Was modernism complicit with colonialism, and did the struggle for decolonisation also entail a targeting of imperial modernist architecture? Mark Crinson visits the exhibition In the Desert of Modernity to see if the charge will stick

i guess the idea that 'negative' social energies can be redirected and inverted into perfecting the reigning negativity is nothing new (ie 'the apprentice' - both the tv series and the picaresque proletarian of yore - is always encouraged to turn class hatred back on his own class in order to ascend from it), but this marks a new level of assimilation even for graffiti.