Exploring New York @ May 2013
Brooklyn / Will.i.amsburg
Just forget it.
Wait, wait, there is something to say, in case you are a sensitive soul, do not read this.
Brooklyn's Williamsburg is achieving an altitude of cultural hegemony within the Non-Manhattan-scene-propaganda which a good reason to get afraid or angry.
A chain reaction was following those reports in mass media between 2005 and 2010, that had reported on Williamsburg as a interesting place beyond Manhattan's long term cultural ruling times. Yes, indeed, Williamsburg has been interesting. Many people went there. many people experienced nice streets with some bars, clubs, bakeries, boutiques and hotels. The chain reaction mentioned above came after a the huge body of copy-and-paste-journalism and it was produced by the Williamsburg folks. Travelling there often for many years, I have to state that this fame is not in a reciprocal relation to the real "realities" on Williamsburg. Either in the media conveyed reality or in the real world on "streets" the first and foremost phenomenon which one is encountering is a bunch of overbearance, cockiness and hubris personified in young, explicitly bearded men with very slim trousers and a non-achievable niveau of sophistication.
The real and measurable outcome of cultural values, economic dynamics, scientific knowledge or even, because often proclaimed, of their "creativity" is merely low.
Williamsburg is, evidently and obviously, a low intensity area in regard to cultural values, economic dynamics, scientific knowledge and creativity.
It is, clearly, a high noisy ara: noise in the sense of physical noise (Rauschen) and in the sense of being just too loud. Implicitly echoing to it self.
Ok, just forget it.
Just forget it.
Wait, wait, there is something to say, in case you are a sensitive soul, do not read this.
Brooklyn's Williamsburg is achieving an altitude of cultural hegemony within the Non-Manhattan-scene-propaganda which a good reason to get afraid or angry.
A chain reaction was following those reports in mass media between 2005 and 2010, that had reported on Williamsburg as a interesting place beyond Manhattan's long term cultural ruling times. Yes, indeed, Williamsburg has been interesting. Many people went there. many people experienced nice streets with some bars, clubs, bakeries, boutiques and hotels. The chain reaction mentioned above came after a the huge body of copy-and-paste-journalism and it was produced by the Williamsburg folks. Travelling there often for many years, I have to state that this fame is not in a reciprocal relation to the real "realities" on Williamsburg. Either in the media conveyed reality or in the real world on "streets" the first and foremost phenomenon which one is encountering is a bunch of overbearance, cockiness and hubris personified in young, explicitly bearded men with very slim trousers and a non-achievable niveau of sophistication.
The real and measurable outcome of cultural values, economic dynamics, scientific knowledge or even, because often proclaimed, of their "creativity" is merely low.
Williamsburg is, evidently and obviously, a low intensity area in regard to cultural values, economic dynamics, scientific knowledge and creativity.
It is, clearly, a high noisy ara: noise in the sense of physical noise (Rauschen) and in the sense of being just too loud. Implicitly echoing to it self.
Ok, just forget it.
Exploring New York @ May 2013
Bowery and NoLiTa are getting more mature.
In terms of cool urban places that offer a variety of subtle and small zones of comfort, no one beats NoLiTa. It 's just beautiful. It's a vision of city in the very European understanding: Cafés are (almost) European, the coffee is (almost) Italian, the bakeries are (almost) German and Austrian, groceries are (almost) Dutch or French. And I hope, indeed, they never became entirely European, the notion of being almost something is the most attractive thing about NoLiTa.
In terms of cool urban places that offer a variety of subtle and small zones of comfort, no one beats NoLiTa. It 's just beautiful. It's a vision of city in the very European understanding: Cafés are (almost) European, the coffee is (almost) Italian, the bakeries are (almost) German and Austrian, groceries are (almost) Dutch or French. And I hope, indeed, they never became entirely European, the notion of being almost something is the most attractive thing about NoLiTa.
Exploring New York @ May 2013
NY's Lower East Side is gentrifying, hell, why not?
China Twon is still, now for years, as I could remember, a well defined 3rd world enclave within the turbulences of gentrification, velocity, digital revolutions, big money, big data and big media.
Still, folks in China Town are wearing the same clothes they wore in the time of arrival. An arrival that could have been happened in 70ies, 90ies or three years ago. It does really not matter, when they came to NY, or why they chose NY as "exile", they work hard, as they did in other places, they earn their own money, and, indeed, they reject any kind of symbolic, representational or material assimilation with non-China-Town areas of NY or other urban epicenters of USA.
Still, folks in China Town have similar habits on streets in regard to body movements, direct contact, noise production, symbolic gestures, wearing clothes, combing hairs, and looking people in the eyes; they had previously somewhere else. A subtle charm, a curious and distant gaze, and, more interestingly, a shameless ignorance of the surroundings.
I liked China Town very much, and the people there. Their cool resilience, their calm resistance, their altruistic 3rd world charm and the look.
China Twon is still, now for years, as I could remember, a well defined 3rd world enclave within the turbulences of gentrification, velocity, digital revolutions, big money, big data and big media.
Still, folks in China Town are wearing the same clothes they wore in the time of arrival. An arrival that could have been happened in 70ies, 90ies or three years ago. It does really not matter, when they came to NY, or why they chose NY as "exile", they work hard, as they did in other places, they earn their own money, and, indeed, they reject any kind of symbolic, representational or material assimilation with non-China-Town areas of NY or other urban epicenters of USA.
Still, folks in China Town have similar habits on streets in regard to body movements, direct contact, noise production, symbolic gestures, wearing clothes, combing hairs, and looking people in the eyes; they had previously somewhere else. A subtle charm, a curious and distant gaze, and, more interestingly, a shameless ignorance of the surroundings.
I liked China Town very much, and the people there. Their cool resilience, their calm resistance, their altruistic 3rd world charm and the look.
In-transit BKK to Singapore
It's actually all about temporal dynamics, spatial density and probably about a
pressing drill of modernité. Asian cities are supposed to be the laboratory, where
times is compressed and space is extended vertically.
pressing drill of modernité. Asian cities are supposed to be the laboratory, where
times is compressed and space is extended vertically.
Exploring Asia @ Spring 2013
Bangkok @ March 2013
Since cities, specially southern and southeastern Asian cities, have become epicenters of cultures in all their variety; economic hubs, places of enhancement of communication and inducing mobility, it is obvious that the way of life and all those modes of exchange and channels of communication within these giving geographic areas we call city are supposed to be determined by the very URBAN specifics.
BKK is not merely the "dream city" of youth and aged subpopulations originating from rural areas of Thailand, who may move transiently or permanently to the city, in order to receive education, to find work, to be included in the society, thus to enhance the standard of life. Some move back, the vast majority, still, stay in the city for longer times than planned. The recent fresh air, encompassing minor changes in the political arena, the decrease of administrative power of military, mirco reforms of the legislative and executive organs; and especially, the rise of a middle class with a solid educational background acquired in USA, UK, Japan or India is correlating systematically with the increasing financial potency, has caused basic tectonic movements in Thailand. The epicenter of the tectonic moves has always been BKK. The wave of critically acclaimed social organisations founded in the last decade, the impact and the radius of their cultural influence and with special regard to their mass media transmitted color coded visibility (yellow shirts, pink shirts) in Asia and abroad, seem to cause sub-terrain chain reactions within the politics and in the realm of the urban cultures. This, will change BKK's economic functions and cultural impetus, respectively.
Retrospectively seen, BKK has been for long time, at least in the last three decades, a classic touristic destination for the small but economically potent group of upper society of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and other Asian countries.
Here, the situation has been changing more forcefully and with a unseen velocity than the internal Thai developments would have made it imaginable.
