De dialektiek van het experiment

In De dialektiek van het experiment (The Dialectic of the Experiment) Constant looks back at the preceding period in his career and the radical transformation that took place in his artistic development during the 1950s. He declares that while he can visualize ‘unitary urbanism’, the present state of society is fundamentally different from the societal situation essential to the realization of such a revolutionary programme. Consequently, unitary urbanism remains limited to isolated experiments and a programme. The creative process is shifting from reality to a conception of reality. This 1965 text foreshadows the end of the New Babylon project, a process that begins in 1969 and becomes definitive in 1974 with a retrospective exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Hague.

English translation: The Dialectics of Experiment in New Babylon Informatief nr. 4, 1966