New York

Action around the Edges

The Douglas Crimp reading was about his neighborhood, and living in New York, experiences. He relates how he didn’t move into certain neighborhood because of how he felt they were “rough” due to it being mixed use (of industrial and residential.) This is about after the time when developers were trying to “de-slum” areas of NY. This lead way to Gordon Matta-Clark’s works with the abandoned structures- “Work with abandoned structures began with my concern for the life of the city of which a major side effect is the metabolism of old buildings. Here as is many urban centers the availability of empty and neglected structures was a prime textural reminder of the ongoing fallacy of renewal through modernization”

 

The city had several ways of using these abandoned buildings, whether it be demolishing them for bigger and better buildings, re-use or even cruising.

Crimp makes a fantastic point “cruising- is feeling yourself alone and anonymous in the city, feeling that the city belongs to you, to you and maybe a chanced-on someone else like you- like you at least in an exploration of the empty city.”

Cruising in this context doesn’t even need to be looking for gay sex. It seems as if a new version of flanuer- but instead of watching people the point is to be alone (if you encounter sex though, its like a bonus.)

I encountered this video from the show 
"Mixed Use Manhattan"- curator video that Douglas Crimp and Lynne Cooke curated.


Sidenote...
Between Alvin Baltrop's photographs of pier 52 and Matta-Clark's "Day's End" is slightly removed from NY but still shows the phenomenon of the anonymous gay sex. (also recent masters graduate Jennifer Ray "go deep into the woods" www.jenniferray.net also illustrates this.)






Martha Rosler-

This reading makes points about how post-war bombings cleared the way for Europe to streamline transportation, clear out small old buildings and fix narrow streets. America hasn’t seen an attack that easily guts out the old slum areas. Improving the lives of urban poor has been unsuccessful, and they have yet to find a real solution. Putting the houses and apartments in the citizen’s hands makes them more responsible and more dedicated to keeping their houses and streets clean versus “that’s someone else’s house, I don’t care” attitude. Rosler touches on class quite a bit. Through the middle class to the to the class categories of the elite and bobos (or bohemians.) Which there are several subclasses of. The class referred to in “Bobos in Paradise:” is the ones who are imitating the poor artist type as well as the hippie type.

Rosalyn Deutsche's Evictions introduction touches on what all of the essays are about. Written in a span of 10 years they can be broken into three interconnected categories that include: Analyzes the mutual supportive relationship that developed in the 80’sbetween the aesthetic ideologies and oppressive program of urban restoration. The second: criticizes the alliance formed between prominent urban and cultural scholars. The third returns to the question of public space and explore contemporary aesthetic debates. Deutsche goes on to summarize her essays and tells us more information behind the essays and other info that we might not have gathered from reading the essays themselves. She references the firing of the curator from the Hans Haacke exhibit.

She touches on a few artists and important debates that have happened in the art world, such as the Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc. She debates that “Art critics who want to defend public space should look harder at the question of democracy” But then goes on to refute herself in the “critical concept sphere” stating that art’s “publicness” depends on its universal use/enjoyment. Passerby simply got agitated by having to walk around this huge piece of metal and petitioned to get it removed. The common walker is not going to notice the “edge” this artwork is making and realize how this puts them in the environment- they’re just going to get annoyed. They did. And it was removed. 

(Richard Serra, Tilted Arc. installation photo)

jane jacobs

(demolition of Cabrini Green)

(security footage of a disturbance at Cabrini Green)

Revolt of the Urbs

This was a more captivating reading to me. The information that Robert Moses was using to streamline transportation and then trying to implicate with getting the middle class out to be able to use the highways for an escape is well thought. These streets were made when the middle class and poor didn’t go much anywhere. Now (more like the 50’s…) these tiny streets were getting more packed with cars and traffic. Moses was attempting to modernize and move New York forward. But because of old spaces of recreation, he was unsuccessful at getting past his plan of the highway through Washington Square Park.  
In the end though- I feel the park being left alone is a positive thing. Too often do people hustle and rush to get to work, back home, here and there- but rarely do we slow down and enjoy things. 


Jane Jacobs introduction to The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs makes the point of how slums stay slums and some depressed areas regenerate. Cabrini Green is an excellent example of how a slum stays a depressed suction and doesn’t necessarily “turn around” like developers hope for.


In chapter 2o Jane Jacobs writes about that projects seem that they are stuck in a perpetual state of un-kept depression. They can never be “improved” because they’re isolated from the districts they are in. reweaving the projects back is vital to turn them over from what they are. Planners need to recognize what’s missing in this equation and then supply it.

She goes on to point out that projects and low-income housing is poorly planned that lack diversity or lack conditions that generate diversity. Salvaging them requires specific attention. That the problems are more evident in low-income housing and affect the residents there.

“The silliest conception of salvage is to build a duplicate of the first failure and move the people from the first failure into the second while trying to salvage the first.”

She touches back on the importance of small blocks, public parks and streets that allow proper traffic flow.

The new streets need to tie into the streets beyond the project edges as well as tying into fixed features. The streets need to not be narrow, dark and dank. This will prompt the strong fight to not go there and maybe the quote from page 399 “Where can we go? Not to a project! I have children. I have young daughters.”

Children are also a big factor in this chapter. The projects have to be safe for them. There has to be a play-areas far enough from the streets for them. High-rise buildings don’t assure proper supervision for them. Apparently they pee in elevators in the projects. There are no doormen or guards to protect children from random predators.

There also needs to be cooperation from the people who live closest to the projects. They tend to be afraid of the projects and start border vacuums. Projects need to be reintegrated into the fabric of the city- be it “civic” areas or low-income or middle-income housing.

the navigators

      Edgar Alan Poe’s “Man of the Crowd” is about a narrator (writer) observing people walking from a coffee shop window in London. He describes in great depth how you can tell the certain “demographics” of the population apart, by either the clothes they’re wearing, the way they’re carrying themselves and how they’re standing apart from the others. Jessica Rodrique (http://jessicarodrigue.blogspot.com/) best described it “and the small details that the narrator uses to distinguish one type from another are photographic.” A line from Poe’s short story “Feeling in solitudes on account of the very denseness of the company around.” For this very reason, living in the city got to me. You would see thousands of people a day and not talk to one. This ties straight into Walter Benjamin’s reading. Public transportation is a common media where you spend minutes (up to an hour, or more) with people with no necessity to talk to them or acknowledge them. Along with that you have the opportunity to be the voyeur, or be looked at yourself. Along with public transportation there are arcades to be added to the public eye. Benjamin cites a poem To a Passer-by “Neither knows where the other goes or lives”

Which is another great example of the anonymous and the voyeur. Here the author (C.F. MacIntyre) is illustrating a narration of a figure who has seen a woman he is possibly interested in, but because of the disconnect and separation that we encounter everyday- this opportunity is lost. 

Look Down/The Robbery A street scene (and song) that I was reminded of in the Benjamin reading when he mentioned Hugo (who rote Les Miserables) ... just ignore that its a wee Jonas brother...

Anonymity of people slowly disappearing: “Photography made it possible for the first time to preserve permanent and unmistakable traces of a human being.” (Benjamin p.48) Although this is about the time when photography was more easily available, its not like you take a photo of ever person you ever see. Thus still keeping the overwhelming feeling of being alone with thousands of people around you.