the raw and the cooked

still moving, and: apiculture

2006-04-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

I am still moving...my excuse is that I'm moving in several directions at once, maybe as many as four if you count them, so it takes a while... I am trying to be as busy as these bees, busy pollinating the Luxembourg Gardens...

very tiring... but maybe the bee-man will open his hut for business and sell me some honey from the gardens once I have finished my first move, nearby, to the 5e.

You can see a few bees if you look closely... not to mention the glare of reflecting light of the iron bars I am valiantly peering through to get you this picture...yeah.

Moving notice

2006-04-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

(View of a building from the Viaduc des Arts)

Apartments in Paris are damn small. I would probably give my eye-teeth to live in this flatiron-style apartment building. Instead, I am moving from my current apartment in Arts et métiers, my well-loved neighborhood, to a smallier and crappier place in the Latin Quarter, because of a crazy man in my building.

Maybe it will be a good education to learn to know a new part of the city. Here's hoping that Les étages, the café (although maybe not the cut-rate hammam) of the Grande mosquée de Paris, and the used bookstores of the Left Bank will be a good new home.

[Update: Actually, I like my new place. It has amazing amazing quantities of sunlight from the 4th floor window. And anyone who can't deal with a toilette à la Turque for a couple months isn't tough people. I'll just imagine it's 1923 and I'm Ernest Hemingway...or Igor Stravinsky or something....]

Viaduc des Arts

2006-04-19T03:22:00.000-07:00

This is the promenade plantée, la ligne verte, or the viaduc des arts... an old nineteenth century railway bridge that fell out of use as all trains were brought into a state monopoly. It was ruined for a while, and the city considered tearing it down and putting something horrible without any character in its place, but then Paris came to its senses and turned it into an elevated park, a few meters wide and over a kilometer long. It feels like a picturesque promenade in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century sense: designed for a wandering, observing eye, and offering a varied panorama to look at.

The space underneath the arches that is not occupied by a cross-road, as shown here, has been turned into commercial space and tends to be inhabited by all sorts of fashionable design shops, third world import shops, and cafés...

The viaduct was redesigned by Patrick Berger in the late 1980s. He took his cue from an 1858 L'Illustration article, which describes the viaduct as being designed to have open arches faced in brick with stone dressings, in a style of which `the nearby Place Royale (Place des Vosges) offers such an elegant specimen', with the columns of the cast-iron bridges over the cross-streets exactly aligned on the trees bounding the Avenue.

Someone who may or may not have his feet photographed elsewhere in this blog, having a look at the traffic whizzing beneath him on the boulevard just below...

Because the viaduc is now a fashionable area to live, very interesting buildings are going up around it, most of them more penthouse-like than this one, but I liked this because it has such great organ-pipes attached...or is it just an old factory?

the traces of railroad trestles in the floor?

No fish... but fabulous little old ladies far away at the end of the picture... people were surprisingly wonderfully well dressed on the Viaduc.

Here is the park at Reuilly that the viaduct more or less ends at...gorgeous and alien at the same...although the park's pathway does continue for maybe another 0.4km as a sunken park converted from another old railtrack. It's also pretty, though not quite as nice as being up above the world...

As the Architectural Review comments: "Aloof from traffic noise and exhaust fumes, it offers a series of unexpected views -- from glimpses of the city's intimate anatomy in close-up, to plunging urban vistas through branches of the trees bounding the road below. Moreover, not only does this new linear pedestrian park revive the device of the elevated promenade (provided by the seventeenth and eighteenth century Paris boulevards on the city ramparts, and by the raised pavements of Bath and Bristol) but it demonstrates, too, that CIAM notions of vehicular and pedestrian traffic separation were not totally misguided."

Will narrow several meters wide elevated parks become the norm in cities?

instant chrysanthemum

2006-04-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

thank god I was invited to brunch today by a friend, where I consumed many Bloody Marys and eggs and salads of all kinds and Moroccan pastries and was generally genially well fed. I have nothing left in my fridge except condiments and sparkling water, because I forgot to go shopping before the long, looong Pâques weekend when everything is closed...

well, almost nothing. I could probably have tried surviving on this:

(yay!)

place Louvois

2006-04-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is the little garden opposite the other library I work in, when I want to look at maps, engravings, and manuscripts, or when I want to work somewhere beautiful and restorative for the soul unlike the main library at Tolbiac, which I heard someone call the HLM de Mitterand today, although it's really not that bad in its own way. Still, a library with opposite a park, with nineteenth century industrial clocks, a pneumatic tube system, and chestnut trees? Chestnut trees are good for the soul. As are tulips.

Also, this is a garden with plenty of foresight. There are instructions in case of tempests.

One of the few real parks in the 2e arrondissement, this space was the site of Paris’ 9th opera house, razed to the ground to obliterate the scene of the politically-motivated murder of the son of the future king Charles X. Now it is dominated by a fountain designed by Visconti, sculpted by Klagmann, and commissioned by Louis-Philippe of France, which has three female figures at the top representing the four major rivers of France: the Seine, the Garonne, the Loire and the Saône.

The fountain was set up in 1844 but the space was transformed into a square only in 1859, by the great and megalomaniac Baron Haussmann.

It has putti. Very well-sheltered putti, who have been given first-rate flying fish, even if this one looks a little squinchy.
My eyes almost hurt from how buttery yellow these tulips were. That's probably healthy after a day in the dusty art-manuscript room on the very top of the library. I brought some home later that day (from a shop on rue Montorgueil, not from the park, helas).

the Eure river

2006-04-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

supplemental

2006-04-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

The floorplan of Chartres, after the enlargements after the fire of 1194:

An oil in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Chartres cathedral's roof on fire in 1836:

(If you know the name of person who painted this, please email me, as I neglected to note it).

C/hartres (inside)

2006-04-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

This is just a small selection of my photos, and of the cathedral... it was really like a small stone city unto itself.

Barrel vaulting of wood ribs covered by stone. The circular joints are hollow, so their covers can be removed to air out the church if it got smelly and odoriferous from all the people in the middle ages who turned areas of the nave into a marketplace--since it was under the church's control, the king's taxes couldn't be imposed on goods bought or sold in here--or if it filled up with too much incense.

This is the Sancta Camisia, the Virgin Mary's tunic. It was considered to protect the town, and in fact whenever Chartres was besieged, the defenders would hang it on the town's defensive walls before battle. Apparently it worked.

It used to be kept in a closed container, so people thought the Virgin Mary had a shirt with sleeves on it. But no, it's a wrap, a length of silk cloth that has been carbon dated by scientists as coming from the appropriate time period.

This is one of the few medieval labyrinths to survive the changing fashions of church interiors. It's a meditation device inlaid into the floor (unfortunately we showed up the day after a very big group of pilgrims came through, so chairs are temporarily covering part of it). Unlike a maze, a medieval labyrinth has only one path for the devotee to follow. The exact uses of the labyrinth are unknown because no descriptions have survived in manuscripts, but it was once a widespread motif...the cathedral had Reims had a more complex one with towers in the corner, but the round labyrinth at Chartres is considered one of the more perfect designs.

me and another mystery friend...me at the bottom of the frame, him to the right.

Roseoles, so beautiful. Chartres must have been a very complex mnemonic device for monks at the school of Chartres, which was made famous by Fulbert for its advanced teachings in mathematics and logic as well as theology.

to give yourself a sense of scale, look at the chairs...

Looking behind us down the stairwell of the clocher du nord, the flamboyant Gothic tower...

C/h/artres (outside)

2006-04-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

C/hartres, built 1194-1260, in order to house the silk tunic or veil of the Virgin Mary, the Sancta Camisia, a relic given to Charles the Bald by the Empress Irene of Constantinople.

The cathedral is a major stop for pilgrims making their way on foot to Santiago de Compostela in Spain; I saw one singing outside the church's doors and holding the cockleshell that is the mark of a pilgrim of St. James, Santiago.

too many beautiful images to share all with you...but here is a Romanesque doorway, of the resurrected Jesus and the souls of saints in heaven, the heavenly Jerusalem in relation to which C/hartres cathedral was considered the earthly Jerusalem... and indeed was large enough to be a stone city, and house a medieval population of several thousand pilgrims at a time...

Saints and Old Testament figures crowned by different famous churches and palaces existant in the twelfth century...
Somehow it was hard to take a photograph that showed just how visibly tiny the town of C/hartres is, and the bright vivid line between the town and the green, green fields that surround it...but you can kind of see it here.
These soaring arches are flamboyant Gothic, meant to remind you of flames.
May it not ring until I climb down!... we could see an electric system attached to the bell, so no human bell-ringer hangs from its ropes anymore.
who is lucky enough to repair this peak...
the balcony I am standing on, in the late afternoon sun...

green!...
the shadow of the spire I stand in...
The Romanesque tower, as seen from the flamboyant Gothic spire... including the mysterious wonderful demonic lion-dog on its own rectangular booster column, next to the littler spires surrounding the main tower...
Flying buttresses as seen from above... too bad I am not a rock climber!

Flying buttresses, from another angle... this is the exterior of the apse. It seems to connect via a staircase to a religious administrative annex...maybe part of where the monastery school of C/hartres was, with its logicians, originally headed by Fulbert.
copyright 2006

a last look at pre-spring paris

2006-03-31T04:22:00.000-08:00

because it's springy April now, not March when these photos were taken...

En mars, vent ou pluie
Que chacun veille sur lui

These are the only remaining fortification walls built by Philippe Auguste between 1190 and 1220, and rebuilt in the fourteenth century by Charles V. It was built when the Marais was still marshland (kind of like this day), although people clearly decided to build their houses into it later on, when the city grew and sieges were no longer a big threat. This photo was taken around the rue des Jardins Saint-Paul, although the wall originally also extended along the rue des Rosiers, rue des Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, and rue des Francs Bourgeois from the Crédit Municipal to the Hôtel de Saint Aignan.
Paris had lots of water shortage problems until Napoleon built these handy outdoor fountains around town... which still exist in the Marais although nobody congregates around them anymore...

a happy rainy afternoon on rue Charlemagne... near the absinthe shop!...

part of the village of St-Paul, medieval buildings saved from being destroyed for new developments by craftsmen, artisans, artists, and antique dealers who still live here today, in the old city block, marked by these flags... one of my favorite areas of Paris...

It's very wet, and the tree boughs look like a poem from Ezra Pound here at the Picasso museum, where a little posthumous due is being given to Dora Maar, who was an artist in her own right... and the street glows orange, slightly.

106. In a Station of the Metro. THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;. Petals on a wet, black bough.

Quand Mars bien mouillé sera, beaucoup de fruit cueilleras.

grève generale

2006-03-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

the anti-CPE protests were more peaceful than last time... and the police began using paintball to catch casseurs.

"Ensuite, y'a plus qu'à ramasser. C'est ludique et pratique."

Also, if you don't read the newspaper now, your life is much more likely to become exciting by turning round a corner and walking into a line of riot police. Or people running in the other direction. Some of my favorite places being, of course, place de la Sorbonne and place d'Italie. Luckily, this is Paris, so sometimes if there aren't any protesters around for a couple hours and the riot police get bored, you are likely to see them headbutting each other with their plastic shields...

fragment for a two-month anniversary

2006-03-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

The door is half open,
The lindens smell sweet...
On the table, forgotten,
A riding crop and a glove.

The yellow circle of the lamp...
I'm listening to rustlings.
Why did you go?
I don't understand...

Tomorrow morning will be
Joyful and bright.
This life is beautiful,
Heart, just be wise.

You are completely exhausted.
Your beating is fainter, more muffled...
You know, I read somewhere
That souls are immortal.

Anna Akhmatova
February 17, 1911
Tsarskoye Selo

a hint for rioters

2006-03-25T11:46:00.000-08:00

accidental or not?
a beautiful old shop on a rainy day, rue st-paul. le vieux marais.

(it's funnier in French, with the formatting, but here's a translation for non-French speakers:
TO THE STUDENTS OF THE SCHOOLS
It is Forbidden
1. to spit on the floor
2. to wet your fingers in your mouth in order to turn the pages of our books
3. to put in your ears a pen-holder or a pencil
4. to clean book jackets by spitting on them or putting your tongue directly on them
5. to hold in your mouth pen-holders, pencils, coins, and so on.
Do you want to know why these things are forbidden? Ask your teachers, who will give you the necessary explanations.
Remember that it's not enough to just obey these instructions yourself - you should make sure that everybody knows about them.)

2006-03-24T03:14:00.000-08:00

joli Montmartre

2006-03-20T02:53:00.000-08:00

I didn't actually take this picture but I was there. The chicken had somehow wandered over from the restaurant next door, as this is a delicious oyster and sea-creatures restaurant, on the reasonably chi-chi rue des Abbesses.

[insert joke about the grippe aviaire here]

assez aux manifs

2006-03-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

j'en ai marre. What started out as a bunch of young people demonstrating against a measure that would probably decrease youth unemployment, especially in the banlieues (not so much in privileged places like the Sorbonne) ...

has turned into this.

place de la Sorbonne

This goes beyond young people shooting themselves in the foot over a legal measure that was poorly communicated to them by Villepin and the rest of the French government, and becomes something that needs to stop.
boulevard saint-michel.

More photographs and news here and here.

portugal, still beautiful

2006-03-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

I like this last one because it looks like somewhere I've never been.

copyright 2006

lisboa

2006-03-14T14:42:00.000-08:00

"The best way to travel is to feel." --Fernando Pessoa (via the heteronym Álvaro de Campos)

Nonetheless, I flew to Lisbon...

which contains peacocks...
lots and lots of tiles...

me and my friend (briefly!)...

a church destroyed in the earthquake of 1755 and never rebuilt (though really, I hate to explain this one...)
a geometric urban grid only in the areas destroyed by the 1755 earthquake that shook Voltaire and Swift's already-shaken faith (it happened during Sunday mass and the faithful were crushed as they prayed) - it was built all at once, Baroque mass-planning...

and in the Middle Ages, they had to fortify the Tagus river that opens Lisbon up to the Atlantic...

although the shore has been moving out to the fortress...silt, you know...

