Can aesthetic reveal truths? Or is it that when we find truth (an instinctual, fleeting feeling of certain ‘rightness’) we also find aesthetic? I think both are possible, but, at this moment, I feel the urge to state that aesthetic can never be intentional. When we create for aesthetic and aesthetic only, it disappears. It disappears and is replaced by some vulgar representation of truth.

Seeing Fred Sandback’s string sculptures at DIA Beacon strikes me as pure aesthetic because they were not created for the sake of aesthetic, but rather out of a desire for truth. They arrive at aesthetic by way of challenging certain truths about space and geometry, by becoming a physical manifestation of a conceptual paradox. What do I mean? Using taut pieces of string, Sandback makes cartesian forms that stretch across entire rooms, down the long, vertical hallways of  DIA, and all the way to the top of the ceiling. Each piece takes up space, but eludes the actual occupying of it, we feel intensely fulfilled looking at these beautiful shapes, objects, but note the irony–essentially, nothing is there.

One can hardly see these pieces; at a distance, our eyes immediately gravitate toward other works, especially Jean-Lun Moulene’s Body (not literally!). Most of the strings are white or off-white; consciously positioned in response to pre-exisiting walls and lighting so that the awareness of these pieces occurs only once we are upon them, when we are close enough to see what is (and what is not) there.

The aesthetic arises from what is and what is not, it is the experience of viewing, even interacting with the work. What makes DIA so pleasing is the space, we can walk 350 degrees around the Serra’s or Beuys’s and yet, the presence of the Institution is strong. Signs that forbid touching are numerous, our encounter with the work thus remains relegated to the visual experience–save for Sandback whose work we can walk through, over, under….we can utilize almost any preposition in relation to his work simply because it’s not really there.

The string becomes the mediator between the space and the human, the string then is intentionality. According to Sandback, his intention was to “assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it.” Insanity right?! The quote, ripped from its context sounds like a defiant architectural student, all theory, no practice. But, see, Sanback actually constructs this abstraction, and by constructing it, the work reveals a certain truth.

But what about aesthetic? It’s there, but is it deliberate? I’m tempted to ask what came first, the concept or vision? I think we usually think of these as sharing the same side of the same coin but I’m tempted to call them different sides of the same coin–a kind of Janus face of artistic creation. Vision is just that, it starts with a visual reference; we may not know yet what it means, but we see it, strong and clear. Concept on the other hand starts with a question, a riddle that must be explored. It takes many tries until we find the right way of representing this concept, and even then we most certainly are left unsatisfied. This, I think, is where aesthetic is the strongest, when the visual is born of a question. I think this is why I feel so close to Sandback’s work, because he started by asking many questions, about space, presence, absence. By answering these questions however, he produces even more, so that we are, like these pieces, always occupying something that can never actually be filled.

Take for example, this dichotomy of 1% and 99%. The logic behind this is inclusion, the argument that pretty much everyone is part of the 99%. But to say that that 1% (often referred to as bankers) is not concerned with the 99% is to simplify something of great complexity. How much funding for NYC arts and cultural organizations come from that 1%? You like the Bang on a Can marathon?  Did you go see The Creators Project this weekend? Stop by the IBM Think exhibition at Lincoln Center? How about Target’s free Fridays at MoMA? I’m told by an elderly man that this is class warfare. Even I, an unabashed Marxist, must muse over this. I’m hearing the word working class a lot, but I’m pretty sure the working class no longer exists. All of us, even that 1% on Wall Street, work for a wage that is determined by market forces. Whether that wage is minimum or maximum it is a wage that is spent on means of consumption (food, clothing,  shelter) of many different scales. In the end, it is a wage that determines and is determined by the forces of production and reproduction.We are blaming individuals as opposed to institutional structures, and even then, I find it problematic to see our institutional structures as entirely negative. Which is why, when I go to hear Brian Holmes speak over by Mark di Suvero’s sculpture I’m both fascinated and disturbed by the whole act of repetition, the communication technique used at the General Assembly meetings.

Because loud-speaker devices cannot be used, in order to be heard throughout the Park, the  human speaker must pause after every sentence or two and let the audience repeat it so that the statement ripples through the crowd. Now here was someone who’s work and ideas I absolutely love, yet, I initially felt uncomfortable engaging in this act of repetition whose origins seemed to be somewhere between the game Telephone and famous 20th century dictators. Isn’t this form of communication just one of the many things we are standing up against? We must think before we repeat, right? Yes and no. Voices are suddenly being heard for the first time. People who wouldn’t usually listen to each other  are. Everyone has a different agenda, but, by repeating what each person says, we are acknowledging the many diverging opinions that make up this space. The General Assembly is a huge component of Zucchoti Park’s democracy. The more General Assemblies you go to, the more you understand and appreciate the structure of these meetings. There’s a vocabulary of hand gestures that allow individuals to silently express themselves, wiggling fingers for agreement, thumbs up and down…confirming that this is an ongoing process of direct democracy.

“We need to find new forms of refusal,” Holmes concludes.

The crowd repeats it, as do I, and then the moderator opens the meeting up to questions. A flabby man with grey sweats and a blue shirt that says Army in white lettering steps over the people sitting, through the people standing, and makes his way next to Holmes. He cups his hands together. “I’m doing a television show and need three volunteers.”

The crowd repeats it. “I’m doing a show and need three volunteers.”

“To be interviewed about Occupy Wall Street.”

“To be interviewed about Occupy Wall Street.”

