oooooh! I'm starting to get it

Michelle also said something in our meeting on Thursday that made me think. How do I see this work entering the community itself? What do I see as the site-specific application of my abstractions, symbols and drawings? I just discovered a Brooklyn artist who places tape in geometric (mostly cubes and rectangles) shapes in the street environment. This is the description from the Art in Odd Places festival in 2008: "In a city made up of rectangular buildings, windows, and blocks the artist plays with a shape that is symbolic of New York City. In the attempt to draw attention to forgotten dimensions and overlooked layers, he creates reminders and portals with cubes that allow pedestrians to see the lines they are surrounded by in a new light."

Image from Art in Odd Places.

Aakash Nihalani currently has his first solo show at the Bose Pacia gallery and I'm actually so happy for him it's as if I knew him as a friend. I feel such a kinship and understanding of the work he's doing in the street environment, and he also has beautiful abstract paintings.

I'm putting together a presentation for Seminar class that started out trying to define psychogeography and it's really interesting to track the trajectory of my research. I started with psychogeography on Wikipedia. Apparently the term was coined by a man named Ivan Chtcheglov in the 1953 essay "Formulary for a New Urbanism". He was then banned from Situationist International (SI) and was eventually committed to a mental institution where he went through shock therapy and eventually died in 1998. It's horrible how fickle the SI and Lettrist movements were and there was constant turnover in the membership of both movements. Guy Debord seems to be the only constant name throughout, and also the only member with a full theoretical work, Society of the Spectacle. I read this book over the summer after finishing Naomi Klein's No Logo and was inspired by the lofty language and theory of the former while learning about case studies through the more practical language of the latter. Both books are essentially about the "spectacle" of contemporary society, and not having to accept the way it is just because that's how it is.

You can see the similarity in beliefs from the biography of Guy Debord on the European Graduate School site: "At the beginning of the SI movement their goal was to transgress the boundary separating art and culture from the everyday and make them part of common life. They theorized that Capitalism has the effect of diverting and stifling creativity, dividing the social body into producers and consumers, or actors and spectators. The SI saw art and poetry as a production by all people, that this was a way to make art the dominant power rather than having power rest in a small group of designated men. They argued for complete divertissement, and were against work. By 1962 they were applying their critique to all aspects of capitalist society, and no longer limiting it to arts and culture."

It also turns out that Debord was quite the heavy drinker and the SI movement did most of their theorizing in bars around Paris. Not the upscale bars that philosophers like Camus frequented, but smaller, seedier places. Debord tragically committed suicide in France in 1994, at which time the French press memorialized him after never acknowledging or recognizing any of his work before.

Psychogeography began in this way as a critique of urban geography. In the late 50's and 60's the French intellectuals and artists that made up SI were contemporaries to the Beat generation in the US. They rejected the traditional experience of the street, which they considered part of the spectacle itself with expressionless, cold modern glass towers. Le Corbusier was their nemesis because of his insistence on homogenous architectural structures and spaces that left little adventure in their chance and exploration. They proposed a more organic and spontaneous encounter with the city landscape. Debord describes the theory of the derive: "In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones"

Chance. That was the theme of the latest Art in Odd Places festival in New York City. It's surprising that this event (or series of events) is so related to the theory of Dada and Situationist movements but they make not one mention of it on their site. In the opening sentence of the curatorial statement they mention the word spectacle, which is an obvious nod to the work of Debord without literally saying it. As the statement goes on, they suggest that chance gives us the opportunity to move past our cultural conditioning to see the world in a new way. They aim to reveal undetected aspects of the city through performance and sound-based work.

Coming soon: a critique on this event series and also the Conflux festival.

Looking Up and Other Inspiration

So I found this project, Sketches from Street Level, on Flickr after I had just finished an almost identical one that I called looking up. This photographer and I definitely have the same interests! See below:

I'm thinking that I can use this project as a jumping off point to transition to looking out at the streetscape (angles and patterns associated with looking down a street or up an avenue), then looking in, which wouldn't be looking inside but instead looking at very simple and otherwise overlooked building details.












And then holy @#$% I found this. A link to part of Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's Memoires from 1952. The delicate placement of type with dripping ink patterns is beautiful and reminiscent of the journey along a path. I can't understand the French but I imagine them to be describing a daydream of the experience of the streets of Paris in the 1950's.

