Social Exchange

On Funeral Rites and Getting Fucked Over

Although I’m extremely comfortable with ambiguity and open-endedness in film, I’m still wrestling with the women characters in Thithi, the recent Kannada film set in Nodekopplu village.

First let me say that the film is, as indicated by the number of national and international accolades, a “must watch!” (thanks Aamir). It belongs to a growing number of Indian films that are difficult to genre-ize and, as a result, often reduced to ‘art house’, which is actually a quite inaccurate description. Unlike the Western conceptualization of art house, Thithi transcends cultural and class in a way no Miramax film ever achieved. Its experimentalism comes from the slight tweaking of the everyday, a slowing down of the already slow village ecosystem to the point that humor organically emerges. Perhaps this is art house for those in the West with the attention span of a fly, but I think for the Indian audience, for whom most will have some connection, no matter how remote, to this setting, the humor is accessible and relatable. Similar to films like Sairat and Court, Thithi is composed of a cast of non-actors and unites a diverse cinema-going audience by offering the poignant wit that arises from place specific language and environment.

Thithi and Court share commonalities beyond the obviousness of a white haired elder for a central character. Mostly, the fluid intertwining of humor and tragedy which is, in fact, so well integrated that it is impossible to distinguish. But while Court is pointing to the absurdity of an arcane legal system, Thithi points to nothing. Or does it point to everything? I left the theater content with a four way intersection between humor, tragedy, nothing, and everything. But how does that intersection hold up in the context of the women of the film?

While we see that the woman of the village are sharp tongued, hardened, and no nonsense, they are given very little substance. Now, I’m not asking for any contrived portrayal of strong village women nor am I demanding some 30% reservation of plot given to women. Thithi is not about women, nor the relations between men and women in the village. But something happened for me after Abhi has sex with Cauvery, which is shortly after he has stolen sheep from her uncle.

Why has Abhi stolen sheep from the sheepherder? Because he drunkenly gambled away all the money his father, Thammana, gave him so that he could buy sheep for the Thithi celebration. None of Abhi’s actions are particularly good, quite the opposite in fact. But like every character in the film, we are endeared to him simply because of his human-ness. He’s not a bad kid, just a bored kid.

But by the time sex has occurred, even though it is assumed consensual, it is clear to me that multiple violations are occurring. Or, to put it in colloquial terms, some people in this film are getting fucked over. Kamalakka, the money lender, Cauvery, and of course Thammana.

Because we know Thammana’s story so well we understand the various ways in which he is getting fucked over by the reappearance of Gadappa. But because we don’t know much about Cauvery’s story, nor Kamalakka’s, I think most film goers will not think much of it. Which is perhaps why some reviews are able to say the following:

“Abhi offers little commentary on the matter of the inherited land; instead, he’s consumed by more youthful activities, which Reddy treats with an appropriately affectionate eye by not forcing the youngest heir into the film’s greater conflicts.”

a gentle, playful comedy set in a small village in Karnataka…featuring a wonderful ensemble of non-professional actors that transports you to an Asterixian village in Karnataka.

I found the film deeply comical but I do not think the words affectionate nor gentle have a place. It is deeply comical but also darkly comical. I keep returning to this question of whether Raam Reddy, the film director (who is clearly a genius), is in some way making a statement on gender in the village, in which case it is achieved through a non-statement or subtleties that can make us think quite deeply. For example Gadappa’s story about his wife (which may also only be a dream), which perhaps affected his relationship with his father (Century Gowda) and his relationship with life. But while he has, essentially, renounced society, his wife renounced life. And what of his game of Tiger and sheep? At what point does this carefree spirit become the Tiger of the whole plot and village for that matter? How does Gadappa, though unconsciously, orchestrate the thieving to take place by buying the sheep herding men their alcohol, to which the women ask, “But who will watch over the sheep?” I can’t help but wonder if the film is, in one small way, projecting an attitude of boys will be boys and men will be men.

By the time everyone is sitting down to the fine meal of mutton it is evident that some men have come out on top, others not, but every female character have been fucked over in some form or another. Now, I’m not saying that I want to see some form of justice delivered, but if this is to be a new cinematic take on the village, it is still an old take on gender in the village.

I also wonder if a film like Thihi could be created in which all central characters were women. What I’m trying to say is that in Thihi the characters are substantial enough, there need not be a presence of women to enhance or give a fuller picture of the male characters or their place within society. Could the same be achieved if it was a cast of women characters? Could an entire 120 minute film carry the same level of humor, irony, and rich character development without reference to husbands, children, or cooking? Although Thithi in many ways revolves around the story of a family, family relations and duties, it is at the same time not at all about the family. We see each generation of men as autonomous characters so that the film is almost an anti-statement about familial relations. Could the same humor or essence be achieved if the cast were women and not men? I have no doubt it could, and that such a director exists somewhere, but the question is whether such a film would receive the same kind of attention and reception as Thithi.

Wheels and Tracks

Same destination but different mode. Why one would chose train over bus travel in India–anywhere for that matter*–hardly warrants explanation. But let me try. I finished Paul Theroux’s The Grand Railway Bazaar while traveling from Delhi to Bombay, down the coast of Maharashtra and yes, eventually to Goa. It was a mixed modes approach of bus, rail, and one flight.

Reading a travel book while traveling is obviously cliché, but then to read a travel book while performing the regiment of everyday life is possibly to induce despair. Although my two week hiatus hardly compares to Theroux’s half year journey, it did allow me to reflect on a few things that have been brewing for some time, such as the gendered nature of adventure travel (and writing) and how the interior spaces of India’s overnight buses compare to the train journeys.

Inner-urban transportation in India is pretty gendered, from the subtle hand-painted portrait-of-a-lady on the side of Mumbai’s crumbling yet delightfully efficient suburban rail system to the ‘women on wheels’ pink taxis. Light rail and metro systems have whole compartments reserved for ‘ladies.’ In Delhi, this is indicated by a Barbie pink coloured sign complete with your classic stick-figure-in-a-dress and white flowers blooming around her body.