The phrase barely reaches its second repetition before a sea of hands shoot up. An unsettling wave of skepticism momentarily washes over me as I’m reminded of Zizek’s cautionary note during a different General Assembly, “Don’t fall in love with yourselves, carnivals come cheap.”

I whole-heartily support OWS. I am proud and humbled by this collective movement and yet I cannot align myself with any one statement I hear being made. I am, in fact, so uncertain about the world  that I don’t know how to speak. But my confusion is not entirely a problem for me. As awe-struck as I am by Occupy Wall Street, I’m equally awe-struck by contemporary history, structures of powers and individuals that have brought us to this current state. It is so fascinating I risk treating it as I would a  good novel; anticipation, horror, wonder, and shock, the plot is so engaging I forget I am actually a part of it.

And this brings me back to the present. The physical place that is being occupied. This first thing I’m struck by is the high level of functionality, which seems absolutely organic, something I would have never thought possible. There’s a clothing donation and distribution box, a food area, a sanitation section. I’ve decided this is where I belong, on the logistical side of things, because at the end of the day, what draws me to OWS is it’s ability to create a working space. I’m happy to wash some dishes, to sort trash,  simple tasks that are in themselves reductions and binary but help distract me from the larger binaries that remain unanswered.

A few Saturday’s ago, I went to the Au Bon Pain nearby to get a coffee and, like the other 50 people, to use the bathroom. Since late September there’s been twice the amount of staff at this franchise, but no one is getting time and half for their extra hours. I ask the guy behind the register if it’s been annoying to have so many more clients. He shrugs his shoulders, “Nah, it’s cool.” In the 45 minutes I sit drinking my coffee, the staff empty the bathroom trash three times. As I get up to leave an elderly police officer walks in from outside and gets into the men’s line. His head is down but I can see his face which looks sad, tired or perhaps  just indifferent. He has a frail body, wiry hair, and thick glasses. Looking at him, I’m reminded of my grandfather. He waits behind two high school kids wearing classic Jordans, dark rinse jeans, and white tee shirts hand painted to say Occupy Wall Street. They’re carrying plastic H&M bags and cameras. The kids observe the cop, trying to decide if and how they should react to his presence. But the cop doesn’t even look up. He keeps staring at the ground as he walks into the stall,  confrontation has been avoided, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the end, the boy and his friend seem okay with that.

New forms of refusal means not placing blame in obvious places. This cop, like these teenage boys helps constitute this 99% that everyone is speaking of. Class structure is just one of many structures flourishing under our present socio-economic system. As Karl Polanyi makes clear in The Great Transformation, early capitalist society was not just about an agitated working class. There was also the peasantry. Although both groups were essentially exploited under this new economic system, they were not in solidarity. For some, the question was hours in the work week, for others it was a question of land laws and agrarian tariffs. Occupy Wall Street will continue to be a success so long as it continues this pattern of inclusiveness. This inclusiveness must stretch across many spheres and must ultimately reach even that so called 1%. It’s a system, not people, that needs to be destroyed. For that to occur, 100% must understand why. Trying to include everyone is obviously messy and complex, but not anymore messy than our current system. To keep binaries such as 1% and 99% is just another way of keeping structure of “us” and “them,” structures that will inevitably retain class-based, racially based, occupation-based, gendered, religious sentiments.

One of the greatest critiques of the protest is that there is no clear objective, no singular demand,  and therefore, no way to gauge whether conditions have been satisfied. I completely disagree with this critique. I think to make change we need to get even messier, so that people no longer know who’s part of the 99% and who’s part of the 1%. Hopefully, this will become so confusing that the complexity of our current structure is weakened to the point that the only thing left to do is move forward.

Resist work?! That sounds a bit radical, even for us Marxists who are still preoccupied with questions of labor, production, and reproduction.

But Kingwell says forget exploitation and alienation; let’s even forget capitalism (well, for a minute). Let’s question work and its invisible pervasiveness.

“The values of work are still dominant in far too much of life,” Kingwell writes, “indeed, these values have exercised their own kind of linguistic genius, creating a host of phrases, terms, and labels that bolster, rather than challenge, the dominance of work,”(19).”

The question for Kingwell is not how to achieve labor peace but why and how such a destructive concept of labor has managed to prevail under socialism, democracy, fascism, and every other political ideology. This argument makes sense, maybe even more than most the Neo-Marxists I spend my time reading. To better illustrate his point, Kingwell revisits Bertrand Russell’s brilliantly straightforward essay, “In Praise of Idleness,” a cohesive argument against the development of modern work.

“From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family…” Now however, “Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”

For Russell, modern society is marked by the fact that while new technologies are creating efficiencies that should let us work less, most of us are working more. Furthermore: “It seems more likely that they will find continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity.”

Although Russell’s essay was written in 1932, it doesn’t take rocket science to see the contemporary validity of such a claim. Smaller computers that commute more faster, Wi-Fi on airplanes, overnight shipping…these are all schemes of productivity that allow us to overlook the disturbing reality that it is virtually impossible to be idle.

“Work hard, fly right,”(Continental); “Empowering People,”(Acer); “Long Live Dreams,”(American Express); “Choose Freedom”(Toshiba); “It’s Everywhere You Want to Be,”(Visa), all of these reflect the great achievement of modern work culture and it’s ability to disguise its essential nature.  While this is all quite clever, as Kingwell illustrates, there is a very dark reality behind such ideology.

