A firewall in Park Slope

Brooklyn’s Botanic Garden

Bushwick loft concert

Chinese conditions in the MEx

Beth’s performance

Sunday, Beth’s performance. I’m happy I could make it. A small theater space on an upper floor of the West 18^th Street, just a few minutes walk from Union Square. I arrive early, have some time to look around, and read further my book, still Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. We enter the hall, and walk up the stairs to sit down. A tiny little space, with about 40-50 seats, family atmosphere. The show starts with Beth’s solo dance, and this is exactly what I was looking for on this grey afternoon. Magic. Filling my hangover emptiness with scents of travelling, of bodies, of movements, irreplaceable with words.

Hanne Hukkelberg a Union Hallban

Alice finds the program: we’re hesitating between Monday and Tuesday. Finally it’s Tuesday, and another location: Brooklyn’s Union Hall. I arrive directly from work, and wait for the others in a comfortable fotel. The bar looks like a ‘Union Hall’, a literary-free-mason venue from one of the best days of the late 18^th century. Books cover the walls, I find a political analysis of the Soviet union’s first 5-year plan. But then people gradually arrive and we move down to the concert hall. A small space, with three concerts following each other. Romantic balladas with disturbingly simplistic lyrics, then fast, imaginative rock, and finally the Norwegian band.

Back to Times Square

After spending months with researching the Grand Central Subdistrict and the area south of Penn Station, I’m back to Times Square. I went out recently a few times to look around in the Theater District, took photos and notes, and I was amazed how much the theaters which are supposed to be preserved and emphasized by all the planning mechanisms, are oppressed by the office buildings towering over them, except for, maybe the 42nd Street. In this case, the quare feet floor area commerce seems to be more difficoult to trace back than in the Grand Central area. Petterns are not as clear and future is more unpredictible.

Foster’s iconic architecture

If he leaves his traces in the central cities, these traces have to be remarkable. An office tower by Norman Foster on the Eighth Avenue, built over an existing building. It makes me wonder about Marcel Breuer’s proposal to build above the Grand Central: his 1968 plan projected a classic modernist office tower at the top of the Beaux-Arts station. It was seen as a blasphemy.

CUP in the New Museum

Sunday afternoons want me to stay in Brooklyn. But I resist the seduction of the Madison Street, and head for the New Museum. I met several times with different members of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, but I was interested in Damon: he’s next on my list of interviews. The subject of the talk in the Lower East Side, and long-time residents’ organization to avoid displacements and rent increases. The discussion starts in a predictable way, but after a good half an hour it takes a sudden turn. A question from the audience introduces an idea whose significance is hardly recognized. She talks about the ecological footprint, a notion omnipresent in the politically and environmentally conscious press of the US. She doesn’t articulate clearly her question, but I continue her train of thought. There sould be a way to think about our social footprint. To have a set of information about where I move: who lived there before, how can I avoid changing the rent structure of the neighborhood and to make it lose its rent-controlles status, how can I contribute best to the local economies, how to participate, how to engage? We all know the dynamisms of ‘cutting-edge’ neighborhoods, but often fail to personalize the responsabilities.

Chess machine

This chess machine, on display at the MoMA’s design exhibition, is not a regular one. From a given situation, it tells you all the possible steps each character may take. In this way, it’s a few steps behind me: it tells about the possible futures of the board I play in. The chess board becomes the garden of forking paths, Borges’ famous take on the co-presence of futures, and the parallel presence of choices failing to exclude each other.