But inside the compartment of the long distance trains, gender differentiation evaporates. Of course there is the list outside the car, dutifully telling the name, sex, and age of each passenger, but within the car your cubicle of six berths, geometrically lined up and magically suspended by some cable that has been carrying the weight of human travellers since Gandhi, has no explicit demarcation for gender, personal space, and perhaps even class for the matter.**

What is it about this temporary communal space, a space within a contained vessel in motion, that allows things like concern for personal security to evaporate? I tried bringing up this question several times while doing research interviews with those who work in the field of urban public transportation. No one had ever given it much thought, and with the exception of times of social upheaval, no one could think of an instance when a woman rail passenger had been violated, nor any public demand for gender segregated compartments.

It is hard to convey the feeling of this tiny, 50 square foot, six berth space that is created on the long distances trains. A similar feeling does not exist on overnight buses, or international flights. I’ve tried to identify certain qualities–the freedom to move within and between cars, the open doors, the tiny table at the end of the lower berth where one can set their namkeen, chai, oily IRCTC breakfast. Is it the fact that there is a communal space? That everyone starts the journey sitting on the lower berth, a padded rectangle that eventually becomes someone’s bed and ends up in some contorted position with a wad of of stiff wool blanket wrapped around some part of the body? Is it the sounds and smells outside the rail station, the situated historicalness of rail travel itself? While there are a great number of rail travelogues, I’m hard pressed to think of any involving buses (that aren’t tied to some self-depreciating, down and out character), and certainly none written by women.

*I suppose in the US you could argue that there is hardly a lesser evil between Amtrak and Greyhound.

** Of course the compartments are organised according to class, but unlike air travel, where a curtain and several stewards and stewardesses are strategically placed to ensure no trespassing between first class, silver elite, gold and the masses in economy class.

Ce n’est pas une neoliberal agenga

Semiotics. No doubt that stuff is complicated. So is international policy. Sometimes I think they’re more or less the same thing, but try telling that to a macro economist. “Stop with the semantics,” I hear professors working with large data sets telling confused PhD students. “Just tell me plain and simple, what is it you are trying to say?”

Given the extent to which the data inclined are Derrida adverse, I find the UN’s recent discursive shift from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals quite interesting. Is this linguistic turn as arbitrary as Saussure’s arbre? Is the __DG format indicative of a signifier without a sign? Well, no. I’d say the transition from MDGs to SDGs is hella loaded. It’s loaded with the ideological baggage and political power of 193 member states.

I kinda think of the UN as a monolithic ersatz linguistic department that has been given the task of creating a New World Order, but can use neither physical or political coercion, only semiotics. By New World Order I mean Human Rights as a framework for global cooperation and by semiotics I mean the constant coding, recoding and transmission of ideologies through acronyms in the hopes of getting genuine commitment from the individual and institutional powers behind the ether of the neoliberal agenda.

When the Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” it was equally applauded and criticized for its vagueness. There were just so many interpretations. That was 1987. By 2000, international political support for sustainable development was waning. But, thanks to the private sector, concepts like Energy Star, LEED design, green architecture, fair trade, and buy one give one allowed sustainability to became big business.

Perhaps taking cue from the private sector’s ability to turn a vague concept into a profit margin, that same year, the UN announced its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight goals (‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’, ‘Improve maternal health’) and countless targets to be achieved through through the commitments and financial investments of states, corporations…and celebrity benefit concerts in which attendees Buy the Impact!

Example 1:

Person A: “Let’s get tickets to the Eliminate Poverty benefit concert, our money will go to a kid in Africa who lives on less than a dollar a day!”

Person B: “Wow! If my ticket is $54 dollars, it’s like I’m giving that kid 54 days of help and happiness!

Example 2:

Person A: “Let’s get tickets for the sustainable development concert, our money will go toward furthering the concept of sustainable development and the idea that we should live in such a way that our present actions aren’t at the expense of untold generations to come!

Person B: “But how do I know if the decision to take my pill during Tiesto’s set so that I can be seriously rolling for Jay Z will have an effect on global warming and the lives of others?”

I believe the linguistic shift from sustainable development to MDGs and the campaign to end poverty was motivated not by words, language, or meaning but rather by numbers and their ability to be arbitrary yet full of (financial) value. Numerical outputs taken from rigorous statistical analyses involving hundreds of independent variables, scrupulously examined for any kind of heteroscedasticity ensured that the global discussion was on whether or not poverty was increasing as opposed to the question of what poverty actually meant.*

See, until these new SDGs were announced, I thought sustainable development, like Ecstasy, was waning in popularity. I mean, this post isn’t about questioning the meaning of sustainable development or the utility of the SDGs but rather why the words keep changing and whether this has any impact on the ideologies behind them.

Writing on the immutability and mutability of the sign, Saussure tells us: The signifier, though to a appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. The masses have no voice in the matter, and the signifier chosen by language could be re placed by no other (General Course, 71).

Okay. A simple set of words are created to capture a political and policy agenda. The first set was too vague and so a second set was created, this time incorporating the word ‘goals’ so as to encourage quantifiable targets and thus dissolve any conceptual ambiguity. When these targets are not met by a set date (i.e. 2015), the international community falls back on a critique of the concept, the meaning of these words (e.g. are we talking about work or livelihoods? What is included in ‘maternal health’?) and the difficulty of financing such a project. The outcome is a new set of words that incorporates one (or two) from each iteration to thus reflect the revision of that agenda. And we begin, afresh.

Today is a beautiful October day, that time of warm, muted colors, when fashion magazines announce the ‘return’ of some classic and everyone runs to Soho to buy a new version of an old classic. Ever since the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I can’t help but feel that the UN and its various institutions have put all their energy into rebranding a classic that everyone keeps forgetting. I think part of the problem is the lingering idea of progress–that hangover of modernism we still wake up to and, of course, development–that stepmother of colonialism. These two concepts, I believe, are a true detriment to the actuality of human rights, because both make easy bedfellows of the neoliberal agenda.

* I’m not suggesting that this conversation was or is absent from UN publications or the concern of individuals. Only that this type of discussion doesn’t lend itself to donors.

Dream Spheres and Urban Development

When she first told me her apartment complex was off NICE road I thought I heard ‘a nice road’. “Oh, great!” I replied, trying to show enthusiasm for surface pavement, “But what is the name?”