I also discovered Place Magazine recently, a now closed publication from the 80's and 90's on urban spaces and planning. This is an exerpt from the editor's letter Summer 1990 issue: "Places, like lives, evolve; sometimes uncertainly, sometimes abruptly, sometimes to good ends, sometimes for naught. Places though, carry our lives within them. They give structure to where we spend our time, what and whom we encounter, how much sky we see, how much green surrounds us, and how tightly or freely we conceive the community. Places form an armature for the imagination."

Along this same line of thinking, I would like to explore the geography of a place to uncover these qualities. I spoke with Leigh Okies today and she gave magnificent advice on this direction. She created a project during her grad school experience at Art Center that was based on the Situationist movement (which I have studied at length for my topic!). They were really interested in the idea of derive, and just going out and experiencing the world. Their project began as a series of observations, not idea based at all but more of a game to formulate the project around these observations. They drew the word 'gospel' on a map of LA and drove around to different points on the map, observing and doing experiments. Their project culminated in visual artifacts that represent this series of experiments and observations. It is so inspiring to hear that her project produced such concrete benefits for the designers involved, and started out so amorphous.

This project speaks to me because I am struggling with the theoretical nature of many of our classes, finding that the thinking in words is taking away from my visual experimentation. I think a lot of reading and theoretical assignments have taken up time when I could be making, creating interesting projects for my thesis. I've posted many of my drawings on this blog in previous posts but I will post a new series here. Also a couple sketches for ideas I have towards making abstract maps, or memory maps. I just put together an "exhibition" of 20 artworks around nyc around this theme and it's inspired me to create some of my own.

Mmm... Skyscaper I Love You just arrived as well, and it's giving me even more visual direction. One of the earliest projects of Tomato (Karl Hyde and John Warwicker) created a book that feels like a film, all in homage to the feeling of walking around New York City. The compositions are made up of simple elements and typography but the texture that is created with out using any actual textures or colors besides black and white is striking. This inspires me to incorporate my drawings into a very simple but impactful graphic landscape.

I visited the Whitney on Sunday, and was blown away by the Edward Hopper painting, Early Sunday Morning. He had this way of creating a feeling that was entirely his own creation but it still represents the place in a powerful way. So much so that people have made efforts to restore the building that he depicted in Early Sunday Morning. It made me wonder how can I capture the feeling and essence of a place to communicate to others? As a designer I can create strategies to keep the authenticity of a place alive, and to get people interested in historical and cultural concerns. Luigi Fusco Girard says in The Human Sustainable City, "The historical and cultural heritage, representing the collective memory of the city, it's specificity and identity, must be preserved and promoted as a key contribution to the humanization of our cities."

Part of me thinks that my thesis needs to look at decades of urban planning in NYC and all historical factors that contribute to a specific neighborhood. Along those lines, one of my ideas for a visual project is to take a streetscape (on Rivington or nearby) that explores all of the buildings, storefronts and signage, research all of the historical factors and engage the community in conversation.

Another project I'm considering is taking close-up shots of building details and place them along a specific route on a map. These details can also be interpreted by drawing or another medium. I really want to focus on drawing and painting as my initial mediums and use those explorations to create a final design project. I need to let go of the idea of having this final finished product and let all of these explorations naturally lead to it. I find that it's only through drawing the contours of an object or place that I recognize it's true beauty. Drawing allows you to move beyond just looking to see and feel the relationships in space, and this could lead to rich visual investigations and who knows what applications down the road.

A few references I need to jot down from thesis advisors:
pritzkerprize.com -- to understand how architecture is verbalized. Also Words and Buildings by Adrian Forty
Verbalizing the Visual by Michael Clarke
Delirious New York and Mutations by Rem Koolhas
Metropolis magazine (which I already love but need to look at more)
"Visual Acoustics" - a Jules Sherman documentary

Also:
The Architectural Review
Arch. publishers such as ACTAR
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
also look at how architecture and urban planning programs describe their missions and activities
ANY - Architecture NY (Vignelli-designed)
Tadao Ando
listen to interviews with Frank Gehry
check out architecture supply stores

I have many ideas for projects and have no idea where they will take me. Leigh Okies handed out an Anni Albers statement on designing when she visited our class last week. "We come to know in art that we do not clearly know where we will arrive in our work, although we set the compass, our vision; that we are lead in going along, by material and work process. We have plans and blueprints, but the finished work is still a surprise. We learn to listen to our voices; the yes or no of our material, our tools, our time." I love when she writes "the yes or no of our material" - we have such a close relationship with our material and awareness allows us to listen when we need to change direction or continue following a path.

