This morning I got up and went down to the 9/11 Memorial. I was really interested in seeing it after the MoMA PS1 exhibition. I think if I were to go back to PS1 I would have a different experience now because I have had a different life experience. I felt very sad for the city. I also felt sad for all the victims in other countries hurt by American forces. I wonder if they have a memorial site...
To get there I was on the E train which has its destination as ‘World Trade Centre’, and I have to wonder at how this reminder affects the people that catch this train every day. A lot of them would have been down in the area that day, I would imagine. When down in this area of Manhattan I get more of a sense of loss and emptiness, and I don’t think it’s just Wall St. The new trade centre is going up and I sat to watch it being built. There were hundreds (probably more) workmen in the area, eating, laughing, working. I wonder what it is like for them working on it.
There are banners around the construction site that intimate that there are people working on it from all corners of the globe. It did affect the entire world and it’s good that they are now able to do something with the space, but my more cynical side thinks that it is arrogant of the Americans to assume that we side with them. I don’t side at all. Perhaps I’m being too harsh and reading too much into it. It could just mean that New York is so multi-cultural that the workers are just representative of the city and its people.
After the World Trade Centre, I walked around the financial district for a while, to gauge the feeling of this part of town, as I have done with all the other neighbourhoods I have been in. It is very grey and bleak. If you aren’t in a suit, you are a worker on a construction site. There are barely any tourists. The streets are smallish and cobbled. People are just going about their business. There isn’t much character here. I caught the train north from the Wall St station.
On the train, it occurred to me that Americans seem to take up more space. That is, they have wide stances with feet spread and wear big and/or baggy clothing. They ‘own’ the space around them. Unlike European countries where people try to take up as little space as possible. Europeans drive scooters, but even New York people drive big cars. It doesn’t make sense.
I got off the 6 train at 59th St and began my journey north to East 75th St (the Upper East Side). I went into (and out of very quickly, their prices are crazy) Bloomingdales, Barneys and other stores on the street. Most I just passed, knowing how depressed I would be if I went inside! I walked along Madison and 5th Avenues mostly. It seems to me that there is a lot of traffic up here. I think it’s because the super rich, who live here, don’t catch the bus or subway, but are driven either by private car or cab. The parking stations here are always brimming with cars and their chauffers, there doesn’t seem like a lot of room either. The space seems very tight.
I saw Sotheby’s auction house, I can only imagine the art works and antiques they have in there. You even have to walk uphill until you get to 71st St. It’s like the neighbourhood is reminding you of how elusive it is! Trying to keep you out! The streets are very clean and manicured much like its people. I also think the reason that the resident’s don’t walk their own dogs is because they don’t want to be seen with a dog going to the toilet. They can’t be seen using a pooper-scooper. They have images to protect.
Once at The Whitney we went straight to Sherrie Levine’s exhibition titled “Mayhem”. We discussed this postmodern artist and what her work aims to do. Mark’s tute was great; I wouldn’t have understood the work, or its point, if he hadn’t explained it. Levine would appropriate another person’s (a male’s) artwork and turn it into her own. She did this with the first set of photographs that hung on the wall in front of the elevators. She took photographs taken by Walter Evans, and then duplicated them. She is effectively saying that the art by Walter Evans was not original, so there is no problem with her copying it. They already belong to the library of images. The girl or boy in the photograph is the original, not the photo of it. The photo is just a copy.
Levine doesn’t believe there is anything new and so art, any art, isn’t original, because the artist got the stimulation for the artwork from somewhere. Meaning it was not original. By playing with copies, she questions whether the original or the duplication of it is better. Is the original better? Furthermore, if you were to continue to copy a copy, etc, the image would, over time, alter. In the end, the original and final copy would look different. But which one would be better? I think these are all interesting ideas and it had me thinking a lot about art and its credibility; much like that of the conceptual artists. She represents the representation.
Levine is also a feminist, so her art is a lot about pointing out the lie of the ‘male genius’ in art. She takes the male artist’s work and recreates them, so if she can do it, the male artist isn’t “great”. The work is very political in this sense. She also makes a comment on how all culture is arbitrary; it’s not about truth, but about how we will get through.
I liked the exhibition “Real Surreal” the most. I think this has mostly to do with the fact that I understand it better as I teach it in Drama. I like the darkness in it and the extension of reality. There is something so sinister about the artwork’s that gets my head thinking. I find them creatively stimulating and a good pretext for drama.
I wrote a lot of notes about the different shows, of what I did and didn’t like. One note that keeps coming up is the different experience I had between The Whitney and the New Museum. Yesterday’s gallery was all about touching and experiencing; interacting with the art. Today, at The Whitney, we kept getting warned to stand far away from the art. It really ruined my experience of it. Not that I stand close, but the feeling that I couldn’t just stand (even two meters away) and enjoy the art because one of the attendants would think I was about to run up to it and lick it or something! Perhaps because I am a Drama person, I prefer the exhibitions where I can touch and fully experience the art.
I went back to the hostel after The Whitney and went and got Chinese food for dinner with Mandy. It was nice to finally talk with her properly about her studies and what she plans to do. We had a really nice meal (too much food as usual), and it was nice to have the room to only us, it’s usually so full when I’m here. I have been able to write without too many interruptions or answering any questions. It’s been a peaceful night, which is different for my nights in New York!
Tomorrow we are going to go have breakfast together before we meet Mark at the hostel. Then we have our final day on tour, which is really sad. I don’t want to leave. I am seriously looking into jobs and internships here. Our tickets for Chicago have been cancelled. But that means we can hang out with the whole group for longer. I can go see it next week anyway when the others have left.
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