tragic v. comic

It turns out the answer to my question "Laurie Olin vs. Dave Hickey: What Makes Them Different and What Does It Mean" is in a Hickey essay called "The Delicacy of Rock and Roll" (which is also the first essay of his that I ever read, the one made me go searching for more). It's about two short films he saw in grad school; one by Stan Brakhage ("that might be characterized thematically as 'very nervous' and sort of about 'film itself' [with] a great deal of panning, swooping, jiggling,dipping and zooming"), the other Andy Warhol's Haircut No 3, a film that is nothing but a very close shot of a man's hair being cut, for a long time, and finally, the man lighting a cigarette.

"Brakhage's practice...was essentially tragic. His films strove toward a condition of freedom and autonomy, fully aware that the work itself, for all its abstract materiality, could never free itself from cultural expectations. Nor could the artist, for all the aleatory and improvisatory privileges he granted himself, free his practice from the traditions of picture-making...Brakhage told us what we already knew as children of the Cold War, that no matter how hard we tried, we could not be free. Warhol's film, on the other hand, told us what we needed to know, that, no matter how hard we tried, we could not be ordered--that insofar as we were tiny, raggedy, damaged and disorganized human beings, we probably were free, in some small degree, whether we liked it or not...Warhol's self-inhibiting strategies liberated him as an artist and liberated his beholders, as well, into an essentially comic universe."

Tragic vs. comic. Olin: with his visceral understanding of how his predecessors, English designers in the 18th century, brought to bear all their skills and knowledge to create some small plot of beauty and order against the passage of time, decay, ruin, death, etc. And Hickey: with his faith in rock and roll (the Stones again!) as a metaphor for democracy and in popular/commercial culture in general as the source for all truly pleasureable/meaningful high art, who never really mentions the passage of time, decay, ruin, death, etc. at all, but is very interested in democracy--how people are living, talking to each other, getting by.

I was thinking of tragic vs. comic in relation to the Warner Herzog movie I saw tonight, Fitzcarraldo (at the Brattle, which continues its fundraising in hopes of staying open). Herzog flirts with Issues (the echoes of colonialism and the Heart of Darkness, the power dynamic in cross-cultural encounters, the exploitation of indigenous people by outsiders--anthopologists, filmmakers, or otherwise) but in the end the movie is pure fantasy, skipping by tragedy to stage operas on steamships. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie that asks for such suspension of disbelief. At one point, our projectionist actually showed a 10-minute scene out of sequence, a full hour before it was supposed to appear. No one noticed until we saw the same scene the second time, in its proper place; the first time around, it had seemed like just another disjointed, fantastic lurch forward in an essentially comic universe.

the shift

"One day near the end of my first summer in Britain, while visiting Magdalen College, Oxford, the cumulative experience of recent walks, sights, senses, and ideas, the layering of efforts and disciplines that have made the landscape of southern Britain, became overwhelming. Many thousands of people before me have passed through this college and its environs and have been moved by its tranquil cloister, commenting on the charm of the river and bridge, the shady waterside path known as Addison's walk, and the harmony between Sir Christopher Wren's classical building and the earlier Gothic arcades and tower. On this particular occasion I happened to find myself at a corner of its little park beside the Wren building. It was a beautiful warm afternoon, and a small herd of fallow deer was browsing near the railing, their mottled tawny backs moving in and out of shadows cast by centuries-old oaks. It was calm and quiet. Birds chattered and cooed somewhere above. A bell chimed the hour. I studied Wren's graceful facade, the tall window frames and buttery-gray stone of the wall, their cornices, the central arcade, and the vines growing upon it. I turned and found the massive hulk of an ancient tree. Beneath it was a plaque. The text expalined that this plant had been opne of the first London plane trees to be grown in the seventeenth century in the botanical garden across the road from the college. They had been started from cuttings brought from the very first such plant in London, where specimens of Oriental planes and American sycamores had accidentally (naturally?) cross-pollinated in the nursery of a leading horticultralist who had been actively importing plants from around the world.

