Belleville

La Cagnotte

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.

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.

Community Board 5

Two Community Board 5 meetings this week, in two different available spaces in Mid-Midtown. This is not the equivalent of the infamous public hearing procedures well-known in Budapest. Community Boards are formal groups representing a certain district and articulating the consensus reached among the community members. The CB expresses its opinion about each development projects in its neighborhood and approves or disapproves it. CBs have no right to veto – but they are influential in emphasizing the problems and weaknesses of the projects, and thus affecting the further procedure.

The recent developments plans in the CB 5 are very illustrative. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA extension in the 53^rd Street and Norman Foster’s new Lexington Avenue tower will both change the Midtown skyline, and will significantly charge the area with people, deliveries – traffic. The Board is not intimidated by the star architects: its membership includes Rockefellers and prominent real-estate attorneys, ie. professionals who are totally aware of the area’s development potentials and have their own vision about it. The nimby-attitude is also represented, of course. But the point is elsewhere: on debate and the public clash of interests and ideas.

Hispanic Society

A lecture abourt Francis Alys in the Hispanic Society of Harlem. A piece of colonial Spain in the middle of Black Harlem, huge courts and baroque architecture opening to a street of hamburger and pizza shops. When the lecturer enters the room, I find him very familiar. It takes me a few minutes to find out, who he is – where did I see him. Mexico, Mexico. I make the connection: he was the prominent guest of the Mexican Pavilion of the 07 Venice Biennial, my second employer after being fired from the Hungarian one. Todays lecturer came by boat: but to grab the land is not the most obvious thing to do. He failed to have both his feet on the bank of the canal: he fell into the water. Silence. Everybody stands still, frightened. What will he say? How will he react? Others forcing back their laugher. And there he comes. Swimes some hundred meters down, to reach a point where he can climb out to the bank. He walks back, soaked to the skin, water dropping from all his clothes, around and behind him. And laughs, laughs as if it were the best thing to do in Venice, a quick swim in the canals. All relieved. Hapy end.

Crown Heights

When the waters come up, and buildings become islands, we will be the land, Crown Heights.

Different cultural parameters

“In London his look seems to be about wearing many thousand pounds’ worth of garments that appear to have never been worn before having been slept in, the night before. In New York he prefers to look as though he’s just been detailed by a tight scrum of specialists. Different cultural parameters” – írja William Gibson 2003-as, Pattern Recognition című regényében.