First, the emerging economies of Southern Asia since end of eighties, creating new classes and social groups, inducing new exchange cultures and communicative streams in the region; has been producing a strong push in the region. Thailand, and its economic hub, BKK, got affected positively by this dynamics. The Thai economy has been triggered in the same direction as they were in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia.
Second, the rapid explosion of the Chinese economy since mid nineties, influenced the region and the the world. Almost everything has been said on this topic.
Third, India is awaking. To date, March 2013, 15 % of the population could be defined as a middle class by economic parameters, re-directing cultural and social criteria in the subcontinent and in Asia.
Indian people have immigrated in large groups to BKK since mid seventies, importing not just special skills and knowledge, but huge cultural influence. The new Indian middle class needs simultaneously new fields for expanding business and for selling goods made in India, they need also places for vacation and consumption. This is, how BKK is getting more Indian, than ever before.
Fourth, since the tourism from Golf states has been long time a productive factors for local BKK business in terms of consumption, the context of involvement of Arabs is changing now from the passive consumption to active business in real state, light industries and service industries. This means, again, more cultural impact in the realm of the daily life and increasingly in the mass media.
Fifth, the russians are coming. Massively.
Not to forget, the Japanse highly appreciated invasion of the high-end luxury hotels, restaurants and SPA's.
Last but not least, new and old riches from Iran or West African countries, as well low income immigrants looking for work or any kind of social activities from these regions, have become a factor in BKK: visible and involved.
BKK is becoming a global hub, a paradox hybrid, geographically condensed in the urban spatiality, determined by mobility and communication technologies and strategies, culturally diversified in a unimaginable way.
Gone are days of Britisch clubs and middle age English men with Arsenal shirts and Gin and tonic. Gone are nights of American tourist groups, made of Vietnam war veterans, getting nostalgic for those lost memories.
BKK is hosting forty-something Japanese business men in larger quantities than ever in a marvelous place simulating little Tokyo, but, in real, better than Tokyo, BKK is hosting fifty-something Japanese women in super luxurious hotels haunting for European Farangs, hotels they dream of in Kyoto and Osaka, but dreams are becoming reality in BKK. It is transporting thousands of Russian guests from the deep cold Siberia through the city, which are evidently suffering the heat and smiles and touching density. BKK is home of large families from Golf states, feeling good at Soi 1-3 Sukhumvit, listening the Egyptian music telling stories of pain of all those days gone lost. West African magicians, Iranian basar entrepreneurs, Turkish DJ's are in BKK present, representing attitudes, desires, expectations, nightmares and multiple futures.
And, yes, I admit, you also find all those backpackers from Berlin, Barcelona and Poznan, who really did not get anything from this global city and its unconditional beauty.
Bangkok @ March 2013
At the bright day, BKK is merely a victim of different shades of gray. The sky is gray and tired, the light falling from sky is at its best colorless, if not clearly gray differential. And it is obviously obliged to be, nothing more. Major urban infrastructures, determining the city, as they are buildings, this endless silhouette of skyscrapers, seem to reflect the grayness of the sky. All those highways, navigating cars and sky trains, do the same. In spite of being dynamic, rapid, noisy, dirty and unbearable hot, BKK is bored at the day.
At the night BKK starts to live. Sky is playing a magic game of colors, starting at late afternoon, aiming to reach the beautiful dark purple and later the absolute noire. BKK is awaking at night, which is always a long night, starting 7PM till 6Am.
The first color game of the early and short evening lasts just 45 minutes. It‘s a rush, an obscene move toward darkness, without any warning. A game, which is played almost everyday with a recurrent image and a recognizable pattern. One may be cautious not to oversee the first change away from day gray to a spectrum of red-based colors, darkening toward the real night. Watching the game from a higher point than the ground, seeing the entire sky and not just a small outlook, let‘s say, from the roof at Lebua building or like today from the roof of Baiyoke Sky Hotel (82 fl)
Bangkok @ March 2013
Bangkok is noir.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Hongkong @ March 2013
Arriving in HKK is inducing good feelings. The avant-garde of Asian tigers, the most greedy tiger at all.
Hongkong @ March 2013
HKK is quite.
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
What is the hypothesis?
By chance or as they called it in early days by destiny, they have been three men having lived in this city for a significant period of their live in Buenos Aires (BA), who have had an immense influence on material history of the last century:
First and most important the writer Jorge Luis Borges who was attempting to re-write the history of BA by means of histories and stories, which evidently induced an persisten way of understanding BA by its inhabitants, connoisseurs, admirers and travelers. His poems and stories on BA seem to be today the most read texts on BA. Otherwise, Jorge Luis Borges re-oriented the weigh and re-directed the significance of writing on time, eternity and the language in a global scale.
Hypothesis nr. 1 is as following: Jorge Luis Borges ' writing is the most noble art of sublation of time and temporality by means of his "intelectual poetry", a way to go against the time, and against the claim of eternity. His language is a global and globalized langage, before all these term have been used in main stream meta-media; and it is, indeed, deterritorializing dreams and phantasmagories of mankind.
Hypothesis nr. 2 is as following: Diego Armando Maradona' s play was the most noble art of sublation of laws Sublation of laws of physics (gravity, aerodynamics, velocity), of biology (mass, metabolism, movement) and of geometry (spaciality, density) by his football skills, which transcended the "normal". His physis, his spirit, and his indefinit ignorance seemed to neglect any kwon and established way of movement on the field. His body language has been globalized, thus he became the most popular and beloved player of his and of all times, and it was, indeed, the first mode of deterritorializing dreams and phantasmagories of millions.
Hypothesis nr. 3 is as following: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna 's adventures have merely been the expression of a noble art of sublation of death and dying by means of going voluntary into the death, where it expected him.
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Did Ernesto Guevara de La Serna have any feelings for this town?
Did Ernesto Guevara de La Serna have any feelings for this town?
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Does Diego Armando Maradona dislike or hate this town and his bourgeoisie?
Does Diego Armando Maradona dislike or hate this town and his bourgeoisie?
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Did Jorge Luis Borges made up this town out his phantasmagories?
Did Jorge Luis Borges made up this town out his phantasmagories?
Buenos Aires @ Feb 2012
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
Tracing those ghosts and demons of BA, who evidently influence inversely the destiny of this city:
Jorge Luis Borges
Diego Armando Maradona
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna
Expecting a specific spirituality in terms of the magic of BA: "santisima trinidad" der BoMaGe I am walking through the streets of Recoleta, Palermo.
Buenos Aires @ Feb. 2012
BA is an illusion.
Many places from mid 2011 till end 2012
Just no intention to write down anything on this blog from 2011 November till December 2012 (may be later I just transfer text from paper to the blog)
2011
2011 November in Shanghai
2012
2012 April in Barcelona again (ESTRO 2012)
2012 June in Chicago (ASCO 2012)
2012 July in Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanjing
2012 summer vacation August: London (3d) and New York (12 d)
2012 October in Florence and Verona
2012 November in Fukuoka and Tokyo
2011
2011 November in Shanghai
2012
2012 April in Barcelona again (ESTRO 2012)
2012 June in Chicago (ASCO 2012)
2012 July in Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanjing
2012 summer vacation August: London (3d) and New York (12 d)
2012 October in Florence and Verona
2012 November in Fukuoka and Tokyo
Madrid @ November 2011
Almost 20* degree under a mild sun, that's Madrid.
Having a long conversation with my friend Vicente P., while enjoying the November sun in town, made my trip worth, indeed. Our live, basic issues of today and of many yesterdays, Vicente is wonderful.
Late afternoon, I went to the Cinema Palacio de La Prensa at Gran Via, the main consumption stream, watching "habemus papam" of Nanni Moretti. It was a catastrophy,Moretti should do TV shows.
Madrid @ November 2011
Madrid is beautiful.