“The grim ironists of the Third Reich were exceptionally forthright when they fixed the maxim Arbeit macht frei—Work Shall Make You Free—over the gates at Dachau and Aushwitze,”(19).

Reading this, I thought immediately of a quote from Rene Clair’s A Nous La Liberte, a hilarious but dead on representation of the irony of work as embodied in early 20^th century capitalist society.

“Work is mandatory, because work means liberty” says one factory worker to Emile, an ex-convict recently freed from prison. Released in 1931, A Nous shares many similarities with Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness,” the most obvious being the resistance to work. The film opens with men seated along a conveyor belt assembling wooden toy horses. As the camera zooms out, we realize we’re not in a factory, but a prison. We hear:

Liberty is a man’s dues

He enjoys love and skies of blue

But then there are some

Who no worse crimes have done

It’s the sad story we tell

From a prison cell

The story begins here, with a friendship between two inmates, Emile and Louis. One evening, both attempt to escape but the plan is botched. As the prison guards run after the two escapees, Emile tosses the rope to Louis so that he may climb over the last prison wall and onto freedom. Using a combination of wit and resourcefulness, Louis  begins manufacturing phonographs.

Within a short period of time, Louis becomes the world’s largest phonograph manufacturer. He is now part of the industrial elite, participating in the idleness characteristic of the bourgeoisie: dinner parties, drinking, and pointless banter.

Louis’s success is juxtaposed as we cut back to Emile. Finally freed from prison, he heads into a field and falls asleep, only to be woken up by an officer. “Not at work? Don’t you know that….” In a classic move, Clair makes explicit the paradox of modern society by taking us out of the plot and into the French classroom where a professor, writing on the chalkboard, announces to his pupils: “Work is mandatory. Because work means liberty.” The pupils, hunched over at their desks, diligently write and repeat, “Work is mandatory because work means liberty.”We flash forward to the factory workers, hunched over the conveyor belt of gramophones and back to Emile who is walking toward the large, industrial complex by the force of the two officers.

Emile joins the ranks of men waiting to be employed by Louis’s factory. The men march into a room, sit down, and follow the directions of a recorded voice:

Walk in formation

Will give you a job of worth

You who seek an occupation

State your name and date of birth

Leave fingerprint identification

About-face in formation

Emile’s inability to adapt to the pace and efficiency of modern work quickly gets him into trouble. Exasperated with Emile, the factory supervisors bring him to Louis. While Louis doesn’t initially recognize his old friend, Emile’s endearing incomprehension of modern work strikes Louis, who suddenly recognizes what happens to the human spirit when it succumbs to “our character as social animals forever competing for relative advantage,”(Kingwell, 20).

Louis quickly returns to his old, playful demeanor, much to the disgust of his class-hungry girlfriend. She scolds Louis, calling his behavior “inexcusable” after he and Emile ruin a dinner party. His reply is simple: “What do you want? Money, here…you bore me!”

Louis understands that this boredom, while an offshoot of idleness, is not the kind Russell propounds but the kind he is weary of: namely the repetitious passivity of material comfort, the passivity that stupefies the senses and is no more enjoyable than the mechanical repetition associated with the 10-hour factory workday.

A series of events unfold and Louis is forced to abandon the factory, which has recently undergone a new technological marvel. Louis explains to the supervisors and workers:

“In our new plant, men will have no other task other than supervising the machines. The machines will do all the work. They will manufacture our phonographs. ‘Organization and progress,’ that is our motto.’” While that is certainly a motto of modern capitalism, Clair gives it a twist. The speech continues: “While the machine has proven that it can replace the hand of men, it cannot replace his brain.”

Because the factory can do the work of humans, humans are free to be idle. In the final scene we see the workers dancing together at a picnic along the water. Emile and Louis walk down the road, without a penny in their pockets.

When all things around us operate

Friends, let us enjoy our idleness

Beneath sunny skies, what a sweet life

To laze about and sing like this

Let’s indulge in this infinite elation

We can only imagine that Russell’s prophecy of idleness come true: “Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all.”

]]> http://utopiography.com/2011/08/09/work-means-liberity/feed/ 3 morganfrances Film_160w_ANosLiberte 7746__7746_a_nous_la_liberte___a_nous_la_liberte_!_-2 a nous la liberte 7746_a_nous_la_liberte___a_nous_la_liberte_!_-3 10326872_gal 18820304 a-nous http://utopiography.com/2011/07/14/bad-architecture-6/ http://utopiography.com/2011/07/14/bad-architecture-6/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:54:58 +0000 morganfrances http://utopiography.com/?p=988 Read more]]>

Today while doing my transit research for the Miami TriRail System I came across Opa-Locka station. Interesting name, I thought as I zoomed into the station on Google Earth. Checking first for handicap accessible egresseses, I found an escalator concealed within a hideous concrete turret and an outer wall of paste-y, pastel-striped patterns. Meanwhile, the station looked as if it had come straight out of Disney’s Aladdin. What the hell was going on? Did SFRTA (South Florida Regional Transportation Authority) blow their budget trying to recreate the Oriental Express?

I zoomed out only to discover that the station was located at 480 Ali Baba Avenue, not far from Sultan Avenue and Sesame Street. Sure Florida is no stranger to kitsch, but I began to wonder if everyone in public works had missed that whole, you know, post-colonial, Edward Saidian discourse about the danger of exoticizing the East.

