This is a sort of ARC redux. A revisitation on the death of kings and fathers and Lear and M. Tristan, which turned out to be extremely clairvoyant on my part, but more on that in another post. Yesterday, I went for a run across the brooklyn bridge to go see the graffiti mecca, 11 Spring Street that is not long for this world. The building has been vacant for over twenty years and become a sort of beacon for the internatinal “urban art” movement. But like every other square inch of NYC, it’s going condo. As a cool last hurrah, however, the developers have invited graffiti people from all around the world to tag the exterior one last time and then also tag up the interior. The whole work of collaborative art will stay on the naked brick walls and will be sealed up like a time capsue behind the sheetrock. The building opens today and will be open for a week or so before the sheetrocking starts, so go see this. I suppose some day, if urban art proves it’s potential as the next big thing, all the developers have to do, is gut the fake walls, and voila the world’s biggest masterpiece since the Sistine Chapel… call it the Cistern Shrapnel.
Ran back over the Big Blue and visted with Major Tom and the wife of the party, Ms. Drum, the semi-official Library Science Consultant for TheLibrary Project. I’m planning on doing a portrait of her in her Library, but we thought it might be fun to do an interview talking about her own library of personal books. The real subject was “Weeding” the term for culling old books from a collection. Her point was that “all things must pass” and she started with the question, “Of these ten books, which two would you throw out?” No doubt we’ll be seeing and hearing more from Sharron and this interview. I even walked away with the two books she declared were unsuitable for shelving: yellowing paperbacks that are, however, suitiable for reading on train rides home with aching feet and legs and spent battery in the camera. The thing is dead: book, camera, king. Long live the thing.
Images from the library (from top down):
1. My video on running the route of Arc Along The Watchtower in time lapse.
2. The death of King Lear from Francesco.
3. Morte End: a collab of Brian Raszka and Machinewithnoname.
4. Collab from Tara and Snappy Dresser.
5. (below)Fawcett World Library: Best Short Stories of the Modern Age back cover. A DISCARD from the Sharron Drum Library.