Almost 20* degree under a mild sun, that's Madrid.
Having a long conversation with my friend Vicente P., while enjoying the November sun in town, made my trip worth, indeed. Our live, basic issues of today and of many yesterdays, Vicente is wonderful.
Late afternoon, I went to the Cinema Palacio de La Prensa at Gran Via, the main consumption stream, watching "habemus papam" of Nanni Moretti. It was a catastrophy,Moretti should do TV shows.
Madrid @ November 2011
Madrid is beautiful.
Copenhagen @ October 2011
The Nordic of all Nordic towns, so close and so far from core land Europe, tough part of it, is a miniature.
It belongs to the very nature of miniature, that they develope a sort of solid and not reproducible own life, which transform them, away from originals they attempted primarily to imitate. On some precise stage of history they have nothing in common with the original. That seems to be the fate of Copenhagen.
Seen in its pure existence, as a place of urban space, the town is just a blurred copy of any ! nord German Town. The morbid charme of any ! Prussian town is imposed on Copenhagen and determines its image and its destiny. The frozen urban structure of towns build in protestants regions of Northern Europe in last four centuries and later as its blurred and obscene version, thus puritanism, in the US, are depressingly prevalent on any street of Copenhagan, on any public place and virulently on any geometric perspective.
Copenhagen is just the actual, nice, slim and effecient format of a urban space, wich is, in terms of urban developement, backed by the paradigms of the terrible past and more depressing present of any! town in North and East of Germany. Not merely the unbelivable visual "dryness" (C) and anti-picturesque emphasis of this place is a marker for its very structure in the real of urban living, but more then that, the lack of any! statement seems to be the strongest value it radiates. Copenhagen is saying nothing to you, just nothing.
While the local government is suggesting to the inhabitants and with more brand consciousness to the visitors and potential visitors that this is the future. Browsing the streets and places in loco makes you believe that THE suggested future of the ideal urban space and of the optimal eco friendly living style have never been and that it will never come to the realm of our sensory system, not here. One has to admitt that the ideology of the altertnative live style, the NORDIC one, with its huge conventional imagery plenty of bicycles, bicycle ways, bicycle products, and, naturally, with its claimed "Design Turn" (C) is just another nice branding idea for a place of 600000 people away from all main cultural roads in the reformated global village we live in. In this way, it is understandable why Copenhagen trys to transform and re-narrates its dry and distant face into a wild, innovative, sustainable, eco friendly, alternative, organic, design driven and NORDIC things. What they attempt to make us believe in a persistent and sucessful way, is to ignore/ to forget the trancendent core of this place, which is its inherent ultra-protestant emptyness. A virulent and infictive emptyness, or if you like it: a metaphysical VOID, that is evident and unavoidable in the very vibes of the urban architecture and in internal space of imagery, literature, cinema, art. It is even evident with an enforced rhythmic presence in the worst version of post-liberal ideology: local politics, be it left or right or green or red. As terrible, as its more perverse version of "protestant ethics" (cave: Max Weber & co) : namely the calvinistic ideology and its real materialisation, which is Switzerland; Copenhagen is the miniature of an utopian world of ideas, thus images and words: a dry and distant place, free of chaos, joy, warmth, movement and uncertainty.
Copenhagen is one of most liveable in all recent surveys.
It is a place for clarity of mind, brightness of spaces, organic food for a healthy body, bicycles as vehicles of ideology, design as escapism and a lot of fresh air. What do you need more?
Copenhagen @ October 2011
First of all and foremost is Cøbnhavn an illustration.
The Nordic of all Nordic towns, so close and so far from core land Europe, tough part of it, is a miniature.
It belongs to the very nature of miniature, that they develope a sort of solid and not reproducible own life, which transform them, away from originals they attempted primarily to imitate. On some precise stage of history they have nothing in common with the original. That seems to be the fate of Copenhagen.
Seen in its pure existence, as a place of urban space, the town is just a blurred copy of any ! nord German Town. The morbid charme of any ! Prussian town is imposed on Copenhagen and determines its image and its destiny. The frozen urban structure of towns build in protestants regions of Northern Europe in last four centuries and later as its blurred and obscene version, thus puritanism, in the US, are depressingly prevalent on any street of Copenhagan, on any public place and virulently on any geometric perspective.
Copenhagen is just the actual, nice, slim and effecient format of a urban space, wich is, in terms of urban developement, backed by the paradigms of the terrible past and more depressing present of any! town in North and East of Germany. Not merely the unbelivable visual "dryness" (C) and anti-picturesque emphasis of this place is a marker for its very structure in the real of urban living, but more then that, the lack of any! statement seems to be the strongest value it radiates. Copenhagen is saying nothing to you, just nothing.
While the local government is suggesting to the inhabitants and with more brand consciousness to the visitors and potential visitors that this is the future. Browsing the streets and places in loco makes you believe that THE suggested future of the ideal urban space and of the optimal eco friendly living style have never been and that it will never come to the realm of our sensory system, not here. One has to admitt that the ideology of the altertnative live style, the NORDIC one, with its huge conventional imagery plenty of bicycles, bicycle ways, bicycle products, and, naturally, with its claimed "Design Turn" (C) is just another nice branding idea for a place of 600000 people away from all main cultural roads in the reformated global village we live in. In this way, it is understandable why Copenhagen trys to transform and re-narrates its dry and distant face into a wild, innovative, sustainable, eco friendly, alternative, organic, design driven and NORDIC things. What they attempt to make us believe in a persistent and sucessful way, is to ignore/ to forget the trancendent core of this place, which is its inherent ultra-protestant emptyness. A virulent and infictive emptyness, or if you like it: a metaphysical VOID, that is evident and unavoidable in the very vibes of the urban architecture and in internal space of imagery, literature, cinema, art. It is even evident with an enforced rhythmic presence in the worst version of post-liberal ideology: local politics, be it left or right or green or red. As terrible, as its more perverse version of "protestant ethics" (cave: Max Weber & co) : namely the calvinistic ideology and its real materialisation, which is Switzerland; Copenhagen is the miniature of an utopian world of ideas, thus images and words: a dry and distant place, free of chaos, joy, warmth, movement and uncertainty.
Copenhagen is one of most liveable in all recent surveys.
It is a place for clarity of mind, brightness of spaces, organic food for a healthy body, bicycles as vehicles of ideology, design as escapism and a lot of fresh air. What do you need more?
Copenhagen @ October 2011
First of all and foremost is Cøbnhavn an illustration.
Istanbul @ October 2011
Soundtrack of MC:
Ben Harper
Bach
Xavier Naido
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 2
Public transport: 3
Creative Index: 2
Istanbul @ October 2011
The Biennial is located in one single venue, at the harbor. Compact and decisive. More photography than
Istanbul @ October 2011
After having passed the evidently endless sequences of REM phases bevor dawn, the following morning is beautiful: mild sun, still sea and people walking somewhere.
Although I see the sea through gaps between the buildings, it does not smell like sea, it is obvious another geography than the Caribeean sea.
Istanbul is neither Asian, and less then that, nor European. The standard media transmitted simulacrum claiming Istanbul might be THE geographico-cultural linkage between the two so different spheres of human civilization, between the notorious West and the blasphemic East, is to be forgotten and ignored due to the fact that the premises of this claim are false and, threor, obscene. Just starring at the strata of omnipresent local narratives and of preserved images boxes is not enough to trace te greatness of this place. History makes us blind by its borring and relentless focus on obvious "historical" events in the past and their factual and mental imagery of meaning. History makes us deaf by its shamless and iterative concentration on off voices of predecents and ancestors, who we do not understand at all. We, in order to be well mannered and highly educated, pretend to trace those events and see those images and, worse of all our simulative activities, to listen to voices of the past. We just can't. And it is unneccesary.