“NICE”, she said again, “The toll road, about 3 kilometers from Electronic City.”

There is a lot of ambiguity in India but I can’t say the same for subtlety, especially when it comes to new development. California County, Wall Street II, Prestigious White Meadows, Dream City…these are just a handful of communities I have come across in the past week.

Like many former British colonies, English street names and districts are common in urban India (e.g. Richmond Town, Frazier Town) but it seems, to me at least, that there might be a correlation between the liberalization of India’s economy and the rise in gated communities that make literal references to lifestyles specific to particular geographies. J. Naigar’s and John Stallmeyer’s excellent works on Bangalore helped me understand the city’s explosive growth, particularly in terms of human population and kilometers of land but neither prepared me for the flood of speculative real estate development I have encountered.

Some highlights below:

-Billboards testimonials. These are particularly popular along Bellary Road, from the airport into the city, but also on any toll road—such as the NICE ring road. These testimonials include a picture of an individual in some expressive gesture, such as a head cocked to one side. “I chose to relocate from _______ to Bangalore, and it was the wisest decision I’ve ever made.” A simple, straightforward affirmation. The logic of someone beyond middle age. It seems to recall Bangalore’s former identity as a ‘pensioner’s paradise’, namely because of the year-round good weather. The word is relocate, but the assumption is retire. Retire and invest.

-Radio. “Ooh gawd, Shriti,” begins one radio ad I heard approximately every five minutes for one entire weekend, “I’ve missed the real estate expo and now I’m back to driving all across the city looking at places.”

“Don’t worry Ashita, the expo has been extended for one week more!” Like all classic infomercials, we are told to ‘hurry’ because this ‘opportunity’ ‘won’t last.’

Another personal favorite is one in which a metaphor between finding the perfect wife and finding the perfect property is utilized. By doing his research, and refusing to settle for anything less than perfect, the man gets both the woman and the two-bedroom flat.

Or, here are some favorite snippets from the August 23^rd real estate section of the Times of India (Bangalore edition):

Toast, Cereals and Conversations: Nitesh Cape Cod is located just off the Sarjapur-Marathahalli Ring Road and within walking distance of leading IT offices.

-Niteshestates.com

Get ready to Start your Second Innings at your Own British Colonial Bungalow (sic): Fresh forest oxygen; Zero carbon footprint

-legacyhomes.in

Innovative aquafront: Where happiness Reflects. Exactly Facing the Lake

-innovativeconstructions.in

-Comment: This is not EXACTLY what I would call a Lake, nor is it exactly attractive.

Neo Bangalore—An Address you can flaunt about

Your property can help you fulfill your dreams, just like your family.

-HSBC

Even since my trip here last summer I feel what was a craze has now become an epidemic. That said, it’s hard to know what is aggressive advertising and what is reality. As an employee working in Electronics City, I’m amidst the target population of this advertising. And yet real estate has yet to become the topic of any lunchtime conversation. So is this ‘Exactly facing the Lake’ this ‘Toast, Cereals and Conversation’ a myth?

Regardless of whether or not Innovative aquafront actually faces a lake the reality of this city is uneven development. Bangalorians often talk about how just 20 years back all this area was scrubland. Aside from being called a pensioner’s paradise, Bangalore was also—and is still somewhat—referred to as India’s ‘Garden City’, an image the real estate industry loves to invoke. But can the legend of Bangalore’s garden paradise peacefully co-exist with the reality of high population growth? Can the city successfully attract people, development, and maintain ‘pristine natural surroundings’?

The directions for getting to my co-worker’s apartment were simple. After getting off the NICE toll road I was to turn left at the petrol station and continue down the winding road until I arrived at ‘Sabah Sunscape’.

The thing was, after a few hundred yards from the petrol station the road went from paved, to dirt, and then back to paved. We passed cows, pockets of dense forest, and area cleared for future development. We came to a fork in the road. The driver stopped a man in a white dhoti who seemed to be walking without purpose. “Where is Sabah Sunscape?” he asked in Kannada. The man gestured straight with a good deal of indifference. After a few minutes we came to a gate and two high rises. I got out of the rickshaw and walked toward the security station on the other side of the gate and told the guard the name of my friend. He checked the roster and shook his head. No one of that name lived there. After a few minutes of debate we solved the problem. I was at Sabah Sunbeam, NOT Sabah Sunscape. I walked back to the rickshaw. We continued driving until we finally arrived at an even larger gate set between two concrete pillars. We had arrived at Sabah Sunscape.

Later that night, coming back to Electronics City, I started to wonder what makes a city. If Electronics City does not include electronics manufacturing nor does it constitute an actual city, why does it have the name that it does? Electronics City is supposedly the ‘place’ that put Bangalore in the global marketplace, but for the first 15 years of existence it was considered to be outside the city. Now, Bangalore’s development stretches even further south. Was Sabah Sunscape and its environs really part of this Bangalore city? Historically, Bangalore has always been a low-density city. But that did not mean, I thought to myself, that some gated high-rise apartments located in the middle of nowhere could be part of the city, even if the city boundary will eventually give way and include it. Then again, what right did I, a child of Detroit, have to conclude what is urban and what is not?

Is urban the same thing as city? What is a city anyway?

Sometimes my grandfather likes to tell us about the first house he and my grandmother bought. The street on which the house was built wasn’t completed; they were the first homeowners on the block and because of this, my grandmother got to name the street. She chose ‘Devonshire’ because she thought is sounded very sophisticated.

It’s easy to be cynical of the HSBC quote about family and property, but the fact is that for many people this relationship and its connection to something loosely defined as a dream is very much a reality. Cities are also spaces/places of dreams, or where people go to fulfill something that might be described of a dream. Cities are constantly expanding in order to accommodate all those individuals, all those families, and all those dreams. So, I suppose when I think of it that way I can accept Sobha Sunscape as part of Bangalore and yet, when it comes to the reality of this piecemeal development, these self-contained bio-spheres of swimming pools and tennis courts cropping up in the middle of nowhere, claiming to have the amenities of both urban and suburban life I can’t help but think that these real estate dreams must be destroyed, as the future of the city depends on it.

