paid parking

One of the original Park(ing) day spots in San Francisco

Park(ing) day, originally a guerrilla project in San Francisco in the mid 2000s, now spread over many cities around the world.  On one day in September, parking meters are fed and the parking space is made into a temporary park, rather than being occupied by a car.  Fine, point made, city streets are inhospitable with their wall-of-steel edges, when they could be lined with boulevards of grass and trees instead.  

However, a festival aspect has entered Park(ing) Day, a celebration of pop-up parks: it is not longer a guerrilla action, it is sanctified as a street festival in many cities, street fair licences are bought, the protest element has been infantilised. Balloons abound.

The surest way to disarm protest is to commodify it, to bring it on board as a celebration.  What is actually being celebrated here?  That one day in a whole year, car parking is suspended in a few streets?  Point lost.

'Lighter Than Air' Park(ing) Day balloon installation at Public Bikes on Valencia & 17th St., San Francisco

the Willows: the Maid of Culmore

Something tells me these people don't spend a lot of time rushing around, meeting eleventh hour deadlines, tap tap tapping on their iPhones.  There is another world, where stories are remembered and told, and sung. 

Zaha Hadid: Sackler at the Serpentine

Zaha Hadid, Sackler Gallery, Kensington Gardens, 2013

A provocative portrait of the architect and her building.  Zaha Hadid's addition to the Serpentine Gallery has opened; big fanfare, diehard modernism that neatly jumps over all those tedious conversations about architectural context and replication of: the original 1805 gunpowder magazine remains intact with its proportions correct, the new and necessary addition for a new gallery, restaurant and lobby lands like a hankie beside it.  

1805: Napoleon had designs on an invasion of Britain, the magazine was part of the defensive strategy, built in the gardens of Kensington Palace.  Just because it was a warehouse for armaments, no reason not to make it look lovely.  War with Napoleon appears to have been the backdrop to continuation of elegant Georgian reason: Jane Austen's novels are full of it; some of the most beautiful buildings in London are military.  Today, our military occupy dismal metal or concrete buildings set far away: aesthetics are, perhaps rightly, completely absent from military life, and the military is completely absent from public view.

All that aside, one feels it keenly, the absence of an aesthetic public realm here: no annual pavilion by famous architect set in beautiful palace gardens, no gallery additions by famous architect, no galleries actually.  Here in wealthy oil land life is very utilitarian. 

that different country

Now, this is a lovely thing: the Paris, Texas music of course, Ry Cooder's take on José López Alavez's 1915 'Cancion Mixteca'.

It is overlaid on an unrelated early film on the Navajo (for which I cannot find any information – on the film, not the Navajo), and shows construction details of hogans along with what always looks like a bucolic, slow, quiet life when looked at across the divide of seventy years or so.  We know it wasn't so, as with the whole continent, sequestration and, confusingly, assimilation was in play.  The kids posing behind the granny spinning wool indicates something of the coming divide: jeans and dresses; the velvet jackets and tiered skirts already marked as folkloric. 

This was part of America's terra nullius, the landscapes of Arizona and New Mexico, and they used it accordingly.

Lisbon: two projects:: Zuloark, Toran and Kular

The Universal Declaration of Urban Rights

Zuloark (Spain)

Universal Declaration of Urban Rights, Zuloark, 2013

The introduction:  'Between 1986 and 2002, the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects’ rules, codes, ethics and mission were designed, written and conducted from within the walls of the palace.

Presented as an infrastructure for communal reasoning about the rights to the city and the rights of being a citizen, the intent of this project is to build a Universal Declaration of Urban Rights, aiming to reach a consensus about the methodologies that regulate the construction, legislation and use of public space. Every Tuesday at 19:00, there is a Parliamentary Session led by guest speakers, open to the public, that contributes to the making of one article. Based on a trial and error methodology, the declaration will evolve as the project develops, throughout the course of the exhibition, written in successive drafts, throughout the course of the exhibition.'

