39 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2021
    1. he protests, beyond raising a spectre of anti-globalization, posed questions on the nature of a “public”

      A side by side of media coverage of the Battle and the George Floyd Protests could be insightful.

    2. , and might even be able to come up with some answers to them

      One lingering question I have is, what art was created in the aftermath of the Battle for Seattle. What did the community at the site of the Battle do following the protest to heal itself, could those lessons be applied then to Powderhorn?

    3. While the issue at hand is less global, in this case police brutality instead of glo-balization,

      Three weeks later, the situation in Myanmar is a reminder that police brutality may in face be a global problem.

    4. Different protesters had different expectations about the extent to which they would remain nonviolent, the message they wanted to send, and so on

      I imagine that many members of the Powderhorn community, while they felt the need to participate in the protests, wished that the protests had gone a different way. What does it mean to participate in a protest the form of which you disagree with?

    5. While there were spurious reports of violence, the protests were by and large peaceful. They were covered on all major media stations and broadcast around the country.

      In the 20 or so years between the Battle and the George Floyd protests, those who would seize the narrative for their own gain have obtained powerful tools to amplify their spin on the situation.

    6. Like one of Robert Morris’ sculptures, how one perceived the protests was highly dependent on their loca-tion,

      This, I think, is the most glaring similarity between the Battle and the George Floyd Protests. Residents of Powderhorn had a necessarily unique view of the going-ons.

  2. Feb 2021
    1. Stories about places are makeshift things. They are composed with the world’s debris. Even if the literary form and the actantial schema of “superstitions” correspond to stable models whose structures and combinations have often been ana- lyzed over the past thirty years, the materials (all the rhetorical details of their “manifestation”) are furnished by the leftovers from nominations, taxonomies, heroic or comic predicates, etc., that is, by fragments of scattered semantic places.

      Then, the story of Powderhorn might inherently be democratic... Perhaps the best monument/anti-monument is just a place.

    2. edestrian speech act has

      interesting that this fundamental part of the city system comes to a halt when the weather is bad. Thinking of the past few weeks, not many pedestrians in Northfield.

    3. space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology.

      Is the goal of beyond repair to put the brakes on this process? To create a "space"? How can one be sure they are creating space as opposed to simply creating the next iteration of 'progress'?

    4. discourses

      Barthes!

    5. nowhen

      ? unsure of meaning.

    6. human agglomeration or accumulation.

      not sure about Powderhorn, but MN is growing at about 1% a year I think- which is pretty fast by historical standards. My guess is it picks up in the future too, as Texas, CO and Chicago fill up with people moving away from the coasts.

    7. xtremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts between yesterday’s buildings, already trans- formed into trash cans, and today’s urban irruptions that block out its space.

      I'm lucky enough to have walked on New York's highline (skyline?) one time, and can concur that this component has not changed about the city.

    1. it is necessary to promote the experimental forms of a game of revolution

      Kind of funny to think about sending a vote out to Powderhorn residents. The poll: We are building something to commemorate the George Floyd murder and remember the surrounding protests, would you prefer a) A monument b) An antimonument c) Some form of architecture which promotes the experimental forms of a game of revolution d) A park

    2. a fe w passive spec­tators who have not participated in the constructive work, who should be fo rced into action.

      Minimalist art... Something contingent on the viewer forces one into action.

    3. he appearance of new necessities out­modes previous "inspired" works. They become obstacles, dangerous habits. The point is not whether we like them or not. We have to go beyond them.

      This whole process reminds me of Mao's cultural revolution and the constant push to define a thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Wrt the redevelopment in the Powderhorn neighborhood which is best of the three, thesis (monument), antithesis (antimonument), or synthesis (something else)

    4. We know with what blind fury so many unprivileged people are ready to defend their mediocre advantages. Such pathetic illusions of privilege are linked to a general idea

      Can't help but feel a tinge of elitism here. The "blind fury" and "pathetic illusions" held by "so many unprivileged people" make the author sound a little arrogant in that he knows what is good for others, who do not... Maybe a democratic decision making process for the Powderhorn neighborhood is ideal- even if that doesn't lead to an antimonument?

    5. use public transportation

      I think Paris is experimenting today with totally car-free days. At least they were before Corona.