Intertextual styleee

Intertextuality is a word used to describe the experience of finding one text within another; it is the rejection of closure and the championing of an open, iterative process of dialogue and meaning. I’ve long convinced myself that intertextuality did not come from Julia Kristeva nor Mikhail Bakhtin, but rather King Tubby. I’d argue that the inventor of dub reggae is the real father of deconstruction, the original palimpsest rocker. A radio repair technician by trade, King Tubby begin experimenting with the B-side instrumental tracks of Jamaican 45s, distorting the sounds beyond recognizability and thus, essentially, creating a ‘new’ sound. I think literary theory could learn a thing or two from dub and that cultural studies should give a big up to the pliability and constant evolution of Jamaican music.

Photo of King Tubby from the National Library of Jamaica.

My supreme love and massive respect for Jamaican music was part of the reason I decided to take an impromptu trip to the island this past January. A second reason was a long-standing, school girl crush on Michael Manley and his commitment to democratic socialism. But, there are others: Trevor Munroe (The Politics of Constitutional Decolonization), Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery), Walter Rodney (okay, technically not Jamaican), Obika Gray, Louise Bennett…I could go on. My point however is that the Jamaica I wanted to visit had nothing to do with beaches or Club Med and everything to with the urban political, language, and the aural.

The funny thing is, I never made it to Kingston. See, I arrived at a very special place and, even after ten days had passed, I still found it impossible to leave Great Bay in St Elizabeth Parish. The Jamaica that captured my heart had a lot to do with the (clearly un-urban) landscape, even more to do with the wonderful people I was able to meet, and the vernacular-ness I was able to experience.

A quick detour…

Many of us are exposed to Jamaica via online advertisements for holiday destinations. Book a flight to anywhere in North America in the middle of winter and, inevitably, an ad for a Caribbean vacation will appear in your side bar. Mind you, it’s generally not a flight but an inclusive package. The idea, no, fact of Jamaica as a unique, small-island nation quickly evaporates under more general concepts of ‘cheap’ ‘luxurious’ and ‘getaway.’

In 1989 The National Black Business Report covered Prime Minister Manley’s press conference addressing the state of Jamaican tourism. Tourism was the subject of a much larger conversation around the need for foreign direct investment, which was at an all time low. Manley’s Democratic Socialism, his belief that “A country like Jamaica cannot become a just society if you don’t redistribute some of the wealth and some of the benefits, and we’ve begun some of that redistribution,” and the actions he would take to go about achieving this (e.g. education for all, nationalizing utilities, redistribution of land to small farmers) did not sit well with the US, nor did his relationship with Castro. Between 1972 and 1976 Manley raised taxes on family incomes above $12,500 to 44 percent. The middle class was keen to leave and the US was all to happy to invite them to places like Miami and New York. Until the mid-1970s, the US received most its bauxite from the Caribbean, more specifically Jamaica. When Manley decided to raise taxes he didn’t just tax the middle class, he taxed bauxite in such a way that it became the most expensive exporter of bauxite in the world. In addition to driving out the middle class, he also drove away foreign investment. Furthermore, by the early 80s, the US significantly reduced their annual amount of USAID, from roughly 13 million to just under four. This is why, going back to this press conference, Manley is making the connection between foreign direct investment and tourism.

Anyway, I don’t wish to linger too much in the fascinating climate of 1970s and early 80s Caribbean politics but I will just say that, by the mid 80s, a number of factors, including the rising popularity of mass tourism led many small island states to believe that international tourism was the best way to go about achieving international investment. What distinguished Jamaica from some of the other islands was its image as an incredibly violent place, something that would, and continues, to influence visitors to the country.

In that 1989 conference Manley explains to the audience that Jamaica “Has a duty to their guests to make them safe and to help them feel safe…In fact Jamaica is a safe destination but no one could really say there isn’t the sort of incident you might find in New York, or all over the place…we are concerned about some problems we inherent, like harrassment…but the fact remains, and forgive me for having to say this, but I think Jamaica might be just about the most fantastic vacation product in the world.”

There are some (including myself) who believe that much of violence in Jamaica can be traced back to the US, who, in attempt to thwart the country’s relationship with Cuba and the Soviet Union by dismantling the Manley regime, facilitated the entry of arms into the country in order to not only encourage violence and political opposition, but also create an image of violence that would discourage Americans from taking holiday vacations in the country.

The perception of Jamaica as a violent and dangerous place continues to persist today. My point is neither to support or deny violence but rather focus on the how that perception influences tourism within the country. People buy all-inclusive packages because it is easy, but do they also do it because it is perceived as ‘safe’? Either way, I would argue that the experience of Jamaica becomes somehow reduced to the image of the beach, Bob Marley, the Jamaican flag, and a bottle of Red Stripe.

I’m quite sure American travelers to Jamaica have been briefed on the violence within the country, but do they make the connection between politics, tourism, and ideologies of power?

Jamaican music of this time period sure did. And not just in terms of lyrical content, but even more so in terms of structural form. Let me quote en masse from the master theorist of subculture himself, Dick Hebdige:

“Reggae draws on a quite specific experience…It is cast in a unique style, in a language of its own–Jamaican patois, that shadow form, ‘stolen’ from the Master and mysteriously inflected, ‘decomposed’ and reassembled in the passage from Africa to the West Indies. It moves to more ponderous and moody rhythms. It ‘rocks stead’ around a bass-line which is more prominent and more austere. Its rhetoric is more densely constructed, and less diverse in origin; emanating in large part from two related sources–a distinctively Jamaican oral culture and an equally distinctive appropriation of the Bible. There are strong elements of Jamaican pentecostal, of ‘possession by the Word’, and the call and response pattern which binds the preacher to his congregation, is reproduced in reggae,” (Hebdige, 31).

