metropolis m

The fast train between Washington and New York is packed. It is also expensive relative to the cost of European train travel (with the U.K. as the privatised exception with its chaotic pricing and “competitive” structure). Most passengers appear to be involved in some form of business or government, the few others on the train who don’t wear business suits or use Blackberries are clean-cut students moving along the premium route from Washington to Boston. Most places on the train are face to face, with a table running between the two sets of seats. Each seat is near enough to a power supply to ensure that there are enough outlets to power the laptops that appear as soon as the train starts to fill up. The design is standard Euro-style high speed train, with culturally specific elements, especially the lavatory, which is stainless steel, over-engineered, looks ready to be hosed down if necessary and as if it would survive a major conflict, uprising or hurricane. An LED sign at the end of each carriage announces that you can listen to “Light Classical” on channel 1, “Light Jazz” on channel 2 and “Light Contemporary” on channel 3. No-one is listening for fear of gently ebbing away. There is a quiet car where silence is strictly enforced by a train worker who frequently and loudly reminds travellers that they should keep quiet if they want to remain sitting where they are. The train moves through a landscape of boarded up houses on the edge of each city and travels past an excess of rusting and crumbling former industry in a relentless trail of closure and abandonment elsewhere. The energy of the train users and their constant buzz of communication and work is in direct contrast to the evidence presented of blighted neighbourhoods and business failure that borders the track. A man talks in a loud voice on his phone as we get to hear a one-sided conversation where he attempts to persuade someone that they should be spending twenty times their anticipated budget on some data processing software. He is involved in attempts to stoke the excess of analysis that has led to the proliferation of management and consultancy in a blighted environment. He sounds convincing. At the end of the call, he proceeds to phone his superior and report that he acted dumb and might have tricked them into something and that they should all go hunting as soon as possible. There is no murmer of disquiet in the carriage, nor is there any lowering of the voice during this exposure of corruption.Surrounding the main tower of the United Nations headquarters you can find a number of flat-roofed buildings. These are fine structures that work to complete the complex and play off the purity of the tower itself. These low buildings form a sequence of platforms that are used as the base for sharpshooters and lookouts during serious meetings at the U.N. The sharpshooters all appear to be men. They lounge and drink Snapple and yawn, rub their eyes, then adjust their webbing and flak jackets. At any given moment a number of them are scanning the surrounding area using binoculars. As with people who work on large cranes, you have to remain thoroughly attentive in order to catch the moment when the work shift ends. The continual languid movements and interactions of the men merge into a constant exchange of place and focus that is inherently relaxing and turns the eye away to any other detail or distraction. It is only when they have gone that you realise that you missed the moment. You look and they are not there. Whether it is these people who are the main component of observation and protection is unclear. They may just be the visible form of surveillance, a distraction equally watched over by others who remain completely hidden from view.Prefabricated concrete barricades are formed with hooks cast into the top edge of each unit in order to enable parts to be lifted into place by a standard mechanical digger with a hook instead of a scoop. A digger can easily lift each section of barricade and move it into place due to the fact that the length of each section has been calculated to be an appropriate weight to be handled by a standard piece of machinery that already exists in the world. Each single section of concrete barricade curves up from the base on both sides of its long edge. This form provides stability but also ensures that if you drive at the barrier from any angle off ninety degrees you are flipped up and away from the surface of the concrete, spinning and rolling the car or truck away from the intended target. They use the same concrete mouldings on highways and intersections.There is a park on a side street that is carefully designed. Close by is a new type of barrier. These echo the form of the concrete ones that have proliferated in the city but are made of plastic. These plastic forms can be lifted into place by a couple of people rather than requiring an adapted digger and are then filled with water to create a weighty block. The park itself sits up on a concrete plateau. The concrete base then steps down to a water wall at the rear of the designated space that creates complexity through the use of blocky stone facing. The blocks trouble and constantly redirect the water which is then pumped back to a small stream that runs along one side of the park and returns to the top of the water wall once more. The park is on two levels. There is a high terrace that is semi-protected by the regular form of an overhead run of horizontal aluminium beams that are capped at each end by spherical lighting elements. Dotted around the main plaza of the park and up on the high terrace are a large number of green painted Bertoia chairs or convincing knock-offs and small round tables that look like something Arne Jacobsen might have done but are more likely to be a custom made generic copy. It is not possible to smoke in the park but you can eat, drink, rest or read a book or magazine. If you try and smoke a cigar, pipe or cigarette one of the park maintenance crew will firmly ask you to leave.The book “Relational Aesthetics” by Nicolas Bourriaud (les presses du réel) has attracted a great deal of attention, especially in Anglo-Saxon culture. The book has been used in the U.K. and U.S. as a way to critique certain somewhat successful attempts to reconfigure and activate notions of the social function and potential of art without slumping into leaden irony or deadpan documentary. Central themes from the book are extracted and literalised in relation to a misreading of most of the work made by the artists referred to. There is a picturisation of most of the work or an over-riding assumption of artistic authorial primacy at the base of the activity when considering an artist such as Rirkrit Tiravanija. In general the work of artists who create a complex of reference points that actually echo the notions in the text are glossed over in critiques of the book.One of the key points that is somewhat glossed over is the complication of the curatorial dynamic in relation to what artists do now. The key to much recent work is a complex of neo-collaborative agendas developed between various artists and various curators. It is not possible to ascribe authorship to artists in every case of production and exhibition. Nor is it possible to completely evade it. The shift in relationships, however, is not merely limited to an unmediated one between artist and notional publics.Standing in a park next to the gate. There is a large concrete wall stretching away on one side. It slips low at one end until it runs into the ground. The other end is high and bisected by a further concrete barrier. This second barrier is punctuated by a hole. The hole is large enough for two adults to crawl through at the same time. The width of the concrete wall is one twentieth of its length in this second section and one fortieth of its length in the first section. The edges of the puncture are slightly bevelled and the whole surface of the concrete is smooth, having been hand sanded after being cast using smooth sided shuttering.Near to the concrete structure is one element of a signage project that was begun twenty-two years ago. At various places around the city new signs were installed in relation to ambiguous instructions. There was a sense that it might be useful to give vague information that referred to temporary conditions. A set of signs and indicators of non-permanent states. Indications that under certain circumstances, all things being equal and with occasional coincidences there might be the possibility of observing A or B or 1 or 3.