In Dreams I Walk With You

Noam Toran (US) & Onkar Kular (UK)

Noam Toran & Onkar Kular. Mário Castelhano, 1928 © Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. On 31 January 1912, 620 anarcho-syndicalists were arrested in the then headquarters of the movement, located at Palácio Pombal. Expelled from the building at gunpoint, it was reported that the anarchists proudly sang “The International”, before being led away.The description:  'A theatrical piece inspired by the “Worker’s Theatre” of the early 20th century in Europe, whose remit was to depict the struggle of the working class with the aim of arousing social consciousness and collective action. The subject of the play focuses on the relationship between Mário Castelhano (1894–1940) and Manuel Rijo (1897–1974): railworkers, militant anarchists, and syndicalist organisers who shared most of their adult lives in exile or imprisonment. Set in a degree zero architecture, the prison cell, the piece depicts a series of daring 'escapes' in which the prisoners mentally construct varying utopias to imaginatively travel to.  The work is accessed in the form of a written script, facing a theatre set empty of actors. At once a commemoration of the humanist values of political anarchism and a reflection on the fragility of contemporary political culture, the work is a meditation on the inherent problems of, but necessity for, the desire and production of utopias.'

Frida Escobedo: the public stage

www.close-closer.com is the quite confusing but graphically beautiful website for the triennale.

The Lisbon Triennale is launched, its theme: When do we produce architecture?  Frida Escobeda, who we published a long long time ago, issue 13 perhaps, has set up the Praça da Figueira as a stage. 

The intro says: 'What happens if a real-life public stage, a civic stage, is suddenly unveiled in our cities? What would happen if we reframe the tamed reality of public space into a theatrical site of exchange were can collectively perform our aspirations? Would fiction become real life and vice versa?'

The program, New Publics, has scheduled a number of performances and acts on Frida's stage, a floating disc, above, including City Acts, below, described thus:

'City Acts are three long-term city initiatives that address the domestic, the social, and the public space. Developed similar to ethnographic projects, they frame consistent dialogue and fieldwork as the main motor to create diverse and dynamic civic spaces. The success of all three initiatives relies on community support, which demonstrates the power of people working together.'  

Ground Floor Act, 2013 © ARTÉRIA. This group is made up of Artéria (Portugal), Daniel Fernández Pascual (Spain) and Unipop (Portugal))The triennale runs from September 12-November 10, 2013. 

Richard Wentworth: the ladder's shadows

Richard Wentworth. 35°9,32°18, 1985. Steel and aluminum, Tate Gallery T07168

Allan Fleming: CN, 1960

Allan Fleming, Sketches for the Canadian National Railway, 1960

Thinking about diagrams and Adobe Illustrator and the alleged legitimation of the handwritten scribble by transforming it into dead font and clipart arrows; thinking about this because one of our On Site contributors was fretting about not being fluent in Illustrator. There are parallels with auto-translation here: a whole lot of meaning, intelligence, emotion and sheer life can be lost from the original.  

Allan Fleming's sketches clearly informed the ultimate CN logo: it isn't an entirely intellectual exercise, this design process thing, it is largely a visual exploration, running through hundreds of ideas, relying on the eye to weed them out before they go mechanical.

The 1960s  cleaned up a lot of our national icons, gave them all a simplicity which is now mostly replaced by font selection: the Bay, for forty years a quill pen hand pressure ribbon of ink, now a font that looks like a version of Banknote. 

Hudson's Bay logo, ca 1960, designer contested but perhaps Savage Sloan.

more summer

Looks like Castle Mountain and the highway to Banff before the Trans-Canada was built.  It is paved; even in the 1960s most of the Trans-Canada through the mountains was still gravel.  It certainly reduced speed.  What I do now in a day used to take two at the minimum, three if one was being leisurely.

The station wagon looks roughly like a mid-50s Pontiac, but people kept cars longer then. 

summer

the tiny ladder is a nice touch.

Andy Plant: orrery, 1997

Andy Plant. Orrery built for the 1997 Stockton Theatre Festival. A 40′ high, temporary outdoor floating sculpture, where a rotating orrery, with planets, is operated by a performer inside the main sphere.