This town is a singular entity. A self made emerging place with a highly cultivated sense for ignoring the history and all histories, which should have been the time based ground of it or even space based legitimation of it. No. It is as it is, because it shuts its eyes close in front of the grandness of the BIG history of Byzanz, Konstantinopel, Konstantaniya and old Istanbul. Not even the old Istanbul has anything in common with this town. For a momment, in order to follow the sub-text, forget the geography, which always misleads us. Yes, logically Today is on the same place in wich was Yesterday, but in this case it is somewhere else. Istanbul would not have been Istanbul, as it is today in this configuration of urban dynamics, economic autonomy and chaos, cultural outburst and dissociation, if it would be merely a historical place. Beyond the "bullshit" (cave: book of HG Frankfurt and the disputes after its publication) of the local traditional politicians and cultural localists, who always claims to be the real voice of Istanbul and inherent of political affinity and historical loyalty for it, this town is not what they are talking about. It is not even their nightmare or chimera.
It is uniquelly something different that their narratives, images and Yesterdays.
It is the "After City".
PS
see Lars Lerups's text on after city, may be there is something in it.
Istanbul @ October 2011
A midnight landing seems like a nightmare: confusing, deliberating.
Soundtrack of MC:
Ben Harper
Bach
Xavier Naido
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 2
Public transport: 3
Creative Index: 2
Istanbul @ October 2011
The Biennial is located in one single venue, at the harbor. Compact and decisive. More photography than
Istanbul @ October 2011
After having passed the evidently endless sequences of REM phases bevor dawn, the following morning is beautiful: mild sun, still sea and people walking somewhere.
Although I see the sea through gaps between the buildings, it does not smell like sea, it is obvious another geography than the Caribeean sea.
Istanbul is neither Asian, and less then that, nor European. The standard media transmitted simulacrum claiming Istanbul might be THE geographico-cultural linkage between the two so different spheres of human civilization, between the notorious West and the blasphemic East, is to be forgotten and ignored due to the fact that the premises of this claim are false and, threor, obscene. Just starring at the strata of omnipresent local narratives and of preserved images boxes is not enough to trace te greatness of this place. History makes us blind by its borring and relentless focus on obvious "historical" events in the past and their factual and mental imagery of meaning. History makes us deaf by its shamless and iterative concentration on off voices of predecents and ancestors, who we do not understand at all. We, in order to be well mannered and highly educated, pretend to trace those events and see those images and, worse of all our simulative activities, to listen to voices of the past. We just can't. And it is unneccesary.
This town is a singular entity. A self made emerging place with a highly cultivated sense for ignoring the history and all histories, which should have been the time based ground of it or even space based legitimation of it. No. It is as it is, because it shuts its eyes close in front of the grandness of the BIG history of Byzanz, Konstantinopel, Konstantaniya and old Istanbul. Not even the old Istanbul has anything in common with this town. For a momment, in order to follow the sub-text, forget the geography, which always misleads us. Yes, logically Today is on the same place in wich was Yesterday, but in this case it is somewhere else. Istanbul would not have been Istanbul, as it is today in this configuration of urban dynamics, economic autonomy and chaos, cultural outburst and dissociation, if it would be merely a historical place. Beyond the "bullshit" (cave: book of HG Frankfurt and the disputes after its publication) of the local traditional politicians and cultural localists, who always claims to be the real voice of Istanbul and inherent of political affinity and historical loyalty for it, this town is not what they are talking about. It is not even their nightmare or chimera.
It is uniquelly something different that their narratives, images and Yesterdays.
It is the "After City".
PS
see Lars Lerups's text on after city, may be there is something in it.
Istanbul @ October 2011
A midnight landing seems like a nightmare: confusing, deliberating.
Bologna @ August 2011
A city of arcades and passages.
Pasta.
Genoa @ August 2011
The town of Enzo Piano and its shadow.
Pasta.
El mare @ August 2011
A day and a night in the depth of Mediterranean sea. Flying dolophins.
Barcelona @ July 2011
A pool on the roof, mild sun. That' s it.
Amsterdam @ July 2011
World Lung Cancer Conference.
A nice chat with my friend Martin v.R. in his beautiful house.
Prague @April 2011
Having a week off work I decided to move again to refresh the air. Prague was supposed to be the next stop: a kind of mueseum under the sky, as Paris is for years.
Mild evening, almost summer, a day before Karfreitag. Under the late evening light of lanterns, Prague seems to be Island of calmity, almost no traffic, no noise, the hills in background, that ' s it, why people love Prague. It is just an image: distant and safe.
Prague @ April 2011
First, Prague is oblivion.
A city of arcades and passages.
Pasta.
Genoa @ August 2011
The town of Enzo Piano and its shadow.
Pasta.
El mare @ August 2011
A day and a night in the depth of Mediterranean sea. Flying dolophins.
Barcelona @ July 2011
A pool on the roof, mild sun. That' s it.
Amsterdam @ July 2011
World Lung Cancer Conference.
A nice chat with my friend Martin v.R. in his beautiful house.
Prague @April 2011
Having a week off work I decided to move again to refresh the air. Prague was supposed to be the next stop: a kind of mueseum under the sky, as Paris is for years.
Mild evening, almost summer, a day before Karfreitag. Under the late evening light of lanterns, Prague seems to be Island of calmity, almost no traffic, no noise, the hills in background, that ' s it, why people love Prague. It is just an image: distant and safe.
Prague @ April 2011
First, Prague is oblivion.
London @April 2011
Saturday evening, surfing the tube toward the north of London, again the micro universe opend its ports: the tube experience.
For years, inevitably, I already used the tube within London for changing places and words and fragrances and spaces and subcultures and theorems and sounds and memories and prophecies and continents and tastes and images and deepness and openness. The tube has been my vehicle of transgression, even at the first glance absolutely not spectacular, but repetitive and, therefor, persistent, a way to come somewhere else. From Boomsburry to South Harrow, it is not a journey, it is, indeed, a shift of Weltanshauung.
Meeting the family of my oncle for dinner, it became obvious, I was travelling through places and times. He, at his end seventhies, may be less or may be more, immediately timeless, was as cool as ever. Clear visioned toward surrounding worlds ( cave: world with s), with a deep insight in our secrets we are not aware of them, relaxed in despite of time, living in many dimensions and as a person very nice and agreeable. Mr. Tayeb is convergence of pure awareness ot today, culminated histories, strange stories, adherent to the past, which is reality / illusions/ intensity. Witnessing early mornings of birth in those old times (in his case mine, and many other), days of joy and sadness, nights of nostalgia, the wind, and the breath. He is a kind of extension of our memories under the passionsless passing of times we experienced and inevitable transformations of places we lived in.
Saturday evening, surfing the tube toward the north of London, again the micro universe opend its ports: the tube experience.
For years, inevitably, I already used the tube within London for changing places and words and fragrances and spaces and subcultures and theorems and sounds and memories and prophecies and continents and tastes and images and deepness and openness. The tube has been my vehicle of transgression, even at the first glance absolutely not spectacular, but repetitive and, therefor, persistent, a way to come somewhere else. From Boomsburry to South Harrow, it is not a journey, it is, indeed, a shift of Weltanshauung.
Meeting the family of my oncle for dinner, it became obvious, I was travelling through places and times. He, at his end seventhies, may be less or may be more, immediately timeless, was as cool as ever. Clear visioned toward surrounding worlds ( cave: world with s), with a deep insight in our secrets we are not aware of them, relaxed in despite of time, living in many dimensions and as a person very nice and agreeable. Mr. Tayeb is convergence of pure awareness ot today, culminated histories, strange stories, adherent to the past, which is reality / illusions/ intensity. Witnessing early mornings of birth in those old times (in his case mine, and many other), days of joy and sadness, nights of nostalgia, the wind, and the breath. He is a kind of extension of our memories under the passionsless passing of times we experienced and inevitable transformations of places we lived in.
