Of the two festivals that offer installations and performances roughly based on psychogeography, Conflux and AIOP seem to have lost a strong thread tying all of the exhibitions together. The individual installations and performances included in these events are only scratching the surface, but when viewed as a collective festival it infuses the urban landscape with experimentation. Conflux has more of a technology focus, and AIOP is mostly different groups of performance artists set up in different locations in the city. In one performance, a group of artists from the collective Flux Factory wear t-shirts with waivers printed on the back of them. One artist stands across the street and waves to someone walking down the street (they choose specific people to wave at - people in hats, boots, etc). If the person waves back, another artist on that side of the street stops them and asks them to sign the waiver on the back of their shirt. The performance is called Sign a Waiver. I don't know about you but one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone stops me on the street, to ask me something, hand out something, etc. I'm usually in a rush, being a New Yorker and all, and it bothers me that someone assumes that my time is not that important. If I'm meandering through the city on a derive, however, I probably wouldn't mind that much. Unfortunately I don't usually have the luxury of that freedom.
This brings up an interesting point about time, psychogeography and who really cares? I think it's fascinating that there can never be two identical psychogeographies of an area, because each person will have different memories and experiences in a place. However, who has the time to drift through the city, letting the contours and encounters guide you. The only purpose you have is to keep your awareness open to chance and circumstance and a sense of play and adventure. Is this aimless navel-gazing for jobless people with too much free time? Or is it something that everyone, even people whose jobs and families prevent them from having much freedom, would benefit from experiencing?
The concept of psychogeography is deeply rooted in the theory and circumstances of the Sixties. This new approach to the city was a rebellion against the "spectacle". In these days, the spectacle is more powerful than ever, so much so that we don't even notice it anymore. Many of these street installations are surface treatments of a larger issue that is underlying but not mentioned. Or maybe people aren't interested in making political statements anymore. The closest any of the artists get to making a political statement is Rebecca Nagle who stands in the middle of Times Square with a sign saying "I can't compete with this". She attempts to bring awareness to the increasing competing advertisements that make up the texture of our urban environment.
This project is interesting - the artist Todd Jokl proposed to track participants paths on a map of nyc. Each person has a hand-held GPS device that they use to check-in at every Conflux event they visit. The map he draws in the simulation is beautiful, the line quality is organic and each path combines to create this nice visual harmony. When you see the actual results of the project the feeling completely changes. It looks so unnatural and forced. There are 12 lines, some follow identical paths, and others just meander around the small space of the parks. Also, that shaky, natural line quality is gone. Maybe there were technical restraints to actually creating a path on Google maps but I would have liked to see the artist draw the path lines himself then. I'm struggling to see the purpose of this project, beyond trying to make a beautiful composition at the end of the festival.
I just played three of these gnome games and they're very addictive. The artist's name is Mateusz Skutnik and he highlights little known or abandoned places by creating a scavenger hunt for gnomes hiding in the structures and behind walls. His images are high contrast black and white, so very expressive and mysterious, and during the game an ominous melody plays in the background. The gnomes themselves are adorable and have so much personality that it makes me so happy to find them. This game makes me smile. Thanks Mateusz!
This is a lovely audio tour by Jeremy Dalmas that infuses the city with some mystery and adventure. He started in Golden gate park and by popular demand created an audio tour for the southwest part of New York City. You are meant to download the tour on an ipod and begin at the start of the tour. He takes you through back streets and down staircases, through parks, sometimes providing true historical facts and other times embellishing a little. He makes the experience of the street so intimate amidst the hustle and bustle, and even unearths some hidden creatures and forgotten stories along the way. The various music is a rich complement to his relaxing voice. The tour encourages a playful approach to the city and gives the participant a new sense of wonder while walking through ordinary surroundings.
Showing posts with label street pattern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label street pattern. Show all posts
Monday, November 8, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Urban form study
My interest in this topic began with researching Hippodamus, the first recorded urban planner in ancient Greece and the person credited with the invention of the city grid. This is an image of Pirea, which is the first city to be laid out on a grid. How appropriate that rational Western thought would have created this structure that goes completely against natural growth of cities to make our lives more organized.
Then I discovered urban morphology, which explains how cities are developed based on a multitude of factors. Religious structures, topography, city planning, fortifications, harbors, subterranean networks, and suburbs are all components that contribute to the development of the street pattern in our cities.
I used the list of top 25 cities based on the quality of life study done by Monocle magazine to choose cities for this street pattern study (above). Maybe there is some correlation between the pattern and quality of life. Also, maybe there is one central factor that led to the appearance of the city layout. Medieval cities were developed around religious structures, whereas in Mesopotamia the city was built around the king's palace. The United States has far more planned cities than in Europe and that contributes to their homogenous form.
The most interesting discovery I've found in this research so far is this paper that correlates the development of street patterns to the veins in a leaf. In fact, they compare transportation networks as structures that convey energy or matter in a variety of fields: city streets, plant leaves, river networks, mammalian circulatory systems, networks for commodities delivery and technological networks. Is the development of ALL of these structures related at a basic level?
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