Friday, March 25, 2011 is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which claimed the lives of 146 garment workers trapped at their machines. Most of the people who died, either consumed by flames, or jumping out of the windows on the ninth floor, were young women, recent immigrants. This is the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City.
Terrible Karma is project Merle Patchett and I put together. The title - Terrible Karma – refers to both the title of a protest song sung by Cambodian female garment workers at a union rally in Phnom Penh (July 2010) and to the idea that events of the garment industry past continue to haunt the present, that they are always coming back.
Merle and I will be out this Friday morning and afternoon (10-2) in downtown Manhattan, at Cooper Square, and near the location of the fire, at Washington Place and Greene Street. Follow the path on the map, and look out for our UHAUL truck, containing the audio-visual installation above. If you’re in town, drop by and spend some time in the back of the truck, feeling the reverberations of the fire, 100 years later.
Below is an excerpt of a conversation I had with my friends, Maja Trudel (M), and Johann Reble (J), when they were guests in my home last spring. Maja and Johann are young Swiss architects, and it was pleasure to talk with them about building, cities, space and perception. Here’s the part about grids:
J: What I was thinking about for a long time is that there are very different scales of structures in the city. A building can be destroyed at any time when you don’t want it anymore. Maybe the structure didn’t fit anymore, maybe it’s the façade people don’t like anymore, and it’s just cheaper to tear down the whole building and build a new one. Look at New York. New York is a perfect example. The structure, the layout of the streets, and even the subway lines, can never be changed. It’s there forever. There would have to be a very [horrible event], like the worst war ever, to destroy the structure you have here. And it all began one day, when some guy drew some lines on a paper.
A: The grid.
J: So it’s there. You cannot change it. You can destroy all the houses and build new ones, but the structure is still there. These are the scales of structure, which are very important—the bigger the scale, the more time you need to destroy it, or change it. And the other thing I think is very important, is what is the order of the scale, who says what scale it is, and what it is about.
A: Yeah, I think about the grid a lot. I used to teach a course called, “We Built this City.” Students expected to learn about large scale structures like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, and other iconic structures of New York. But students are always surprised that I spend so much time at the beginning of the course on the grid. The reason we have to start there is exactly what you said before. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building—they don’t really matter as much as that grid.
Inside of that grid there are whole lives. Even small sections of the grid can be the space of a whole life. In that sense, there is this big structure, there is this scale, but it doesn’t matter, if you don’t experience life at that scale. Within that grid, there can be infinite variation.
It’s fashion week in New York, and you know what that means… a lot of walking! I went to see Victor de Souza’s showing of his Fall/Winter 2011-12 collection at Exit Art, in Manhattan’s fashion district. Victor is my downstairs neighbor, an impeccably disheveled man who is always hard at work on Fashion, into all hours of the night. It is hard to believe how, in the death-grip of laziness, I lounge about reading and sleeping in the rooms right above his busy little workshop. I was excited to finally see the finished work, after getting glimpses here as there on visits to the apartment. I was not disappointed. See for yourself:
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 picks up on the crossed-leg posture that seems to come with the shoes. While I’m not a leg-crosser, the way I stand, my attitude, the way I imagine the potentials in my relationship to other walkers is certainly shaped in no small way by the sort of shoes I wear. One might say that choosing shoes for the day is a way of selecting a mood, a way of approaching the town, and my fellow urbanites.
Style and fashion–the fabrics, cuts, shapes, and the ‘postures’ that come with them are as much archives of urban experience, as any documents down at City Hall. Maybe even more so!
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 appreciate the steadiness of his time, his soulfulness. Also there was that pile of books, filled with markers and notes that sat on the piano, evidence of his voracious appetite for books. Histories, biographies, philosophy–Harry read a lot. Musicians appreciated his flights of mind, the way he took them high, and kept them there. “Everytime he played, the music was fresh, new. He never played the same old shit. I can’t say that about too many people,” says Itai Kriss, who played frequently with the great pianist. Harry was a real teacher, what Jacques Ranciere might call an ignorant school teacher: one who shares his knowledge openly, without imposing relationships of inequality on his students. He taught without his students knowing he was teaching. He taught them how to be free, by being emancipated himself. Most important, Harry was a sharp wit:
for more about Harry’s life and work, visit waxpoetics.
