ARCHIVING THE CITY

for the city yet to come

Archive for January, 2011

beirut, before

Posted on January 30, 2011

Beirut Outtakes (2007), by Peggy Ahwesh This beautiful film is cut from pieces of film found in an abandoned movie theater in Beirut. The film clips appear to show segments of newsreels, advertisements and trailers for films that one might have seen a Beirut theater in the 1950s, 60′s and 70′s. What is eerie about Ahwesh’s video is not only the glimpse we get at life in Beirut before years of constant war, but also the strange combination of violence (American westerns), Orientalist sexuality (gyrating belly dancers), and feminine domesticity (women shopping for home appliances). This cocktail of violence, sexuality and domesticity seems so painfully modern, so appropriate for a forward-looking city, ‘the Paris of the Middle East.’ Ahwesh’s film is a cloudy mirror,…

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the posture of an era

Posted on January 25, 2011

Legendary street photographer Bill Cunningham is an observer of subtle shifts in the city’s seasons and moods. On his walks and bike rides around town he takes pictures that together constitute an archive of the ephemeral: style. In his January 23 dispatch from the streets he discusses the way footwear, in this case the high-heeled ankle boot, can define an era. He points out the 7-year life cycle of the fashion trend, which go hand in hand with shifts in the relationship between ankle-boot-wearing women and their urban environment. Being one such ankle-boot-wearing New York lady, I appreciate Bill’s sensitivity to the huge difference a shoe makes in posture and movement–in the way I travel through city streets, in my body’s lines of flight. He…

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harry whitaker, 1942-2010

Posted on January 25, 2011

Last night I went to a memorial service for Harry Whitaker, jazz and soul pianist, teacher, and all around New York music legend. Roberta Flack sang a song for him, remembering their days playing the world together. In her clear voice, she described how, as her musical director for fabulous records like Killing Me Softly, he transformed a song Stevie Wonder had written for her into something like “an Egyptian chant,” free and open, meditative and forward-thinking, like Harry himself. “Harry was the scene,” said Eric McPherson who, along with saxophonist, Abraham Burton, also played for him last night. I remember Harry where I met him, in his berth behind the piano at Arturo’s, the pizzeria-restaurant-bar, on Houston Street. A non-musician, I can only…

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tel aviv in wartime

Posted on January 21, 2011

It is July 2006, and Israel is at war again with Lebanon. Terrible waves of shelling sweep over densely populated south Beirut and the Israeli army enters southern Lebanon. Small mines, shaped and colored like toys rain from Israeli planes into farmer’s fields, making a deadly harvest. Each day, missiles assail the northern Israeli towns closest to the border. There is little protection for Arab Israelis. Their communities are hit hard. An overwhelming silence about Lebanese casualties engulfs the country—a wall of support-our-troops-bomb-them-into-the-next-century rises up into the air. On Israeli television a few heartfelt cries to please stop the bombing come from Arab Israelis standing in the ruins of their neighborhood, places forgotten long before the war. I am in Tel Aviv, “Israel’s urban…

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peace prize

Posted on January 17, 2011

The City of Hiroshima has selected the winner of the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize, Ms. Yoko Ono (born 1933 in Tokyo, currently lives in New York). About Yoko Ono, and Reasons for awarding the Hiroshima Art Prize Yoko Ono has been active as a creative force for over a half century in various fields as an artist, filmmaker, poet, musician, performance artist and peace activist. Born in Tokyo in 1933, Ono entered the Philosophy Department of Gakushuin University in 1952. The following year she moved to New York City where she studied music and poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. Soon after, she joined Fluxus, an avant-garde artistic group, where she presented experimental works of art blending forms such as poetry, music, visual arts, film…

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hold on, hold on

Posted on January 17, 2011

In every generation, we must get free. Let everyone of us work, let none of us shirk our duty. I do not think that there is anything that is functionally–by its very nature–absolutely liberating. Liberty is a practice… The liberty of men is never assured by the institutions and laws that are intended to guarantee them… I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guarantee the exercise of freedom. The guarantee of freedom is freedom. –Michel Foucault.  

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