new feature: facebook field notes

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Dear readers, today is the premiere of a new feature here on Archiving the City: facebook field notes. For many years, I avoided the draw of facebook, but when I joined the Strelka Institute, I was asked by program organizers to join facebook, in order to make participation and communication with colleagues easier.

In recent weeks, I have found myself involved in extended conversations about my Moscow life with friends from around the world. It now occurs to me that these conversations are in fact an extension of my “Shop Talk” series (cross-disciplinary conversations about method), and so I have decided to post some excerpts of chats and emails here, as “field notes.”

(Of course, these excepts appear in edited form, in order to preserve the integrity of the conversation, and the privacy of my interlocutors, as per their requests).

12:03pm
how is going for you in moscow, still boring?

12:04pm
well moscow is getting a bit better

12:04pm
ah thats! great!! actually better
glad moscow is getting u

12:05pm
some of my russian colleagues are slowly realizing how difficult their country is for foreigners, and reaching out a helping hand. i have been invited to several homes of colleagues, to some parties, and today, to some kind of hipster artist collective in an old factory somewhere.

as i said a BIT better. the people are still very strange to me. i have had enough conversations with the young people here to know that they are very tense and depressed about the country’s situation

12:07pm
well, its good to feel happy, even if just a little! so enjoy the BIT more!

12:07pm
many just try to escape into little worlds of hipster intelligentsia

12:08pm
like the kinds Yurchak described in his book? (Alexei Yurchak, Everything was forever, until it was no more)

12:13pm
not exactly. this is a different time. those people were poor and did not have (or want) money and jobs. these ones that i have met are elite in many ways: iPads, iPhone, ieverything. They work in the same little circles of media-art-architecture-design; they have middle class to very rich parents (lots of brands: prada & american apparel feature prominently). They have gone to the best schools in the country, usually due to family connections. However they feel their country “uncivilized” they want to be more connected with Europe and north america. they do not appreciate the mannerisms and attitudes of the older Putin generation, and the coarseness of their country men. so they retreat a bit, but not too much, because they are the young winners of society

i just went to an exhibit of necrorealist art and then after an exhibit of the latest young moscow artists (sponsored by martini and rossi, of course). let me tell you, yurchak’s people had a very different mentality.

12:16pm
gotcha
is a different kind of western influence
a recent aggressive capitalist western influence, different from the processes of westernization taking place during the 80 and 90s under the soviets and right after the end of USSR

12:22pm
maybe. i don’t know if the influence is western, or simply part of a global trend. they look to europe and north america, but at the same time are very insulated within the particularities of their own history–maybe too insulated in fact. this is the cause of the tense depressiveness: they want to be more european, but they are afraid of great distance culturally and historically between their country and the “west.” so it is hard to say western influence. it is very strange. they talk about visiting london, berlin, new york, but never “britain, germany, usa.” so i am not sure if it is that they are influenced by the west, or that they long for some lifestyle that is replicating itself around the world right now: this nondescript international floating life, linked by certain brands and hip places.

for example, it is not as if they long for democracy. non of these people are democratic activists, or would ever do anything like “occupy wall street.”

12:28pm
i hear you–its important to question the idea of “the west”, since it does not say much, and it does not describe processes that as u say, are more “international”–but still london, i agree, is not the UK, I agree, so its more a longing for mega-city lifestyles, but is London and not for example Kuala Lumpur. In this sense, it is not West in general, but still a part of the so larger unspecified western culture

12:30pm
well they also talk about shanghai and hong kong and sao paulo. the studio program is taking us to tokyo.