Wishing to investigate further, I went to the town of Opa-Locka’s site. Despite a lot of broken links, what I learned is that the town was founded in 1926 by 28 registered voters, one of whom was Glen Curtiss. Curtiss’s vision was to develop the town entirely off Arabian Nights. Apparently, the town boasts the largest collection of Moorish Revival architecture in the Western hemisphere (according to Wikipedia) and many of these buildings are recognized and registered by the state as historic places.

It seems to me there is a correlation between warm weather and fantasy architecture. That and the American tendency to take everything literally. I have no idea who Glen Curtiss was, maybe he spent so much time in the Middle East prior to South Florida that the only way he could possible tolerate this new town was to recreate that far away place. But, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it went. In my mind, Opa-Locka is a good example of how the more we try to recreate what we perceive to be reality, the further away from it we become.

 The contradiction of modernity is a reoccurring theme in the work of Francis Alÿs, who currently has a retrospective at MoMA. While watching his 2006 video, The Politics of Rehearsal, I was reminded why the image of the prostitute is such a fitting representation of modernity. Just as the strip tease is always a rehearsal (for the sexual act is never performed), modernity never actually performed the very image it had rehearsed, the image of a universally free and just society.

The film begins at The Slipper Room in the Lower East Side. Shot in black and white, it opens with a woman practicing operatic scales behind a grand piano before cutting to footage from Washington D.C., January 20^th, 1949. The television presenter announces that “The life of a democracy is about to be renewed.”

In his inaugural address, Truman announces to the American republic: “We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas…Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action against their human oppressors.”

We transition from Truman to the title of the piece and are told that the Politics of Rehearsal should be considered a metaphor of Latin America’s ambiguous affair with Modernity. Forever arousing, and yet, always delaying the moment it will happen.

We return to the Slipper Room, the piano player, the soprano, and soon, a woman in a sequin dress. First we see her foot, enveloped in rocket tall heels. It emerges from the wings, and a leg follows. Without words, just a sway of her hips, she announces her presence. We are captivated. A man’s voice tells us in Spanish:

“I was rethinking the implication of the rehearsal as a comment on modernity. And what becomes immediately obvious is the notion that modernity is pornographic.”

Baudelaire, that great poet of modernity was well-known for his reoccurring image of the prostitute as the juxtaposition between Paris past and present. But it’s Benjamin who uses the work of Baudelaire to make the explicit connection between prostitution, the commodity, and commodity production. In Convolute O of The Arcades Project, Benjamin discusses the prostitute and the gambler in relation to the suspension of time. While the gambler lives in a fantasy of suspended time, the job of the stripper, as entertainer and performer, is to suspend time.

The stripper must arouse and then prolonged that arousal. This is what the spectator wants, for arousal to be maintained throughout the duration of the performance. But, because arousal is suspended, the spectator forgets that the sexual act will never actually be performed. The performance is, therefore, nothing more than a rehearsal of the act.

Modernity is incredibly appealing; it is seductive (even Hegel was enraptured) but, as the narrator warns us in the film, “even as it displays itself, it’s impossible to appropriate it.”

Truman’s speech is a rehearsal for modernity. The words behind his monotone voice arouse and seduce the listener. Like the order in which the stripper removes her clothes, the argument for democracy unfolds sequentially, (“First, we will continue to give unfaltering support to the United Nations…Second, we will continue our programs for world economic recovery…Third, we will strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression…”)

But,  in the decades that followed, the act of democracy was never actually performed; only rehearsed. Like the stripper, the role of the politician and his or her political ideology is to keep us in a constant state of arousal. The final act, the “What we have achieved in liberty, we will surpass in greater liberty,” will never be delivered. To satiate that arousal would put the stripper out of her job, the President out of power.

This means that stripper and the audience are not on the same time. She keeps it moving (she’s clocked in after all) while ensuring it never goes anywhere (stay aroused by my liberty and you will come to surpass it).

The stripper in the video removes one pair of underwear, only to present us with another smaller, sexier pair. Our eyes work hard to imagine what is behind that underwear, but, no matter how hard we try, only she, the performer, can remove them. And, when she finally does, time is up.

The strip tease of democratic fair dealing is a very nice display, but touching is forbidden. The spectator, believing it  possible to eventually overcome this small detail, repeats and repeats until there is no money left to pay for the show. We realize arousal costs a fortune and modernity never comes.

Shelby Farms Greenline

On Saturday about eight of us had the good fortune of biking the Shelby Farms Greenline, a former rail line turned urban greenway. Our hero of the day was Kyle Wagenschutz of Revolution Bikes (read their history and see why they are seriously revolutionary) who led us through the City’s Midtown and East neighborhoods, along the Wolf River, past two penitentiaries, and to the Farm–all the while interjecting interesting historical facts.

Wolf River, made famous by Jeff Buckley’s body.

Shelby Farms is the aftermath of the Shelby County Work House/Penal Farm, which was established in 1819 by the County as a facility designed to change human behavior. According to County history, in 1883 private contractors hired inmates to build roads and rail lines. The county was paid 10 cents a day for this labor, allowing the Farm to be entirely self-sufficient. By the mid-twentieth century however, this penal model was considered outmoded, but as google maps illustrates, Shelby had already cultivated quite a love for correctional institutes.

Where would you like to serve out your term?

In 1970, the 4,500 acres of Shelby Farms was declared surplus land (seeing as how there were four nearby prisons) and put up for private bids. According to Kyle, one idea floated was a safari park. This vision was eclipsed when former mayor Bill Morris and Park Superintendent Tom Hill found a very good deal on some 200 buffalo back in 1989. The buffalo continue to populate the land and are in fact available for adoption (in the metaphorical-pledge-a-donation-kind-of-way) to help raise funds to combat  a parasite due to rampant inbreeding. On this particular day, we had the good fortune of seeing the Park set up for Israel Festival.

