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.

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.

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.

Anthony Vidler a Cooper Unionban

Milos Forman a MoMÁban

New York igazi Közép-Európa. A Guggenheim közép-európai modernizmus fotókiállítása, a Public Library Nádas Péter-beszélgetése, a Lengyel új hullám retrospektív az Anthology-ban, Boris Groys a New Museumban, és most a Milos Forman-retrospektív a MoMÁban. Forman különös figura: 1969 megérkezve New Yorkba egyből nekilátott a filmcsináláshoz, de első filmje (Take Off) még a csehszlovák világ nyomait viseli: a mindennapi élet paródiája, amerikai karakterekkel és problémákkal. Forman különös pozíciót foglal el a film történetében: kívülállóként nekiállt, és kultuszfilmet forgatott az amerikai társadalom összes jelenkori problémájáról.

Boris Groys a New Museumban

A New Museum megkezdte “esti iskoláját”. A budapesti Tranzit szabadiskolához hasonló, zárt és nyitott foglalkozásokat Boris Groys előadása nyitotta meg, telt ház előtt. Groys a “kommunizmus utáni vallásról” beszélt, összekapcsolva az iszlám terrorizmus videó-alapú kommunikációját a közel-kelet kommunistái által bevezetett öngyilkos-merényletekkel.

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.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

mlk-we-shall-overcome.mp3

January 21 was Martin Luther King’s Day. A national holiday, thanks to a group of students and teachers who joined forces in some Midwest colleges, and repeatedly demanded from the authorities the recognition of the MLK Day. It was 40 years ago that MLK was shot in the face on his civil right campaign in Memphis.

They succeeded, thus creating another red letter day in the calendar. Nevertheless, the instant poll, organized daily in my regular Blue Spoon café, revealed that about a half of downtown workers, visiting the café, would work on January 21, despite its holiday status. I, as a municipal employee, didn’t.

So I went to celebrate. I walked down the few blocks from Classon Avenue, to ther Brooklyn Academy of Music, to enjoy the free program supported by the local shopping center. The program consisted of verious performances, a screening, and a civil rights movement concert, by famous gospel singers. I chose the screening. BAM’s movie theater was packed: you could sense the excitement of the spectators, mostly Afro-Americans. The movement songs on the screen were rapidly joined by the audience: they were all known and all sung throughout the room; a very touching moment.

The movie was capturing: it told not only about the heroic struggle of Memphis union and church leaders standing up for the city’s sanitation workers rights, but also the strategic mistakes MLK made in the course of his campaign. Leaving the theater, I had no illusions about the success of the civil rights movement: our beloved neighborhood, although good-willingly balancing between gentrified tidyness and black poverty, is a good example for a highly polarized society.

Shigeru Ban és a katasztrófa építészete

Kedden a Cooper Union-ban Shigeru ban tartott előadást, telt ház előtt. Shigeru Ban pontosan itt, a Cooper Union építésziskolájában végzett, mielőtt karrierje meglódult. Az előadás nagy része az építész felelősségéről szólt: Ban az utóbbi tíz évben rengeteget dolgozik katasztrófa-sújtotta területeken (Ruandában, Indiában, Törökországban, Sri Lankán), ahol olcsó, könnyen előállítható hajlékokat tervez. Valószínűleg ezért időzítették így ezt az előadást. A szervező Architectural League a 2007-08-as szezonban “Reimagining Risk” (Building and Fear, Indefensible Space) címmel tartott előadás-sorozatot. Ha a katasztrófa nincs is jelen a New York-iak életében (csak a filmeken), ennek megvan a lehetősége. A városháza globális felmelegedést vizsgáló kutatócsoportja szerint a tengerszint emelkedése komolyan veszélyeztetheti Manhattant – a szigetet. Emellett a hurrikán lehetősége sincs kizárva: a magát felkészültnek tudni szerető városháza az elmúlt hónapban beindította a vészhelyzetekben történő kooordináció megkönnyítését szolgáló kommunikációs hálózatot, és építészeti pályázatot hirdetett egy modellezett hurrikán rombolása utáni tömeges szükséglakások tervezésére.