12:30pm
and some of those Russian, perhaps, might have a lot in common with OWS , in terms of views on social programs, though their lifestyles are a contradiction to the OWS’ claims

12:30pm
i just gave an example of those 3 cities
could be true, i have not asked…

12:31pm
yes, but is your program not all the russians u described above, i mean the parents of those mates of urs

12:33pm
maybe. i thought we were talking about the young people? those comparable to the necrorealists of yurchak’s day. anyway, it is hard to tell, as i have not been here very long, and my impressions are formed from a very strange distance from the people

12:34pm
i meant Russians in general, but yes, generations are different and its important to distinguish

12:41pm
well then i must say i do not know russians in general, and doubt that i will. i am moving in a very specific circle. the city of moscow is organized in rings, quite literally. the city is divided by giant rings of avenues, and people tend to socialize within their “rings.” I was warned when i arrived here never to leave the first two rings, as my life could be threatened by the (poor or working class) barbarians living beyond. So the rings are social and physical and increasing everyday. My work place is on an island across from the kremlin, which is right in the center of the center ring. this island is its own world of media-design-bars-restaurants-cafes-cool-expensive-face-control. not a place for just anyone to come anytime. Given this, it is not clear that i will get far off this island, except to go to other islands as led by my new friends and colleagues. So when I speak about young russians, i am speaking about these islands within moscow/russia.

12:48pm
i see–
it sounds a bit like Nairobi, in terms of urban segregation by different classes…sorry, got to go on skype now–my aunty called–parents etc..lets talk/chat later , if ur still there, keep writing about moscow and its rings, and also who told u not to explore other rings…, well this is what u do , no?

12:53pm
if i go to other rings, it is with the guidance of colleagues. this is not the kind of place to just ride the train and get off somewhere and go for a walk. at least not for me, as i clearly do no blend in most parts of the city. but yeah, let’s chat more later. –a

model memorial

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Here is Pradeep Jeganathan’s proposal for a giant model, dedicated to remembering all who died in Sri Lanka’s long civil war. Imagine what it would be have a model like this made for your own city. It is an amazing idea:

Let us layout a large map made of concrete or granite somewhere in the country. It must be to scale with all its mountains and valleys, rivers and reservoirs, forests and cites. Let it be, say, 500 metres in length or more. Let us mark on this map the place of every violent event that took place within its shores from the April 5, 1971 to the May 19, 2009. It cannot be comprehensive of course, but it can be representative, no ‘sides,’ but in the sense of a random statistical sample. Identify survivors of these selected events. Record what they remember, not about politics, not about violence, nor about who did what to whom, but about their loved ones died in that place. That’s all, a narrative of their love and attachment, which will also be a narrative of loss, pain and grief. Let us take these recordings made in the language the survivor chooses, and translate them also in to the other two languages of our country.
The idea is to place these recordings on the map of our country so that any one, especially, our children can listen to them. This map then will be filled with markers, of stone also, simple and yet distinct from the terrain it represents of death.

Violent death
Let us walk on this map– it is a large map, remember, and we can walk on it; respectfully of course — as we walk our country, and we can visit and revisit, in some small way, at each place someone died.
As we walk this map, then, with simple portable playback device with pre-recorded disk, yes, like a iPod, and a pair of supplied head phones, which we obtain from the administrator of the site as one does in some museums now, we should be able to listen at each place that is marked, by selecting number, like k324 on the device to a narrative of a survivor that pertains to that place.
Listen, take it in, and perhaps move on to another spot. It will take hours, of course, perhaps days, to traverse this map.

I do not offer panaceas; nor can I foretell the future. But I do think this may be a better way for us Sri Lankans to reconcile ourselves to our violent past.

aeroport

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After three weeks of organized field trips and official lectures, some of us Strelkans* decide to take a detour off the tourist path. On the last Sunday in October we take the green metro line into northwest Moscow, and get out at the Aeroport stop. After a half-hour walk, across an 18-lane boulevard, through a massive sports complex, across a large open field filled with friendly stray dogs, over a section of crackled tarmac, which has been converted into a makeshift amateur stunt driving course, and through a hole cut into a chain-and-barbed-wire fence, we arrive at a graveyard of Soviet aeronautical ambition.