St. Jeronimo's monastery (a.k.a. Jerome)...

where the devout scatter rose petals...
and which has African monkeys on it, for the Portuguese sea-traders to recognize...
plus a sea-froth style called Manuelito...
and squares that make me think of Angola, but it's Lisbon...
the 8th century Moors picked good spots to build in...
...and that's all I have bandwidth for right now.

copyright protected 2006.

Revolutionary Time: the Franciade, Decimal Clockfaces, and the 9 Thermidor

2006-03-12T17:08:00.000-08:00

The revolutionary calendar (or calendrier républicain) was designed by the politician and agronomist Charles Gilbert Romme, although it is usually attributed to Fabre d'Églantine, who invented the names of the months. The calendar was adopted by the Jacobin-controlled National Convention on 24 October 1793. Years appear in writing as Roman numerals (usually), counted from the beginning of the Republican Era, one day after the Convention abolished the monarchy and the day the French First Republic was proclaimed: 22 September 1792. (As a result, Roman Numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use).

The first day of each year included the autumnal equinox. There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year.

Daily time was ordained to be divided into new, rational measurements as well. Each day was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute had 100 decimal seconds. But it was a colossal failure. Although clocks were manufactured to display decimal time, this did not catch on with the peuple. The attempt was officially abandoned in 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.

A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a "Franciade".

The Republican calendar year began at the autumn equinox and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature:

Autumn:
Vendémiaire (from Latin vindemia, "vintage") Starting September 22, 23 or 24
Brumaire (from French brume, "mist") Starting October 22, 23 or 24
Frimaire (From French frimas, "frost") Starting November 21, 22 or 23
Winter:
Nivôse (from Latin Nivosus, "snowy") Starting December 21, 22 or 23
Pluviôse (from Latin pluviosus, "rainy") Starting January 20, 21 or 22
Ventôse (from Latin ventosus, "windy") Starting February 19, 20 or 21
Spring:
Germinal (from Latin germen, "seed") Starting March 20 or 21
Floréal (from Latin flos, "flower") Starting April 20 or 21
Prairial (from French prairie, "meadow") Starting May 20 or 21
Summer:
Messidor (from Latin messis, "harvest") Starting June 19 or 20
Thermidor (from Greek thermos, "hot") Starting July 19 or 20
Fructidor (from Latin fructus, "fruits") Starting August 18 or 19

Days had an animal, tool, or plant associated with them instead of saints. So, my birthday, February 17, would have officially been le 29 Pluviôse, with the patron entity chélidoineor celandine, a yellow poppy which is pretty but highly toxic throughout its roots, stem, leaves, and bloom. It was brought to North America by settlers who wanted to cure skin ailments, especially warts. All right.

In England, people against the Revolution mocked the calendar by calling the months: Wheezy, Sneezy and Freezy; Slippy, Drippy and Nippy; Showery, Flowery and Bowery; Wheaty, Heaty and Sweety.

The calendar was abolished because having a ten-day work week gave workers less rest (one day off every ten instead of one day off every seven); because the equinox was a mobile date to start every new year (a fantastic source of confusion for almost everybody); and because it was incompatible with the secular rhythms of trade fairs and agricultural markets.

Perhaps the most famous date in this calendar was immortalised by Karl Marx in the title of his pamphlet, "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoléon" (1852). The 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) is considered the end of French Revolution. Another famous revolutionary date is 9 Thermidor, the date the Convention turned against Robespierre, who was guillotined the following day.

Thomas Carlyle on the calendar, in The French Revolution, a History:
"As to the New Calendar, we may say here rather than elsewhere that speculative men have long been struck with the inequalities and incongruities of the Old Calendar; that a New one has long been as good as determined on. Marechal the Atheist, almost ten years ago, proposed a New Calendar, free at least from superstition: this the Paris Municipality would now adopt, in defect of a better; at all events, let us have either this of Marechal's or a better,--the New Era being come. Petitions, more than once, have been sent to that effect; and indeed, for a year past, all Public Bodies, Journalists, and Patriots in general, have dated First Year of the Republic. It is a subject not without difficulties. But the Convention has taken it up; and Romme, as we say, has been meditating it; not Marechal's New Calendar, but a better New one of Romme's and our own. Romme, aided by a Monge, a Lagrange and others, furnishes mathematics; Fabre d'Eglantine furnishes poetic nomenclature: and so, on the 5th of October 1793, after trouble enough, they bring forth this New Republican Calendar of theirs, in a complete state; and by Law, get it put in action."

also see:
Les Heures Révolutionnaires, by Yves Droz and Joseph Flores
Decimal Time History, by John D. Hynes

convert dates here

Maison Tristan Tzara

2006-03-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

15, avenue Junot, 18e. (Montmartre)
Built in 1926 by Adolf Loos for Tristan Tzara, opportunist, radical artist, activist, founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, enemy of the Surrealists, Romanian, writer of the wonderful Dada manifesto.

Says Archinform, "Die symmetrische Straßenfront schwingt leicht nach innen. Der über zwei Etagen geführte Sockel wie auch die Stützmauer, mit der das abschüssige Gelände abgefangen werden muß, sind sichtbares Hausteinmauerwerk, darüber ist die Wand glatt verputzt. Hinter dem Eingang - es ist die rechte der beiden Türen, die linke führt zur Garage - liegt lediglich eine kleine Halle. Hier setzt eine Treppe an, die in einem engen, schluchtartigen Einschnitt im geraden Lauf an einer Einliegerwohnung vorbei zur Atelierwohnung des Hausherrn führt. Der rumänische Schriftsteller und Dadaist Tristan Tzara, ein 'Lebens- und Sprachkünstler von feuriger Lebendigkeit und Angriffslust', führte damals zusammen mit André Breton die Pariser Avantgarde an, die eine führende Stellung in der europäischen Literatur- und Kunstwelt einnahm. Über die Villa Tzara kam auch Adolf Loos in diesen Kreis. Weitere Bauaufträge, die er sich dadurch wohl erhoffen konnte, blieben allerdings aus. Man suchte zwar seinen Rat, ließ sich auch Entwürfe zeichnen - wie die Amerikanerin Joséphine Baker, die Mitte der zwanziger Jahre mit ihrer 'Revue Nègre' auf den Champs Elysées Triumphe feierte; wenn es aber um die Realisierung ging, wurden ihm doch französische Kollegen vorgezogen."

look, anthropomorphic.

from "Adolf Loos, the New Vision," over at Studio International:

"Loos, like many of the architects of the pre-1914 period, was self-consciously modern. I have already noted this. And he had other things in common with them. His generous, if sometimes misguided, enthusiasm for all things English, for instance. But he was untouched by the generalized Werkbund optimism. It was not through the reformation of untutored mechanics in art schools, however excellent, that good design would be achieved throughout society. In so far as good design was available, it was those very rude mechanics, the saddler, the silversmith, the upholsterer, even the plumber — but above all the tailor and the shoemaker — who already provided a repertory of excellent objects for everyday use. This was the early intuition of the perfection, of the superiority, of unadorned objects, as they had come from the ‘unspoilt’ craftsman's hands. Loos remained consistent in this: if you look through his interiors, whether private or commercial (he never designed a public building) you will find that he never used ‘modern’ designed furniture. His preference was for English style, for Chippendale or Hepplewhite chairs; or else the cheaper canework. Occasionally he uses the standard Thonet chairs in bentwood, familiar from cheap cafes all over Europe. The armchairs are the usual cosy, sub-Biedermeier upholstery, even including the occasional Chesterfield. The floors were, for preference, covered with Oriental rugs.

I suppose that is why there are so few photographs of the house which Loos designed for the most famous of his clients, Tristan Tzara, in the Avenue Junot, on Montmartre. To the street the house would have shown — had the projected top storey been built — a great white square set over a rubble stone base. The base contained the garage and fuel store, as well as the main entrance on the ground floor, and the main windows of a flat for letting above. This flat was entered from behind the building. The main apartment consisted of hall and kitchen looking through the windows which overhung the string course, more important rooms in the huge niche, about half the height of the square and a third of its width, which cut sharply into the great white surface, a negative of the shape which he would later perfect in the Muller home at Brno. It was set in the middle, so that a swathe of white, a third of the square's width, went round it on three sides.

The inner complexity of the plan was a topical Loosian solution for a difficult site. The complexity had its wit, as did the strangely highly-abstracted anthropomorphism of the facade, or the use of the commonplace Parisian industrial detailing in the lower floors, the shape of the lower niche, again the inversion of his favourite English bay-window. It is a configuration not unlike Le Corbusier's exactly contemporary villa at Garches for Leo Stein: a blank facade, sparsely pierced to the street, and an open, glazed frame towards the terraces and gardens at the back. But Loos's complexity always remains hard, the spaces are never moulded, never the plastic, shaped interiors which Corbusier made them.

Repeatedly Loos asserted that the architect's business is with the immeuble, the craftsman's with the meuble. The architect saw to the inert volume, to the walls and ceilings and floors, to the fixed details such as chimneys and fireplaces (beaten copper was one of Loos's favourite materials). And here his haptic reading of buildings was most important.

Wherever he could, Loos used semi-precious materials on walls and ceilings: metal plaques, leather, veined marbles or highly veneered woods, even facing built-in pieces of furniture. But unlike his contemporaries, Loos never used these materials as pieces to be framed, but always as integral, continuous surfaces, always as plain as possible, always displaying their proper texture: almost as if they were a kind of ornament, an ornament which showed the pleasure providence took in making them, as the more obvious type of ornament would display the pleasure experienced by his fellow-men.

Curious then, this feeling for the decorative effect of figuring in the arch-enemy of all ornament. Even more curious is his persistent use of the classical columns and mouldings. The crassest of these was his project for the Chicago Tribune, an unplaced competition project; it was an extraordinary scheme which consisted of a vast Doric column, (the shaft alone 21 storeys high) on a high parallelepiped base. To Loos, however, the project seemed wholly serious. The building was to be a pure classic form, classic and therefore outside the reach of fashion, so that it would fulfil the programme of the competition promoters to 'erect the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world'.

A naughty extravaganza you might say. Of course. But Loos was convinced, secure enough, to allow himself that also. He had imagined a way of life in the house. The felicities of the plan all exult in the way the house was to be occupied, to be lived in. And does everything to ennoble it formally by a quiet unassertive wit. It is at this scale that Loos was at his happiest. The private houses are his masterpieces: they, the bars, the clothes shops, all buildings on a small scale, for the greater dimensions of public urban building he could not quite master. Though perhaps this is not entirely fair to him. In 1920 he was appointed chief architect for the Siedlungen of the post-abdication, the newly Republican Vienna. It was the nearest he came to giving positive expression to the western civilization he spoke of in architecture. But he was consumed by one or two detailed ideas which he never fully worked out: the terrace house with weight-bearing party-walls, and light construction cross-wall (what he called ‘the house with one wall’); the use of stepped terraces, so that the roof of one house could serve as garden to the next; the provision of access at every other floor, so that the terrace became in fact an immeuble villa, to adapt Corbusier's phrase. But his appointment did not and could not last. Only one of his Siedlungen was actually built, only partly following his plans before he retired, disappointed and embittered, to Paris. It is too easy to say that it was fated, that he should have remained the architect of the individual villa. Although all his projects for great public buildings show him at his worst, the low income housing absorbed his ingenious talent, drew the egalitarian and the moralist in him to a full engagement."

hmm

2006-03-06T10:47:00.000-08:00

somehow I feel less well-traveled when I see how Euro-centric I am. (Also, this map deals in generalizations, and is unauthorizedly crediting me Alaska and giant swaths of the Russian Federation, even though I haven't been beyond Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev).
Still, it's a useful image for some mental organizing...

create your own visited countries map

by Jorie Graham

2006-02-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

ON DESCRIPTION

(from Walter Benjamin's ILLUMINATIONS, and a letter)

1

An angel

is looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage on wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into a future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

The angel, however, resembles all from which I have had to part: persons
and above all things. In the things I no longer have, he resides. He makes
them transparent, and behind all of them there appears to me the one for
whom they are intended. . . .

Just as I, no sooner than I
had seen you, journeyed back with you, from whence I came.

les moulins

2006-02-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

Before it was annexed to Paris, the butte of Montmartre was a hillock of orchards, vineyards, and farmhouses. Many people moved very suddenly to Montmartre in the middle of the nineteenth century when Baron Haussmann demolished their apartment buildings (he usually picked the poorer areas of Paris) in order to create boulevards and grand lines of perspective appropriate for an imperial capital. Workers and families settled on the hill because rent was low and there was no tax on wine. It was a good life.

At one point, the hill of Montmartre had 14 mills on it (and it's not very big!). They were used to show Parisians which way the wind was blowing and to power early factories. Many of them disappeared in the first half of the nineteenth century, although at least one was used very late to grind pepper and, according to a historical plaque I read, to provide a lookout for the city when it was besieged by an invading army. Unfortunately for that miller, he was noticed by the invading cossacks (what war was this? The plaque was very unclear but I assume somehow the cossacks got attached to the Prussians in the war of 1870-1871) and they cut him into pieces and nailed the bits of his body to the beams of his windmill. His sons carried on the family business after that...

Two of the mills, often known together as the moulin de la Galette, were preserved and turned into ballrooms. Very stable and completely untippy ballrooms, you see.

This is where a former butcher named Zidler got the idea for the Moulin Rouge in 1889. (Architect Joseph Oller adapted the building). It's also where Renoir and other impressionists got the idea for some paintings.

