Well we’re all feeling a little sleep deprived around here. For the first time in recent memory mardi gras has made it to new york in the form of christo’s gates. While there’s not a lot of beads, nor jazz, nor the exposing of breasts, there is a sort of parade a foot in Central Park…..but as with any good winter carnival: YOU ARE THE PARADE. No standing around waiting for floats, or oversized balloons, or marching bands, you just walk and look at the other people walking and really the gates serve as a sort of framing device for the park and the people in it, including YOU.
It is a sort of reimagined urban space that allows you to reimagine the urban populace. It dresses them in different clothes. Painter, Stephen E. Lewis said to me the day before they went up, “Hey man they’re a hell of an effort, but from what I saw of the drawings, man, they’re just window treatments.”
I’ll give Steve that point, but the windows needed a little treatment at this point. I’ve been looking through a cracked, fogged, filthy set of windows with the shades pulled down…..more or less since 911 and definitely since the last presidential election. So orange you glad they finally put up the gates?
They seem to create a different resopnse in every viewer. They are like thousands of little orange Rashomon gates all in a row. Some love – some hate, but at least new york is talking about art.
Many of us at the institute were treated to a sun rise viewing of the gates; complete late night dancing beforehand, Mud truck coffee in the cold February park wind, and a brunch at the temporary offices of The Institute (in other words bob’s apartment). We all had a wonderful time, but I for one, am still feeling it. (of course my girlfriend went to FLA last week while I was left alone for five days trying to write a artist in residence grant for Eyebeam – either one of these things could have sent me into a sleepless fit of the screaming mimis, but together they were a sort one two insomnia punch).
I’ve been waking up every night a four for four days. So it was nice to have an excuse to be with other people at that ungodly hour. There is something about waking up in the dark and gathering to experience an event that is very magical. You are out of your normal place in space and time. The world is an oyster, or a clam….I can’t remember, I was half asleep and still dreaming
Finnegan’s Wake …pros and cons of hitchhiking
The next day was both Valentine’s day and the first day of Fasnacht in Basel, Switzerland (place of origin of my family name and my dear old dead dad). This is a medievil lent carnival that is very particular to the town (home of art fairs, graphic design revolutions, and birth place of LSD). The normally serious Swiss wake up and throng into the old part of the city near the Marktplatz: Many of them are carrying drums and fifes and masks with candles, or electric lights affixed to them. All through the city enormous painted lantern/signs have been stashed. At exactly four in the morning all the lights of the city are turned out and the costumes and lanterns are lit and the Basel Cliques put on their masks and thousands of drums and fifes begin to play one song together. The whole mass of masked characters and the people who are there to watch them start to move, but they don’t move along a route….each group goes its own way, each person follows whoever he wants, and often jumps ship to move along with a different set of minstrels After the first unison song is played, each clique (there are some 150) plays what ever tune it wants. WIth all these drums and fifes and later brass bands marching in thin stone medievil streets (called gasse), it is very loud…the music is always shiffting and changing and ringing in your ears. It makes the whole techno club thing seem pretty tame. Now this constant spectacle of sights and sounds and food and wine and confetti and kirsh and political humor and poetry goes on for three days! Every night till five in the morning and then back at it by ten. It is truly crazy! It is a strangely somber thing too….very Swiss German, very obsessed with death and ghosts and scary visions.
Anyway, there is something about this self directed wandering through a spectacle: weather it be Christo’s gates in New York, or Fasnacht in Basel that I want to inform my work in the more intimate spectacle of an e-book, or interactive video. I have a feeling that Fasnacht, at least, will be coming up a lot in this blog, but for right now the portal point is the orange crate art that is scattered all over central park.
Walk through….don’t be scared.