A simple orrery, 1900

Evidently common enough to be in schoolrooms, this one in Germany.

An orrery, ca 1900. The arm is manually rotated by worm and wheel below a circular calendar disc printed with months, date, zodiac and seasons. The candle reflects light over the wood moon onto the terrestrial globe. signed 'Erd Globus v. 15cm. durchm. von Dr. H. Fischer Wagner & Debes, Leipzig Lehrmittelanstalt' 19in / 48.5cm high

Compared to William Pearson's orrery design below of the whole solar system, this schoolroom orrery is just the sun, the earth and the moon.  It must have been magical.

William Pearson: planets, 1813

A drawing of a machine to illustrate the orbits of the planets.  It appears to owe much to clock and watch mechanisms, cogs and wheels: the largest system illustrated by the smallest devices at the time.

Planetary Machines, Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, Vol 16. Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1830

Holst: Saturn, 1915

Holst's most ponderous planet:

Vija Celmins: drawing, 1982

Vija Celmins. Drawing, Saturn. 1982. Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, 14 x 11". McKee Gallery, NY

yyc floods

Tornado in Denver last week, travelled up the eastern slopes of the Rockies and parked: much rain.  Mandatory evacuation order issued in Calgary's river valleys Thursday, but not my block, the last before the railway tracks. Curious.  Voluntary evacuation on the street left just four houses occupied.  Very quiet; dystopian moment Friday morning in the back alley – bottle picker cutting the lock off a mountain bike, cycled away whistling.  Kept walking every few hours down to the river, three blocks away, empty streets, very eerie, reminded me of the end of On the Beach.

By Saturday I'd had enough of flood, however at the eastern end of the neighbourhood a great chunk of bank was swept away putting a long block of new houses right at the edge of a cliff.  In comes the army and lots of heavy lifting equipment and bolsters the cliff with large concrete blocks.
Sunday, water in the Bow about 6' down, neighbourhood still evacuated, now not even any gawkers – boring now that the water isn't bashing at the bridge deck, usually about 12' above water level.

Spent Friday moving the contents of the basement up to the ground floor: the archive of my life – much too much stuff.  The fear is always of reverse sewer action filling one's basement with toxic glurk.  This flooding thing will happen again, so vow that what goes back to the basement will be very thinned out.   

Saturday, doing some thinning: acres of paper, photocopies of articles and essays – Barthes on the Eiffel Tower – never seen it before but the margins are full of my notes.  I appear to have been quite smart once.  
A beautiful essay by Aijaz Ahmad of which there were several copies so I must have given it out in a course.  How to take all the excitement out of a favourite essay: assign it.  Half the students don't read it and try to wing it in the discussion.  A quarter don't read it and tell you it was irrelevant, the rest read it but don't know what to think about it, one person quotes it appropriately in their term paper and you give him an A.

Sunday, looked at the river, evacuation order still on, but so is the power and the gas, so I'm lucky.  Downtown last night inky dark as the power is off protecting the transformers. Mowed the lawn, listened to Gardener's Question Time – guaranteed to restore equilibrium in times of unease.  

Too much rainfall filled the Elbow River at its source in the mountains, it over-filled the Glenmore Reservoir and then joined the already flooded Bow River at the western corner of my neighbourhood: it crested here Saturday morning, and that crest is travelling at high speed down the Bow where it will meet the South Saskatchewan River and Medicine Hat later today.  Then it will continue east, through Saskatchewan and all its river towns, on to Manitoba where it will eventually enter Lake Winnipeg, not unknown to flood. every year.

It has been very odd living in an empty neighbourhood, just us and the birds, no cars, no neighbours, no roar of traffic on the nearby Deerfoot Trail but a more local sound of a sump pump bailing out the basement of an old apartment building on 9th Avenue, the main street.  The water coming out of the hoses is clear and sweet, not the milk chocolate colour of the river water.  It feels like a much earlier time. 