Renoir's painting Le Moulin de la Galette à Montmartre is above, Willette's lithograph of a performance of the Moulin Rouge is below. Apparently Zidler and his associate Renard hid the orchestra inside the elephant. You can sort of make out a grand piano and a man standing at it, who was directing the orchestra.

Here is a fabulous description of the dancers from the official butte de Montmartre website, quoted without any editing. Note that "grille d'égout" means sewer-grill.

"He had joined together on its plate decorated by Willette a girl name "Grille d’Egout", because of the exceptional spacing of its teeth. Nini-Patte-en-l’air, la Môme Fromage (the cheese kid), la Sauterelle (the Grasshopper) , la Cascadeuse (The stunt girl) , la Guigue, Etoile Filante (Shooting star), Arc-en-Ciel (rainbow), Rayon d’Or , Clair de Lune (Moonlight), Violette, Pâquerette, Camélia (dite "trompe la mort"), Cri-Cri (who died on stage), Goulue (flabby). This universally known monument was superbly illustrated by one of its most assiduous customers, the painter Toulouse-Lautrec."

"Oui, la Goulue, elle était célèbre. Je lui ai parlé, sur les quais du métro. Je l'ai reconnue et je lui ai demandé de l'embrasser : "Vous permettez que je vous embrasse, ?" C'était très dans le genre. Un personnage du siècle. Elle était, pour moi, sans âge, grande, forte, très très grande, dans mes souvenirs. Elle aurait peut-être 125 ans aujourd'hui ? A Neuilly, il y avait un lion en cage qu'elle domptait... Arletty quoted by Michel Souvais. Les Cancans de la Goulue

The can-can, a very exciting form of the quadrille.

left: the real Goulue.

And finally, below: I wouldn't mind living in Montmartre.

mesdames messieurs, la sainte-chapelle

2006-02-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

--Where are we going now?
--A la Sainte-Chapelle, répondit Fédor Balanovitch. Un joyau de l'art gothique. Allons grouillons! Schnell! Schnell!
...
Les caméras crépitent.
-- Tu me fais mal, glapissait Zazie folle de rage.
Mais elle fut elle aussi emportée vers la Sainte-Chapelle par le véhicule aux lourds pneumatiques.

La Sainte-Chapelle is so famous that I don't have much to add to what you might know of it, except to point out that it was built in only six years (1242-1248) which I think could inspire certain architects of the twenty-first century (especially when you see the diagrams I saw of its being built, which seemed to involve only about 10 workers, some very beautiful but rickety-looking wooden cranes, a king in robes monopolizing the attention of his architect, and a surprising number of medieval people in their cups or reading a book while sitting on scaffolding somewhere off on the sidelines).

It's also worth noting that it was the "oeuvre personelle" of Saint Louis, the king who also built the Sorbonne, and it used to contain the Crown of Thorns of Christ as well as all sorts of saintly knucklebones taken from Byzantium, until the French Revolution when these things got scattered a bit.

It's astonishing for the enormous size of its gorgeous detailed stained glass windows, which incredibly manage to support the weight of the very tall vaulted ceilings of the Chapelle.

I'm a sucker for this little castles punctuating the columns...

and I like the asymmetry of this off-centered window-within-a-window. It doesn't give up its secret.

a small tease... me to the right.
and my mysterious ami.

Gothic is reliably exalting, even if it's wrapped up inside the sober walls of the Palais de Justice and the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette and many others waited before having their heads chopped off, and where I too tried to get my residence permit...and probably wanted to lose my head by the time that was over...

Palais de Tokyo

2006-02-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

Before the period of absence I just marked, I went to an exhibit of contemporary French art at the Palais de Tokyo. Most of it - including the things I liked best - were life-size exhibits that you could walk into or on or sit in/on. I didn't photograph the tiny doors excavated into the museum walls with light seeping out of them, or the spinning hamster wheel you could use to walk from one room to another, or a constantly in- and de-flating circular sofa, but here are a few other things I found...

such as a room half-filled with old, out-of-date newspapers...

a giant human skeleton with flippers set up like a dinosaur in a Natural Hsitory Museum (a future mistaken reconstruction?)... and it is getting smooched by a museum-goer...

then Batman swooped in, looking a little pudgy...

a room studded with foam spikes featuring table and chairs...

a guest appearance by none other than...
...Edna Mode

and a few other wonderfully non-utilitarian things...

such as, for the hell of it, skateboarders outside the Palais' pavilion...

Gare de l'Est

2006-01-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

Place du 8 Mai 1945. 10e arrondissement.

34 million people pass through the train station every year, making it the fifth-busiest station in Paris.

The Gare de l'Est is always a bit of an emotional sight for me because it was the train station from which thousands upon thousands of soldiers were sent to the trenches of Verdun in world war one. They all passed under the half-rosette of its glorious entrance, and for many it was their last sight of the civilian world...a point of no return.

The Orient Express still runs from here to Vienna and Budapest, even though it looks a bit different. It first departed from the Gare de l'Est to Istanbul on October 4, 1883.

Between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, the square in front of the train station was the site of the Saint Laurent Fair otherwise known as the Carnival -- a much-missed festival now in the twenty-first century.

The original building of the Gare, now its western wing, was built between 1847-1850 by François-Alexandre Duquesney with the help of the engineer Pierre Cabanel de Sermet. Commissioned by the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Paris à Strasbourg, the building was originally called the Gare de Strasbourg, and served the railroad line Paris-Strasbourg, functioning since 1844. Streets in the neighborhood still recall the origins of the first passengers: Boulevard de Strasbourg, Rue d'Alsace... and restaurants in the area still reflect the choucroute and galette influences.

All the shoe ads are a little ironic given that this is a place devoted to other forms of transport...

Luckily, the French decided to change its name to the Gare de l'Est in 1854, well before the embarrassment of losing the province of Alsace to the Germans during the 1871 Franco-Prussian war. Growing railway traffic made extensions necessary, so the engineer Bertaud imitated the original building, adding on to it symmetrically, between 1924 and 1931.

Today, trains leave from here for eastern France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Pigeons beware. (So weirdly beautiful...where is Marcel Duchamp?)

graffitti around Château-Landon

2006-01-23T06:30:00.000-08:00

Next up: the Gare de l'Est. But first: some more street art, because the graffitti painters get inspired by train stations and transport hubs, and also because I promised more space invaders.

my legs plus a message written on the wall (er, sidewalk), Nebuchadnezzar + FDR:

Here the space invader's eyes match the pattern of light in the windows behind him - they would be looking in the same direction if they weren't on different planes. I hope that was intentional.

and on the rue Etienne Marcel:

aerial

2006-01-22T03:18:00.000-08:00

a chilly view of Paris from within the tubes of the Centre Pompidou...

camping on blvd. sebastopol

2006-01-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

I was too shy to take a photo of any, but pup tents have been popping up all over the streets of Paris. The organization médécins du monde has been giving very high quality tents out to homeless people all over Paris for the winter. I thought that the issue of homelessness couldn't possibly be made vivid or interesting ever again -- it was one of those issues that had just been worn out, exhausted, beaten into the ground along with all the unfunctional solutions that had ever been suggested for it -- but this effort has actually made it shocking and interesting to think about again. Not only do the domed tents with their space age materials keep the homeless warm, give them some privacy on the street, provide a place to keep their things safely, and give them a permanent location where food aid and medical workers can find them, but it also makes the homeless seem much more of a permanent fixture on the street, a part of my neighborhood on rue du Temple in front of the Monoprix, or at the pl. de Châtelet. They look familiar, and also strangely bourgeois -- I would find it hard to afford a tent that nice, although it looks like one that might belong to somebody I know, maybe a distant cousin -- although it's hard to imagine cousins of mine with the street smarts to set up their tent over a heating vent in front of my local Monoprix. The homeless take up a little more space on our sidewalk now, I can't quite ignore them, but they also seem to have a certain right to be there now -- they're established. I've always had a certain sympathy with the homeless from living in places where rents are high and apartments don't feel stable, securely mine -- but now we're even more similar. (Of course I am speaking from a position of privilege in writing this, but we always exist in strange relations of power and powerless towards the things we write about). I like not only that they are leading a more comfortable life now with the tent, but also that they remind me the city is a wild untamed place, the concrete wilderness, asphalt jungle; we're both camping out in it, finding a little shelter in the wilds that is our own.

space invaders

2006-01-18T02:12:00.000-08:00

I had been noticing pixellated mosaics of space invaders around Paris for some time now -- mostly on street corners. (I even pointed one out to my mother on a visit, and she insisted it was nothing special: "that's how the workmen communicate to each other" -- ha!).

But nope, there is actually someone behind them, and he's discovered a new building material. Space invaders in bas relief! As Parisist says, les invaders se font cubes.

avenue Ledru Rollin, in the XIe. More photos coming soon.

(Photo by Space Invader).

Bauhaus-Archiv

2006-01-14T06:43:00.000-08:00

The Bauhaus Archiv has one of the best-designed websites I've ever seen. I adore their fonts. For some reason, the building didn't really take exceptional photographs -- no comparison to the experience of being there -- probably because I was so distracted by the people I came with! but you get a fairly literal idea of it. The building is a humorous little surprise on the banks of the canal that keeps unfolding as you get closer and your lines of perspective change. It wakes you up.

Clearly setting itself up as the definitive institutional source on the subject, the Archiv defines the Bauhaus period as 1919-1933, and has very good exhibits (most recently: collages by Marianne Brandt).

Gropius designed this building in 1976-79 specifically to be an archive of the movement; it replaced an earlier Gropius-designed building from 1964-65 in Darmstadt that must just have not worked out. Their website describes his role quite hilariously: Gropius war über seine Amtszeit hinaus für das Bauhaus die inspirierende Persönlichkeit und integrative Autorität. Auch nach Schließung der Schule hat er für die Anerkennung und Verbreitung der Bauhaus-Idee gearbeitet. In other words, Gropius was their "inspiring personality and integrating authority." Ja.

I also highly recommend the group portrait taken of the founders, here.

Paul Klee was involved for a short time, and Wassily Kandinsky was a bona fide member of Bauhaus. It was impressive to look through their Bauhaus shop and see just how many well-designed objects of daily life are still being used today, in versions that often cost less mere pennies to buy.

Other major members: Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Marianne Brandt, Marguerite Friedländer, Lothar Schreyer, Gunta Stölzl, Georg Muche.Nearby, you can see one of the Spree canals flowing by.

Clearly, I was fascinated by the ducks walking on water. Miraculous!

Berlin looked like the wintry steppes when my plane landed at Schoenefeld -- dusts of snow scattered across the rocky landscape and a few twisted trees. To think I canoed here once.
At least the ducks are happy.

This, my favorite photo of the day, is just beautiful.

for and against monuments

2006-01-12T03:23:00.000-08:00

I love this -- nothing to be added -- except perhaps to say that it was taken on the Kreuzberg, a man-made hill with man-made waterfalls in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin that I always stay in---so close to my old apartment in Neukoelln (of David Bowie fame)--
--and it appears to be painted on a monument in praise of Germany's conquest of France in the 1880s when the Germans occupied Paris in 1870-1871, right after the Paris Commune revolt. It was winter, and a very brutal time (according to my Martial sketches); 71,000 French died during the siege, 47,000 of whom were civilians defending their city. 12,000 of the attacking Prussians died. The victory cemented the newly established Germany, which had only recently become a nation...empire-grasping will do that.
You get some pretty good bird's-eye-perspective-visual-domination of the surrounding city from the Kreuzberg. Napoleon would have liked it. This is Mehringdammstrasse you're looking down, with the Fernsehturm half-hidden on the left.
Potsdamerplatz! Can't you just look at this and see how cold it is?

Another anti-monument of sorts. The Palast der Republik 's story is so contested and well-known that I will only retell it briefly. The Palast was built on the ashes of the Berliner Schloß, a Wilhelmine palace that had been greatly damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and 1945 but nonetheless had at least one wing still standing and could have been repaired. Instead, the DDR government bombed the foundations as a remnant of uncommunist monarchist nostalgia (and let's be fair, the old palace was pretty blah). The ruins were next to Alexanderplatz, a very central part of East Berlin, but the DDR was strapped for cash for much of its existence, so twenty years went by until the government felt they could properly build a modernist, futuristic building that would overshadow all the cutting-edge avant-garde buildings being put up in capitalist parts of the world at that time -- because the bright future of the communist utopia was here, dammit. Built in 1973-1976, the Palast really was quite beautiful in its coppery way, and it had some parliamentary spaces as well as restaurants, theaters, and music venues that were for regular people to use, instead of an aristocratic or financial elite.

Some people say that East Germans nicknamed it Ballast der Republik ("Ballast of the Republic"), Erichs Lampenladen ("Erich's Lamp Shop", referring to Erich Honecker and the 1,001 lamps hanging in the foyer, made by the "class enemy" in West Germany), or Palazzo Prozzo -- but I can't vouch for any of that.After German reunification in 1990, it was found to be dangerously contaminated with asbestos and scheduled to be demolished. You can imagine the many metaphors people have seen in that. One idea was to create a green space near Alexanderplatz with its turf; a plan that has been gaining increasing momentum is to rebuild the Schloss on its spot, erasing history (because Disneyifying life is so meaningful).
When I lived in Berlin, a canvas cloth with the Schloss facade painted on it was hung over the Palast and we expected its demolition at any moment. Differently-nostalgic Ossis would like the building to remain forever. It seems unclear what the future of the building will actually be, although it's clear that the solution will be uninventive, unoriginal, and unable to look to the future, whatever it is.
Meanwhile, the Palast is pretty cute. A group called the Temporary Palace Use group (Zwischenpalaztnutzung) has built a cloth mountain inside that looks rather like a geodesic dome reproducing, and occasionally they throw parties inside in the best Berliner squatter tradition (of 16 years standing now). That's the Rotes Rathaus you see reflected in it -- and really, it's quite appropriate that it's a building that reflects its surroundings (that's probably why it's survived so long) because of all the dreary fights going on around it about what to remember, when, and what the ethical and cultural issues at stake are in the physical encrustation of memory it fixedly -- or not so fixedly -- embodies.

redux

2006-01-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

See what a dangerous place the library is -- you could break your neck there. Or slice yourself on one of the sharp corners. The library is very difficult to get into...