The park is considered one of the largest urban parks in the country–mind you the only thing perhaps remotely urban about it is that it has a Master Plan (and a plan to make it less urban at that) but with James Corner leading the redevelopment, maybe nearby inmates will have a chance to appreciate some marvelous Diller Scofidio + Renfro benches (!!!)

Another highlight was getting treated to lunch at the High Point Hub Cafe by the super nice and innovative Charles McVean of the Aerobic Cruiser Hybrid Cycle, which, by resembling a moving couch perhaps really is a viable alternative to the car…

Chicago-based geographer Andrea Craft tests it out.

Kyle and Charles are surrounded by conference participants.

Soulsville Community Charrette

The name Soulsville reflects the commonly held belief that this geographic area in South Memphis is in fact the birthplace of American soul music. Soulsville’s impressive legacy of civil rights activism and home of the first African American College, first female educational institution, and, of course Stax Records (call 634-5789!) has not safeguarded the community against the poverty, disinvestment, and suburban flight in the past 30 years. However, despite adversity, if there is one thing this Charrette emphasized, it was the innovative thinking that is occurring on a neighborhood level.

On our tour we saw the Lemoyne-Owen College community garden–a reminder of food desertification within Soulsville. The Memphis Black Arts Alliance took over an old firehouse slated for demolition and helped initiate community-sponsored murals that not only draw attention to the rich musical history, but also beautify aging infrastructure. My personal favorite site was just off Beechwood Avenue and South Bellevue. Next to the SMA citizen’s charter is a coin laundry facility that will soon begin offering social services such childcare and home ownership advice. The idea behind this is that people do their laundry when they have one or two hours of downtime, these facilities thus become places for social exchange. Providing such services in a well-used neighborhood facility allows for more widespread access.

Lastly, I must acknowledge the amazing Southern hospitality of the University of Memphis planning department, particularly  the extremely hilarious Ken Reardon, who is probably not an actual Southerner, but nonetheless went out of his way to ensure that everyone had a good time, which is maybe why I never actually saw his bow tie tied.

Waiting on the subway platform in the first hours of the morning, I usually experience some kind of infrastructure euphoria. Even the rats, who at this time, are so bold as to come right up to your feet, are a part of my utopian vision for a more collective MTA consciousness.

It might be a flawed, bankrupt, and crumbling system, getting more expensive and less functional, but it gets me where I need to go 24 hours a day seven days a week. It goes over bridges and under water. When I put my face to its translucent, scratched windows, the intestinal track of the city is revealed.

While I realize most people will not share my unabashed infatuation with the New York City subway system, I’m pretty sure more people should. Or, at the very least, take a moment and think about all our subway allows us to do, everywhere it gets us. Recognizing what it can do will allow us to better critique all it does not do–but should. Certainly, this is a position many car owners take; they know the ratio of miles to the gallon, the cost of an oil change and when to get it. They are aware of the distance traveled each month and whether or not their car is efficient in achieving this distance. In other words, they know if their personal motor vehicle is operating at its expected standard of performance.

Does this level of awareness come only with ownership? Can we feel responsible for a system we cannot own?

During the Festival of Ideas (May4-8), Anthony Townsend drew attention to the increasingly dichotomous situation regarding public services. Cooperation vs. offloading is a hot topic, particularly in Britain right now where the government’s championing of ‘Big Society‘ comes at the time of tremendous budget cuts.

New Yorkers who rely on the subway for their daily needs have been hit the hardest over the past three years. In early 2008, a monthly pass rose from $76 to $89 and on January 1st of 2011, from $89 to $104. This 17% increase (or 65% over the past twelve years) far exceeds inflation, New Yorkers find themselves paying more for less.

Although $104 a month is cheaper than owning a car, it is still too expensive for many residents, particularly in the boroughs. 2008 Census data found 22% of Brooklyn and 27% of the Bronx living below the poverty line. In 2000, the average commute time in both boroughs was 45 minutes. With frequency of services decreasing and travel costs rising, one can only assume that travel times will not improve.

For the two catch words of the day (i.e. sustainability and cooperation) to have any sort of teeth, they must offer options accessible to everyone. Yes, a subway is more energy efficient when compared to a car, but not if the nearest stop is a mile a way, a physical disability prevents you from accessing the system, or, if the service is simply too expensive.

We cannot move forward until we recognize these limitations, however, neither can we move forward until we realize what we have and what our transportation network is capable of achieving. So while the MTA and all of us relying on it are in fairly dire straits, our rage is not the fleeting type –and here I’m thinking of the kind associated with people in cars, on the freeway. It’s not directed at fellow passengers but toward inefficiencies at the state level; those determining decisions they themselves are far removed from.

The network of the subway is different to that of a freeway. There is a better sense of collective experience, be it exasperation due to delays or elation for an arriving train. If Adopt-A-Highway schemes can work in America, certainly New Yorkers can take measures to better adopt their transit system and improve upon its ability to connect us not only to jobs and services but also to each other.

]]> http://utopiography.com/2011/05/11/some-ideas-on-transportation-education-part-i/feed/ 0 morganfrances P1040215 http://utopiography.com/2011/04/30/deep-sea-sovereignty/ http://utopiography.com/2011/04/30/deep-sea-sovereignty/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:23:22 +0000 morganfrances http://utopiography.com/?p=779 Read more]]>

Sovereignty is about power, boundaries, and sight. To possess we must define what it is we are possessing, to define we must see. How can one truly govern what one cannot see?

