like is there like any awareness in this kind of like museum space?
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like is there ongoing battles or that there has been challenges?
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like is there any like even nod to something like resistance to liberalism?
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean let
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's a reflection of Obama's air, like a extreme ability to corrupt left movements, honestly, like there's a bit up in the upper floor about like how occupied Wall Street made their voices heard.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, brother, who were they protesting?
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: like someone else like and there's things of that nature and so that's really how everything is presented from the like bad civil rights lessons that are in there like do you support democracy like poll or whatever for children it's all just like you know how would you make your voice heard that's how it's like presented actually it's not how would you fight for a
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like how, you know, would you, whatever, you know, anything more radical than voting or like making your voice heard.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what's that even mean making your voice heard anymore?
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like yelling on Twitter?
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, that's just part of the whole thing.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that there again there just is no future there is no like you know you would think that like he would put in something like okay now this museum is completed it's 2020 six you know we got a fight back because i started constructing this thing in 2017 when Trump was president
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like it's been Trump for the entire time the whole thing has been an existence and you would just think that they would be like okay now it's time to fight back against like fascism or whatever and it just assumes that that never happened and that like whatever happens after that is just going to go back to Obama land and I find that like such a fascinating choice and so detached from reality.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I am, that's a very depressing kind of lesson to draw.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Although, I think it does speak to a certain sort of politics.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you do see these sort of politicians like Osof and Buddha Jazz who basically take up the sort of most superficial aspect of Obama, let's sort of his speech of fighting and his sort of like even his sort of rhetorical
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: and so they just need to be a kind of like, you know, can we take this band on the road again?
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, if we're thinking about like in terms of like who this Obama-centric could appeal for, like maybe the project is to generate this sort of Pete Buddha judges and John Ossops of the future?
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah did you see the part in my piece where they were like talking about the obama foundation to begin with and they was like such a funny thing it's like we're we're cultivating leaders all over the world and they were just listening off like we have people working in I don't know the work bank we have people working in the mayor of London city we have people working we even have a woman who is like in the army and coast of like who's we have no the best one was where they said we have like Morgan Stanley bakers making change in their
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh my god, I was so glad I came to the press preview because that is just that a chef's kiss and so like yeah, the answer is is that reproduces neoliberalism.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes Obama's
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right, I think that's why I raised this question because I think that that particular passage in your piece really does highlight what the possible purposes of this whole thing is.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does seem to be a place where future bombas will be incubated.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... and uh... uh... uh... uh... i mean maybe what's even a necronistic is i'm not quite sure that like you know whatever happens politically like i don't think more brak obamas are going to be like uh... either the solution or even what people want yeah and definitely i mean Morgan Stanley bankers will live forever
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right, yeah.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, although that does seem like the constituency.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, covered, I think some of the riches in your piece, but I'll encourage listeners to read it.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Among other things, it is actually like also extremely funny.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to like mention that, but thank you for being on the program.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you for having me.