On the other hand, once you get in, it's comfortable and very hard to get back out again...

this is what the library area would look like if I were an Impressionist painter:

(it was snowing and vaporous)

My favorite time of day there is dusk, when four or five giant flocks of larks take their turn swooping down over the hidden low-depths garden, shrieking all at once like a high-pitched version of static on a television set, dive-bombing the pine trees several times and then finally settling in a particular one -- one per flock -- and turning the branches black with their bodies. That is something I am not able to take a photograph of, yet.

G--- L---, or: the symphony of consumption

2006-01-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

can you guess where this photo was taken?

okay, okay, I'm not going to hold out -- too much longer -- :
The Galeries Lafayette -- built originally in 1893 by Theophile Bader and his cousin Alphonse Kahn as a haberdashery on the corner of rue Lafayette and Chaussée d'Antin. They were successful and expanded fast: in 1896, the company purchased the entire building at n°1 rue La Fayette and in 1905 the buildings at n°38, 40 et 42, boulevard Haussmann and n°15 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.

At night, the facade gets a second facade on top of it -- in sparkly lights.

Balzac, cited by Benjamin: "The great poem of display chants its stanzas of color from the Church of the Madeleine to the Porte Saint Denis." [And the Galeries Lafayette]
Théophile Bader commissioned Georges Chedanne and then his pupil Ferdinand Chanut to design the interior, which looks to me like a giant opera house without a stage -- the boxes are just rotated around each other so that the audience is the show -- one can see and be seen, enjoying the pleasures of voyeurism as well as shopping. The glass and steel dome and Art Nouveau staircase were built in 1912 -- doesn't it look like the commodity fetish has taken over the aura of the sacred, and become the new sun we should orient ourselves towards? It looks like candy. It's run now by a conglomerate which also owns BHV and about 600 Monoprix stores, as well as little spin-offs; the families Meyer and Moulin helped build it up and still own a controlling portion of the company: 61%.
Citation by Benjamin from A. J. Wiertz: "Sun, look out for yourself!"

"There are relations between department store and museum, and here the bazaar provides a link. The amassing of artworks in a museum brings them into communication with commodities, which -- where they offer themselves en masse to the passerby -- awake in him the notion that some part of this should fall to him as well." [Benjamin, L5, 5]

Look, a Christmas tree. (I hope this gives you some idea of scale -- the Galeries are certainly too big to photograph without a panorama camera).

"Squares, o square in Paris, infinite showplace,
where the modiste Madame Lamort
winds and binds the restless ways of the world,
those endless ribbons, to ever-new
creations of bow, frill, flower, cockade, and fruit--"
Benjamin's citation of Rilke, Duineser Elegien.

Fashion: Madam Death! Madam Death!
--Giacomo Leopardi, "Dialogue between Fashion and Death"

Nothing dies; all is transformed.
--Balzac, Pensées, sujets, fragments
[epigraphs to convolute B]

Fashions are a collective medicament for the ravages of oblivion. The more short-lived a period, the more susceptible it is to fashion. [B9a, 1]

Another photograph of the light in the Galeries Lafayette -- taken by a camera in fast motion.

"The subject of this book is an illusion expressed by Schopenhauer in the following formula: to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus to the morning newspaper... Our investigation proposes to show how, as a consequence of this reifying representation of civilization, the new forms of behavior and the new economically and technologically based creations that we owe to the nineteenth century enter the universe of a phantasmagoria. These creations undergo this "illumination" not only in a theoretical manner, by an ideological transposition, but also in the immediacy of their perceptible presence. They are manifest as phantasmagorias. Thus appear the arcades -- first entry into the field of iron construction; thus appear the world exhibitions...Corresponding to these phantasmagorias of the market, where people appear only as types, are the phantasmagorias of the interior, which are constituted by man's imperious need to leave the imprint of his private individual existence on the rooms he inhabits. As for the phantasmagoria of civilization itself, it found its champion in Haussman and its manifest expression in his transformation of Paris.
Nevertheless, the pomp and the splendor with which commodity-producing society surrounds itself, as well as its illusory sense of security, are not immune to dangers... humanity figures there as the damned. Everything new it could hope for turns out to be already a reality that has always been present; and this newness will be as little capable of furnishing it with a liberating solution as a new fashion is capable of rejuvenating society."
[From the Exposé of 1939]
Don't worry, according to Benjamin, the twentieth century will be an improvement on the nineteenth -- or can be, depending on us -- as he says in a different document also dating from 1939... and the twenty-first?

if you enjoyed or were puzzled by this or the other quotes in this entry, um, please go over to the little link from Amazon.com at the left-hand margin of this blog and click on it a few times! (ha, I am kidding...but do have a look at Arcades or Illuminations sometime). merci bien...

Sylvestre

2006-01-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

while I get back the energy from my New Year's celebration and all the visitors there have been this season, I hope you have been enjoying yours... here are some lovely ladies from a MUCH WARMER day a long time ago in the Tuileries, who are also ready to wish you a bon réveillon...

(i do miss... the sun)

bonne Année!

orsay

2005-12-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

well, I was at the cafe inside the musee d'Orsay tonight with my parents, who are visiting for the holidays. We just had had time to take a few bites of our dinner when suddenly the lights went off. In the entire museum full of priceless paintings.

We were eating in a little hanging room behind one of the clocks (it is housed in the building of a former train station, of course), very high up, and we could see out the window beyond the clock that all of Paris was lit up, except for us -- and occasionally the search beam emitted from the Eiffel Tower would sweep the ceiling and cast beautiful colored shadows. Pitch blackness, and the emergency PA system repeating the same instructions over and over in four different languages. The museum guards manned the stairways but the waiters made jokes and we all finished our meal quite peacefully, as did the other diners, sometimes with the help of some light from their cell phones -- and payment in cash, of course. I did my best to convince my mother we were eating dinner at the Orsay while a Major Art Heist was taking place under our noses -- but she is far too sensible for me, ha. The terrorists didn't attack either, but we were in semi-darkness for about 75 minutes, looking at Renoirs and Seurats under the green security lights until finally, finally electricity returned and they re-opened up the good part of the fifth floor, so we could go visit Cezanne, van Gogh, Monet and Caillebotte, and Ingres later on.

It was particularly funny for me since I am actually going to a restaurant tomorrow precisely in order to eat in the dark -- you order at the bar, and then are led indian-file in the pitch black darkness around the other diners to your table -- where you pour your wine and eat in the dark, served by a waitstaff entirely composed of blind people.

The food is supposed to be delicious.

and no, my dinner companions for tomorrow night will not be my parents, thank god!! much as I love them.

Happy New Years.

winged victory

2005-12-28T15:28:00.000-08:00

Taking a brief break from buildings, here is an old love of mine, the Winged Victory of Samothrace (or, in Greek, Niki tis Samothrakis -- Νίκη της Σαμοθράκης).

She is made of Parian marble, and 3.28 meters or 11 feet tall, probably made around 190 BC in celebration of a naval victory. She was probably originally located outdoors, set into the niche of an amphitheater. The statue stands on the prow of a ship (which is cut out of the photo but doesn't look like much specific anyway) and represents the goddess as she descended from Olympus to award victory to the Greek fleet led by Demetrius I Poliorcetes. Before losing her arms, this Nike was probably blowing a victory paean on a trumpet.

Champoiseau discovered the prow she stands on in 1863 (I am impressed he could tell what it was) and she was reunited with it. Someone else found one of her hands later, in 1950; the Louvre keeps it in a little glass case nearby.

I visited her recently thanks to my new-found seekrit discovery of how to go in the Louvre BY THE MAIN PYRAMID ENTRANCE which is more beautiful than the Gate of Lions, and nonetheless wait in ALMOST NO LINE WHATSOEVER (about 30 seconds, in this case) and still have 5-6 hours of open time to visit it. There were a mere 15 people around the Mona Lisa (as usual blithely ignoring all the other da Vincis in the room, let alone the wonderful Giotto, Cimabue, and Giotto paintings), and it was easy to move straight to the front row center to have a good look at her - craziness. The rest of the museum was a dream of uncrowdedness too, including my favorite Babylonian, Ninevan, and Susean lions and warriors. Ha! looking forward to lots more future visits like this.

from the category of back-handed compliments:
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in the Futurist Manifesto of 1908: "A screaming automobile that seems to run on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace."

59 rue de rivoli

2005-12-26T02:34:00.000-08:00

Whenever I walk down the rue de Rivoli, I pass this building, which I have finally figured out is an artists' squat, taken over when the bank Credit Lyonnais abandoned it after some hard financial times. It is hard to imagine how/why a major financial institution would abandon a building on such a famous and luxurious shopping street as the rue de Rivoli, not far from La Samaritaine, the Seine, and the Louvre, but maybe it was in a bureaucratic tangle when the artists made their move. In any case, having their squat on the rue de Rivoli does make for the maximum dissonance, and while I am sad that their gallery-spaces were closed down before I moved to Paris, so I can only see them on-line like you, it is good to see the artists have such staying power in the face of the French state. As well as quite a good manifesto. Here are my photos and their words:

Le 1er Novembre 1999, jour de la fête des morts, le KGB (Kalex, Gaspard, Bruno), investit les murs du 59, rue de Rivoli, immeuble laissé à l'abandon par le Crédit Lyonnais et l'Etat français. Très vite une dizaine d'artistes leur prête main forte afin de réhabiliter le lieu trouvé en état de décharge publique (pigeons morts, seringues, gravats). Le but de cette opération est triple : - réanimer un lieu inculte - permettre à des artistes de créer, de se loger et d'exposer - prouver le bien-fondé d'une politique culturelle alternative.

Le collectif ainsi formé prend le nom de « Chez Robert, électron libre » et organise des vernissages, performances, expositions, le tout en ouvrant gratuitement au public, tous les jours de 13h30 à 19h30, sauf le Dimanche. L'Etat français porte plainte contre les artistes qui sont condamnés à être expulsés le 4 février 2000. Cependant, grâce à leur avocat Florence Diffre, ils obtiennent un délais de six mois. La presse s'empare alors du phénomène « squart » (contraction de squat et art) et contraint par cette médiatisation les pouvoirs publics à se pencher sur le « dossier » négligé depuis des années.
...
Des études sont à l'heure actuelle en cours, afin de déterminer la possibilité légale, après chantier de rénovation de l'immeuble, de poursuivre toutes les activités du Collectif. En attendant - et nous savons tous que le temps administratif s'écoule beaucoup plus lentement que le bref temps de nos vies humaines - Le Squat est fermé pour cause d'interdiction au public depuis le 28 mars.

2e Manifeste de L'Internationale Squattiste

Bonne nouvelle. Suite à une fusion torride entre deux groupuscules squatteurs (la Ffesse : Fédération Française et Européenne des Squatteurs et des Squatteuses Eclectriques ET le Ppucrap : Projet Pour Une Contre-Révolution à Paris), un texte, définissant la démarche artistique et politique des squarteurs, a pu être établi dans la nuit du 19 au 20 Décembre vers 2 heures du matin . Texte immédiatement signé par le squat du 59 Rivoli ainsi que par d'autres squarts inconnus ou à inventer. Ce texte, le voici :

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers .

Prisonniers de la spéculation immobilière
Prisonniers de l'incompétence administrative de certains pouvoirs publics
Prisonniers de guéguerres politico-politichiennes
Prisonniers d'une politique territoriale qui favorise la désertification des campagnes
Qui favorise également la désertification des villes
Enfin qui encourage le développement de banlieues-ghettos infinies .
Par ghetto, nous n'entendons pas seulement ghettos de pauvres, mais ghettos de riches, ghettos de musulmans, ghettos de gitans et encore ghettos de vieux, etc., tous regroupements identitaires plus ou moins assumés par la République .

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers

C'est en cela que le mouvement des artistes-squatteurs est un mouvement de libération. De libération des espaces prisonniers. Qu'un espace prisonnier soit, par la présence d'artistes-squatteurs, libéré ; qu'il soit libéré pendant deux heures, deux jours, deux mois ou deux ans, peu importe, le fait le plus important est qu'il ait été libéré : qu'il ait connu le goût de la liberté.
Car qui a su le goût de la liberté ne peut jamais l'oublier .

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers

Lorsque l'on sait à combien de sociétés de gardiennages font appel les propriétaires privés et publics pour empêcher que des intrus pénètrent dans des lieux inoccupés, on mesure à la fois les sommes d'argent astronomiques qui sont dépensées pour empêcher qu'il se passe quoi que ce soit et par la même occasion les sommes d'argent astronomiques qui ne sont pas dépensées afin qu'il se passe quelque chose.