9th Avenue SE, Calgary, under mandatory evacuation: all the bridges closed, just one way in and out on the appropriately named Highfield Road.

for he loves me so

the BSA Airborne Paratrooper Bicycle, 1944

Infantrymen of The Highland Light Infantry of Canada aboard LCI(L) 306 of the 2nd Canadian (262nd RN) Flotilla en route to France on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

On yesterday's photo of the landings at Juno Beach soldiers appear to be landing with bicycles.  I thought when I saw it how far we have come from bicycles to drones in the conduct of war, given that some of those fellows in the photograph are probably still alive: many of them died that day however.  

The bicycles: BSA [British Small Arms, a Birmingham manufacturing conglomerate that made everything from rifles to London taxis] made 70,000 Airborne Folding Paratrooper Bicycles between 1939 and 1945.  As with all things military there are many sites devoted to the most arcane details of this bike, its rifle holder, its pedals, its colour (green).  This one is very complete: Bcoy1CPB  which will mean something to anyone connected with the Canadian Forces: B Company, 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion I think.

BSA was famous after the war for its motorcycles; our geography teacher, Mr Knight used it as a mnemonic for the names and order of the great northern lakes: Bear, Slave and Athabasca — good, eh?

In the D-Day landings, the bicycles were to be used by the second wave regiments to speed their way to the front, but the troops found the roads so congested that they couldn't ride and most were discarded.  B coy reports that they were intensely disliked: probably weighed a ton, and after the war many were sold as surplus: $10 though the Hudson's Bay Company, $3.95 at Capital Iron in Victoria, BC. 

Oh, Capital Iron, a most wonderful weekend tradition of my childhood: huge, dark and gloomy, smelled like metal, oil and canvas, aisles of barrels of nails and tools and incomprehensible metal doodads.  The ceiling was dense with hanging flags.  I suppose it also operated as a reality check, all that metal and machinery, for the men who miraculously found themselves in clean safe jobs with little families and houses with back yards just ten years after the end of the war.

D-day on Juno Beach, 1944

Canadian soldiers from 9th Brigade land with their bicycles at Juno Beach in Bernieres-sur-Mer during D-Day

Jeremy Deller. English Magic, 2013

Still from Jeremy Deller. English Magic, Venice Biennale British Pavilion until November 24, 2013

Jeremy Deller, passionate chronicler of the tangents of war.  The reviews have called his installation at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale aggressive. Angry, yes; resigned perhaps; this video captures something else. Deller's 2008 piece at the Imperial War Museum, It Is What It Is, was made from a bombed Baghdad car: there is something about the gratuitous destruction of cars in this film that with that earlier car in mind seems obscene. As does the aftermath of the inflatable Stonehenge: heritage as entertainment, the critique levelled at Danny Boyle's orchestration of the positive side of Britain for the opening of the 2010 Olympics.  There is a place and time for critique and the London Olympics was not one of them.  Deller has no such restrictions.

He isolates contradictions in Britain – the gap between pride and insignificance, between a blithe skipping along and a still, red in tooth and claw, countryside; between an imperial history and its modern incarnation as entertainment and celebrity.  Perhaps not contradictions, rather they are complex, near-inexplicable realities which artists and critical theorists keep trying to explain, reframe, re-present.  Adrian Searle calls Deller's Biennale installation a war on wealth — maybe, obviously I haven't seen it, I'm not British and I receive such works through a different lens, however, it seems that at the heart of Deller's work is a critique of war that uses a panoply of images used to disguise the project of war as a series of successes, heroisms and parades.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Will Gompertz on BBC World last night reported on Jeremy Deller's Venice project: the language a classic put-down.  'Aggressive' figures as the first word in every review, every report. If someone is angry, and as Deller said, these things had been in his mind for a long time, they can be dismissed as being aggressive, much as how angry women are written off as strident.  

And then, and this is unforgivable, Gompertz called Deller's angry, close to the bone murals that show just how socially conflicted England is today, 'the heir' to Danny Boyle's Olympic extravaganza.  This trivialises Deller by giving him a critical biography not from art but from the world of entertainment.  Controversy safely contained.