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a story about one man’s attempt to possess the unpossessible, which, on a surface level, is all that is below the surface (i.e. the deep sea). On a deeper level, it is about the characteristically masculine battle with his unsovereign unconscious. Verne is an unquestionably brilliant writer; we have grandiose 19th century themes of power, technology, and the obsessive controlling of nature, all of which is elucidated via Captain Nemo’s deep sea adventure in the Nautilus, the ultimate vessel of technological sovereignty.

Take for example chapter 22: the Captain allows his captives (i.e. the Professor, the Canadian Ned Land, and Conseil, the Professor’s faithful Dutch servant) to leave the Nautilus and visit the land of Papua New Guinea. The attempt to hunt local game draws attention from the native Papuans, who follow the men back to the Nautilus. The Professor is quite anxious and brings this to the attention of the Captain.

‘Ha, it is you, professor? he said to me. ‘Well, have you had good sport? Have you botanised successfully?’

‘Yes, captain,’ answered I, ‘but we have, unfortunately, brought back a troop of bipeds, whose neighborhood appear to me dangerous.’

‘What bipeds?’

‘Savages.’

‘Savages?’ answered Captain Nemo in an ironical tone. ‘And you are astonished, professor, that having set foot on one of the lands of this globe, you find savages there? Where are there no savages? Besides, those you call savages, are they worse than others?’

To his astonishment, the Captain is more irked by the Professor’s judgment than his fears. Nemo dismisses him with the reminder that while aboard the Nautilus, there is nothing to fear.

‘M. Aronnax,’ answered Captain Nemo, who had again placed his fingers on the organ keys, ‘if all the natives of Papua were gathered together on that shore, the Nautilus would have nothing to fear from their attacks.’

Over the course of the chapter, both Professor and reader are wondering how exactly the Captain will prevent the Papuans from entering the Nautilus. In order to replenish air reserves, the vessel will soon need to open its panels, thus exposing itself to the ever increasing presence of natives.

‘I have given order to have the panels opened.’

‘What about the Papuans?’

‘M. Aronnax,’ answered Captain Nemo tranquilly, ‘it is not so easy to enter the Nautilus through panels, even when they are opened.’

The lids were opened on the outside. Seventy horrible faces appeared. But the first of the natives who put his hand on the balustrade, thrown backwards by some invisible force, fled, howling and making extraordinary gambols. Ten of his companions succeed him. Ten had the same fate. Conseil was in ecstasies. Ned Land, carried away by his violent instincts, sprang up the staircase. But, as soon as he had seized the handrail with both hands he was overthrown in his turn.

‘Malediction!’ he cried. ‘I am thunderstruck.’

That word explained it all to me. It was no longer a hand rail but a metal cable, charged with electricity. Whoever touched it felt a formidable shock, and that shock would have been mortal if Captain Nemo had thrown all the current of his apparatus into this conductor (131-2).

This is one of many examples in which the Nautilus is literally the vessel of Nemo’s power. While the Professor and Nemo are similar in many regards (men of science, technology, and  systems of meticulous classification), both reader and Professor quickly become enamoured with Nemo’s ability to control every situation, to transform the bottom of the sea into his own sovereign state.

Sovereignty at this time in Europe involved the ability to take land from those considered less organized, to see and identify what was uncontrollable and control it. It was, in short, colonization. While Nemo and the Nautilus represent the ultimate patriarchy, there is an ambiguity to what such patriarchy entails. Several examples, such as Nemo’s challenge to the assumption of what is ‘savage,’ leads us to believe that Nemo’s deep sea sovereignty is about power, yes, control of course, but also a skepticism toward 19th century social rationalities. His sovereignty appears to the reader as ‘just.’ (‘Do you believe that I ignore the existence of suffering beings, of races oppressed in this world, of miserable creatures to solace, of victims to revenge?’ he rhetorically asks the Professor one day).

But, as the story continues, we see that actually it is the Professor who possesses greater rationality. Through his conversations with the Professor, we see that Whatever might be the motives that had forced him to seek independence under the seas, he was still a man! (217).

While his underwater kingdom represents sovereignty in its freedom from external control, Nemo is unable to control the desire to demonstrate his power, and for his captives, particularly the Professor, to acknowledge and be awestruck of that power. Nemo’s journey to the South Pole becomes the ultimate display of power.

‘Ah professor!’ answered the captain in an ironical tone, ‘you are always the same! You see only obstacles and difficulties. But I affirm to you that not only will the Nautilus be set free, but it will go farther still!’

‘Farther south?’ I asked, looking a the captain.

‘Yes, sir, it will go to the Pole.’

‘To the Pole!’ I cried, unable to restrain a movement of incredulity.

‘Yes,’ replied the captain coldly, ‘to the Arctic Pole, to that unknown point were all the meridians of the globe meet. You know whether I do all I please with the Nautilus.’

Yes. I knew it. I knew that man pushed boldness; to temerity…It then came into my head to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered this Pole, which no human being had set foot upon.

‘No professor,’ he answered, ‘and we will discover it together’ (259).