The tree and Wren's building were the same age. I thought about the effort and vision of the people who created this ensemble, the optimism and care with which they had attempted to combine the latest science of their day, in this case botany, and the exploration of distant continents with the accident that had produced this hybrid, which has been such a blessing for the great cities of the world ever since, and of architecture and planning--in this case Wren's use of the very latest and modern architectural style and technology to produce a bold and handsome building, one that holds its own with the equally strong (and contemporary in their own day) late Gothic buildings it faces, forming a court without rejecting them--and of the deer, themselves a remnant of medieval landholdings and hunting priveleges, not to say culinary habits. The trees, the animals, the buildings, the steady and serious scholarship inside, the light-hearted recreation on the river outside, together presented a clear attempt by the men of the seventeenth century who created this ensemble to produce a harmonious world through the combination of art and science, nature and culture. It isn't Utopia, but it is humane in the deepest sense of the world. Also it is beautiful. As I finished reading the plaque the intelligence and combined efforts that produced this ensemble struck me, and I burst into tears."
--Laurie Olin, Across the Open Field: Essays Drawn From English Landscapes

I am putting together a chart comparing the passions and dislikes of landscape architect Laurie Olin and Dave Hickey--born only a year apart (1939 and 1940, respectively), both successful practioners and critics of what falls in the broad categories of art and design, and both with such different, highly developed sensibilities and polar-opposite reactions to: the 1960s, French theory, popular culture. I can't imagine the young Dave Hickey bursting into tears for anything. Between Olin and Hickey lies the shift to postmodernism in American sensibility; I'm just not sure that I can tease it out.

On a similar note, I wish that someone had come up with the idea, in the 1980s when it was still relevent, to put Mary Gaitskill and Camille Paglia in a room together to chat.

marriages

I'm very suggestible. That latest pose or attitude you're seeing is probably the result of some book I was just reading. Or some movie. And who better to influence your life for the night than Dave Hickey?

"My idea of embarking upon graduate studies was to go some place where the smart people are. Unfortunately, the smart people are no longer in universities, the smart people are writing for The Simpsons, the smart people are writing for LL Cool J. There are exceptions, and that's an exaggeration, but most of all academic culture is just one big handicap, and I live in it with colleagues that I respect, but it ain't where the thoughts are thought. I kind of like teaching—I mean, I enjoy working with artists. But what I do with graduate students now, is exactly what I did with the artists I represented when I was a dealer. I go to their studios, we sit around and talk about the work with the idea of how can we get this shit looking like something. That's it. I like being around people who work. All of my social talk is with people who have done something between the time I talked to them last, and the time I talk to them now. University people really don't do very much, so you have to talk about pets. I am mostly interested in people who are doing things and are busy. I get along with them...

But I am really interested in people who make it up as they go along and there are still some out there. Regardless of what my colleagues say, you have in this place, still, a lot more options, and a lot more freedom than I see in other places. You can really do some weird shit. You can always leave town as well; go to the edge and declare that the center. You can always leave town and start again and then start 'againagain.' It is possible in good times to live on the margin. Like in the '60s and '70s, there was enough money floating around to get by. I have no idea how I supported myself between '68-'78. This kind of money and fluidity is coming around again, so there is enough money that there is a margin that you can survive on. And that privileges improvisation. I think it is going to get better."

I know: it's not perfect. LL Cool J? Plus he admits he's been saying practically the same thing for decades now, and that includes rhapsodizing about the Rolling Stones. And I know, that excerpt is from an interview conducted however many years ago and Dave Hickey is not actually appearing in my life just now (on the virtual eve of 2nd semester) as an omen about my graduate studies. But still. There's a line from his essay "Dealing" (in Air Guitar) about completing his grad school thesis and the prospect of life in academia: "Even then I prided myself in being a gambler, but this was a bad bet. You don't send good money after bad, ever." Three year Master of Landscape Architecture program? Mostly I love it, but big picture, it's a calculated bet, weighed against what was happening in my life Spring/Summer `05.