London @ April 201
At the backyard of the house a group of Indian people are laughing loud, together, rythmic and impulsive. The sun is shining.
On Saturday,while the sky was dry and bright, calm and without traces of regret, London was beautiful ( or biutiful, as Mexicans would say it).
I met my friend Javier G. I., who is attending a workshop on issues of climat change at Oxford University and now in London City, living in La Paz in Bolivia. First time met 1991 in a small pub in central Berlin or may be in an elevator in the building of National Library at Unter den Linden in Berlin or may be in our dreams, which already keep working, who knows.
Last time met almost twelf years ago in Bonn, during a spring day.
He was leaving Berlin 1995 after some years of stuying technological stuff at the Humboldt University of Berlin and mostly and predominantly having been on a seemingly endless wave of words, signs, sounds, images and joy. Our meeting in London at Soho Hotel was just a
"Wiedersehen" as if we talk regularly at some way, time is never a gap. We have seen each other after twelf years and kept talking exactly in the same mode as we did it mid ninethies in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg in Duncker Strasse or somewhere there. There was no incubation time necessary, no preparation, introduction or BlaBla, just starting to talk on those isssues, on wich we had have talked in those days.
At the backyard of the house a group of Indian people are laughing loud, together, rythmic and impulsive. The sun is shining.
On Saturday,while the sky was dry and bright, calm and without traces of regret, London was beautiful ( or biutiful, as Mexicans would say it).
I met my friend Javier G. I., who is attending a workshop on issues of climat change at Oxford University and now in London City, living in La Paz in Bolivia. First time met 1991 in a small pub in central Berlin or may be in an elevator in the building of National Library at Unter den Linden in Berlin or may be in our dreams, which already keep working, who knows.
Last time met almost twelf years ago in Bonn, during a spring day.
He was leaving Berlin 1995 after some years of stuying technological stuff at the Humboldt University of Berlin and mostly and predominantly having been on a seemingly endless wave of words, signs, sounds, images and joy. Our meeting in London at Soho Hotel was just a
"Wiedersehen" as if we talk regularly at some way, time is never a gap. We have seen each other after twelf years and kept talking exactly in the same mode as we did it mid ninethies in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg in Duncker Strasse or somewhere there. There was no incubation time necessary, no preparation, introduction or BlaBla, just starting to talk on those isssues, on wich we had have talked in those days.
Mexico City @ February 2011
Mexico City @ February 2011
MC has got all features of a megapolis. The vivid local cultures including contemporary arts as they are music, cinema and design seem to determine the new/old face of the town.
A paradoxical mix of accelerated urbanization by means of local area gentrification, absolute rise of service branches, huge amount of art hot spots, merchandizing, restaurants and the multinational coffee chop chains and proliferation of mass media and the most rapid growing realm of telecommunication tools, companies and innovations. At the same time MC tries to keep stand, to preserve historic monuments and documents with big efforts by the metropolitan area government in terms of having moments of de-acceleration, what might be useful for conservatives and elderlies and calming down the political aristocracy.
Mexico City @ January 2011
Day 2
A wonderful sunny Monday, let' s call it a normal Monday, where people go to work, please their live partners, send some flowers to the other beloved ones, and if free of action, than going to the town making errands, buying useless things, which look good, or even ugly in the eyes of those beloved ones, who get no flowers. This is a normal Monday. And not to forget, those kids, oppressed and pressured to go to their schools after this biutiful ( Mexican expression for Schönheit) weekend.
I tried to emulate the second version, namely, walking around in Centro Historico of MC, watching those who have been on the way from work to lunch or vice versa, those who have been talking to their selfs while walking with a tempered pace on streets and those who have been looking for some salvation in the absolute beauty of this town.
Centro historico seems to have two basically different faces. The One belongs to the visitors from outside, from Mexican countryside, amazed to the radical speechlessness of a fellow wandering and wondering in the city. These folks reinvent daily the town, they give to it a demonial face, a Fratze ( German word, indeed, see Bertolt Brecht or Heiner Müller) under the mild sun of early afternoon. I believe, just believe and nothing more, that this specific looking-at of paysannes in the city generally implies a dilemmatic background. On the one hand, a subtil curiosity about all those citoyens, all those "rich people" of the town, about their habits, their dreams and their pleasures. There is no sorrow of work, there is no pain of life in perception of men and women arriving just right now in town. On the other hand, a dark abyss of envy and get hatred. An evident, and not at all metaphorised, opponence to anything the town people say or do; think or desire. Looking in their eyes will miror you the dialectics. Then we encounter visitors from outside, overseas, mostly. I am not sure what visitors from other countries of Americas likely to be, when they exploring MC, we should, may by, just ask them. Visitors from transatlantic, mainely French, German or Italians might have other dialectics. They, I guess, would have loved having the entire glory, shine, beauty and petrified memories in their own places. They reinevent and keep reimagining "Ciudad de Mexico" as a theme park, as a neutralized, almost depressed (= de. pressed) and decompressed place, free and apart of the anthropologic filling and content. MC as a strategy, a fatal one. Images of European visitors are not concordant at all of those autochthon landpeople. The significant difference is a gap, a sulcus metahistoricus, between European perception of history, as a linear space of transformations of the outer world, made and rearranged mainly by Europeans and autochthon land based proletarians 's understanding of history as a disrutptive sequence of battles for autonomy and persistence power of town people, made possible by destiny, bishops, law and absence of god. European visitors, with their big, very big hearts, love Mexico, not really this very real place, this very real people, they love an image, a dramatic sequence of their own. They love a picture: induced by desires; rearranged by words, rebuilt by forgetness, restructured by visions.
Beyond fears and laughs of paysannes and European tourists, both are lovely, loveable, and nice, for sure, beyond their both paranoia and desires, Mexico City/ Ciuadad de Mexico is at Monday, at a normal Monday a biutiful place to be, pleasing the coolness of elderly women, dressed perfectly, walking in a manner, as if their were in deep dreams, touching walls of buildings built long long time ago, hunderts of years of solitude, built on bones and blood and heads and stories of former habitants by Spanish noble men and Spanish god' s men in the name of salvation and in the name Of Messias.
Mexico City, at Five of afternoon is a marvellous cacke with un Americano, looking at small kids selling things at the corner, feeling the impertinent presence of police anywhere, window shopping at Cinco Mayo, here and now, this town is at five of afternoon mild, slow and full of live, real live.
Soundtrack of MC:
Maria Callas (divine sound)
Element of Crime (german pop)
Benjamin Biolay (French SS/ pop)
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 1
Public transport: 3
Creative Index: 3
Benjamin Biolay (French SS/ pop)
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 1
Public transport: 3
Creative Index: 3
Mexico City @ February 2011
Beautiful celebration of a birthday with dottore Ignacio MR and friends, nice and smart people.
Mexico City @ February 2011
MC has got all features of a megapolis. The vivid local cultures including contemporary arts as they are music, cinema and design seem to determine the new/old face of the town.
A paradoxical mix of accelerated urbanization by means of local area gentrification, absolute rise of service branches, huge amount of art hot spots, merchandizing, restaurants and the multinational coffee chop chains and proliferation of mass media and the most rapid growing realm of telecommunication tools, companies and innovations. At the same time MC tries to keep stand, to preserve historic monuments and documents with big efforts by the metropolitan area government in terms of having moments of de-acceleration, what might be useful for conservatives and elderlies and calming down the political aristocracy.