Now, since I mentioned my love for King Tubby, let me quote again:

“Reggae began to slow down to an almost African metabolism. The lyrics became more self-consciously Jamaican, more dimly enunciated and overgrown until they disappeared altogether the in the ‘dub’, to be replaced by the ‘talk over’. The ‘dread’, the ganja, the Messianic feel of this ‘heavy’ reggae, its blood and fire rhetoric, its troubled rhythms can all be attributed to the Rasta influence….It was during this period of growing disaffection and joblessness, at a time when conflict between black youths and the police was being openly acknowledged in the press…With dub and reggae, this rebellion was given a much wider currency: it was generalize and theorized,”(Ibid, 36-7).

In his article “The Popular Culture of Illegality: Crime and the Politics of Aesthetics in Urban Jamaica (2012), Rivke Jaffe makes an insightful connection between the dons (informal political leaders…somewhat akin to Italian mafia or Japanese Yakuza) of Kingston and soundsystem culture. Jaffee attributes the ‘almost supernatural’ or iconic status of dons to a unique urban aesthetic of performative music culture. What I would like to focus on is the unique structure of having both a DJ and a selector.

Growing up in Detroit, I had my own unique experience with DJ culture, particularly through Detroit techno. This form of dance music is also, in my opinion, about intertextuality where no one DJ is Author. Rather, each DJ acts as an author of an experience–a single moment in time and space. A track may be reproduced, but it is never repeated. History then, becomes layered, textual, but never linear.

The early reggae records contained one side with lyrics and the other was the instrumental version. This was so that the track could be played live, with the DJ adding his or her own lyrics according to the context, the atmosphere of the moment. Jaffee points out that DJs will often, in the middle of a track, give a big up to a celebrated don of the neighborhood. Sometimes, the lyrics become a story or a narrative of how that don came to power.

What I found interesting about my encounter with the Jamaican soundsystem was just how much I liked the talkativeness and performative within DJ culture. Here in the US, I’ve never liked MCs (Beastie Boys excluded, obviously). I find it jarring, disruptive and often in bad taste. I think, as I reflect on this, it’s because the MCs I hear have nothing substantive to say. Not that their Jamaican counterparts always have something substantive to say–but whatever they do say always sounds good. You can literally slurp down the riddims cause they are that smooth. I think it’s because they remain situated within the context, by context I mean the situation, the audience, the moment. So although many Jamaicans are critical of the direction reggae music has taken in the past decade (e.g. dancehall is all bling with no substance)–coming from my perspective I found Jamaica’s music scene ripe with substantial lyrical style. Music is, I feel, about communication. Watching the unspoken communication between the DJ and the selector, between the selector, the DJ and the audience, was really an amazing experience. A friend of mine explained that the job of the selector is to size up the audience and make sure everyone in the room gets at least one song. You feel it. There is the collective that is constantly dancing, but sometimes, depending on the call outs and the track, there are some who come into the foreground and then recede again into the background so that what you feel is both fleeting and steady.

Heritage?

The word heritage use to make me yawn. I associated it with visiting my grandparent’s house as a child where the perfectly preserved 1950s interior was equally dull as it was formal. Almost all socializing took place in the dimly lit front living room; I’d stare out the window, to the street, and wonder how long before I’d be excused from listening to stories about the past so that I could go outside and play.

For fear of making you yawn, I’ll refrain from further descriptions of this domestic interior and conclude by saying that I always thought heritage was something for people stuck in the past. It was what academics got into just before they decided to retire.

These past three months I’ve had many opportunities to think about heritage. The first began at the conference of Critical Heritage in Gothenburg, Sweden and continued when I left Sweden and went to India. Ironically, as soon as I arrived in the ‘field’ to, in fact, research a heritage landscape, I almost immediately forgot about heritage as a discourse. See, I was so busy enjoying the heritage that organically makes its way into everyday life—sunset from Hamakuta Hill, wading in the Tungabhadra River along side the shore temple, finding remnants of 400 year old clay pots on a cricket field—that I failed to do what all good researchers emphasize—write immediately!

Now I’m home and have no choice but try to make sense of my observations. As I reflect on the meaning of heritage, I can’t help but think of an overly simplified interpretation of Lacan’s mirror stage. The child, prior to this stage, does not recognize itself as separate from the mother. Similarly, I found that most residents in Anegundi (the village I did most my research in) do not see heritage as distinct from their landscape or daily life. Like the child’s relationship to the breast, heritage is nourishment that comes naturally; it is within, around, and never completely separate from the individual, the community, or the landscape.

Now I’m not suggesting that residents of Anegundi have the mental capacity of a breast-fed child, I’m trying to emphasize that symbolic moment when the child is placed in front of the mirror and forced to recognize that it is autonomous yet dependent on the mother. There is something beyond the mother and the child, a social order (for Lacan this would be language) that establishes and maintains this rupture. Just as the mirror affirms that mother and child are not one, the mirror affirms that heritage and community heritage/heritage and landscape can be separated, controlled, and pivoted against one another.

The heritage that was once within is now external, available to the international organization, the national government, the state government, the department of tourism…the American doctoral student, to be freely consumed, interpreted, and repositioned accordingly. Heritage becomes an economic driver that must be regulated, marketed, and even protected from the very people it lives within.

I’m new to the academic study of heritage. I have no literature review on which to base my assumptions, only impressions. Another impression I have is that international dialogue about heritage is similar to dialogue about international development–overtly colonial in belief and approach. Like colonialism, development and heritage are about management. There is a right approach and a wrong approach and it is the economically stronger countries that determine how economically weaker countries should manage their heritage so that they don’t destroy it.

This leads me to another word I’ve spent some time thinking about: inheritance. Inheritance is a word that divides families and inspires soap operas to run for multiple years. It is also a word that is related to heritage. When a family member dies, the inheritance, if any, is divided, but not always equally. In America I hear the word inheritance more than I hear the word heritage. We inherited the right to own land–that is our freedom, our legacy, and our interpretation of democracy. It is the heritage of a national ideology and it is meant to appeal both to the collective history of the nation and our personal right to participate in it.

It makes me queasy.

Unfortunately, I lost my notebook (damn you Delta airlines!) with all the CRUCIAL notes I wrote regarding my impressions of heritage in these two very different locations. So, I’ll now proceed to trail off with a few scattered words that I’m hoping will help inspire to me begin this monolith of a project write-up.