Last spring, while I was deciding what program to attend, I went to a conference organized around the MOMA exhibit Groundswell. The last item of the day was a panel discussion with some of the leading practioners, people in the show whose work I admire (listening to Jim Corner describe Fresh Kills or the High Line is genuinely moving). At one point, they were talking about landscape architecture's relative obscurity and Michel Desvigne, in his thick French accent, reminded everyone that 90% of new development gets built without any design consultation. Then he went around the table pointing at each speaker, beginning with himself, saying: "I'm nobody...you are nobody...you are nobody...you are a little more than nobody...only a little."

I tell that story a lot. It's the masochism of being in a marginal profession, even as I continue to find out-of-the-way corners of Au Bon Pain so I can sketch the traffic triangle outside the window for a while--the hopeful, daily practice of drawing--knowing that all the monk-like daily practice doesn't add up to much of a life. That's school. So with my unused birthday wish, I wish for myself that I can recognize those things in Hickey's exaggerated portrayal of academia that are true and avoid them; and that I can remember enough of his ideal of making a living (improvising "in advocacy of your particular marriage of desire and esteem") to do just that.

Here's where you can find the best ever definition of an ideal marriage (it's in the last paragraph).

Strange mix today of faking the testosterone (shopping for construction materials at Home Depot and building my bench) and not (my first ever voice lesson, with crazy genius Diane). You know how when you first meet the crazy genius you have to sacrifice some of your dignity (think Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid, or those early, insanely grueling workouts with the new coach in feel-good team sports movies)? That's me with Diane.

Diane: Can you see the vibration? Can you touch the vibration?
Me: (bewildered silence)
Diane: No, you can't. OK, good!

It's not all blogable, unfortunately.

forged in the darkest recesses...of imagination

A couple of posts back I mentioned that Public Space Project is helping to install a temporary exhibit in the lobby of our building. For the last 4-5 days, we've been scavanging junk. Last Friday, just a stone's throw from Outflow #70, we visited the Big Dig salvage yard, tucked away beneath a continuous ceiling of highway overpasses. (Big Dig trivia: all of the temporary on- and off- ramps we're using while Boston's downtown highways are put underground are built on styrofoam--you can see it in the pic below where the cement has worn away.) Tomorrow and Thursday we'll be building benches out of paper towel rolls, old street signs, financial ledgers, and other recycled materials. Either Thursday or next Monday (grand opening) I'll post pictures of construction and the final installation. In the meantime, Justin forwarded me this great guerilla-park construction project in San Francisco.

Finally, many overdue thanks to Switzerland. For the brilliant idea of hosting last Friday's reception for a new exhibit on Swiss student architecture in Terminal E at Logan Airport. For the many take-home gifts. And finally to the Swiss Ambassador in Cuba, who hosted a group of us design students a while back. After an hour in his palatial gardens, the white-suited waiters who had been serving us non-stop, flawless mojitos approached sheepishly to say there was no more rum; either we'd finished the poor man's supply or were being cut off. Either way, that day I promised myself that first chance I got, I'd post an online picture of Alpine horns.

(Today's post title is the slogan for Porche's new online ad campaign, which is on Salon.com these days.)

Kicking my ideas in the ass

"Here is a characteristically modern definitition of the public square: a place of passive enjoyment, a kind of playground for adults, and it says a good deal about how slack our current definition of community can be. [Many urban theorists] are content to describe the public square strictly in terms of gregariousness: how it offers a spatial experience shared by a heterogeneous public which will sooner or later go its separate ways; an urban form which acts to draw people together and give them a momentary pleasure and sense of well-being. No one should underestimate those benefits but in the political landscape the public square serves an entirely different purpose. It is assumed that those who were come there are already aware that they are members of the community, responsible citizens, and that on occasion they will participate in public discussions and take action on behalf of the community...

The most popular, frequented plazas and small parks are those which [sociologist William Whyte] says provide an agreeable microclimate, easy accessibility, some sensational object like a piece of sculpture or a display of flaming water, and which (and this is most essential) allow people to sit comfortably and relax. 'What attracts people most...are other people.' But what does 'other people' mean? Those with whom (to use Aristotle's phrase) we exchange moral and noble ideas? No: 'other people' more often than not in this new urban space seems to mean voices and color and movement and fleeting impressions. People have become elements of animation in a pleasantly planned environment, and we are social beings merely to the extent that we want to be 'at one' with that particular environment.

These contemporary urban parks...are the last, poor remnants of what was once an almost sacred space, but in our rejection of their political function we presage not the end of civilization but the end of one chapter. We are better off than we suppose."
--J.B. Jackson

Ouch. Flipping through my notebook I found this passage, which I'd copied out almost exactly a year ago. It's sobering to see that my ideas about public space haven't changed much since then (see my posts on the Zocalo and indirectly on murals and Mark Morris), and that Jackson years ago was taking those ideas apart. The kicker? What does he mean, after all of that careful dissection of what he sees as an ahistorical and impoverished vision of public space, when he writes "We are better off than we suppose?"

A public space in which we exchange ideas. In whatever form that space or those ideas might take. That's my new project.

variations on a theme

The only two dance performances I've ever seen and not liked were a jazz tap show (when I was working as an usher) and a performance by the New York City Ballet. I could appreciate the dancers' skills, but the whole production felt stilted, as if an entire range of emotion and movement were off-limits because of a set of antiquated instructions on what dance should be. But I got goosebumps at the Mark Morris ballet this afternoon.

Imagine you are Mark Morris. Let's say you are moved by baroque classical music. How do you choreograph a piece that communicates this to the audience? The phrase "baroque classical" doesn't tell people much these days, and hearing the actual music is probably worse. For one thing, it's too culturally-coded: you immediately think of those lone stations on the radio dial with the sedate hosts and tasteful commercials for uspcale furnishings stores. (In Baltimore, my local car-repair guys dressed in white lab coats, had Wall Street Journals lying around the waiting area, and played the classical music stations on the radio so white-collar folks would think I can trust these guys and would gladly pay the jacked-up prices.) And what do you do with the delicate and refined movements we automatically associate with, say, trembling flute melodies? There are whole genres of Hollywood movies that parody these dances and their leotards.

One way to defuse the expectations is to play to them; at times Morris pokes fun at the genre by giving his dancers exaggerated, goofy movements (although there are also plenty of straight-up precious-graceful-bird-like movements set to flute and soprano solos). Then there are moments of slapstick, such as the two rings of male dancers, the outside ring spanking the inside ring along. But mostly Morris runs with what the music does best: set up intricate structures and vary them. I have only a vague idea of what the term counterpoint means, but I feel like for two hours Morris created it physically in flesh and blood, dressed it in color, and whirled it around.

When most or all of the twenty-five dancers were on stage, you felt you were looking through an old-fashioned kaleidoscope. At one point, two lines of dancers snake around the stage, outlining the corners of a square, then cross the stage diagonally to meet, touch briefly, and bump off to the edge again--a perfect abstraction, like a screen-saver or those "serpent" games on your old computer's hard-drive. In the next-to-last sequence, the dancers sprinted and skipped full-speed towards the audience then veered offstage, to sprint and skip another pass, always in different teams of two and three. (Goosebumps.) And Morris always allows these precisely coordinated sequences to break down, wander off-course, become human again. From where I was sitting, high above the action, and because it's been on my mind, sometimes it looked like people crossing a train station or public plaza.

And then Molly re-enacted whole scenes out on Tremont Street after the show. Morris would've loved it.