April 2012
1 post
3 tags
“The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of...”
– Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
February 2012
2 posts
January 2012
2 posts
October 2011
2 posts
August 2011
3 posts
May 2011
1 post
February 2011
2 posts
January 2011
1 post
December 2010
1 post
November 2010
1 post
Out My Window (part of the Highrise project) →
This is a gorgeous interactive documentary about life in highrises around the world. Inspiring!
October 2010
5 posts
September 2009
4 posts
August 2009
1 post
September 2008
1 post
May 2008
1 post
re: production, planning, ruins
The layout of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin, built in 1936 as the model camp for all others, is a huge triangle, enclosed by a thick cement outer wall. The shape was dictated partly by the topography, but it was also a perfectly appropriate symbol that combined the Nazi ideals of form and symmetry in its structural echo of the triangular patches its prisoners were forced to...
March 2008
6 posts
the life of a shadow
So, about a year ago I watched this documentary online, about a Brooklyn artist named Ellis G. who does chalk outlines of shadows. I thought his work was amazing … and the other day I was walking to the subway, and there they were! Making something impermanent (light) into something semi-permanent but also evanescent in its own way (chalk) is just such a cool commentary on medium. Also a...
spring must be here ...
… because I saw a lady wearing flip flops today. Out with the Uggs, in with the new. Please also note that I have never owned a pair of Uggs.
this is so scary. →
A crane collapsed a couple of years ago near where my brother works back home in Seattle. It killed one person. New York is a lot denser. Damn condos.
WatchLately I’ve been editing together my great aunt’s old films from the 1940s. This and the one below are results of this project … this one features my great uncle’s family on a road trip from Chicago to Seattle; the one below is of my grandparents leaving for China in 1940 to be missionaries. It’s an uncanny experience to see all their faces on film. I see traces of...
Watch
January 2008
2 posts
the art of posing
Recently Errol Morris did a really cool series of (very long) posts on his blog on the New York Times site about the famous pair of photos made by Roger Fenton during the Crimean War. Here they are: Morris’s posts are a fascinating journey through expert opinions, photographic forensics, and an actual trip to the Crimea. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you the outcome of his...
overheard
Today I overheard what I assumed to be three NYU undergrads talking about one girl’s trip to India. In addition to her friend exclaiming that an Indian friend “didn’t know what curry was, can you believe that? She’d never heard of curry!” she proclaimed that most Indians are not aware of the dangers of bacteria that cause food poisoning because they are not...
December 2007
6 posts
my 30 most quintessentially New York seconds yet.
I got off the L train at Union Square. I had planned it so I was right next to the stairway to the R … this is apparently a sign of acclimation. Begin 30 second clip: In a crowd of people going every which way, I pass a man drumming deafeningly on a set of 5 gallon buckets. He’s actually really good, but he’s there like, every day, so I don’t really pay him much attention....
breakfast
… a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you...
I went for a walk today ...
November 2007
5 posts
also awesome at PS1...
This guy. If I were a critic, I’d say his photographs of our neighborhood are moody, dark, foreboding and yet also somehow candid and tender … as I think critics are bollocks, I’m just going to say that I really appreciate the work of a fellow Greenpointer!
This guy is so awesome.
I saw this guy’s work at PS1 the other day. He is my new idol. I mean, I’ve done decoupage, but this is collage. And as Jack Balkin reminds us, Freedom is bricolage.
to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a...
to a man without a hammer, everything looks like a nail that he can’t nail to a nail, everything looks like a hammer that wants to hammer him to a hammer, everything looks like a man looking at nails to everything, a man with a hammer looking at a nail doesn’t matter so damn much.
the lovechildren take Berlin
So, last night I went to a panel discussion with our Favorite Architect for Making Tragedies Popular … Mr. Daniel Libeskind! It was part of a series of events called “Berlin in Lights,” sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Center for Architecture here in New York. The topic was memorials - in Berlin and here, specifically the World Trade Center site… *shudder* (Love the...
October 2007
5 posts
addendum:
also, the G train has better buskers.
les bleux du train
I hate the L train! Sure, the G train comes only every 10 minutes and is always under construction on the weekends. The G train is always leaving just when I get to the station. The G train is sometimes host to annoying high school field trip groups. But all this does not compare, does not even begin to parallel the hell that is the L train. It’s my impression that people generally tolerate,...
