Photo: (c) Liza Béar, December 13 2007
Moving the fountain, flattening and shrinking the fountain plaza entails cutting down the trees around the fountain--an absurd proposition on all counts. But that's not all that Parks designer (not a qualified landscape architect) has in mind.
The original bid documents called for removal of 32 mature trees as part of Phase I. Did the Landmarks Commission, the Art Commission realize what they were voting for? Are New Yorkers going to let this happen?
Willoughby at Faculty Club dinner in his honor. The Piper Auditorium presentation consisted of readings of W's biographies short and long. Ironically for someone whose sonorous voice would have filled that 30ft ceilinged auditorium without a mike, W has the throat variety . . .We never knew when we were young that our friends and lovers would be nuked with radiation, poisoned with chemo, lose their lymph nodes, become speechless, yet retain their indomitable spirit, stoicism and sense of humor. "Is there anything that shocks you?" a student asks W during the q and a. "That I'm still alive," is the reply.
Afterwards at dinner at the Faculty Club, a little further up Quincy Street from the GSD, everything seems outrageously normal. A long narrow table, fourteen guests, several authors; intervals between the courses allows plenty of time for conversation in one form or another. and much of it turns to publishing. Across the table is Wayne Anderson who's written books on sculpture of the fifties; W writes to me on back of menu: to compare notes about royalties, le book bizness. To my left, arch. prof. Meredith, also the author of a DVD manifesto: Notes for those beginning the discipline of architecture, sounds intriguing, youworkforthem.com calls it a scathing attack on the profession. So maybe here's the link to his interest in Avalanche dialogue format as: non-top down, non-hierarchichal, operating outside academe but now reclaimed by academe.. . . the tropes here are site or non-site)
Michael Meredith at Faculty Club; background, Wayne Andersen.
Under the rubric "Fighting Institutionalized Formalism through
Ephemerality:" Harvard Graduate School of Design papers wall
with all thirteen issues of Avalanche. Screens show video views
of Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden by
my former partner Willoughby Sharp.
10 am Fung Wah bus to Boston South Side, almost as excruciating as bus ride from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik. 2:15pm Red T Line to Harvard Square. Through Johnson Gate, meander diagonally across Harvard Yard, past fully parked bicycle racks, scissor walking students crisscrossing between red brick bldgs, oak and maple leaves suspended in mid-air, twirling down to still green lawns. 3:30pm Pick up key to place on Beacon Hill where I'm staying tonight from Faculty Club concierge. Find Club lockers for 25 cents but only in Men's Room. 4pm Check Avalanche wall paper exhibit studded with a triptych of Willoughby's early video views on 8 ft by 10ft wall outside Piper Auditorium at bottom of Quincy Street. Embedded in this display of all pages of all issues of Avalanche is a statement of purpose by intrepid curator Michael Meredith, Fighting Against Institutionalized Formalism through Ephemerality explaining relevance of exhibit to architecture students, but let me double check that, am not too familiar with such weighty terminology, which certainly isn't in the spirit of Avalanche 4:10 pm Take elevator to Architecture department on second floor to say hello to Andrea, coordinator of guest visits, but Andrea is at a leadership training workshop. 4:17pm Take elevator back to ground floor and check e-mails at front desk of Frances Loeb library. Email from KC at publisher's says she will answer any questions directed to marketing ("the untouchables," as per production manager) so I rephrase my request--to remove an item from publisher's cover design--in such a way that hopefully she will understand the context in which it is being made, ie this context , appropriate design and my past history in the art world and in publishing, which so far has counted for zilch for said publisher 4:45pm Leave the GSD and head back up Prescott Street to Faculty Club, this time to change for the evening, and stuff another locker with backpack (repaired for the occasion) and well worn leather hiking boots (not repaired but anointed with mink oil).
5:15pm Return to GSD. Willoughby has arrived, thanks me for coming, the technicians are setting up for the power point presentation, and Toshiko Mori the chair of the architecture department says hello and introduces guests to each other. The auditorium has a capacity of about 350 very hard seats, but the back half is sealed off by moveable partitions on castors. I don't take a seat (enough hard seats for one day) but stand by one of the giant pillars.
Students munching convex whole wheat sandwiches are drifting in in twos and threes and the front of the auditorium is filling up; the left half of the front wall is occupied by a video screen showing a simultaneous live projection of W's show "Retrospection" at the Clyfford Gallery, Colgate University. Possibly an homage to Keith Sonnier's NY-LA gallery interactive interconnect in early 70s, possibly not. Make mental note to ask. W himself is busy snapping photos of audience members possibly with a black Lumix camera. 6pm people are still streaming in; Toshiko says we await some VIPs, among them MIT Press editor and the curator of the AVA exhibit, whom she calls on her cell phone.
Chris Burden's magnum opus arrives by flat rate priority mail. Returning from the post office I place it on the laundromat scale opposite the bike rack to see if it's really as heavy as it feels. And it is: weighing in at seven pounds, it's one pound less than the weight of a baby.
My camera is a lot lighter, though, clasped in my hands, following the movements of dancers, coming together from different points in Washington Square towards the fountain and dispersing in a contiunous flow of motion. Eight different sites and a change of location every ten minutes over a good portion of the park's ten acres means fast work for the camera too, climbing in and out of the fountain.
My neighbor alerted me to this work, Changing Landscapes: A Movement Choir. The choreographers are members of the Laban Institute of Movement Studies; the dancers, mostly from Drew University and responding to the Square's Ohmstedian rolling landscape for the first time.
Couple in Snow, 2001. Photo Liza Béar
A friend and former neighbor who got a lot of trees planted and bike racks put up in Little Italy but now lives in Barcelona is in town. When we first met in the early days of Connecticut Muffin she was working as a casting agent.
Today we meet for tea at the McNally Robinson bookstore on Prince and Mulberry facing the cathedral and churchyard which I once overlooked from my perch in the building now housing the Mulberry Street Public Library.
The entrance to the library is on the narrow alley, Jersey Street, a location for many fictitious crimes in student films and unfortunately a dumping ground for a real crime
Upside Down Parrots, San Gennaro Festival, 2002
committed in the basement of the Puck building. It's also where the original Ferris wheel for the San Gennaro Festival would be parked until 2001.
The site of the bookstore was still a Chinese live chicken outlet in the early 80s. Occasionally at dawn a rooster crowed. A murder of as many as 50 crows would congregate on the slate roof and play games jumping over each other; from behind the computer screen, I watched them through the tall arched windows
My friend turns her head to watch a tall man in a raincoat with a shock of grey hair; she recognizes him as Tom Stoppard (she has just seen his Broadway play, "Rock and Roll"). He crosses Prince Street, enters the bookstore and prowls amongst the new book displays; leaves, walks a few steps down the street, turns back and reenters the store.
Now that the bike is fixed and travel possible, a party for the soundtrack CD of Downtown 81 at the Tribeca Grand Hotel tonight is definitely an option. It would mean, though, detaching myself from Barack Obama's dance moves with Ellen de Generes, lacing boots and clattering down the stairs, uh, neighbors, so I'm holding out for the Grace Paley homage tomorrow, November 6, at Cooper Union's Great Hall on East 7th Street,7pm. See you there.
Photo: (c) Liza Béar, December 13 2007