Culture

Value

Intellectual property

(What is the relationship between heritage, culture, value, and intellectual property? Is intellectual property the ‘value’ of culture? Is heritage a property so to speak? Would recognizing it as property be the best way to ‘conserve’ heritage? Does the conservation of culture make heritage (like, if I put culture in the oven and set a timer, does it become heritage)?

At the Gothenburg conference there was an afternoon session with a wonderful speaker named Tracey Ireland she used a lot of really interesting words in relation to each other. Here are a few:

Archaeology as place making:

“memory archive”

Archeological landscape Archeology as site of focus Symbolic site types…linking to cultural memory.

“Spatial inscription”

How old does heritage have to be?

(Contrast between old and new, does it inevitably suggest that some kind of ‘progress’ is happening? When heritage and development work together are we advocating to preserve the past, move forward, and eradicate the middle?)

There was also this guy Michael Falser:

Object to agency

De/Re…political terms…a constant process of renegotiation.

Decolonization then becomes an act of recolonization

Cultural performance vs. historical reenactment.

Rights approach vs systems approach

Throw public history into that mix.

On erasure…there is no global and no local.

(Okay, on this last point I want to say that I am sick, SICK of talking about global and local, even if it is to talk about how there is no global and no local. We need to stop wasting our breath, and our brain cells on this. I would argue it’s more useful to talk about private and public space. Maybe I will talk about this more in my next post.)

Lastly, let me leave you with a few more thoughts I have (at random)

I don’t think anyone in heritage discourse is talking about Iris Marion Young’s ideas about inclusiveness and democracy.
Sameness and difference…does heritage emphasize one over the other or both simultaneously? Heritage, well, in the UNESCO context is about the inscription of ‘universal’ values. It’s universal until the individual sites become sites of difference as the daily life of people living in the site is sacrificed in the name of the universal value. What values are universal? I think this is where Young would add to the discussion.
Conceptual vs every day life.
Heritage–>tradition–>‘freezing’ of culture so that it can be represented.

Occupy Wall Street

“Che Guevara was not a communist,” a girl says without glancing up from her cell phone, nodding in the direction of a group of five people wearing occupy the hood shirts; the face of Che in between the words occupy and hood. From where I sit, it’s too loud to hear what someone might have said to provoke this comment, which seems to float upward and hover in this atmosphere of politically charged statements. But don’t get me wrong, no animosity is felt between the two groups, or any of the groups occupying Wall Street. For me, this is the basis of the occupation’s success. I decide that the phrase–this is what democracy looks like–now a staple to the movement, is in fact incredibly apt. The whole reason this is a democratic space is because there is nothing reductionist about it. Unlike other protests that have occurred in North America over the past decade, OWS is about inclusion; if the environment is your thing, anarchy, Jesus, well, you’re welcome into this space. To see Zucchoti Park is to see complexity, but, in a society based on spectacle, image making, and concrete statements, the complexity is constantly being reduced, for both good and bad.

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. I 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.”

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.

In the Domain of Body Culture

The image of the crowd belongs to the domain of body culture. It’s unquestionable powerful lies in momentum, where the body—as mass—replaces the singular mind. Last month, as crowds proliferated across the Middle East, there was a brief interlude here in the US in form of the Super bowl and its halftime show. The extreme juxtaposition between the two events left me contemplating the meaning of crowds, democracy, and whether or not the domain of body culture here in the US will ever move beyond the singular mind of capitalism.

“The Mass Ornament” is Kracauer’s famous essay on the crowd as an emotionless replication of the capitalist system of reproduction. Kracauer’s vessel for discussion is the Tiller Girls, a troop of women most akin to the Rockettes, known for their ability to use body parts to achieve interesting visual ornamentation. Calling them “products of American distraction factories,” Kracauer states: “The mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality to which the prevailing economic system aspires,”(79).

This seems an apt description of the spectacle, from the Black Eyed Peas conscious aesthetic of multi-cultural bling, the meddly of American classics that relied on visual prompts encouraging the crowd to Pump It Up! and the cheap imitation of Daft Punk androgyny in the form of LED-clad background dancers. With the exception of Usher (who is dismissed from this discussion) the whole thing fit Kracauer’s Mass Ornament: it was a crowd, it had momentum and it even had power but, it was ambivalent and thus an end in and of itself.

“The commodities that it spews forth are not actually produced to be possessed; rather, they are made for the sake of a profit that knows no limit…value is not produced for the sake of value,”(78).

If this wasn’t clear from the beginning, then consider the media’s post-performance debate on the monetary figure Slash got to emerge from the ground.

Kracauer is often criticized for his failure to fact check the origins of the Tiller Girls, they were British, thus making his connection between Fordism and the mechanical formations of female legs less relevant. But maybe that connection was never meant to be. Perhaps the art of scientific management died with Detroit. For all the commonalities between the half-time show and the Tiller Girls, precision is not one of them.

I was reminded of this while watching the LED dancers. One arm was up, and one row over it was to the side. There was movement, energy was expended, but the robot dance was not mechanical enough and the pump it up failed to pump. The performance reflects the prevailing American mentality that impressions are best made through size and scale. With so much to look at, no one would notice all the mistakes–like the failure for the V in LOVE to light up.

To me, that seems an accurate description of our prevailing economic system.

The show concluded with confetti of the red, white, and blue variety, suggesting the event could be connected to a broader sense of nationalism.

“Fairy tales can become reality only on the ruins of natural unities,”(81) Kracauer concludes. American democracy might have once been a reality but it seems it have joined Sleeping Beauty in her 100 year slumber. Vapid spectacle is how the American crowd achieves its happily ever after, it’s time we look elsewhere for the power of the crowd and new fairy tales of democracy.

Some Shitty Wine at the Thing

A friend and I use to joke that Thursday nights in New York might as well be dubbed some shitty wine at the thing because of the numerous opportunities to partake in free alcohol and visual culture. Also known as exhibition openings, these alternative happy hours draw a wide range of people: underemployed students and trust-fund babies, the genuinely disheveled, the stylized disheveled, creative entrepreneurs, and the corporate type with their creative accessory girlfriend, boyfriend, partner…all of whom come together via two great social equalizers: provoking art and shitty booze.

