‘Prince’
Charles might think that, but then he’s a scab.
Join Proles for Modernism in the fight to Save the
Tricorn
The plot against the Tricorn Ley Line Exposed!!
Dr. Mintern discovers a lost way down in Portsmouth!
How the Tricorn keeps the city up and the dangers of removing it!
Against the skyline of 'Portsmouth' ('UK') the Tricorn stands out as an object of realisation in itself. It up-ends the 'denial' that is a function of the architectures of militarism and consumerism that suffocate the city, its civic life. The Tricorn stands for a consciousness of what is, rather than repression in what seems and the memories lost in that.
We heard the Tricorn calling and we came to it. All kinds of people have responded to the pull inside which the Tricorn asserts. We shall complete the Modernist project, in its social aspect, and express the non-identity which we have found within ‘our’ class (that to which we were assigned). No more enclosure. The Tricorn is an open field, an urban commons, which we have walked upon, and imagined. We spit on ‘Prince’ Charles, and on the scum who execute his wishes.
Described by Ian Nairn as "a great belly-laugh of forms" (Observer, 19/2/67), the Tricorn has always functioned as an aspect of the Trickster. It has blocked the progress of enclosure, the extension of ‘the’ market place. It has been perceived as a threat not because it is undecorated, but because it resists enclosure, ‘it’ cannot be controlled. That is what ‘it’ is. It disrupts the city, ideologically as well as visually. It does not woo the shopper, rather it breaks the icon that shopping has become. It shows shopping to be a false therapy. We demand access to our memories. We are the Tricorn, and it is us (neither matter nor spirit). It contradicts the concept and the practice of consumerism. Down with Scenery!
If the Tricorn is destroyed it will be re-placed by an extension of the Cascades shopping centre. From hallowed ground to hall of mirrors. In there we find false images of ourselves, the unredeemed Gorgon, a stoniness. We need what is real in order to come to terms with it, to see the words in things. Join us now.
THE CASCADES IS A VAMPIRE!
WE MUST PULL IT DOWN,
AS AT THE BASTILLE!
"A spectre is haunting Europe...The spectre of the Tricorn - a symbol of demotic resistance - it contradicts the role it was assigned. The concept of ‘functionality’ is negated in it, and the currents of militarism and consumerism that suffocate Portsmouth, its civic life. All the Powers of Olde England have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Bishop and Prince, Hancock and Branson, Taylor Woodrow and English Heritage... Join Proles for Modernism in their heroic defence of this matrix of working class vision!"
Dr. Charles Mintern