Oh, one more thing. My interests lie on the border of art and design, so another thing I want to explore is how these two fields interact and complement each other.

Still expanding the possibilities

At this point I thought I would have narrowed down my topic for thesis. (Fortunately or) Unfortunately I am still expanding the possibilities for my topic but seem to be approaching something that really resonates with me. I keep returning to the topic of awareness of place, as well as the connection with a local community and its history. This weekend I re-read parts of No Logo by Naomi Klein and realized that it is the contemporary equivalent of Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Klein makes Debord's theory concrete with details on the mergers and acquisitions that limit our consumer choice. Branded retail environments like Barnes and Noble replace the library as the literary destination; malls have replaced the traditional notion of the town square. Media companies have merged to the point that all of our news and entertainment come from a total of three companies, and independent filmmakers and distributors struggle to have a voice against this well-connected competition.

But it's capitalism, one might argue, and America has grown fat and happy with the conglomer-nation formula! Yes it has, but we've also lost many opportunities for those with differing viewpoints to be heard. There will be a popular backlash if the one-way communication of mass media outlets continues in this way. Consumers will exercise their power of choice to buy products from companies that are the most transparent. Transparency will in turn lead to better corporate ethics and programs that benefit the community.

Globalism will not stop, but we can preserve the shreds of culture that we have left in our communities. Self-replicating clones like TGI Fridays (that just opened two blocks away) can integrate programs that respect the community they are homogenizing, through the in-store environment or takeaway items. 'Brooks of Sheffield' wrote the Lost City blog for many years, lamenting the disappearing cultural destinations in New York City. He compiles a list of remaining classics here, considering them the last few iconic utterly New York destinations. Another interesting blog bent on historical preservation, Forgotten NY documents much of the urban scenery that just doesn't exist anymore.

One design solution for this problem is to put it in the hands of the people. We have lost so much of our cultural landscape at the hands of largely unregulated corporations, it's time to take the power back. Excuse me while I start coming up with an inspiring and motivational speech to rally the people, but in the meantime check out these beautiful town logos created by Japanese designers to represent their distinct locality. These designs represent a symbol of the importance of place for each individual.

Manhole Covers, The Naked City and Paul Klee

In class two weeks ago, I read a thesis from 2001 called 'Manhole Covers and Other Art Underfoot'. I was mostly interested in discovering how to create a thesis out of a concept so abstract. The author found that upon transitioning to a pedestrian lifestyle after moving to New York City, she began noticing and appreciating so many details in her surroundings. I definitely had a similar experience of waking up to the beauty of our city, even in the most banal everyday things.

'While the exotic may raise our eyebrows, it is the mundane that is truly engrossing, and from which the most can be learned. It is in the everyday that we find insights and miracles, in what's under our noses... and under our feet.'

New York City at one time was dotted with cast-iron foundries that produced everything from decorative railings, staircases, doors, building fronts, weathervanes, lampposts, boot scrapers, and manhole and coal chute covers. In the thousands of miles of sidewalks in NYC you can find the names of these foundries with handiwork from as far back as the late 1800's intact. Also, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Gramercy Park neighborhood are the cast iron gates surrounding the buildings.

It is definitely interesting that these manhole covers signify an old-fashioned time in New York City. A time when we burned coal for heat (oh, we still do that) and had to access the reservoir from downtown, and when there were many fine craftsmen available to make beautiful designs for our buildings out of cast iron.

The most interesting part of the thesis was an historical section that examined the Situationist movement and derive. The Situationist work focuses on the urban environment and it's interaction with human behavior. Derive is "a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences, one that entails playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects." This is all so related to urban planning, and some of the articles I plan on reading for thesis research are within this field. I am only interested in this subject with regards to how welcoming a space is to bring people together to interact with each other and their environment.