Verne’s choice of the deep sea is the perfect stage for exploring the murky depths of human psyche and terra unknown. In the beginning, Nemo appears to us as superhuman in his ability to control not only that which is around him, but what is also within him.  The Nautilus is a vessel of progress, but we begin to see that it is also a vessel of stagnation. Captain Nemo’s mastery of the environment is largely superficial, in his head. His renunciation of society, his choice of alienation over integration means progress as such is submerged in subjective interpretation.

Captain Nemo, leaning against a moss-covered fragment of ruin, remained motionless as if petrified in mute ecstasy. Was he dreaming about the long-gone generations and asking them the secret of human destiny? Was it here that this strange man came to refresh his historical memories and live again that ancient existence? (226)

When we arrive at the South Pole, the one place Nemo believes he will truly be at home, [a] master of unbound space (255), disaster begins.

His countenance, habitually so impassive, revealed a certain anxiety. He looked at the compass and manometer in silence, and put his finger on a point of the planisphere in that part that represented the South Seas.

I did not wish to interrupt him. When, a few instances afterwards, he turned towards me, I said to him, using an expression he had used in Torres Straits–

‘An incident, captain?’

‘No, professor,’ he replied. ‘An accident this time.’

‘Grave?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘The Nautilus has split upon something?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Through a caprice of Nature, not through the incapacity of man. There has not been a fault committed in our manoeuvres. But no one can prevent equilibrium producing its effects. We man resist human laws, but we cannot stand against natural ones’ (277).

Here, we might recall another remarkable novel from the 19th century that uses the polar regions as the site of epic battle between man and nature. It is only in this unforgiving environment that Victor Frankenstein truly realizes that his quest for scientific wisdom and the control of nature has ultimately destroyed everything he cares about.

In this landscape, where water becomes earth, liquid becomes solid, Nemo realizes he is the sovereign ruler of nothing other than the desire to be such. The ice mountain that has turned over and blocked the Nautilus’s passage has destroyed Nemo’s illusion of control. Although the Captain can use scientific jargon to explain the cause of this event (‘When icebergs are undermined by warmer water or reiterated shocks, their centre of gravity ascends‘), he cannot transcend the reality that the iceberg is in fact impassable. At this moment, we see that his sovereignty, much like the sovereignty of 19th century imperialism, is about erasure and fiction. The act of making something legible is what allows for control. It is the ability to erase that which is illegible and rewrite, even at the risk of misrepresentation. The journey of the Nautilus is the journey by which the unconscious passes into the conscious, by which power extends across a geographical territory–until we reach the end of the earth.

Although Nemo has a Habermasean deep-seated cognitive interest in technical control, it is at this point of the adventure that he comprehends that man’s attempt to dominate nature is the most effective form of domination of self. True, the Nautilus eventually frees itself from the icy grips of the Pole, but the Captain must acknowledge that he is no longer in control. The dichotomy between man and nature, conscious and unconscious, ruler and governed is shattered. A slow, self-destructive attitude takes hold of the Captain in that classic 19th century style. But, by this time, Nemo’s legacy has already penetrated the consciousness of his captives.

‘When we return to land,’ added Conseil, ‘blase’ with so many marvels of Nature, what shall we think of the miserable continents and little works done by the hand of man? No, the inhabited world is no longer worthy of us’ (280).

Work’s Cited:

Chorely, R. J ‘Geography as Human Ecology’ in R.J. Chorely (ed) Directions in Geography, London: Metheun.

Gidden’s A. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies, London: Hutchinson.

Habermas, J. Knowledge and Human Interest. London: Heinmann, 1972.

Verne, J. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. London: Harper Collins, 2010.

A few days prior, I’d been reading Derek Gregory’s Ideology, Science and Human Geography chapter “Structural explanation in geography,” a discussion of Maus and Levi-Strauss’s elementary methods of structural analysis by way of Gould’s argument that it is not the uniqueness of spatial organization, but the numerous similarities amongst spatial patterns that should be considered. After laying the appropriate groundwork, Gregory asks the following:

“Does this mean, then, that spatial structures are simply a product of a universal way of looking at the world–that their basic forms are no more than the limited combinations allowed by the mind’s inner logic of classification?”(104).

Why do I bring it up? Because visiting the Noguchi Museum did more than answer this (okay, probably rhetorical) question, it rendered it almost entirely irrelevant.

“Sculpture,” said Noguchi, “is about a relationship that has nothing to do with message, but people’s place in the world. It is something to be experienced, not just looked at.” Here, we are confronted with the dilemma of human geography. How do you represent cognitive experience? In other words, how do you reproduce the unreproducible?

Geography isn’t just the visual representation (i.e. mapping) of people and objects in the world, it is about giving structure to it.”The geometry of location is also the geometry of explanation,”(Gregory, 74).

In my opinion, what makes Noguchi’s work so breathtaking is it embodies both the universal and the particular. Although we cannot ‘read’ these objects, they are in many ways a geometry of location and explanation. The sculptures embrace the beauty of chance [1] and horror of deliberation [2]. These are forms that arise from contradiction, not dichotomy and leave us with a hint of a Burkeian sublime.

That sublime is, in many ways, extremely personal [3]. Although Noguchi’s work is most probably described as ‘modern,’ his sculptures and landscape designs do not subscribe to some kind of International Style de-emphasis of place. Unlike his contemporaries, Noguchi doesn’t pretend to eliminate himself from the work. Why? Well, to borrow from Gregory, it is because “Spatial order….reside[s] inside the mind and not inside the landscape,”(104) Or, as Olsson believes, because spatial order can “reveal more about the language we are talking in than about the things we are talking about“(53).