Mexico City @ January 2011
Day 2
A wonderful sunny Monday, let' s call it a normal Monday, where people go to work, please their live partners, send some flowers to the other beloved ones, and if free of action, than going to the town making errands, buying useless things, which look good, or even ugly in the eyes of those beloved ones, who get no flowers. This is a normal Monday. And not to forget, those kids, oppressed and pressured to go to their schools after this biutiful ( Mexican expression for Schönheit) weekend.
I tried to emulate the second version, namely, walking around in Centro Historico of MC, watching those who have been on the way from work to lunch or vice versa, those who have been talking to their selfs while walking with a tempered pace on streets and those who have been looking for some salvation in the absolute beauty of this town.
Centro historico seems to have two basically different faces. The One belongs to the visitors from outside, from Mexican countryside, amazed to the radical speechlessness of a fellow wandering and wondering in the city. These folks reinvent daily the town, they give to it a demonial face, a Fratze ( German word, indeed, see Bertolt Brecht or Heiner Müller) under the mild sun of early afternoon. I believe, just believe and nothing more, that this specific looking-at of paysannes in the city generally implies a dilemmatic background. On the one hand, a subtil curiosity about all those citoyens, all those "rich people" of the town, about their habits, their dreams and their pleasures. There is no sorrow of work, there is no pain of life in perception of men and women arriving just right now in town. On the other hand, a dark abyss of envy and get hatred. An evident, and not at all metaphorised, opponence to anything the town people say or do; think or desire. Looking in their eyes will miror you the dialectics. Then we encounter visitors from outside, overseas, mostly. I am not sure what visitors from other countries of Americas likely to be, when they exploring MC, we should, may by, just ask them. Visitors from transatlantic, mainely French, German or Italians might have other dialectics. They, I guess, would have loved having the entire glory, shine, beauty and petrified memories in their own places. They reinevent and keep reimagining "Ciudad de Mexico" as a theme park, as a neutralized, almost depressed (= de. pressed) and decompressed place, free and apart of the anthropologic filling and content. MC as a strategy, a fatal one. Images of European visitors are not concordant at all of those autochthon landpeople. The significant difference is a gap, a sulcus metahistoricus, between European perception of history, as a linear space of transformations of the outer world, made and rearranged mainly by Europeans and autochthon land based proletarians 's understanding of history as a disrutptive sequence of battles for autonomy and persistence power of town people, made possible by destiny, bishops, law and absence of god. European visitors, with their big, very big hearts, love Mexico, not really this very real place, this very real people, they love an image, a dramatic sequence of their own. They love a picture: induced by desires; rearranged by words, rebuilt by forgetness, restructured by visions.
Beyond fears and laughs of paysannes and European tourists, both are lovely, loveable, and nice, for sure, beyond their both paranoia and desires, Mexico City/ Ciuadad de Mexico is at Monday, at a normal Monday a biutiful place to be, pleasing the coolness of elderly women, dressed perfectly, walking in a manner, as if their were in deep dreams, touching walls of buildings built long long time ago, hunderts of years of solitude, built on bones and blood and heads and stories of former habitants by Spanish noble men and Spanish god' s men in the name of salvation and in the name Of Messias.
Mexico City, at Five of afternoon is a marvellous cacke with un Americano, looking at small kids selling things at the corner, feeling the impertinent presence of police anywhere, window shopping at Cinco Mayo, here and now, this town is at five of afternoon mild, slow and full of live, real live.
Mexico City @ January 2011
A beautiful day, exploring some places without map and plans. The town has got a magic.
Mexico City @ January 2011
A beautiful day, exploring some places without map and plans. The town has got a magic.
Mexico City @ January 2011
The Sunday night dinner with Ignacio Reyes M. and Claudia Lorena A. was all about basic life issues, as they are finding a good restaurant with original and delicious food, checking out music playing there if it was by play back or in vivo etc. Finally we achieved both goals and stoped in a nice restaurant with a almost Japanese decoration out of wood and leather, decorated by a dimmed side light, but with the very original food. It was astonishing to see how my friend Igancio RM could convince Lorena to order a mixture of deferent components and to explain their essential taste arrangements to me. I had met him sven years ago in Berlin, whil he was undergoing a short period training in radiosurgery of brain lesions. He was actualy resident in another German city doing brain surgery. We met, by chance, almost at the end of his Berlin time. We did meet four of five time there, having some drinks and food. During following years we had some contact by email, not regularly, not always. Now I am here, after sending him a email at Friday deciding to go to MC. Sitting there, a day later, after all these years meant to me a lot. Interestingly by the way, we, both, had the feeling having met after some short time again. It was amazing. Food was good, non-alcoholic drnks better, what was unique was the easy, fluent, very funny and aggreable mode of our conversations. It was, as if nothing have changed in all years. His memories from Germany, vivid and detailled, told in a nice way, have been reminiscent to me for other places. A lot of stories, a lot of time passed. Lorena, a doctora de oftalmologia and oculoplastica, was a perfect conversationalist, she had some training in the US, loving long windy winters in Cleveland. Her deep insight into local histories has impressed me, indeed. While talking on the recent past of MC culture, events, we have been discussed issues concerning Spanish- Mexican and Spanish-South American relations, not in terms of politics, more easier and complicated at the same time, in terms of perception of each other's live, developements and expectations. I expressed my disappointment of the current changes in Spain, regarding the velocity of economic growth of the last 15 years there and the Lack of reciprocity in cultural changes. For me as a lover of Spanish poetry, reading Lorca since I am 14, of Spanish music, contemporary cinema and last but not least, and specially, of Spanish footbal ( Barca for ever), the disappointment seems even more bigger than I feared. The new Spain, all those people we meet somewhere, be it Berlin, London, New York or even in Spain itself, are somehow yet not as mature in terms of being non-pretensious, easy going cosmopolitism, approach to music, literature, arts and cinema, criticism on orthodox religious dogmas, criticism on generalisimo Franco.
I was amazed and happy seeing him again and her at first.
Mexico City @ January 2011
Day 1
Opening your eyes within absolute darkness of the night is always an astonishing, even often banal, experience. At 3 the world is supposed not to be ready for you and vice versa, in case you once went into the depth of your dreams. At 3 AM is a displaced external world, in my case today Mexico City (MC), even more astonishing to Open your eyes in front of a window, leading you in frame of an unique scenario of slowness and colors smoothly into the birth of the sun over the horizon.
MC has been appearing before my eyes, calm and noisless, embedded in forgetness.
Finally I tried to find out, what makes this place a moloch, as all mass media reports are continuosely making us to believe, what makes this place to gangster' s paradise, as any documentary is trying showing us a almost endless quantity of evidence. MC might the hell on hearth. What I have found, was multiple web sites narrating the mythical power of indigeneous godnesses, the meaning of sun, the archeology of sacrifice, the specific semantics of pyramides, and the radicality of reluctance toward the deadh, including a more radical conviction of life as a continuum. A dedicated museum to the Mexican ars moriendi in central MC is standing for this radicality, which we do not know at all in Europe. We do not know any form of transcendent radicality in old Europe any more, you remember the Night of bartholomae? Those days are gone irreversiblly.
Finally I was lost in multitudes of touristic nonsense sites, about charm of old markets, which are by the way neither old nor real markets, just fake for visitors.
Beyond statistics, this aversive format of knowledge, it is difficult picturing MC as an hell surrogate on the earth. So let ' s go out and look at/into the real.
The taxi driver took me to Izazaga finding a strange place called casa virreyes. Twenty something, wet hairs, sun glass, a cool guy. On the way, driving with a constant velocity of 80 kilometer per hour, bypassing all obstacles, as other cars really are, he was talking to me in the same tempo, in which he was driving, and in a biutiful ( the Mexican expression for Schönheit) accent, with the result that I did not understand a word, while listening to aweful mariachi songs attacking me from backside boxes.