Lorsque l'on comprend – avec un certain effroi- que si, dans 99% des cas, les pouvoirs publics refusent de légaliser les alternatives culturelles présentées par les squarteurs, c'est parce qu'ils on précisément peur de créer un précédent – précédent dans lequel pourraient s'engouffrer des générations …-, on comprend que ce qui motive une partie des politiques culturelles en vigueur, c'est la peur … et rien d'autre .
La peur ! ça fait peur ! on avait pressenti depuis longtemps que ce n'était ni les rêves, ni les désirs ni même encore les illusions qui guidaient les politiques culturelles)

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers

Est-il donc si étonnant que cela que, dans ce pays très conservateur, dont les traditions monarchiques ont perduré bien au-delà des têtes coupées, la plupart des artistes dont les médias parlent soient des artistes officiels ? c'est-à-dire des artistes étant passé par toutes les étapes du circuit officiel, à savoir l'Ecole des Beaux-arts, l'obtention de séjours en résidence, puis d'ateliers-logements, la demande de subventions octroyées par le Ministère et enfin l'achat d'oeuvres par ce même Ministère ? Ce que l'on pourrait appeler des artistes ayant montré patte blanche ?
Non, cela n'est pas étonnant car
Qui a peur souhaite être rassuré
Et il est rassurant de savoir que ces artistes doivent tout à l'Etat .
Ce sont ces mêmes artistes qui finissent par représenter la France lors d'expositions internationales et prestigieuses. Pouët Pouët .

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers

L'essence même du mouvement des artistes-squatteurs est de libérer les espaces prisonniers, en y instaurant un mode d'organisation nouveau et révolutionnaire . Le mouvement des artistes-squatteurs est un mouvement armé. De mots, de couleurs, de supports, de formes, de sueur, de larmes, de silences . Et de rien d'autre .C'est un mouvement vulnérable, hissé par des vulnérables. Au service de tous. En quoi est-il révolutionnaire ? Tout simplement parce qu'il se propose de faire tout le contraire de ce que font les institutions : là où elles s'acharnent à tout séparer , ici le lieu de résidence, là le lieu de création, ailleurs le lieu de monstration, plus loin encore le lieu de diffusion, le mouvement des artistes-squatteurs s'acharne à tout réunir : et c'est pourquoi les squarts ne sont ni des lieux de résidence, ni des lieux de création, ni des lieux de monstration, ni des lieux de diffusion mais tout cela à la fois et beaucoup plus encore. Gratuitement.

Squatter ne sera jamais un droit , mais
Squatter sera toujours un devoir .
Car la liberté est un devoir. Surtout quand la démocratie échange, en croyant récupérer une plus-value, Partage et Fécondité contre Confort et Sécurité. Et qu'elle ne peut plus déployer d'autre horizon que « 1984 ».

Il n'y a pas d'espaces vides
Il n'y a que des espaces prisonniers.

2ème manifeste de l'Internationale Squattiste . Anonyme .A traduire dans toutes les langues . A piller de toute urgence, de toute éternité .Faire circuler, ça porte bonheur .

P.S. : le 1er manifeste de l'IS a malheureusement été perdu puis brûlé. Ou le contraire .

BN, site François Mitterand

2005-12-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

This is where I spend so many of my days...in the rez de jardin, many floors below the boardwalk that you see here, in the special "researchers" area which is like working at the bottom of a well, in glass rooms that surround a hidden pine garden that you cannot see here but which has tall, tall trees many stories high.

W.G. Sebald has probably given the best, darkest description of it in Austerlitz, but I can tell you a little more: there are four towers. They each have names describing the books they house: le tour des lois, le tour des nombres, le tour de l'espace, le tour de temps. The books are in the heights of the towers and we researchers burrow below. From a near distance the towers -- glass walls with yellowy wood bookcases lined up inside -- really do look like open books, standing up, facing each other.

Designed by Dominique Perrault and built between 1989-1995, it is now the main site of the Bibliothèque nationale, and has revitalized the sections of the 13e arrondissement it is near -- not to mention the quai d'Austerlitz.

I am finally starting to think it is beautiful, after many days of noticing birds fly into the glass walls, thwap, and fall dead to the bottom of the garden. Flocks of larks do stop here on their way migrating somewhere. The library is like a fortress: many defenses to keep you out, including a steep downward ramp you walk down in order to get to the entrance, which is very slippery in rainy or foggy weather, i.e. at all times. Once inside, there are bank-vault-like double doors which researchers push through, and a long single-file escalator in an absolutely monochrome silver-grey shaft going down, down, down. It has excellent natural light but poor lighting once the sun sets. I do love how they load up any films, reels, microfiche, or DVDs on a computer for you, from a distance, so that all you have to do is sit down at the computer reserved for you in a special room and press "play." But nothing can be checked out, and it is the sort of place that does not lend or give you books...it "communicates" them to you.

The formality of the BN makes going to the library like commuting to your office, for work...but there is a certain pleasure in that, too. I've gone there often enough to lose all anonymity. I know fellow researchers, the coat check people, and of course the abrupt Moroccan man who manages the only café and makes me espresso every day. The slick wood boardwalk of the BN, with its sandpaper traction slips and the giant MK2 movie theater right outside to cheer you up after work is over -- and the transparent mallette that I have to carry my laptop and effects in, once inside, as if we were all diamond workers and might slip something out, instead of fragile people working among books -- all this is habit for me now, ingrained, unforgettable.

le magasin du temps

2005-12-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

There are very small quotes printed in brass circles in the floor of the subway stop in the Bibliothèque nationale François Mitterand subway station, ligne 14, where I have been working for the last three months, and I only noticed now.

Salut, Benjamin (disorientingly in translation).

pour l'instant

2005-12-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

i am very happy to say, finally, i've found some art being made right now in Paris, graffs et fresques, although i haven't found all of them on the ground as easily as on-line. (Also, who does those cryptic messages printed on the sidewalk for us to walk over?)

passagxxe Vivienne part two

2005-12-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

ignoring the fact that rain seems to pass directly through my windowpane into my apartment, as well as literally drip from the uninsulated windows, making this a rather surreal 17 m2 to inhabit, i will tell you more about the passage Vivienne, while sharing what is probably my favorite photograph of it ever:

The Galeries Vivienne did win the period of their face-off with the Galerie Colbert, but it was a short-lived victory since soon all the passages in this area were in trouble.

The Passage Vivienne began to decline during the Second Empire, when the Palais Royale area no longer had the monopoly on luxury and in fact fashion had begun to shift westwards, towards the spanking new Champs Elysees nighborhood. Haussman's urban "revolution" encouraged the exodus. By 1861, Alfred Delvau could write about both the passage Vivienne and Colbert: "ils sont propres, ils sont spacieux, mais ils sont inutiles." By 1887, the Paris Baedeker had cut their entry on Vivienne to only one line, and soon it would disappear altogether.

This after such a bright period: even Berlioz lived there for some time, locked in the buildings of the Institut de France writing his cantata La Mort de Sardanapale for the Prix de Rome of 1830, and incited a mob to sing the Marseillaise in its walls during the July Revolution.

But Colette in the twentieth century compares it to a Venice where Falstaff would never pass: "[les] portes qui soufflent les tenebres, [les] seuils qui trahissent le pas. Songez que le gaz et l'électricité n'ont pas encore rajeuni leur caducité innocente..."

In 1961, the Galerie was in such disrepair that the coupola, in need of some emergency work, fell to pieces under the weight of a worker called to repair it.

In 1965, a psychedelic artist named Huguette Spengler bought five boutiques in "ce palais abandonné." She spent five years, and nearly all her money, trying to revitalize the passage. The Galerie became a theater for happenings and performance art. However, the other merchants began to regret her presence when, in 1970, "elle trouve sa joie dans la découverte des bombes de peinture pour carrosseries de voitures" and began painting other people's walls and facades, as well as her own. Kenzo moved out to the passage Choiseul. Hugette painted over some very beautiful frescos that had been in the old Kenzo space with pink paint. Finally she moved out in 1970.

The passage Vivienne was finally brought back into fashion by the fashion industry, in the late 1980s. Jean-Paul Gaultier and Japanese designer Yoki Tori held fashion shows in its corridors, and images of the passage as a fashion runway were transmitted all over the world by television. The change in the passage's fortunes was abrupt, almost brutal; now completely renovated, it is full of beautiful, luxurious, nearly unattainable goods.

If one regrets that its performance art and fashion run-way selves are definitely past, at least there is some consolation that the passage Vivienne has gone back to its original character, from Marchoux's time: luxury.

Have a look at this panoramic view taken by Arnaud Frich to get a better idea of its cavernous prettiness.

Passagxxe Vivienne, part one

2005-12-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

While I am editing incredibly poorly written essays on European railway networks (how did they get to be professors? when do I?), and hoping that eating chocolate with enormous quantities of Mirabellwasser does not seriously alter my ability to fix run-on sentences and MLA citation standards, I will also give you part one of an entry on the Passaxxge Vivienne, one of the poshest and best-preserved passages in Paris.
4, rue des Petits-Champs, 5, rue de la Banque, 6 rue Vivienne. 2e arrdt.

The rue Vivienne owes its name to an extremely wealthy banking family, les Vivien, who built the street in 1631 to connect to the Palais Royale area and to Louis XIII's court. In 1837, it was lengthened to join the rue Montmartre. In 1788, Sébastian Mercier wrote: "There is more money on the rue Vivienne than there is in the rest of Paris."

A notary named Maître Marchoux who was living in a hôtel at 6 rue Vivienne decided in 1823 to build a covered passage, to imitate the ones elsewhere that were already enjoying such success. (Those were the days, when you could be named "master," weren't they?). Marchoux bought the hôtel as well as a house in the middle whose garden faced onto the rue des Petits-Champs, giving him a section of turf in the shape of an L that linked the rue Vivienne, the rue des Petits-Champs, and the rue de la Banque where the large Banque de France is located. But Maître Marchoux still wasn't satisfied. This was the most luxurious quartier in Paris, after all -- so he wanted his passage to be the most gorgeous passage humanly possible.

Francois Jacques Delannoy, creator of the Banque de France, the Palais de Justice, and the pridon de Dijon, and one of the most brilliant architects of his era, was commissioned to rebuild the passage, and he did so with such success that its design is one of the most copied around Europe (in Nantes, Bordeaux, and St. Petersburg, among other places). Formed in the Empire school, Delannoy decorates the passage with pilasters, arcs, corniches, and various symbols of success (laurel wreaths, wheat, palms), richness (horns of plenty), and commerce (Mercury's cadeceus).

The passage was an immediate success. It was incredibly packed, to the point that contemporaries have left passionate descriptions of the difficulty they had in avoiding having an eye poked out or foot run over, as they shopped in the 70+ shops there. (Visitors to Paris unused to the modern crowds had an even harder time). There were luxury retailers, the restaurateur Grignon, several good cafes, merchants of fashion and novelties, and even a confectioner whose salesclerk, Mademoiselle Valérie, was so beautiful that she attracted crowds.

La Librairie Siroux installed itself there in 1828.

The abbé Gazzara opened a Cosmorama there in 1832, which presented the wonders of countries from the fours corners of the world, via magnifying mirrors.

Even the memorable Vidocq, the voleur-policier (thieving policeman), lived in the passage Vivienne in the 1840s, and there is a rumor that a secret underground passageway linked his part of it to the Palais Royale, to make it easier for him to spirit away his goods.

...tune in next time for Part Two of the Passagxxe Vivienne, where the fratricidal rivalry with the Passagxxe Colbert, the advent of prostitutes and a rough crowd, revival, decline, and its contemporary fortunes will all be discussed...

a Mind of Winter

2005-12-10T03:32:00.000-08:00

this poem -- especially the "mind of winter" it evokes, the impersonal perceiving self which is somehow free of the narrower emotional social self of personality and perceives on a different time scale -- is so liberating. it reminds me I must leave the city and spend some time in nature this winter...or this year...to reach that state more often.

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

vocabulary

2005-12-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

fortune cookie: biscuit porte-bonheur
cotton candy: barbe à papa (frighteningly, this can be made at home)

bakeries I have not yet been to where I may try fresh chocolate and financiers, cannêlés, macarons, sablés, baguettes, et fugaces:

Kayser 8 & 14 rue Monge, 75005 Paris
Le Boulanger de Monge 123 rue Monge 75005 Paris
Pain Poilâne 8 rue du Cherche-Midi 75006 Paris
Pierre Hermé 72 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris
Patrick Roger 108 bd St-Germain, 75006 Paris

and for some authentic British Christmas pudding, to be set on fire with the Kirschwasser I brought back from Berlin:

Rose Bakery, 46, rue des Martyrs 75009 Paris

advertising pillar: Morris and Litfass

2005-12-05T04:15:00.000-08:00

The French claim that these frivolous and wonderful ornamental columns were invented in the nineteenth century by the printer Gabriel Morris in 1868, which is why their popular name is colonne Morris.

Germans claim they were invented by a Berlin printer named Ernst Litfass in the 1850's, hence the name Litfaßsäule. Great minds think alike. In Berlin, they began as a way to organize posters previously hung raggedly on fences and private building facades -- to make the printed material orderly, aesthetically unified. Consequently, the very first ones were all black and white print, as in the wintry photograph to the left (though that is actually Paris you see), except for the blood red ink of police notices seeking a criminal, perhaps for a sensational crime like murder. Litfass died in 1874, leaving behind a legacy of 150 advertising pillars. By the turn of the century there were 1,500 of them, and the newspapers chronicle city plans to build even more. Soon after the columns are put up, however, the order they once imposed on the Prussian capital gives way to disorder, as poster designers experiment with new typefaces, designs, and colors. Peter Fritzsche writes in Reading Berlin 1900: "the blood-red colors reserved for an extroardinary murder had long since been adopted by the promoters of boot polish, variety theater, and new-age messiahs. The fabricated quality of sensation wrecked any sort of hierarchy among the items and occasions of the boulevard. As a result, Litfass' pillars came to upset the demeanor of the streets: they stood out like giant "exclamation marks,"* they "screamed,"* their "thick letters" danced a "never-ending can-can."*

The "can-can" of that last quote from a Berlin newspaper gives me the sense that the French columns went up first, and that in fact their existence is the sign of a Parisian urbanity and modernity, in which the city becomes a readable text just as news and adprint becomes necessary to navigate it and its ever-changing, ephemeral streets and offerings. Classes mixed at the advertising pillars, where you could read about opera productions next to variety theater and even jobs wanted fliers (rather like today, minus all the "lost cat" and "lose weight" ads).