    6. e desert

      Desert and Paris remind me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeEeyOCJ1OA

      It shows that what is a desert at 5:00 in the morning is not necessarily a desert at 5:00 in the evening

    1. Could the two of us find a dark corner where we could get together? Can the city become just ours for this moment?

      Public space, even when it is not occupied, is still about sex apparently. We haven't discussed this in the context of the Powderhorn neighborhood yet?

    2. Hunting for emptiness in a dense urban fabric like Manhattan might seem incongruous, and indeed today it would be well-nigh futile there

      Been to NYC 1x, no chance to do this now... I wonder where you would find an empty loft in Northfield, in the Twin Cities? Where do artists do art nowadays in NYC if there is no space?

    3. Artists' resourceful uses of the forsaken spaces of Manhattan's light industry in this era are now legendary.

      As Professor Elfline said, art fills in the postindustrial spaces very well. Reminded of Detroit's art scene (to the degree I am familiar with it)

    4. performance art than the dance

      Performance DNE dance, as we know

    5. My exchange of one scene for another was destined to fail, but my attempt to achieve it with a geographic implementation interests me now

      Never lived in NYC, but the idea of "moving to the city" seems to be about geographically relocating to accomplish more or change the scenery. He is moving to the city, within the city.

    1. It em-bodies what is missing from the above two memorial sites: it is accessible, tangible, alive and dynamic

      The checklist!

    2. While some commemorative events take place in Corvin Passage, the Liberty Square monument failed to become part of the political landscape of power: no official cere-mony ever took place in front of it

      Given the historical interpretation which underpinned the monument, decay and silencing would be the optimal outcome for the builders no?

    3. Abstract aesthetics and non-traditional visualisation can also be detected in the case of national memorials, where anti-monumental design is perceived as more ap-propriate to challenge the traditional ideas of nation and to ‘mark the national ambivalence and uncertainty of late twentieth-century postmodernism’

      Self critical monuments are good and all for artists, but might lose some of the impact for the layman.

    4. According to one, simple definition, a monument is built to ‘induce remembrance of specific events or people

      Mt. Rushmore, but not the Bean or the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

    5. On the one hand, a regime change is often followed by the demolition of the previous regime’s po-litical symbols

      I wonder if this is more of a European phenonema. In the U.S. the word "regime" seems distasteful, as does the construction of monuments celebrating those currently in power's acheivements.

    6. Local traditions and urban legends make places alive and liveable, places one can go away from and return to (De Certeau 2011). The fate of such local histories and meaningful places they are linked to depends heavily on political decisions and policy actions

      And thus, the work confluence is doing is important.

    7. neither memory nor commemoration is a straightforward, simple, one-way road: both individual and collective memory is subject to constant reformu-lation, whereas a proliferation of commemorations and politics of remembrance explains why memorials have a difficult task when tempting to address the multiplic-ities of memories (if they wish to at all).

      In my opinion it is not always memories or events which monuments or memorials commemorate. The Statue of Liberty and the Arc de Triomphe don't relay a moment in time, or an event for which there is a shared memory, but celebrate the ideals of the nation which constructed them.

    1. Walkman

      He had no idea what was coming.

    2. You come to visit, not to stay

      subways

    3. " Public space is the refusal of monogamous relationships and the acceptance of sex that has no bonds and knows no bounds

      Hopefully there are no Christians in this neighborhood...

    4. the service being only a decoy, an excuse for companionship. Whatever the intention,

      Starbucks' business model maybe?

    5. God-as-target

      Jan 6 Capital Insurrection

    6. aside

      In conservation theory there is a notion that to save the forests, to save the wild, land needs to be "set aside," e.g. not used, left alone. Maybe public spaces have this characteristic, that as soon as they are used even halfway for something else, they lose their original meaning.

    7. Public time was dead; there wasn't time anymore for public space; public space was the next to go

      Can't help but be reminded of the skepticism of the wristwatch that it is so absurd such a small thing could control the turning of the earth. The wrist watch gave individuals a sort of dominion over time, but also situated individuals in schedules and the "rat-race." Maybe it was the encroachment of time into our lives ("I have to be at __ by X time") that killed off public space.

    8. place where the public gathers because it has a right to the place

      Ampitheatre