It is so interesting to think that the experience of our place is so dependent on the maps that guide us. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn offer an entirely new perspective with 'The Naked City', a map of Paris that weaves together parts of the city based on their psychogeographic importance. In the map they offer an antidote to being "swept along by crowds... bound by an artificial imperative of speed... rushing toward sites of alienated production or consumption." It is possible to create a map for residents and tourists alike that suggests drifting through the cities backwaters to enjoy the sense of encounter, and highlighting unique aspects of the city beyond the standard tourist attractions.

This reminds me of a book I just read actually. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925), which diagrams in detail the many points, lines and planes that are available to the artist simply from referencing our environment. In my Visual Communications I class with Professor Mark Sanders, one of our first assignments was to find a modular structure in our walk to class and create a pattern out of it. The concept originated in the Bauhaus philosophy, and more specifically Klee's philosophy "that rested on empathy with the created world, accepting everything that is with equal love and humility. As a very young man he had spoken of his art as "andacht zum kleinen" (devotion to small things)... Through observation of the smallest manifestation of form and interrelationship, he could conclude about the magnitude of natural order." This text is found in the devotional introduction to the book by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, and in the concluding notes she quotes Novalis in the hopes that Klee's book will inspire others to:
"...give sense to the vulgar,
give mysteriousness to the common,
give the dignity of the unknown to the obvious,
and a trace of infinity to the temporal."

Some Ramblings on Community

I'm at a point in my thesis research development in which there are so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I'm having trouble narrowing down to a specific direction for primary research. In terms of secondary research, the sources I have range from visual intelligence, resource sharing systems, sustainable cities, community building and place marketing.

My idea is that through love for banal everyday occurrences, objects and situations, we slow down enough to appreciate our city and experience our place in a new way. Through this new perspective we will build stronger communities by creating valuable programs and services. Why build community? As an antidote to the isolation of globalization, to reduce consumption and share information.


'Walk', project by Constantin Demner of Studio Elastik
An intervention in public space in East London, UK, using the language of street art to bring local history to life in the imagination of passers-by.

This project captured my imagination because of my interest in street art as a portal to the essence of a city, and representation of the more subversive side of it's population. Street artists, however, are not community-builders - they are vandals at worst, and political activists at best. Projects like Walk balance between those two sides and unite them to deliver a strong message about how we view our surroundings, and offer a suggestion on how to explore different ways of seeing. Demner's focus on local history is a great example of creating a connection to the community, something that residents would find valuable. I think there could be a lot more information in the signage for this project in order to get the most value out of it, but it definitely makes a statement on seeing the city in a new way. I especially like the part when the music stops and we take a look at the historic building across the street for a few seconds - that is a beautiful observational moment.

This concept does not address the 'how' of building community however. There must be programs and services put into place to add value to our neighborhoods. Things have changed so much since my parents generation. They grew up in 1950's-60's Bronx neighborhoods, which I picture as the idyllic example of community. You knew your everything about your neighbors, and when you had to run out to the store you asked them to keep an eye on your kids playing stick-ball in the street. My great-grandmother was a real estate maven - she owned 6 or 7 buildings and rented out the apartments, while my great-grandfather had a beautiful garden in the backyard of their house, with overflowing tomato plants and even chickens!

I grew up in Connecticut on an isolated street that was nothing close to being a neighborhood. If we needed something, we got in the car and drove to the store - we rarely spoke to the neighbors much less ask them for a cup of sugar. I used to envy the kids that could run across their yard and get their friend from next-door for a playdate, since my mom had to call and make arrangements well in advance.

Society is moving closer and closer to internet dependence, and there are many opinions on the effect of this on our social interactions. Does it make us more or less isolated to be plugged in to 'social software' like Facebook, Ning, and Foursquare 24 hours a day? I don't know the answer to this, I can only give my opinion which is that there is NO WAY a computer screen will ever replace being with a person in real time. Then again it's possible that an online community can strengthen connections between people because they know each other well enough to say hello. John Thackara writes at length about this - most recently on Change Observer.