The classic literary text for these pillars is Proust's Du Cote de chez Swann, where the young Marcel breathlessly reads them to discover the next dates for La Berma's performance of Phedre. (quote coming soon)

Although the numbers of these columns are diminishing, new ones are manufactured in Paris at least, where the nineteenth century lives on. Today they are made by JC Decaux, which bought the Morris company (whose actual name was La Société Fermière des Colonnes Morris) in 1986. You can see some of their new ones on the website, redesigned to multitask: some of them are also used as public toilets (hidden inside!) or public phone (mostly on the Champs Elysées).

Still I prefer this old survivor, which I found on the rue Marcel Etienne somewhere between the third and first arrondissements:

*"Die Litfasssäule als Jubilarin," BLA no. 315, 1 July 1905
*"Mehr Litfasssäulen," BT, no. 609, 29 Sept. 1908
*Edmund Edel, "Der Schrei der Litfasssäule," BT, no. 481, 21 Sept. 1908

fake hills, geese, and flying machines

2005-12-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

Today I visited Belleville and the sweet park Buttes-Chaumont, with its artificial rock-cliff surmounted by a gazebo, the waterfall in the cave with fake stalagtites, and the ducks of course... including one very large goosey-duck who was ready to defend his turf against me. It was a beautiful afternoon -- the trees are still mostly still green because Paris isn't *really* that cold (I guess), and you are eye-to-eye with all sorts of crazy seventies skyscrapers when you are up in the gazebo. Even the grass was still green -- I felt like I was in a set for Blow-Up. The park's seamless blurring of nature and artifice was fascinating. However, there was no camera, so instead let me distract you with this picture of something I could have used at Buttes-Chaumont...this nineteenth century flying machine form Arts et métiers where I got on the 11 ligne...

okay, maybe the foto isn't 100% centered, but you have to admit, I did a really good job of not getting stopped by the museum guards... er...

Gropiusstadt und weiter

2005-11-30T05:45:00.000-08:00

Partly in honor of the recent riots or émeutes (which reached my neighborhood in the center of Paris briefly one night) -- and which the New York Times has semi-seriously claimed were the result of architecture, in a piece titled "Revolting High Rises" -- I visited one of the earliest Modernist High Rise developments in Europe, Gropiussadt.

Gropiusstadt is just one section of Neukölln (a neighborhood in Berlin that I happened to live in for a year, of David Bowie fame -- just listen to Hero -- as well as fantastic Turkish, Afro-German, Polish, Russian, and Vietnamese mixing -- in my old area, not in Gropiusstadt, you could buy baklava by the kilo). However, it has roughly 50,000 inhabitants, more than many small towns. All of them live in modernist functionalist Gropius-designed houses which were built between 1963 and 1973 -- experiments for a new utopian living. Space for the proletarians! And this was in West Berlin.

Apparently the actual slogan at the time for it was: "Licht, Luft, und Sonne!" I find it amazing that they were able to use so much space in the little fenced-off island that was West Berlin -- 264 hectares. Of course many of Gropius' original intentions were changed by financial practicalities and/or the lack of space in West Berlin:

Gropius sah als Elemente der recht einheitlich gestalteten Großsiedlung kleinere, überschaubare Wohnviertel mit eigenen Geschäftszentren vor. Seiner Idee war die Einbettung von Elnfamilienhaussiedlum gen, zum Beispiel die Hirtsiferzeile, am Gaudigweg oder am Lenzelpfad, zu danken. Gropiuus hatte für die BBR eine Zonierung hinsichtlich der Wohnungsgröße angestrebt. Die kleinen Wohnungen sollten an der Peripherie entstehen, während die größeren Wohnungen zur Mitte hin orientiert werden sollten. Denn dort, im Umfeld des Wäldchens, gab es die besten Spielangebote für Kinder. In der Praxis entstanden die größeren Wohnungen allerdings schwerpunktmäßig am Rande der Großsiedlung.
Das städtebauliche Konzept von Walter Gropius sah - in Anlehnung an die nahe Hufeisensiedlung - kreisrunde Baukörper mit maximal fünf Etagen vor. Durch die Insellage änderten sich ab 1961 die Entwicklungsbedingungen West Berlins grundlegend. Der Mangel an Bauland zwang dazu, viele Projekte neu zu überdenken.

Which is mostly to say that the city built the buildings higher than Gropius wanted, denser, added some parking places, and eliminated some of the large green spaces he envisaged.

But it's still awfully green. I walked through it and kept thinking of contrasting public projects which are now being torn down, particularly Le Corbusier's Garden Cities and Towers in the Garden in Paris and Marseilles.
Revolting? Not so much. These buildings have an awkward beauty of their own -- and I don't feel alienated thanks to all the trees and winter berries hanging on stems. To me, more, it seems like a lost opportunity for high Modernism -- a road not taken, the clues for a corrective rather than an outright rejection of high-rise buildings, and affordable projects for workers and other people to live in. After all, the dream of affordable housing for all and high-density living (to slow down the sprawl of habitation in the natural world, and make cars less necessary) wasn't so bad now, was it?

Here, unlike in Le Corbusier's dreams, you walk between high-rises instead of driving. You can also take the metro, and some Plattenbau actually have grocery stores inside them, on one of the lower floors. (Although a monstrosity called the Gropius-Passagen was built -- it is a shopping mall, snore). You could take a subway which makes several different stops throughout the complex (U7), but you can also just walk. I don't know how long that would take people, since the project is very large, but I got the feeling you might see a lot of neighbors on the way -- really wish I had had a chance to hang out there around the time that commuters would be coming home from work.
There's mixed-level and income housing, allowing for the "housing career" of potentially upwardly mobile income earners (which Le Corbusier did not consider, as the NY Times points out -- so less ghettoization or feelings of humiliation at being trapped in a bad quartier -- as well as ways for the economically mobile to move around without leaving should they so choose).
And did I mention how green it was?
Lucky mushrooms, Glückpilze.
The weather is colder in Berlin than Paris, so the leaves changed color more, and there were bushes full of sparrows roosting together to stay warm, and twittering when you walk past. And then a dusting of snow fell. Almost Schubert Winterreise weather, in the Plattenbau.

Berlin's Mahnmal an den ermordeten Jüden Europas

2005-11-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

I went to Berlin for Thanksgiving, where I spent all sorts of time up in the Fernsehturm or walking around in Gropiusstadt (which is awfully green and pretty for a housing project, aka Plattenbau in German), in several contemporary art galleries. including the Hamburgerbahnhof where I bought a book of photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher and Kunstwerke, which had a rather forgettable 1970s gender/identity exhibit up by Katherina Sieverding but which I loved visiting because the building -- a former squat -- incorporated a silver slide which takes you breath-whippingly fast on a whirl outside and then back inside the building, a three-story ride in all, and which had a little window inserted into the top half of the slide for the portion of time that you were outside the building. It was a snowy day. There must have been a theme to my trip because after Thanksgiving, when we were recovering from all the turkey cooked in brandy and savory applesauce and whatnot, we also slid down the 8 story outdoor tobogganing slope in the middle of the skyscrapers of Potsdamer Platz, buzzed on (ahem, really strong) Apfelpunsch. That was on the way back from a tour of the pneumatic tube system in Berlin and its role as a precursor of the underground subway. Before watching two Brecht plays at the Berliner Ensemble, erected by Brecht himself in the DDRzeit from the rubble of bombed out post-world war two East Berlin. But what I took enough photographs with to share here is not the art, punk, squat, Turkish, high-design, or high-culture sides of Berlin that are so alive and exciting right now. I paid a visit to the Denkmal für die ermordeten Jüden Europas or Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenmann. It is probably the most effective and -- strangely -- beautiful memorials to anything I have ever seen, and it is an experience that interacts with the viewer rather than a visual object.

Above, you can see how close to the Reichstag and the Brandenburger Tor it is -- the heart of Berlin, while below the photographs give more of a sense of what it is like to walk inside the monument.

Near the edges the stellae are short and squat, like tomb-monuments, but as you walk in further the ground artificially slopes up and down, but mainly downwards, and you lose sight of the external world. The granite blocks off sound as well as sight, so that you can lose yourself in an interior world. Inside the stellae is unimaginably related to its appearance outside until you yourself have been in, and even so it is deceptive, surprising. Companions disappear quickly, navigation among the stellae becomes tricky, and you pick your way between the stones, catching and losing quick glimpses of other people.

The walls are unmarked, abstract. They both provide a metaphor for the experience of the Holocaust (desolation, being cut off from the outside world, being reduced to your own lone self, the inhumane rational abstract logic of the ideology that tried to radically transform the world according to its own dictates) and refuse to depict. The monument both encourages remembrance by cutting off the distractions of the outside world -- severing one's connection -- and rejects any sort of attempt at identification. The chasm between one's between one's own experience (or representations of experience that one sees) and the experience of these dead cannot be bridged.

The Mahnmal's website, also available in English, gives the most information about it, although there are also some interesting articles on the NPR website as well as reviews from FAZ and other German newspapers.

It's interesting how people use it, as well. There were no schoolgroups when I was there, but I counted four different couples playing hide-and-seek, including one pair who were well over 30 and engaging in shrieks and giggles. A teenager was jumping from stella to stella, and another man jumped on top of one to photograph the site. This last is against the rules which are engraved very, very inconspicuously in German only, near the area walkers are most likely to enter the site from. How do I feel about this, both rules and rule-breaking? Ambivalence...

And a last, happy photograph of Berlin as I remember it in my salad days, and maybe its too, with bright kindergarten-colored cranes sweeping the sky-line in almost every direction and energy, energy, nothing had to remain the same...

attention aux tondeuses

2005-11-19T08:05:00.000-08:00

the other day I was walking down a fasionable part of Paris when I heard the triple clop-clop-clop of three mounted police coming up the street behind me. Their horses were impervious to the traffic and noise, despite no blinders. I decided to ever-so-discreetly take their picture, it being a childhood dream of mine to be a mounted police. policewoman. mountie.

Being the discreet person I am, on the second or third take the rider in the middle notices me and shouts out something along the lines of: "Did you get a good picture?", I think, although it was hard to make it out exactly over the traffic din. And I was so startled I answered in Italian!

Apparently I just couldn't imagine a government employee being both "French" and "not rude to me" at the same time.

Apparently my French communication skills have gone to hell in a handbasket. I also went, that day, to be a hair model at the Jean Louis Davide Training Center for provincial hairdressers come to Paris to learn the latest styles. AND I WAS ATTACKED WITH AN ELECTRIC RAZOR, a.k.a. une tondeuse. It turns out the trademark style of this hair salon is to ONLY use an electric razor to cut, trim, layer, or in any way alter the length of your hair. This was somewhat alarming because I do not sport the crew cut, and it involved a lot of standing up to check if everything is even, and also: I have a lot of hair, people. It takes a long time to layer it by electric razor. But by far the most perplexing part of the afternoon, from my point of view, is that I specifically asked not to have bangs cut into my hair. Looking at the laminated booklet of the dos available, I asked the haircutter trainee: "Pourquoi ont tous ces modèles une frange?" And, although she was totally uninterested in my opinion of the best way to layer hair or learning the fabulous English term "mullet" which I think captured at least three of the models astonishingly well, we did get across that I was not interested in bangs. In fact, I think it is the only time in going to get a haircut that I specifically requested NOT to get something. Well...dear reader...
I have bangs.
Or, as my friend A has helpfully pointed out in German, "du hast ein Pony?!"

Thank god they actually don't look that bad. But I'm not sure why my haircutter had to disprove my prejudices against bangs ON MY OWN HEAD.

My latest theory is that I must be saying things in a way that seems slow and circuitous to French people when I am reaching for an idiom. Especially impatient fast-firing Parisians, who want to cut to the chase and don't do irony. Because otherwise it would be uncanny (or sadistic) how many times French people take me to be saying the exact opposite of what I am saying.

It could also be related to the fact that I feel much more comfortable listening to Hélène Cixous talk about Kafka, Freud, and Derrida's Résistance au pluriel for several hours than I do trying to explain the latest DSL connection problems to my landlord.

This still doesn't explain "pas de frange" though!

thanks, Gtude

2005-11-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

"She needed privacy: on my wall there hangs a letter from her to an
editor or writer: 'My dear Glass, / I am sorry not to see you but I
am already in the country. / You must not take Europe too seriously,
it is a comfortable place to be alone and that is for many purposes a
necessity. / Good luck to you always, / Gtude Stein.' "

now this is more like it! feeling better about étrangèretude... as well as enjoying g-tude's anachronistically hip-hop sign-off.

(found in Dick Higgins's _A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes towards a
Theory of the New Arts_. Higgins's Something Else Press reprinted
Stein's writing in the 1960s and 1970s along with a lot of concrete
poets that she inspired.)

étrangère

2005-11-16T04:45:00.000-08:00

Someone brought this quote to my attention:

The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.
-- Hugh of St. Victor

Except that skipping straight to stage 3 is not exactly a recipe for happiness or joy in life. But then medieval Christian mystics have different goals; I should remember that happiness is (rightfully) not what Hugh of St. Victor's everyman is practicing for.

