Saturday, January 20, 2018

On Gyms

"The gym is the interior space that compensates for the disappearance of outside and a stopgap measure in the erosion of bodies.  The gym is a factory for the production of muscles or of fitness, and most of them look like factories: the stark industrial space, the gleam of metal machines, the isolated figures each absorbed in his or her own repetitive task ... The industrial revolution institutionalized and fragmented labor; the gym is now doing the same thing, often in the same place, for leisure."

"The treadmill (allows) travel to be measured entirely by time, bodily exertion and mechanical motion.  Space - as landscape, terrain, spectacle, experience - has vanished."

                                                                       Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust  (2000)

No comments: