Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times has a disposable quality. How can I qualify this? It must be the pace of the film, having a speed slightly faster than reality- 24fps. Within the night time department store a new world opens up to Chaplin's character and that of the young street urchin. Oversized beds, large pieces of cake, gargantuan barrels of gin, port, whiskey, endless sandwiches-so large they bow at either end when held in the middle. This is hunger.

The opulent life of Hollywood films, and the Hearst Castle is seemingly caricatured here as well. But the decadence of this moment is fleeting. Such opulence passes quickly through the hands of Chaplin and his companion. The notion of dreaming is paralleled well here, having the sequence take place at night, in the abandoned department store, and all of it dissipating in an instant the next dreary and hungover morning. The young street Urchin flees the scene in the morning under the ever-watchful eye of the clock, a reminder of 'reality.' Its gaze dutifully sees her out of the store before the store opens and resumes its intended purpose as place of both capitalist transaction and capitalist dream.

The clock is the ultimate conceptual map of the city, perfect in every sense. While the clock has no actual power of physical coercion it keeps the order of the urban hierarchy in tact. It signals the beginning and end of the work day. It is the mechanical coalescence of order, it overlays a synchronized conceptual map of human experience in the urban setting (see Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth)

 Yet as we accept the presence of time, we can also bend it and mold it into a far different map within those initial constraints. This is evident in the ways that era's past are re-imagined and re-historicized, framed through different theoretical approaches, i.e. the feminist reading (blatant example).

Last Day in New York

Met T-FUDGE in front of the Victoria Secret boutique at the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Ave and 34th Street. Waiting inside the boutique, before she arrived, I rode up and down the white-railing-ed escalators -the profuse smell of saccharine perfumes wafting about. I watched folk, young and old, black and white, dig through drawers of push-up bras, lacy panties, and gold glitter printed pullover sweaters. I almost bumped into a lady backing up to instagram a truly monumental store display: it was wreathed in magenta-pink velvet upholstered benches, and crowned atop with an ostrich feather-ed wing-ed victory mannequin -headless -a classic reference to classical statuary, except lamé silver paint-ed with black lingerie.

I stepped through the revolving doors, past the eastern European tourists in Ugg boots, and stood in the middle of the sidewalk. I situated myself behind a young couple -girl and boy- taking a photograph of themselves in front of the world's largest Macy's. T-FUDGE appeared then, ten feet in front of me, moving diagonally through the crosswalk densely grey with afternoon shoppers. I watched T-FUDGE scan the crowd, like a lost cat, trying blindly to pick up the scent of a lost hot cat piss trail. I walk towards her as if to shoulder her in the face.


My iphone dies.

T-FUDGE and I walk down Broadway to the Korean food court on 33rd street. We leave there and walk to the Ace Hotel on 28th and Broadway. T-FUDGE walks up a set of marble stairs and down the other side just to be on the other side of the lobby. Our path crosses a woman with a similar intent. A over size American flag, as if taken from the Miley Cyrus music video Party in the U.S.A., is hung above the bar. There is a brown animal-looking fur skin draped on a couch- it could be teddy bear. I could have also cradled the butts of countless wealthy celebrities. There is a pair of stuffed badgers in a glass case that faces a long black table. The table is cut down the center by a row of antique reading lamps, identical. Their shape and design is suggestive of municipal use. The light is more than dim. Everyone seated there is illuminated more brightly by the soft chrome glow of their personal computing devices.

Opening Ceremony at the Ace Hotel:  we squat on the floor -as if we were preparing to defecate in a Japanese toilet- reading fashion editorials. Dazed and Confused was admired for its particularly aesthetically pleasing spreads. We touch everything, move every coat hanger in the store, unzip and open every wallet and bag, and then leave.

D-PANTS is at the MoMa. We're late, we don't care, we want to see Times Square. We leave the Ace Hotel and walk past all the wholesale jewelery and bead stores. People are jam packed trying to see the Broadway musical, Annie, on a Friday night. Five lucky people on the Bank of America red ticket steps get their faces superimposed on cartoon images of the statue of liberty on a 10ft by 20ft LED screen facing southwards. We walk to MoMa.


Waiting in the museum lobby we are gestured at to leave the closing museum.  A girl passes wearing a light blue fur hat with ear flaps. I have to use the bathroom now- #2 @hiltonavenueoftheamericas. D-PANTS and T-FUDGE are preparing to be coolly be ejected from the Hilton- being that my approach in their periphery vision appears like the gait and uniform of a Hilton employee who's sole job is to eject bums and lumpens from the Hotel lobby. Bums and lumpens who are waiting on a friend in the toilet to make an efficient but overly caffeinated deposit into the municipal waste disposal infrastructure of midtown Manhattan via the Hilton on 6th Ave.

 A dinner at a Japanese restaurant ensued.

In Bushwick on the rooftop of D-PANTS' studio building we looked at a graffiti painting of a cat that looked liked it had blood in its mouth. D-PANTS played with fire, and somewhere in the distance Kelly Clarkson songs were being played. D-PANTS needs an instagram.

at Myrtle Willoughby TEDRTLE, T-FUDGE and I watched the first ten minutes of Boogie Nights. T-FUDGE and I drank sprite and whiskey and ate cheezits. I looked at pictures of T-FUDGE's B-Day party at her place of employment, one of the pix featured a cosmopolitan cocktail in the foreground, garnished with a hear-shaped piece of watermelon, beside a white stage set and white spiral staircase set against black in the background. T-FUDGE falls asleep.

The Day I dragged my family to ITT

This photo was taken from inside the auditorium building at Illinois Institute of Technology designed by Mies van der Rohe. After my brother's wedding we drove into Chicago and at my request went on a brief self-guided tour of the famous architect's legacy. My family's critique was that all the buildings seemed to look the same, a concrete pavilion surrounded by a glass curtain, but they were kind of right. New partitions and divisions popped up in the building like a tent city, as it must have seemed unnecessary to build 25ft tall dividers to hide less than 6ft tall people. It was interesting to see the accumulation of decay in the building from weather damage, the steel I-beams were weeping with rust.

whether true or not I identified this clock as something close to the original building. It seemed to be placed there aware of the original scale of the building. as was this exit sign.

The large windows seemed the most unapologetic and beautiful element to the whole architectural scheme. They produced a simple gesture to appreciate the trees planted right outside and changing color. Perhaps a gesture to expand the space of the building and its purpose beyond the walls. The current reality of which seems sorry, i.e. the awkward re-division of space and disrepair. Although not shown here it seems Mies van der Rohe had designed ways to partition the space through a series of curtains, an unobtrusive solution rather than standard office partitions. 

The lobby of 310 Riverside Drive

I decided to try a self-guided walking tour of the upper-west side Art Deco highlights on a late February afternoon. I nearly abandoned all hope having walked from 83rd and Broadway to 103rd and Riverside in the freezing cold- weaving across avenues hopelessly finding only run of the mill upper west side chintz- when I came upon this unassuming gem. Wikipedia explains in greater detail the history of the 24 story apartment building.
Art deco is appealing because it seems conflated with a glamorous and nostalgic past. The first associations that come to mind are the roaring 20's, Jazz, and Hollywood's golden era. But being there you could see the inspiration for the Memphis design movement, and post modern architecture's highlights.
The lobby felt stilted, as if there was some major renovation that occurred some time ago right before my eyes but I just couldn't see it. It was like the colors had been tweaked the furniture edited the incandescent bulbs now compact florescent, and an LED peeking out from behind a pillar. Certain things in the lobby felt replaced it felt part historical recreation, part destroyed, part historical.

Charles and Ray Eams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv7ipQdUrYk

                                                  still from House 1989; Charles and Ray Eams

The case study houses were built under the sponsorship or Arts and Architecture magazine. Most of the houses were built in Los Angeles California with the intent to design and build homes using contemporary materials, economy and most of all taste. Most appear to be built with an almost romantic notion of modesty as their fame and modern glamor have elevated these houses to the status symbol of the wealthy and well-to-do. The house pictured above was owned and designed by Charles and Ray Eams, case study house # 8, who were themselves both architects and designers. Their film House after Five years of Living (1989) showcases, through a series of still images, their interior decorative scheme, landscaping, studio space and knickknacks accumulated via world travels or perhaps weekly trips to the local flea market.  One gets the feeling by surveying the Eams' home that their decorating choices are somehow a antecedent to the kind of lifestyle images espoused by large home furnishing corporations like IKEA or Crate and Barrel.

The Eams' living space is showcased as an example of a 'bourgeois' living space, a living space inhabited by tasteful and erudite artists. The space of the home -littered with trinkets of non-western  cultures; trinkets whose function as objects of display seems to exist on questionable footing, a sort of trailing dialogue with cabinets of curiosities. They -the trinkets- seem to establish the occupant as a world traveler and connoisseur of Kachina dolls among other appropriated non-western objects.

Set amongst these trinkets are elements drawn off of traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics. One wonders if the desired effect, by borrowing heavily on Japanese aesthetics was a kind of elegant cleanliness, or some grasp at perfection and order without sterility, homogeneity or magnificence.

 Yet drawn off of another culture's elemental style the initial critique of such a move is watered down derivative. The image of a Japanese lantern re-imagined as a light fixture of pure white paper seems kitschy. In fact, today, one's first lesson in cheap taste would be a trip to the local IKEA to pick up some paper lanterns in true Blanche Dubois style.

The end result of such appropriation is simply a matter of tasteful appearance. What has Japanese aesthetics done for Charles and Ray Eams? The answer provided by the film suggests a sort of enlightened and joyous lifestyle of nearly rustic simplicity caused by the ingenious design of their beautiful home. On the other hand their ruthless appropriation seems to know no bounds, and makes one wonder if their excessive knickknack collecting isn't responsible for the appearance of such atrocities as Pier One Imports, let alone the very idea that interior decorating could be a worthwhile habit or even a viable business enterprise or that collecting material objects or outsider art objects elevates one's lifestyle image, and adds a notion of 'me' to a place of habitation. 

One must have clarity though. It is not my intention here to defame orientalism as a backwards practice that places value on another culture's artistic and intellectual hallmarks while devaluing the ethnic population from which it emerged. Orientalism cannot be untangled into black and white, or even viewed as 'problematic' the exchanges have been so wide and confusing one cannot look at 'pure' or 'virginal' cultures. What is more productive is to enjoy the richness of parody and the stretching of reality. When another culture interprets another culture the visual void seems refreshing if not at times 'real.' The Eams' house is like a post card presentation of other cultures, a edited reflection that allows for their thoughtful impressions of what it must have been like to be a westerner observing something utterly alien to their way of life, collecting those scraps and then putting them on a small table in the entryway to their fabulous home.

House also bubbles with plant imagery. The natural beauty and the home are inextricably linked as they interpenetrate. The flora are suggestive of Eden, paradise, a bountiful and fertile land. The abundant floral imagery have the effect of a showering of beauty upon the viewer. Some remarked-in jest- the film has the quality of an instagram photography app antecedent. Where the Eams' may or may not be guilty of reproducing their beautiful little life on film in order to present a kind of self-gratifying gesture. A hallmark-no doubt- in the legacy of gestures that are meant to point out to others what is so obviously 'beautiful.'

 But one must also remember that the natural setting of this house is in sunny Los Angeles. A city mythologized for its fair weather, mild climate, abundant growing seasons. A place who's capital in part hinges on its myth as a utopian realization. The Eams' no doubt must be getting kick backs from the LA county department of tourism, having so faithfully portrayed a vision of LA as wholly uncongested, bucolic almost, but powerfully artistic, stylish and glamorous. Glamor comes in the form of orange juice and green lawns -this topic to be covered in further posts.

The artist's studio is present in the film the natural space of creativity. A place of sanctity from modern chaos, where one could ruminate. Everything in the studio seems perfectly placed, but naturally so. One is intrigued by the notion that beautiful vistas can aid in producing culturally valuable capital.