The transition toward sustainability is not about messages; it’s about activity. It’s not about proclamations; it’s about practices. Many professional designers are in the representation business, so their default response in recent times has been to design a poster about sustainability. Or maybe a website filled with green things to buy.

But projecting more signals into an already cluttered environment is like throwing confetti into a snowstorm. Advertising folk respond to what they call “the clutter problem” by adding to it. Social media? They’re part of the clutter conundrum too. Online communications are a mode of publication, not of conversation. The number of bloggers is growing at 35 percent annually; the number of people using the internet is growing at 10 percent. Do the math!

Emitting messages, however clever and evocative they may be, is not the same as being with real people, in real places, who are changing their lived material reality. That’s why I have a radical proposal: Consider speaking your words in a place rather than pressing “send.” Ivan Illich believed that our culture started to go off the rails in 1120, when monks stopped reading texts aloud to each other and became solitary scholars.

Are social media playing a similar role today? For Illich, there was a huge difference between a colloquial tongue — what people say to each other in a context, with meaning — and a language uttered by people into microphones. Or typed onto a Facebook page.

When someone we trust tells us to our face that a thing is important, we pay attention. Conversation is usually a more powerful medium for provoking change in behavior than pre-packaged messages projected at us by media. Conversation matters more than content. Out there in the bioregions, and especially among folk like the Transition Towns groups, face-to-face is key.

There’s continuity here between today’s social radicals and the avant-garde of art in earlier times. For years, artists fought to bridge the schism in Western culture that separates the creator from the spectator. The Constructivists, Dadaists, Surrealists, Lettrists and Fluxus artists all fought in different ways against the idea that art was about the creation of beautiful, static forms.

As Guy Debord put it: “Representation separates life from experience.” The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is a process in which an active body enters into a “communion” with its surroundings. I empathize especially with the Lettrists, who invented a technique called hypergraphics, or super-writing. Their technique merged poetry as text with more graphic ways of communicating such as painting, illustration or signs. Rather as traveling storytellers have been doing in Rajasthan for 2,000 years.

I apologize for practically transcribing the entire article by John Thackara, but it is just so pertinent to the point I'm trying to make. I'm reading 'Society of the Spectacle' by Guy Debord, a provocative 1960's book on cultural theory. He describes the spectacle, 'In all its specific manifestations - news or propaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment - the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life.' He argues that we want what we are told to want by the governing bodies of this 'spectacle', which in modern times means the advertising industry and any other governing body in control of our cultural experiences (film, art, music, etc.). He also laments society having downgraded from 'being into having' - this successfully describes the cause of alienation in a globalized world. The one way communication of mass-media adds to our consumerist society and potential feelings of isolation and apathy.

So let's talk about some solutions! My teacher showed me this great link to an Italian craft fair, Unconventionall Holiday Market, where they are bringing artists and designers together from around the world to create better souvenirs for the town. The creative agency Unconventionall accepted submissions from artists for a minimum of one week stay in the town and they expect over 150 artists over the course of the summer. This is a really unique way to create value in the community, and stop the manufacture of cheap knock-off not-made-here souvenirs.

I've also done some research into 'Use Communities' and I can't believe how many there are out there! It's a great way to limit environmental preaching (which no one really listens to) and actually do something to reduce consumption. It is related to the idea of reuse of materials, which I've posted about numerous times. It is the idea of providing services without requiring ownership, from car-sharing to dress rentals. There are many online resources that provide the link between individuals in a community, rather than consumers renting services from businesses. Here are a few: Neighborgoods, Rentoid, I Let You, Building Bulletins, Gogo Verde, Bright Neighbor and Barterquest. Even more sites offering product sharing include Swaptree, Techtain, Loanables, Sharer!, FreeCycle, RentAThing and Return My Pants. Shared office space sites are WorkSpace, The Hub and Aula. Thank you WorldChanging for this great list!

Borrowing from friends and strangers can help build community, and using an online network to do so can eliminate the awkwardness of knocking on someone's door. Need I also mention that this saves money and the need for storage space? This requires a critical rethinking on what the American Dream really does to the Earth, and to really consider the side effects of our lifestyles. If we visualize the negative backstory (and future) of the products we are using, it will change our behavior, and could change our relationship with objects from one of ownership to one of use.