A Walk with Ruskin and Benjamin (or How to Feel Nostalgia for What We Have Not Lived)

Abstract

Set against the backdrop of the planned city of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil), born at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this text has an essayistic and experimental tone, moving between theoretical-historical and poetic-fictional spheres with the aim of reconstructing, through imagination, a hybrid atmosphere that blends past and present in order to raise concerns about the relationship between memory, heritage, and affect. To this end, it creates an imaginary dialogue between John Ruskin and Walter Benjamin to construct a critical, memorial, and affective landscape, through a blending of time frames and the senses they still evoke. Drawing on some of their seminal writings, Ruskin and Benjamin are summoned here not only to acquaint us with a heritage, but also to leave us a promise of transforming the gaze toward the past into a reflection on the future of cities.