It was a sunny, calm Sunday.
At Izazaga, a grey, sleepy building, open door policy, a more sleepy watchman listening to radio inside, as almost have seen here in MC: lost in his dark blue uniform in XL size and lots of emblames and codes and signs of his chest and arm. He did not have any reaction seeing me coming into the house. The hall, a step higher, had a visible cloud of dust in air, more imaginative than real, more scenic than touchable. Some isolated standing chairs and deep tables in room and a bar and computers in front of windows. Beyond the bar a young girl was sitting and looking at a screen, next to her, a teenage boy, 15 or 16 in age, reading a comic. The entire scenery seemed to be arranged, well choreographed, naturally, but for whom? After asking them for a room, they give me a key, requiring to go upstaires and to see the room, may be you don't like it, she said. I went to the 6th floor with the watchman, which was not willing to wake up, therefor wandering with me between his two dream sequences. I did not like the room, even it was the original copy of any motel room of any American movie of any adventurous pictorial narrative. No, I should go somewhere else. After asking the girl for a cab, to bring me away, I had to wait in the dustful hallway for 20 minutes, reading magazines on body building techniques from 2003 and on sailing and yachting from 2007, lying on tha marvelous tables. Some minutes later, two men came downstaires in the hallway, positioning themselfes on those marvelous chairs and opening their laptops. I believed, and I believe it even just right now, having seen one of these men in Paris at the airport CDG, waiting for the same flight, as I did there. A flight booked for AirFrance, expecting the AF menue of food and the menue of entertainement tools I was expecting to experience with AF, however, it turned out, that this flight AF 006 will be performed by AeroMexico. You know, what this means, well, a small Boeing airplane, with ZERO entertainement, and some food, amazingly with Italian withe wine. However, I recognized the man, opening now his laptop while sitting in the dusty hallway of casa virreyes. The other man, who obviously did not know him, was maybe ten years older than him, let' s say 65, did all same ritual- like movements with his laptops. I was just informing myself about body building arts and crafs in the beginning of this millinium and about yacht industry in Northern Europe, which mad me happy. Immediately, they started to talk to each other with a classical starter, which includes always the question, if the WiFi is working well with his PC?. Yes, it did work well. I, personnaly, was absolutely involved with all those biutiful bodies of 2003 and the color of their skins, so bronzed, amazing. The two men, assumingly 55 and 65 years old, speaking in American accent, seemed not having any reason to delay the process of exchange their solid, stable and consensuel informations on geopolitics. After stating, that his Economist subscription was an nice and useful idea, the younger one has asked the older one about his point of view on events happening in Northern Africa and Yemen. I mean, I was astonished, touched and perplexed, listening to two well educated American men, even the older seemed having a slight and almost unhearable Hungarian phonetics, which might change the entire choreography and arrangemnet of this very theatralic scene. Yes, said the one I believed having already met, with his laptop, in Paris airport CDG, the situation is out of joint, I don't really know, what will come, if the people on streets achieve some of their goals. He was worrying about the dark side of revolutions, obviously. Nobody really knows, what happens, if revolutinaries achieve their goals. Not even those, who are in action. The answer of the younger man, who was certainly deeply originated in American countryside, was more interesting than the general and correct statements of the first one, he said: that is not the issue here, Sir, as all good Americans are used to call folk they don' t know and don' t want to get to know, no Sir, the isssue is the following: do they understand what they want? He meant the revolutionaries in Northern Africa. I tell you, and believe me, I know what I am talking about, they have no clue. It is just rage, fury and poverty. Sir, I know, what is happening down there, nothing. They, he meant the outburst youth of Cairo, Tunis, have no idea of our system, of democracy. He keeped talking, down there there is no individual existing, nor individual freedom is the goal. Individuum does not exist there, so what they want at all? He was asking. My drive came in and called after Gregor Samsa.
At noon, I was arrived at Hotel New York, close to the monument of revolution and to the plaza de La republica, without aiming to be here. I just listen to the taxi driver, who could not find casa conde, where I had to go, at least I intended to go because of their nice artistic images of the homepage, so now I am in New York in MC.
At the afternoon, I was just browsing Paseo de La Reforma, an endless boulevard in central MC, build by emperor Maximilian for his wife' s promonades, thus just for fun and for eternal love of an emperor. Significantly, it is mentioned almost evreywhere, be it tourist guides, historical reviews and, I guess without being sure about it, even in the sayings of the people: the emperor Maximilian has had build a large, endless boulevard with statues, heros on horses, fontaines and biutiful trees just for love, nothing else than a love.
Sun, shadows, trees. A lot of bicycles on the boulevard Reforma.
Having a coffee in a small shop, tired and hopeless, I see a remarable sentence written on the bar : "te voy a quittar el sueño" , I mean so much for coffee, but OK.
It is a nice, calm Sunday afternoon.
I was picked up later by my dear friend Ignacio Reyes M. there and we were cruising through the many town barrios, being told some nice anectodes by him.
We made a short stop after a long car journey at his apartement in the very West/North part of MC, in front of "panteón civil de dolores", a marvelous view on fusion of nature and contemporary anesthetic architecture. A positive suburb with gated communities at the edge of the megapolis Mexico City, infiltrated by motorways, inhabited by powerful automobiles, a landscape with white stone buildings, park slots with a lot of Maserati and Porche and unbelievable solitude.
We picked up a friend of him by the American hospital and drove to downtown, while the mild sun of this biutiful Sunday afternoon was falling apart.
Day 1
Opening your eyes within absolute darkness of the night is always an astonishing, even often banal, experience. At 3 the world is supposed not to be ready for you and vice versa, in case you once went into the depth of your dreams. At 3 AM is a displaced external world, in my case today Mexico City (MC), even more astonishing to Open your eyes in front of a window, leading you in frame of an unique scenario of slowness and colors smoothly into the birth of the sun over the horizon.
MC has been appearing before my eyes, calm and noisless, embedded in forgetness.
Finally I tried to find out, what makes this place a moloch, as all mass media reports are continuosely making us to believe, what makes this place to gangster' s paradise, as any documentary is trying showing us a almost endless quantity of evidence. MC might the hell on hearth. What I have found, was multiple web sites narrating the mythical power of indigeneous godnesses, the meaning of sun, the archeology of sacrifice, the specific semantics of pyramides, and the radicality of reluctance toward the deadh, including a more radical conviction of life as a continuum. A dedicated museum to the Mexican ars moriendi in central MC is standing for this radicality, which we do not know at all in Europe. We do not know any form of transcendent radicality in old Europe any more, you remember the Night of bartholomae? Those days are gone irreversiblly.
Finally I was lost in multitudes of touristic nonsense sites, about charm of old markets, which are by the way neither old nor real markets, just fake for visitors.
Beyond statistics, this aversive format of knowledge, it is difficult picturing MC as an hell surrogate on the earth. So let ' s go out and look at/into the real.
The taxi driver took me to Izazaga finding a strange place called casa virreyes. Twenty something, wet hairs, sun glass, a cool guy. On the way, driving with a constant velocity of 80 kilometer per hour, bypassing all obstacles, as other cars really are, he was talking to me in the same tempo, in which he was driving, and in a biutiful ( the Mexican expression for Schönheit) accent, with the result that I did not understand a word, while listening to aweful mariachi songs attacking me from backside boxes.
It was a sunny, calm Sunday.