I believe Noguchi recognized that to eliminate the self (i.e. the subject) would produce a formless (i.e. meaningless) object, and let’s be clear, abstraction and formlessness are not the same thing.

In 1927, Noguchi moved to Paris to study with Constantin Brancusi. Although he admired Brancusi’s ability to distill as opposed to reproduce form, Noguchi was wary of Branscui’s prophecy (“You are the generation that begins with abstraction”). During the decades in between the wars, Noguchi continued to embrace portrait sculpture, worked with Diego Rivera on murals in Mexico City, and took advantage of the many place-based commissions he was receiving, like the Associated Press Building Plaque at Rockefeller Center.

His deliberate turn to abstraction occurred after moving to the Poston, Arizona internment camp for Japanese-Americans in May of 1940. It was a voluntary move, Noguchi hoped to improve the experience for internees through the teaching of art. However, his success was limited. In a letter to Man Ray (May 30th, 1940) he writes:

This is the weirdest, most unreal situation–like a dream–I wish I were out. Outside, it seems from the inside, history is taking flight and passes forever.

The following November he left Poston. No longer interested in “message-laden work,” he moved to New York, established a studio in MacDougal Alley, and began working on his first illuminated sculptures.

In 1960 he moved to Vernon Boulevard, Queens in order to be near the marble and stone suppliers. He eventually bought the old photengraving plant which is the now the museum.

Noguchi was a man interested in “how to transform but not destroy,”(Noguchi) the material he was working with. This is, in many ways, also the task of the geographer. In both we see what Levi-Strauss describes as the attempt to establish where nature ends and society begins. While one is perhaps more literal than the other, both play off one another and remind us that yes, perhaps Gould is correct.

[1] He often described his work as “a record of accidents” and would leave a piece alone for years in order to ‘heal’ and allow its beauty to re-emerge on its own. “Let stone be stone” he would say.

[2] At the same time he was also accused of “excessive polish.”

[3] Noguchi was also infamous for keeping his best work for himself, something that infuriated many of his dealers.

Gregory, Derek. Ideology, Science and Human Geography. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978.

Gould, P. ‘Some Steineresque comments and Monodian asides on geography in Europe,’ Geoform, vol. 17, pp. 9-13.

Olsson, G. ‘The dialectics of spatial analysis,’ Antipode, vol. 6, no. 3, pp.50-62.

The title of this post is borrowed from Zizek’s 2010 book, a title that accurately describes the irony of a recent ad in the New York Times. Under the guise of tragedy, Eton Corporation’s “Help Japan by donating an Emergency Radio” illustrates the farce of contemporary consumption and its cultivation of an ‘authentic’ self by promoting consumerism that benefits not just the individual but society at large.

This Palo Alto-based company’s ad is simple, aesthetically pleasing, and tangible (I buy this physical object that is then donated to someone who is in immediate need of it), a relief to the thousands of people who want to help but are overwhelmed by the complexity of international aid relief and skeptical of its impact. One major complaint throughout the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami/earthquake was not that there wasn’t enough aid, but that it wasn’t reaching those who needed it. Eton appeals to the educated consumer who looks at an image of the emergency radio and easily envisions its arrival to a relief center somewhere in Northeast Japan.

As often happens in print journalism, the advertisement conflicts with the message of the article in close proximity to it. “Finding Reassurance in Order” is about the ability for daily life (hair cuts, onsens, bicycle repairing, dental visits) to continue thanks to “a passion for order and civility so deep-rooted that the chaos and despair of 1,000 strangers is subdued to the level of disarray expected at the monthly meeting of a book-lovers’ club,”(A11, 3/26/11). I read this and was reminded of the extreme, meticulous disaster preparedness I came across while living in Japan. The first thing my landlord showed me when I moved into my house was the location of an emergency hard hat, flashlight, water, and, yes, emergency radio.

So it is with some irony that I turn the page and see Eton’s ad. Sure, part of the proceeds go to the American Red Cross, but just how badly do the Japanese need American (or perhaps Chinese?) made short-wave radios? Of course, anyone who chooses to call 1-800-872-2228 is well-intended, and most likely, so is Eton.

A large component to any tragedy is the uncertainty of how to respond. There is the immediate tragedy and then there is the aftermath and the inability to measure if outside efforts are improving or worsening the situation. But, to often, tragedy becomes opportunity. The tragedy-as-farce of Eton’s radio is that in our recognition of tragedy, we unconsciously respond through what we know best–consumption. And, in this way, tragedy becomes opportunity for capitalist investment.

The tragedy-to-farce transition Zizek’s title is referring to is the 9/11-to-financial crises, but the essence of the discussion is ideology and how, in its pervasiveness, it appears to us as non-ideology.

Like Ethos Water:

“Here is an exemplary case of ‘cultural capitalism’: the Starbucks ad campaign ‘It’s not just what you’re buying. It’s what you’re buying into.’ The ‘cultural’ surplus is here spelled out: the price is higher than elsewhere since what you are really buying into is the ‘coffee ethic’ which includes care for the environment, social responsibility towards the producers, plus a place where you yourself can participate in communal life,”(53-4).

The argument is that Ethos water represents quality consumption, thus avoiding the infamous alienation Marx ascribed to the commodity. Ethos water, Toms shoes, and short-wave radios are all examples where “we are not merely buying and consuming, we are simultaneously doing something meaningful, showing our capacity for care and our global awareness, participating in a collective project,”(54). Unfortunately (depending on your angle of course), that collective project is all to often the human capacity to consume.