The Metropolitan Exchange

After Beckett, I leave the theater quickly. I still hope to catch the mysterious meeting of ‘young design and urban professionals’, Metropolitan Exchange, just a few blocks away from the BAM. I received an invitation from Tom with whom I met a few days earlier. He said he couldn’t come – but I should go.

I have no idea what to expect. While looking for the building, scanning the facades for numbers, a lady turns towards me and asks what am I looking for. 33, I answer, 33 Flatbush Avenue. This is where I go, she says, so she took me to the house, and let me in. You’re lucky, she goes on. The doorbells don’t work, you need to call someone’s phone to get in. Helped by her confidence, I do get in. I go up to the 6th floor, and timidely step out of the elevator. I came to a meeting, I start, but I’m some hours late, I turn to the first talking couple. You’ve arrived in the right time, a young woman says, come on in, and have a drink. She sounds german, and I make the connections between Philippe’s greetings and the MEx’s member list. Are you Kaja, I ask. How do you know, she’s surprised.

Beckett in the BAM

I arrived a half an hour earlier, but the theater’s café had no more places to sit. I was waiting with a magazine in my hands, leaning against a coloumn in that particularly renovated interior space, jewel of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theater.
About a year ago, I participated at a discussion in the Center for Contemporary Architecture in Budapest. We were talking about ruins, and their perception. I happened to say something of ruins as design elements in galleries and other spaces of art. Someone objected and told me: ‘it is not because we want our spaces to be run down – not at all. We have no money to renovate them.’
BAM has money, with over a dozenh of members contributing with more than 5 million dollars, but still, its walls are uncovered, the bare bricks and other wall structures are illuminated to emphasizer the alternative character of the place. The premier cultural venue of Brooklyn, the BAM is probably seen as alternative from Manhattan. I heard people asking: ‘But what does this wonderful institution do in Brooklyn?’. Others replied: ‘Brooklyn is the new Manhattan.’
It’s Beckett in the BAM, Happy Days, Fiona Shaw plays it all, with a male actor suffering under and around her, but never joining the conversation. She is in the middle of the scene, covered by sand, apparently the debris of a building after the explosion. After some explosion, of which we will never get to know anything more. Just like the whole piece: thrown into the middle of nowhere, a couple continues its one-sided conversations until the female part is totally covered in the ground.
I could take one photo before the security staff started approaching me.

Madison utca 41.

Egy kanapé váratléan felbukkanása tökéletessé varázsolta a kényelmet nálunk, a Madioson utca 41. legfelső emeletén.

We never close

Néha úgy érzem, hogy New York nem a jövő városa. De ezt ritkán mondom ki, nem akarok senkit megsérteni. (Egyszer közöltem egy római lakossal, aki elvitt a Szent Péter térre, hogy a tér kisebb, mint gondoltam. Ezen örökre megsértődött.) New York, miközben a maga 2030-as képét tervezi, sokkal inkább a múlttal van elfoglalva, mint a jövővel. A jövővel csak az ingatlanspekulánsok foglalkoznak itt. Ilyenkor úgy tűnik, hogy a jövővel Los Angeles foglalkozik. Alice hozta magával ezt a bögrét LA-ből. Hol máshol lehet ilyen felhőtlenül optimista kijelentéseket tenni: “Soha nem zárunk be”?