Men and Their Cities examines how life in the contemporary metropolis affects perception, behavior, and mental life, from the effects of density, noise, and speed to the constant stimulation of everyday urban experience. New York City and Vienna were among the first modern metropolises, each with more than two million inhabitants by the eve of the first World War. The project uses the two cities to examine the metropolis as such, taking the Vienna of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities as its historical point of reference. Its premise is that the built environment of the metropolis shapes the psychology of its inhabitants and, in turn, records their collective meanings.

The project treats the city as a symbolic structure as well as a physical one. Drawing on C. G. Jung's approach to archetypal imagery, it reads buildings, streets, and public spaces as expressions of collective meaning. Documentary interviews and footage are combined with fictional scenes, archival material, and analysis of both cities, so that observation and imagination work side by side. The film brings together selected residents of New York City and Vienna with historians, architects, media theorists, economists, and members of the clergy, among others. Each offers a different way of reading the city and its hold on the mind.

OUTPUT

Docu-fiction Film

Installation

Archive

TEAM

Aleksa Milojević (Director/Lead Researcher)

Joseph Reich (Producer)

Matthew Wilde (Producer)

Research initiated in an independent studio with Peter Eisenman, Yale School of Architecture.

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