20th century version of the passage

2005-11-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Besides the shopping mall, its obvious descendant, this reinterpretation of the Marché St.-Honoré by Jean Nouvel has got to be the closest thing I have seen yet to a homage to the 19th century passage. And yet (maybe this is the problem with focusing too much on forms from the past) it is not at all well-beloved by Parisians, unlike some of Nouvel's other buildings such as the Fondation Cartier in the 14e or the Institut du Monde Arabe (which I am constantly being asked if I have been to... hm). A woman I stopped on the street told me it had "sterilisé" the neighborhood, which (she continued) as I could see had no life left. She was right: the cold steel and glass was not pedestrian-friendly, and the light structure hardly protected us from the sweeping wind or cold, unlike the small and cozy 19th century passages which blocked out the outside world and became a world of their own, like aquariums. In fact at first sight it was hard to tell if the building had been finished or was still under construction -- which would have explained its eerie emptiness as pedestrians rushed to get past it back to the livelier streets. One expected a security guard to declare it off-limits, or a corporation to own the unpublic public space. Still, this building was exciting to me not only for the pleasure of discovery (I had no idea it would be there) but also for the way it turned the city into undulating images on its glass, steel, and net screen -- or series of screens.
Inside, it was filled with stores selling furniture and design -- not decor -- items for modern living. How appropriate -- like the surrealists said, to be really modern you must learn to live in a glass house.

Here's one site with Nouvel's biography and works:
http://www.archinform.net/arch/301.htm?ID=bFY8ccRzSU1H4a7I

as well as his own, slow-loading one:
http://www.jeannouvel.com

Meanwhile, today is the first day of the year that I have turned the heat on. The radiator is making a burnt electric smell while a small blue japanese bowl filled with water balances on top of it, and I listen to my neighbor the trumpet player practicing his scales.

a partial history of the bicycle

2005-11-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

To my great luck I live just down the street from a museum set up inside a deconsecrated monastery which is home to nineteenth century flying machines, early bicycles, and Foucault's pendulum. Some weekends they even have actual scientists in there demonstrating the workings of golden adding machines, astrolabes, and various chemical reactions near a model of Lavoisier's lab. All it is missing is a history of mail by pneumatic tube (hint, hint). However, I was glad to see the bikes because they are important to the history of the nineteenth century, the development of fashion, and women's lib -- not to mention modern eros.

The first bicycle precursors were developed perhaps simultaneously in Germany and France, and were known as velocipedes in French and the draisine (after the inventor) or Laufmaschine in German. [This invites the question: can machines undergo a Darwinian evolution just like organisms? Or, are bicycles like other machines a proxy for evolutionary forces on humans -- speeded up like everything else in the modern era a.k.a. Machine Age?]

The early bicycle was a hilarious affair. Here is a description from a bicycle historian: "The German Baron Karl Drais von Sauerbronn invented the "Laufmaschine" or "Running Machine", a type of pre-bicycle. The steerable Laufmaschine was made entirely of wood and had no pedals; a rider would push his/her feet against the ground to make the machine go forward. Sauerbronn's bicycle was first exhibited in Paris on April 6, 1818. The celerifere was another similar early bicycle precursor invented in 1790 by Frenchmen, Comte Mede de Sivrac, however, it had no steering."

The couple above is riding a Penny Farthing, a.k.a. the "High" or "Ordinary" bicycle (of which there is at least one in my photo above). According to the same historian above, "the Penny Farthing was the first really efficient bicycle, consisting of a small rear wheel and large front wheel pivoting on a simple tubular frame with tires of rubber." Before that, various bikes called the "Hobbyhorse," the "Dandy Horse," and the Velocipede or "Boneshaker" (as it was known in the United Kingdom; think cobblestones) were popularly in use. "The tires were iron, and the pedals were attached to the hub of the front, or driver, wheel, which was slightly higher than the rear wheel." Ah, moments when I remember why I am glad not to have lived during the nineteenth century.

The name of the modern vehicle dates from 1869, when a patent was taken out in England for a new machine with solid rubber tires mounted on steel rims -- phew.
In 1873 Jamse Starley, and English inventor, produced the first machine incoporating most of the features of the so-called ordinary, or high-wheel, bicycle. The front of Starley's machine wasas much as three times as large in diameter as the rear wheel.

None of them sound quite as good as Leonardo da Vinci's (unrealized) sketch of a bicycle from 1490, do they?

The rise of bicycles encourages the fledgling modern trend for women's clothes that allow greater freedom of movement.

Benjamin notes the "similarity of the arcades to the indoor arenas in which one learned how to ride a bicycle. In these halls the figure of the woman assumed its most seductive aspect: as a cyclist. That is how she appears on contemporary posters. Chéret the painter of this feminine pulchritude. The costume of the cyclist, as an early and unconscious prefiguration of sportswear, corresponds to the dream prototypes that, a little before or a little after, are at work in the factory or in the automobile. Just as the first factory buildings cling to the traditional form of the residential dwelling and just as the first automobile chassis imitates carriages, so in the clothing of the cyclist the sporting expression still wrestles with the inherited patttern of elegance, and the fruit of this struggle is the grim sadistic touch which made this ideal image of elegance so incomparably provocative to the male world in those days."

"Who still knows, nowadays, where it was that in the last decade of the previous century women would offer to men their most seductive aspect, the most intimate promise of their figure? In the asphalted indoor arenas where people learned to ride bicycles. The woman as cyclist competes with the cabaret singer for the place of honor on posters, and gives to fashion its most daring line."

Okay, for Benjamin: women cyclists = a hint of sadism, provocative seduction, and for me: women cyclists = freedom of movement and the beginning of the development of women's clothes for comfort for herself, not visual pleasure for others. Maybe there's a bit of evolution going on as well in the development of critical analysis of nineteenth century material.

in which there is discussion of anthrocyanin, the tribulations of air travel, and Onion Recipes

2005-11-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

The best part of visiting the East Coast of the US for a few days is the almost edibly beautiful fall colors against (just a few hours later, in the afternoon) skies so blue they resurrect the old meaning of gay. And suggest larks. Even after a freakishly mild November, so much brighter and more exhilerating than old europe; hooray for the chemistry of living colors: green (chlorophyll), yellow (carotene), red (anthrocyanin).
The conference went well -- so well that I wish I could give you the details without hopelessly revealing who, where, what. No red nametags in sight, or at least in my line of vision. And it was good: I was in a seminar-style panel with mostly asst. profs, some of whom had solid and fascinating arguments but some reassuringly did not -- were in fact easy to see through despite the talkers being assertive. It's not schadenfreude -- just the relief of seeing that I really was in the right place, despite being a grad student -- and at a conference where the chair of my department was actually on a panel too, the chair of a related major department in attendance, and I had to make small talk with both of them!

There was of course the "Welcome back to France " experience on Air France to deal with. I alternate between loving the perks of A.F. transatlantic service and getting scarred by the steward/esses -- scarred I say. On the way over, my vegetarian meal arrived (although it was interpreted as "vegan," so lots of soy yogurt and odd ingredients, but that's perfectly okay). However, it was accompanied with a sarcastic remark and raised eyebrow from the stewardess (who was beautiful, but apparently bitter) because I'd finished -my meal before the regular meal was served - because, you know, they served my meal 20 minutes before the other meals and, call me crazy, eating IS what i usually do with meals. There may be other options but personally I get hungry and yes, indeed, I do EAT my food. On the way back to Paris, I was less lucky. The vegetarian meal order mysteriously disappeared. After explaining several times that I did order my meal in advance -- NO I REALLY DID, you can ask a third time but despite the obvious suspicion (wtf?!) I really am not lying on this point -- my waiter kindly brought me a mishmash of items from the other trays consisting of: naan bread, a roll, butter, canned pineapple, and two plates of salad. Which was great of him. After I pointed out that vegetarian means "not meat", he even brought me the yogurt and poppseed cake everybody else was having and I felt less like a starved rabbit (how much shaved carrot can a girl take?). But when I carried my trash back to the steward work area myself because I had gotten my meal so much later than everyone else, and politely asked a different stewardess if there was a garbage can I could deposit these things into -- thinking I was doing something nice by taking care of it myself -- she lit into me! My god. What was I doing trying to throw those things away when clearly half of them should be recycled - and WHY was I not finished when the stewards came around SEVERAL TIMES for trash, and what, WHAT, how could I have correctly ordered a meal and not had it delivered! Why didn't I confirm the vegetarian meal a second time for the return leg of the flight -- how foolish to think that ordering it in advance was enough -- what kind of fool doesn't know you have to return for the return leg of the flight too, specially and at LEAST 48 hours in advance?? Passengers order these meals and change their minds and don't want them anymore (insert large disdainful sneer here) -- because don't you know medical conditions and religious issues FREQUENTLY disappear on return legs of flights -- and then the meals are WASTED, and it costs Air France LOTS OF MONEY -- lots more than all those tickets that angry customers stop buying from Air France with the dear hope that you will lose your job because of it, I wanted to add, but she had already stalked to the back of the cabin and turned her back to me after the last sally. And can I please note, please, that all I did was smile at her, holding my trash, and ask: "où est la poubelle?"

So here I am, an unregenerate foreigner WHO WON'T EAT MEAT in France again (I think the vegetarian business is somehow personally offensive to Frenchpeople, in ways I will never fully understand.) [(And I note that it's just a personal thing, with no reference to anyone else's eating habits, done for health and ecological, not bleeding heart, reasons: so that I am happy to eat rabbits or snails or squid or most fish, anything that is not endangered or (over)farmed -- including venison -- Bambi!).] On a happier note despite the pleasures of visiting friends it is lovely to be in my own apartment again, where I can eat and nap and be jetlagged however I want and which is happily NOT burned down by the rioters, although apparently they got very close a few days ago when they ventured into the center of Paris -- 4 blocks to the north and also a second site a few blocks to the west, in the Marais. Tomorrow in daylight will be plenty of time to reconnoiter -- as well as to consider what it means that Villepin has invoked the law of 1955 from the time of the Algerian uprisings and troubles to impose curfews on the banlieues. On French t.v., it is refreshingly non-racist sounding, however: all the announcers seem to be worred about les jeunes and ways to occupy their spare time or educate them so they have plans and activities and (apparently) no time for Rage.
Also the onions in my kitchen have sprouted in my absence and are so big they are rivaling my actual plants. It is time to eat onions.

Onion Toast

1 TB organic extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp clover honey
1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
1/4 tsp ground red pepper or African Bird Pepper if you like it hotter
21/2 lb onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp dried thyme
favorite bread, sliced thin

In a large, non-stick skillet, over medium heat, combine oil, honey, soy sauce and pepper. Add onions and stir. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in vinegar and thyme. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes until the onions are very soft and thick. While onions are cooking, place the bread slices in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350°F for about 10 minutes on each side. Spread slices with warm onion mixture.

QUICK FRENCH ONION SOUP

(Serves 6)
4 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
4 Tbs. butter
6 cups rich beef broth
1 tsp. Worcestershire
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/8 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup dry white wine or Vermouth (optional)
Pinch of powdered thyme (optional)
2 hard rolls
Grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in a large pot with a cover. Slice onions and saute until golden. Pour beef broth over cooked onions. Add seasonings and wine. Simmer for 15 minutes, covered.

Pour soup into individual earthenware bowls or a large earthen casserole. Slice rolls and toast. Sprinkle slices with Parmesan and float them on top of the soup. Slide casserole or bowls under broiler about 4 inches from heat and broil until cheese turns brown. Remove and serve immediately.

SHALLOT CONFIT

1 pound shallots (about 12 small ones)

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons brown sugar

Salt and pepper

Peel the shallots and slice them thinly. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add in the shallots and stir to coat. Reduce heat to low, add in the balsamic vinegar and sugar, season with salt and pepper, and stir again.

Cover and cook over low heat until the shallots are very soft, about an hour and a half, stirring from time to time. If the mixture starts to dry out or stick to the pan, add in a touch of water. When the shallots are soft, taste the confit and adjust the seasoning. Let cool to room temperature. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze.

Serve as an accompaniment to cheese, grilled fish or meat, add to sandwiches, mix into a vinaigrette, or spread on little toasts with a bit of smoked ham.

"welcome new members"

2005-11-02T15:16:00.000-08:00

i will be away for some time in the US at a conference, so my updating may be a bit spotty next week. And, judging from the email I just got for from the v.p. of the association, i am going to a conference full of crazy people!

cf. second paragraph.

my god.

unless that's because of the presence of [insert name of very famous old writer known for getting drunk and hitting on women and behaving in generally misogynous ways] -- in which case, ha, maybe i need to get me one of those red tags.

Dear Colleague,

This year a number of members are coming to the annual meeting for the first time, including junior professors and graduate students as well as older hands, and we want to make sure that everyone feels at home with the literary family of [acronym deleted]. [Field deleted] academics and imaginative writers are not necessarily the most gregarious of mortals, but we encourage each of you to make bold to sit down with total strangers and introduce yourself—and persons who have been sat down by not to be affronted but to introduce themselves in turn. Moreover, we want to facilitate forming groups to go out to dinner on Friday night after the reception and the president's address. For this purpose, we suggest that persons interested meet together in the second-floor foyer fifteen minutes after the president's address (c. 7:15), count themselves off by sixes or eights, and decide where to go for dinner without making a federal case of it. Obviously a member from the [city deleted] area could be especially helpful in each group, but a short list of recommended restaurants will be circulated by e-mail before the meeting and on paper at it.

If you are a loner and wish to stay that way, please ask the officers to supply you with a red name tag.

Cheers,

[name deleted]

a stroll through town

2005-11-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

Having a visit from a friend from out of town lets you see your familiar surroundings in a new light...or in my case learn really obvious things about them that you should probably have known in the first place, except that you just got here...like the fact that the Eiffel tower turns into a SPARKLY PILLAR OF LIGHT for five minutes on the hour, every night. Otherwise it sends out this incredibly dorky beam of light that makes it look as though Big Brother resides chez vous or as though a World War Two air raid siren is about to go off, while this beam searches out zeppelins and enemy aircraft in the sky. But for the five minutes that it shimmers, it doesn't seem to have a fixed volume -- it could be a pillar just as easily as a pointy cylinder. So much for my claims that the Tour Eiffel is really not kitsch! really! which was already a hard argument to make in certain quarters...but on the other hand there is something to be said for a light effect that makes the Paris nightscape seem to have been colored in by preschoolers.

