“A Vast Neoliberal Zion” is a guided walking tour of Hudson Yards, the largest real estate development in the history of the United States. As a whole, Hudson Yards is a pacifying spectacle, an embodiment of the excesses of the global 0.1%, and a monument to absurd legal structures that are endemic to late capitalism. Hudson Yards offers a physical location to be witness to neoliberalism’s myriad contradictions and problems. The guided walking tour was inspired by philosopher/artist Guy Debord’s drifts, walks that were interventions of built environments that reflected the conditions of late capitalism.
In the center of Hudson Yards is Thomas Heatherwick’s “The Vessel”, a 200 million dollar climbable tourist attraction. The thematic spine of the tour is a point of view climb up the Vessel with frequent discursive asides that explore the absurd legal framework that the whole neighborhood is built on. Initial funding for Hudson Yards was gathered by exploiting a gerrymandered map, and cynically combining it with a shady visa for cash program. In effect, a program designed to pump investment cash into needy neighborhoods in New York City was instead used to build condominiums for oligarchs. This was a multi billion dollar swindle that happened in plain sight. The legal absurdity extends into the personal; in an overreaching waiver that all visitors must sign, any images produced of the structure are the property of The Vessel. What’s more, Hudson Yards is a privately owned public space, and in signs posted on the perimeter, the area security is able to circumvent the first amendment of the constitution, which is supposed to guarantee the right to free expression. Oh well, no one ever reads through these things before signing them anyway.
Staring directly at such hypocrisy is infuriating, but the power brokers of the world are ready for our anger. But are they ready for our poetry? There is kind of a perverse poetry to be found in such twisted legalese. At every moment, the tour considers the metaphoric dimension of design choices, legal language, and mapping. Hudson Yards is the manifestation of authoritarian capitalism. It is an ouroboros where we are caught in the stomach of an infinite hypocrisy that swallows itself whole only to build bigger, steal more, and write more contracts. This level of depravity requires a kind of manic abstraction to meet it on its own terms. “A Vast Neoliberal Zion” is an experience of entering into the belly of this snake, and finding a way out.