In a field of tall grass, lie the remains of dream jets. Children play among the ruins of an empire, climbing onto wings and into cockpits with the help of their parents. Single enthusiasts roam with their cameras, taking pictures of the grounded giants. Teenagers dare each other to climb the rickety watchtower, which sways even with light breeze. Carlos and I walk together, taking pictures and video. We are dazzled by these magnifications of childhood toys. We close in on the same details: a flattened landing tire, wire innards spilling out of a plane’s ripped side panel, graffiti honoring a local football team and the defunct CCCP in the same breath, the cigarette wrappers and beer bottles tucked into the planes’ open holds, the oil-slick rainbow discolorations of the cockpit windows.

After a week of discussing public spaces in the city, this is the first truly public space we have found: this hinterland between a newly built financial center, and an endless sea of residential high-rises. Here are children and parents and grandparents, and tourists, and lone weirdos, and neighborhood residents. Here are multiple uses. Here is play. Here is evidence of another life at night, after the children go home. Most importantly, it is free, in all senses, and an absolute joy to discover.

*Strelkan (n., v.): 1. One who participates in Strelka Institute’s 9 month research program. 2. Describing an approach to urban research and design, as yet to be defined.

**all photos by Carlos Medellin

gorky park

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all images by Carlos Medellin

moscow madness

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Dear Readers,

I haven’t posted in a while, because I have been in the throes of transitioning to my new life in MOSCOW! Archiving the City will be published out of this icy city for the next 9 months, despite the threat of frostbitten digits.

Why am I in Moscow, you might ask? Well, I am doing an extended research residency at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design. Strelka Institute is a two-year old initiative of local media oligarchs and publishers and architects, who would like to transform the discourse around urbanism in Moscow. It’s a tall order, and I am one of a few foreigners who has been invited to participate in interdisciplinary research with early-career Russian architects, social scientists and artists. The entire progam of research is organized and led by Rem Koolhaas’ Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and its mirror research entity, AMO. The research can take a variety of creative forms, and the results will be exhibited, published and otherwise disseminated in the Russian press at the end of next summer. An excellent opportunity, and right up my alley, clearly.

So far, life here has been a whirlwind of lectures by local city officials, architects, academics, tours of construction projects, parks, Moscow suburbs, museums, galleries, and even a local primary school. As you can see me and my new friend, architect Carlos Medellin of Bogota, Colombia, just LOVE school! Check out some of Carlos’ work (it might take some time to load, but worth the wait).

Expect a barrage of Moscow-related posts over the next months, as I become even stranger in this wild city, and work out how to archive this experience.

Yes Lab at NYU, Fall 2011

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This may be of interest for those of you in New York this fall. Starts tomorrow, Friday September 23, 2011:

Yes Lab Fridays

Starting Friday, Sept. 23, the NYU Yes Lab will involve students, faculty, local activists, and the occasional government official in strategizing and accomplishing funny media-getting actions. The first session will be Friday, Sept. 23, 10am, at the Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor, New York. Anyone is welcome to show up for this first session, though we’re asking that you email us at nyu@yeslab.org and tell us about yourself, your interests, and your skills. Subsequent sessions (every Friday thereafter) will be open to those who commit to actively help carry out particular projects.

This fall’s Yes Lab projects will focus on the problem of income disparity and the rich-poor divide, locally and globally. Participants will join “action groups” to come up with funny media actions around manifestations of income disparity; specific focuses will include immigration, corporate tax cheats, military spending, and environmental injustice in Long Island City.

If you would like to propose an “action group” focus (that has something to do with income disparity), you’ll need to (a) commit to put in a lot of work yourself, every Friday; (b) have an activist organization in mind to help guide the group; and (c) pre-establish contact with that organization before the first Friday, and if possible confirmation that they are interested in collaboration. Please write to us about it, and show up on the first Friday ready to present your focus.

http://www.yeslab.org/nyu