We went right up to the Tour Eiffel, on the Champs de Mars (Field of Mars) right by the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre (France's national Superior School of War), and looked up the Eiffel Tower's skirts... as you can see she looks red-gold at night.

Walking through the Louvre, we found this bold chestnut seller, who not only dares to set up shop in the middle of the main walkway of the former king's Jardin des Tuileries, but had the foresight to prepare for the arrival of the police. Should they possibly think he didn't have a license to sell chestnuts on the street. Illegally. And I have NO IDEA why they would.

Quick getaway, anyone?
We may have looked a little suspicious ourselves... in the beautiful light of a freakishly warm October day (low 70s) on the Place de la Concorde...

Though not nearly as suspicious as when I dragged my m-bag containing two boxes of books home through Paris, two blocks on a muddy day, because the postman refused to deliver them to my door. You will just have to imagine that teetering moment where it hung in balance whether I would be dragging the books up the stairs or they would be dragging me down. Ph.D. student vs. diss books: the Cage Match. Also just what I needed to improve my image with the neighbors: young American imitates homeless population and drags large shapeless sacks around the street for kicks.

It only took 7 weeks for them to arrive. Maybe that's because they labelled my m-bag "Domestic Mail, 1.47 lbs"???

chez moi

2005-10-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is my doorway. It's helpful to have a BIG MARBLE PLAQUE on your doorway just in case you ever forget where to go home.

Though I think the young Chinese men loitering outside the Christian evangelical club next door to me also do the trick.

In case you get the wrong impression of my neighborhood, three new art galleries have opened up on my block across the street from me since I moved in two months ago. I think another is opening two doors down (unless it's another leather wholesale goods shop -- but how many of those renovate with zebra-striped curtains covering their display window??). And they're not half bad: some biomorphic sculptures, some beautiful abstract paintings, and a lot of video art that I see screened at night when I come home sometimes, elegant people holding wine glasses and spilling out of the gallery space...

Not to mention the architecture firm across the way from me, and the "Secret Art Gallery" which annoys me because it's just two doors down but only open "sur rendez-vous" so I have never been inside.

Still, the most important fact about where I live is our heroicness. See here:

Even though I haven't yet been able to find out the exact exploits of Paulette Buchman, I did learn that this plaque was put up as part of a series to commemorate women in the Resistance during the Second World War, and given her name Paulette Buchman must have been Jewish. So, I honor Paulette Buchman, whoever she is.

And hey, living in the building of a former Resistance fighter -- that's got to be good karma!

le Passagxxe de Molière

2005-10-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Another half-roofed, half-open passage, in the Marais. We like bikes in the Marais.
Come in...

Part of the luxury of the passages was supposed to be that you could walk through Paris and have dry feet, not a drop of rain on your head, be sheltered from all the tempests of Paris' doux climate. You were also protected from the busy street, where they hadn't invented modern traffic laws yet, and there was a lot of horse manure.

Almost over-protected - didn't it get stuffy, with all those gas lights? I like the half-open passages because they are (often) so green and alive.

And the proprietaires have at least as much character as the ones in the covered passages. Note, for example, this highly useful shop.

I think they shouldn't limit themselves. Just hands and feet?

When there are so many other exciting body parts worthy of artistic immortality?

(that must be what is creepy about this shop: the death mask-li-ness of it. There was a very happy looking Tibetan shop as well as some art galleries in this passage too!)

"Robin, 5 months"
"Victoire, 1 year old, with papa's help, for mom's birthday."

look, the hands are trying to tell me something! hmm, it's like looking into a Rohrschach blot...

Benjamin: "Les passages sont des galeries qui n'ont pas de face extérieure. Comme le rêve."

also: "boh?!" my debut as misanthrope

2005-10-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

The question that seems to guide all this: is it better company being around other people, or being on one's own (with books and radio and e/mail)?

I have a new friend, who shall be called X, who has a boyfriend across the Atlantic but who has also taken up with a 23 year old at the school she's on an exchange with. Whenever I call her or she calls me, I can hear him in the background. What bothers me is not the ethical issues (although she tells me she hasn't said a word to her boyfriend across the seas); nor is it the fact that she and I are pushing 28 and 30, not 24; but more just that I want back the friend I was in the process of making. a) How hard is it really to move to a new country?? and, b) What is so incredibly bad about being alone for a little bit? I met the kid and he is really sweet, but he's never had an apartment of his own or supported himself or lived with anybody...different life stages. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. And then...it is hard to be picky about friends when one has just moved to a new country and knows very few people, but: but.

Last night was dinner with two grad students from an Ivy League school that is a rival to my Ivy League school. One is lovely, but the other (a historian) was competitive. And insisted on giving me advice, one of the most tactless (and boring) dinner tactics possible if the other person has not asked for advice. Gah.

too many expat grad students! Just got in touch with an old performance artist friend in Berlin, who is in no way a grad student, and who is planning some new projects. Must go visit.

modernism vs. postmodernism, or, the post where I lose all 3 of my readers

2005-10-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

the moment comes, I lose all 3 of my readers, but that's cool. This is a place for organizing or keeping thoughts and today I'm going to remind myself why I think postmodernism is not a "radical break with modernism" but rather A REVOLT WITHIN MODERNISM AGAINST A CERTAIN FORM OF 'HIGH MODERNISM' as represented, say, in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. So, a passing moment or style of modernism.

Here is Hassan's schematic but handy list of differences. I like how one of the earliest "modernist" avant-gardes is po-mo in it.

modernism. . . . . . . . . . post-modernism

romanticism/Symbolism. . . . . . paraphysics/Dadaism
form (conjunctive, closed). . . . . . antiform (disjunctive, open)
purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . play
design. . . . . . . . . . . . . chance
hierarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . anarchy
mastery/logos . . . . . . . . . exhaustion/silence
art object/finished work . . . . . . process/performance/happening
distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . participation
creation/totalization/synthesis . . . . decreation/deconstruction/antithesis
presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . absence
centring . . . . . . . . . . . . dispersal
genre/boundary . . . . . . . . . . text/intertext
semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . rhetoric
paradigm (substitution in semiotics)* . . syntagm (positioning in semiotics)*
hypotaxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . parataxis
metaphor* . . . . . . . . . . . . metonymy*
selection . . . . . . . . . . . . combination
root/depth. . . . . . . . . . . rhizome/surface
interpretation/reading . . . . . . against interpretation/misreading
signified . . . . . . . . . . . . . signifier
lisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . scriptible
narrative/grande histoire . . . . . anti-narrative/petite histoire
master code . . . . . . . . . . . . idiolect
symptom . . . . . . . . . . . . desire
type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mutant
genital/phallic. . . . . . . . polymorphous/androgynous
paranoia . . . . . . . . . . schizophrenia
origin/cause . . . . . . . . difference-difference/trace
God the Father . . . . . . . . . The Holy Ghost
metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . irony
determinacy . . . . . . . . . . indeterminacy
transcendence . . . . . . . . immanence

*an interesting fluttering of these categories:
Whilst syntagmatic relations are possibilities of combination, paradigmatic relations are functional contrasts - they involve differentiation. Temporally, syntagmatic relations refer intratextually to other signifiers co-present within the text, whilst paradigmatic relations refer intertextually to signifiers which are absent from the text (Saussure 1983, 122; Saussure 1974, 123). The 'value' of a sign is determined by both its paradigmatic and its syntagmatic relations. Syntagms and paradigms provide a structural context within which signs make sense; they are the structural forms through which signs are organized into codes.

le Passagxxe des 2 Pavillonxxs

2005-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

I'm starting out with a very little-known passage, just off rue des Petits Champs and near the Palais Royale. It illustrates the evolution of a passage from a little street that is gated and can therefore be closed off at night, is still uncovered like any normal street, to the famous passages roofed with glass which are the precursors of the shopping mall. Luchet said of the two types of passages: "L'une est le perfectionnement de l'autre," although the perfectibility of man has to get called into question at some point, because most of us would find the shopping mall anti-progress after having visited a passage. They are beautiful and often surprising little hidden shortcuts in the city -- part of a secret Paris, one which disappears at night.

Here are two views from inside
the passage des Pavillons, one
taken looking forwards (left) and
the other looking back towards
the exit.

Les six commandements
(de Luchet)
for what constitutes a passage:
--pedestrian only
--linking two animated streets,
offering a shortcut to whoever uses it
--being lined with stores
--having a covering which protects walkers from the elements while at the same time allowing light to pass through
--light by artificial means: first gas, then electricity
--luxury

although now, I would say distinctly some old-fashionedness, not just luxe. This is the window of a cobbler who was not very happy about me taking his shop window's picture.

And out we go, back to the Palais Royale.

P.S. all material copyright 2005

hot chocolate and more ruins

2005-10-19T01:48:00.000-07:00

so, right now i am making myself a BOWL of hot chocolate for breakfast because when you are in france, you are not only allowed but in fact encouraged to do things like this. and i am making it with raw, unpasteurized (but filtered) demi écremé milk which, granted, is only from my local Monoprix but when have I ever even had access to raw milk in the U.S.??

à l'ancienne apparently means that your chocolate mix consists of little chocolate squiggles, instead of powder or shavings. I have no idea if this is higher quality or not, but it dissolves almost instantaneously and is YUM.

as you can see I have finally managed to read my user's manual in Spanish (because OF COURSE the English version disappeared in the move) and soon you will be getting even more exciting pictures off my camera.

Meanwhile, a few more paintings from Robert des Ruines:

Hubert Robert, Demolition.
Camille Desmoulins has incited the crowd, which is about to conquer the Bastille, a mostly disused fortress containing very few prisoners but nonetheless a sign of the People's ability to win a battle against royal guard soldiers. If you look at the top of towers, you can see damage already being done...soon people will dismantle the Bastille, take bits of it away as souvenirs (such as keys which you can see in the Musee Carnavalet), turn some bits into novelty items like mini models of the Bastille or card tables made out of former metal doors... citizens will spontaneously take and use the rest of the Bastille ruins as building materials.

Hubert Robert, Saint-Denis.
Here, if you could only see properly, you would know that citizens have busted through the roof of the Saint-Denis cathedral and are busily throwing out the remains of various deceased members of the royal Capet family into ditches and unmarked mass graves. This (apparently) includes the bones of St. Louis, a past king who got canonized. Those citoyens are THOROUGH.

fiery ruins -- 1790ish

2005-10-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

also here is Paris burning down thanks to those firebrand Reign of Terror revolutionaries. Place de la Concorde, former site of the guillotine, future site of Napoleon's obelisk, and right in front of the King and Queen's palace, also known as Louvre, also known as "in walking distance from me."

I will be posting many more pictures of ruins soon, thanks to Hubert Robert, a.k.a. "Robert des Ruines" (we are not going to make any fun of his name here). Also we will be asking what the nature of the difference is between painting really old ruins, e.g. from the time of the Romans, that have the patina of age on them and destruction-by-erosion, versus really recent ruins which in Robert's case were usually created by rampaging mobs, knocking out any relics or symbols of the ancien régime. "Le vandalisme" of the revolution...planned destruction. Creative destruction? Destructive creativity? okay, enough.

ps. I note that I only seem to have that painting available in thumbnail size. Zoom? Not happening. There must be a better way to get high-quality images of paintings...any thoughts, Internet??

thank you henri cartier bresson, 1952

2005-10-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

i am still figuring out how to get my camera and computer to talk together, and cooperate, so for today you will have to put up with a photo from Henri Cartier Bresson instead of me. The Ile de la Cite really does still look like this, and Paris is just this foggy in the morning, as I realized when I walked across the bridges to the Jardin du Luxembourg yesterday. So I waited until almost twilight to sit in the gardens facing a cool wet purple bed of flowers, a fountain, and cross-hatched geometric lines scratching the sky of jet fuel exhaust. very paul klee. this until i was booted out of the park by policemen wearing boxy charles-de-gaulle hats and blowing whistles at us all, because the sun was setting.

also here is some more Einstein, which I find very amusing...is he tongue-in-cheek or not? who knows!! the man was born in 1879; i don't understand people from other centuries...

"With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon."

"There is only one road to human greatness: through the schools of hard knocks."

i thought it was just my dad who said things like this.

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves- such an ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty…The ideals which have guided my way, and time after time have given me the energy to face life, have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth."

the worst part is, he's probably right...

"Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation. "

it's hard being an introvert

"I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough."

"In the last analysis everyone is a human being, whether he is an American or a German, a Jew or a Gentile. If it were possible to hold only this worthy point of view, I would be a happy man."

apropos after my recent horrrendous immigration ordeal. when i walk down the street i now identify with anyone who looks like a recent immigrant, especially those of peuple du sud... probably to their immense confusion!...

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) the fifties!

photograph taken June 3, 1902, at 9:20pm, by M.G. Loppé

2005-10-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

This photo just about expresses how I feel about the bureacracies in Paris, after having been documented, stamped, measured, weighed, x-rayed, investigated, recommended, and filed -- and even made to parade about topless for about ten minutes one afternoon -- but it all seems to be over and I'm registered as a resident alien with full privileges, even at the Bibliothèque nationale.

"Because of thermal expansion the Eiffel Tower is 15cm taller in summer."
--Alfred Einstein

ça bouge...things to know about the world around me here...

hello new blog

2005-10-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

i'm a grad student, in america, and i've just moved to paris. This is very strange for me since I usually work on German lit and live in places like berlin or sicily when I am doing work abroad, not paris. the french take some getting used to. as i am sure you will hear more about soon. but first, let me get things set up in here.

and prepare for a lot of photos and mention of walter benjamin.

soyez les bien-venus.