One seldom learns anything about the exhibition on the opening night, but last Thursday I walked out of the gallery with new-found insight regarding the philosophical similarities between architecture and make up.

It began like this: a friend and I were standing at a little cafe table next to the bar when a man in black skinny jeans, black button down, and black glasses asked if he could join our table. Of course. He put down his almost empty glass of wine, plastic plate, and sighed.

“Now how the hell do I eat this thing?”

He was referring to his mini dosa and samosa, two food items that complimented the aesthetic behind the new exhibition featuring innovative design solutions in India.

“Best with your hands,” I replied.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Like finger food for real, love it.”

As mentioned, openings draw all kinds of people. The advantage to arriving early is that it’s not crowded so there’s room to appreciate the curated space. However, people are less incline to drink and more prone to talking. The pre-booze rhetoric, which includes causal nods to movements, ideas, and people can be tiresome. The advantage of arriving later is that by 8pm all pretentious conversation has disappeared.

It was 8:15.

“No but what is this for real,” he asked, grabbing a plastic fork and knife from the table next to the bar. “I mean is there meat in it?”

“No meat,” my friend explained, “it’s all vegetarian.”

“Vegan,” I added.

“Oh,” he seemed disappointed. “You know, I don’t get those vegans. When I have a party–and I love to have them–they get soooooo fucked up. Drink like fish but refuse to eat anything I cook…such lushes! My speciality is meat. They usually don’t come back”

“What kind?”

“What kind?!” He put down his plastic fork and knife with deliberate manner. “Any kind. Shit, you get me a dog and I’ll make it delicious. You know Beef Bourguignon?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll make you a dog bourguignon that is to die for!”

“Morgan doesn’t eat meat.”

“You mean she eats this stuff?” He turned to me, “You eat this stuff?”

“Yes,” my friend said. “She was in India last year and this was all she ate.”

“Get out of here!”

“Yup.”

“Just like this?”

“Just like that. Only, well, a dosa is usually huge.”

“Get out of here!…Are they this…greasy?” he asked, pressing his knife against the dosa skin so that the oil seeped out. “I mean, I tend to avoid Indian food, it all seems to be fried, which is strange. I thought they only like eat traditional food. I mean, isn’t it expensive to fry food?…How old is frying anyway?”

None of us knew the answer to the question.

“So did you love India so much? Was it fabulous?”

I didn’t know how to respond. “Well,” I said and then paused, “I was there looking at a lot of the issues that are discussed in this exhibition…I don’t know, it was pretty mind-blowing.”

“I can imagine. I love this exhibition! It’s like, well, you know really colorful and well executed, an interesting presentation of materials, but I just love that like thread of ghettoness to it, you know, like making us go outside and getting food from a truck…and only serving Indian wine,” he paused and looked at our Kingfishers, “and beer! Serving Indian beer too!”

I remembered my brief encounter with a 40 oz Madras Special last spring and shuddered.

“So do you miss it? Was it fabulous?” he repeated.

“Uhmmmm…”

“I think that’s a hard question to answer,” my friend chimed in. “I mean look at this exhibition, there are some creative projects that are pretty inspiring, but ultimately they’re projects that are addressing some pretty dire situations.”

He seemed disappointed. “So are you girls architects?”

“No.”

“She writes about it.”

“She studies it.”

“What do you do?” we asked simultaneously.

“Oh, I’m a make up artist.”

Our eyes lit up. How exciting! A non-architect! Oblivious to our expressions of joy, he wiped his mouth, then folded his paper napkin with care and precision.

“Do you come to exhibitions often?” my friend asked

“Oh, well, Katherine invited me,” he said, positioning his fork and knife to three o’clock, “because I did her make up.”

He was referring to the assistant director.

“But I like it! I mean, I like architecture, you know, it can make us feel really good about ourselves. If you’re walking in a city of grey buildings and all of a sudden you see this building with a lot of color, you feel so much better! Architects make sure our cities aren’t just grey buildings. That’s the power of transformation.”

“So,” I began, “do you look at people and think about what they could do to improve themselves, like, are most people clueless as to how to present their best features?”

“Oh no! That’s terrible! No, they pass by, I don’t see people any different then you do, but now, if they come to me asking for suggestions, then that’s a different story….though, I’ll tell you something I’ve never understood…”

“What’s that?”

“People come to me and ask me to give them a natural look, it’s absurd! If you want to look natural, don’t wear make up! It’s about transformation! We have one body but many faces, my job is to help show off that other face, to bring it to the surface, so that…”

“We don’t live in a sea of grey faces?” I ventured.

“Exactly,” he said. “And faces are easier to alter than facades.”

“Oooohhhhhh,” my friend and I sighed, such inspirational wisdom.

“Do you have a favorite brand?” my friend asked.

“Well, I work at the Channel counter at Barney’s…”

“I buy Yves Saint Laurent mascara,” my friend said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “it’s the best.”

“You’ve got fabulous eyelashes,” I said, and she did. “I remember noticing them the first day you started working.” It was true.

“Thanks, you know, right now I’m actually wearing Clinqiue…”

“Well then they’re naturally long,” I concluded, “natural beauty.”

“Everyone knows Clinque’s mascara is nothing to rave about,” our friend added.

It didn’t take a make up artist to recognize the truth in that statement.

“Yes, the Laurent stuff lasts literally two weeks and costs a fortune, but those two weeks…” she trailed off in reverie.

“My grandma sometimes sends me Lancolme mascara in the mail,” I said, realizing that using the same tube for over three months was probably bad form. I was suddenly aware of my lack of professionalism when it came to make up. “She sent me some for valentine’s day.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“So what’s your favorite product?” my friend asked with the assertiveness of a professional journalist. She was there, after all, to conduct interviews.

“Yeah, what do you recommend?” I echoed, picking up on the opportunity. It felt like we had just won a style opportunity from a fashion magazine, where the day is divided into hair, face, body, style and then readers get an hour by hour play back…the exhbition might have been about energy, water, and sanitation but this was my night to finally learn how to wear blush.

