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)