“Girls, make up is make up, it’s about transformation! I go to the beauty stores and get one of those eyeshadow palettes with more colors than a box of Crayolas…you can’t get that range at any make up counter at Barney’s…I live in the Bronx, it’s great for the imagination.”

“Oh.” We were both visibly disappointed. Perhaps we were too much the natural beauty type, searching for that perfect renovation that would reveal an architectural masterpiece.

There was silence.

“Let me get you both something to drink,” he said in a way that made it sound as if he was about to buy a round of drinks. “Do you want the shiraz or the cab?” The presentation of options corrected the lull in the conversation.

“I’ll take a Kingfisher.”

“Me too.”

“Aren’t you two charming!”

We smiled.

He returned to the cafe table and we clinked glasses.

“What about architecture,” my friend asked, “Do you have a favorite style?”

“Hmm, well, the stuff I see here, you know, it’s very contemporary. I like Frank Lloyd Wright, I mean, it’s probably stereotypical to reference him, and I’ve never seen his stuff, but I like it…the way he uses these flat low lines, it’s pretty interesting, and then, you know, you almost bend over to walk into the space because it’s low and flat but then you get into the room and it’s like whoosh! Big, high ceilings, that’s pretty interesting, I mean, I’ve never seen it, but that’s how it seems in pictures.”

In the back of my mind I heard Paul Simon, “Soooo long…” I kept this to myself.

“But I don’t know if I like the flatness of it. I love high ceilings and French art deco,” he continued. “But not American art deco, it’s soooo… sooo big! At least the French could do it delicately.”

“What do you mean?” my friend asked, “Why is American art deco big?”

“Well, it’s just wide, I suppose it’s the whole SPACE thing, you know, a lot of space in America. Paris, it’s compact, such history! It’s delicate.”

“What about art nouveau?” I asked. “Maybe you like Paris art nouveau? You know, like Mucha…the ornateness of it?” I said, thinking suddenly of Shaker furniture.

“Yes, I like that too. I get modernism but if I could design my own house, upstate mind you, it would be high ceilings, very classical, you know?”

“As in vaulted ceilings?” I asked. “Like gothic?”

“Yes! Totally, beautiful, breathtaking, like a church.”

“One would probably have austere furnishing if one lived in a house with vaulted ceilings,” my friend challenged, “it would be dark.”

“Perhaps,” our friend mused, “but it wouldn’t be oppressive like the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, those roofs are so flat…”

All of the nights we harmonized…till dawn…

“I mean, I’ve never been inside of one, but from the pictures, I feel like this,” he put his arm down, flat at his side and a gesture of walking very stiffly. “Who wants to live in that when you can have high ceilings,” on that last word he lifted his chin up and his posture improved.

“Well, we live in New York,” my friend said, bringing us down to the ground.

Second Story Social Exchange

Like the rest of America, a great deal of socializing in New York occurs outdoors, with one marked difference–it’s often a few stories off the ground. If you’re like me you might’ve assumed that New York City rooftop leisure is a product of 21st century real estate development, particularly in the outer boroughs where condos surface like teenage acne. But a few of John Sloan’s works on display at the Whitney’s Modern Life exhibition illustrate that rooftop society occurred long before Dick Van Dyke danced against a faux London skyline.

Sloan’s The Haymarket, Sixth Avenue is one of many etchings documenting spaces of alternative entertainment that blossomed in the first decade of the 20th century, many of which were tucked both bellow and above the ground. At the time, City parks were considered hygienic spaces that provided opportunities for social exchange and entertainment. The natural setting alleviated urban overcrowding and addressed public reform through the co-mingling of the classes, (in other words, the working class would be inspired to adapt bourgeoisie habits and values).

Away from the public scrutiny that accompanied terrestrial social exchange, rooftops allowed for a more fluid mingling of classes–and ideas. Like tea rooms and speakeasies, the rooftop was a destination unknown to most. With the added bonus of open air and vast amount of space, roofs were perfect for balls and concerts that appealed to those who equally enjoyed cultivated and uncultivated experience.

Rooftop access has its origins in safety. After a tenement fire in February of 1860, the City drafted its first comprehensive building code, in which “fireproof balconies on each story on the outside of the building” was “connected by fireproof stairs.” It was these fire escapes that would eventually allow the nascent summer garden party to flourish.

Everett Shinn's Revue, entertainment on a summer evening.

Rooftops also had the added entertainment of the city itself. Take for example, The Fall of the Village Bastille, Sloan’s painting depicting an inflamed women’s prison behind Jefferson Market in Greenwich Village. Men and women watch from the elevated station on Sixth Avenue.

While bourgeoisie concert halls were places people went to be seen, the rooftops offered the unique opportunity to see but not necessarily be seen; an urban panopticon without capitalized Authority.

So what does this have to do with contemporary rooftops? My observation is that rooftops today are increasingly exclusive social affairs. When the global real estate market realized most of us were climbing onto our roofs, developers stopped worrying about whether or not BBQing on the roof was legal and started promoting New York City’s rooftops as attractive additions to otherwise lackluster housing.

I’ve spent my past three 4th of July’s on a Brooklyn rooftop. Who needs the Hudson (damn you Jersey!) when you can see the entire city ablaze just five stories high? However, last summer while straddling a giant GEOTTEL a/c unit I looked around and noticed Brooklyn’s rooftops populated by a singul demographic: young and decidedly middle class. It seems that with more people willing to drop an extra $100 a month on rent so they can play music and drink beer while admiring the NYC skyline, gentrification is moving into the stratosphere.

Grilling above the ground

Grilling below the ground

The City’s density does a great job masking its rampant spatial segregation. Not only are streets divided horizontally–luxury condos on one side and rent stabilized, 1960s era tenements on the other–these streets are divided vertically with low-income, often foreign-born residents relegated to a patch of concrete for all social activities. What seemed to be subversive social space during John Sloan’s time is now sterile, exclusive, and indicative of the troubling connection between real estate and segregation.

To check out:

1860 New York Acts, chap. 470, sec. 25; “Burnings–Fire Escapes,” Scientific America 18 February 1860 121.

John Sloan’s New York

Note: My critique of Brooklyn’s speculative real estate will not prevent me from enjoying my friends’ rooftop parties this summer.