At Izazaga, a grey, sleepy building, open door policy, a more sleepy watchman listening to radio inside, as almost have seen here in MC: lost in his dark blue uniform in XL size and lots of emblames and codes and signs of his chest and arm. He did not have any reaction seeing me coming into the house. The hall, a step higher, had a visible cloud of dust in air, more imaginative than real, more scenic than touchable. Some isolated standing chairs and deep tables in room and a bar and computers in front of windows. Beyond the bar a young girl was sitting and looking at a screen, next to her, a teenage boy, 15 or 16 in age, reading a comic. The entire scenery seemed to be arranged, well choreographed, naturally, but for whom? After asking them for a room, they give me a key, requiring to go upstaires and to see the room, may be you don't like it, she said. I went to the 6th floor with the watchman, which was not willing to wake up, therefor wandering with me between his two dream sequences. I did not like the room, even it was the original copy of any motel room of any American movie of any adventurous pictorial narrative. No, I should go somewhere else. After asking the girl for a cab, to bring me away, I had to wait in the dustful hallway for 20 minutes, reading magazines on body building techniques from 2003 and on sailing and yachting from 2007, lying on tha marvelous tables. Some minutes later, two men came downstaires in the hallway, positioning themselfes on those marvelous chairs and opening their laptops. I believed, and I believe it even just right now, having seen one of these men in Paris at the airport CDG, waiting for the same flight, as I did there. A flight booked for AirFrance, expecting the AF menue of food and the menue of entertainement tools I was expecting to experience with AF, however, it turned out, that this flight AF 006 will be performed by AeroMexico. You know, what this means, well, a small Boeing airplane, with ZERO entertainement, and some food, amazingly with Italian withe wine. However, I recognized the man, opening now his laptop while sitting in the dusty hallway of casa virreyes. The other man, who obviously did not know him, was maybe ten years older than him, let' s say 65, did all same ritual- like movements with his laptops. I was just informing myself about body building arts and crafs in the beginning of this millinium and about yacht industry in Northern Europe, which mad me happy. Immediately, they started to talk to each other with a classical starter, which includes always the question, if the WiFi is working well with his PC?. Yes, it did work well. I, personnaly, was absolutely involved with all those biutiful bodies of 2003 and the color of their skins, so bronzed, amazing. The two men, assumingly 55 and 65 years old, speaking in American accent, seemed not having any reason to delay the process of exchange their solid, stable and consensuel informations on geopolitics. After stating, that his Economist subscription was an nice and useful idea, the younger one has asked the older one about his point of view on events happening in Northern Africa and Yemen. I mean, I was astonished, touched and perplexed, listening to two well educated American men, even the older seemed having a slight and almost unhearable Hungarian phonetics, which might change the entire choreography and arrangemnet of this very theatralic scene. Yes, said the one I believed having already met, with his laptop, in Paris airport CDG, the situation is out of joint, I don't really know, what will come, if the people on streets achieve some of their goals. He was worrying about the dark side of revolutions, obviously. Nobody really knows, what happens, if revolutinaries achieve their goals. Not even those, who are in action. The answer of the younger man, who was certainly deeply originated in American countryside, was more interesting than the general and correct statements of the first one, he said: that is not the issue here, Sir, as all good Americans are used to call folk they don' t know and don' t want to get to know, no Sir, the isssue is the following: do they understand what they want? He meant the revolutionaries in Northern Africa. I tell you, and believe me, I know what I am talking about, they have no clue. It is just rage, fury and poverty. Sir, I know, what is happening down there, nothing. They, he meant the outburst youth of Cairo, Tunis, have no idea of our system, of democracy. He keeped talking, down there there is no individual existing, nor individual freedom is the goal. Individuum does not exist there, so what they want at all? He was asking. My drive came in and called after Gregor Samsa.
At noon, I was arrived at Hotel New York, close to the monument of revolution and to the plaza de La republica, without aiming to be here. I just listen to the taxi driver, who could not find casa conde, where I had to go, at least I intended to go because of their nice artistic images of the homepage, so now I am in New York in MC.
At the afternoon, I was just browsing Paseo de La Reforma, an endless boulevard in central MC, build by emperor Maximilian for his wife' s promonades, thus just for fun and for eternal love of an emperor. Significantly, it is mentioned almost evreywhere, be it tourist guides, historical reviews and, I guess without being sure about it, even in the sayings of the people: the emperor Maximilian has had build a large, endless boulevard with statues, heros on horses, fontaines and biutiful trees just for love, nothing else than a love.
Sun, shadows, trees. A lot of bicycles on the boulevard Reforma.
Having a coffee in a small shop, tired and hopeless, I see a remarable sentence written on the bar : "te voy a quittar el sueño" , I mean so much for coffee, but OK.
It is a nice, calm Sunday afternoon.
I was picked up later by my dear friend Ignacio Reyes M. there and we were cruising through the many town barrios, being told some nice anectodes by him.
We made a short stop after a long car journey at his apartement in the very West/North part of MC, in front of "panteón civil de dolores", a marvelous view on fusion of nature and contemporary anesthetic architecture. A positive suburb with gated communities at the edge of the megapolis Mexico City, infiltrated by motorways, inhabited by powerful automobiles, a landscape with white stone buildings, park slots with a lot of Maserati and Porche and unbelievable solitude.
We picked up a friend of him by the American hospital and drove to downtown, while the mild sun of this biutiful Sunday afternoon was falling apart.
Mexico City @ Jan 2011
Night Nr. 1:
Having dinner with two friends under aristocratic roof of an old colonial hacienda in the south of town. It is Saturday evening, the patio enlighted and just the sound of water, men, mostly elderly, in absolute not-fashionable suites and ties, but biutiful ( the Mexican expression for Schönheit), slowly and calmly talking to their ladies. The ladies, mostly elderly, are wearing, as expected by us and by standards of social normative discourses, Haute couture, talking loud and are full of an pride, which, as it seems to me, belongs to the air of this hacienda. No gringos, no Frank Sinatra, who I love and who would totally fit to this space. Perfecting the atmosphere, a singer and three instrumentalists performing boleros: sin ti; remember the fabulous "Trio los Panchos" in 1960 or it was 1955 here in Mexico City, the recurrent dream of mine, or quizaz quizaz; listen again to the sexy accent of Nat King Cole in "in the mood for love" of Wang Kar-Wei, and the notorious noche de ronda; think on those days in Duncker13, breathing the greenness of the tree covering my windows.
Nothing else than this huge rush and virulence of memories, always present in images of my mind and never vanishing out of my sight, nothing else than the persistent echo of sounds, accompaning me during years and never fading away into the labyrinth of times; nothing else has got a substance, metaphysically and at its very essence physically, as these short moments
has had induced. Air, a glance, a voice, and the smell of chilli. This is, finally, the stuff, of which we are making our recurrent dreams. They are real.
While listening in vivo to bolero classics, while jocking on our live, remembering old times in Invalidenstrasse or Weinbergpark, suddenly a call for my friend Ignacio M.: a case with two shots in the head is waiting for him in ER, then, a race to the hospital, looking at CT scann images, OR for brain surgery.
Is that really the moloch? Yes, more real than the "Reality principle".
Night Nr. 1:
Having dinner with two friends under aristocratic roof of an old colonial hacienda in the south of town. It is Saturday evening, the patio enlighted and just the sound of water, men, mostly elderly, in absolute not-fashionable suites and ties, but biutiful ( the Mexican expression for Schönheit), slowly and calmly talking to their ladies. The ladies, mostly elderly, are wearing, as expected by us and by standards of social normative discourses, Haute couture, talking loud and are full of an pride, which, as it seems to me, belongs to the air of this hacienda. No gringos, no Frank Sinatra, who I love and who would totally fit to this space. Perfecting the atmosphere, a singer and three instrumentalists performing boleros: sin ti; remember the fabulous "Trio los Panchos" in 1960 or it was 1955 here in Mexico City, the recurrent dream of mine, or quizaz quizaz; listen again to the sexy accent of Nat King Cole in "in the mood for love" of Wang Kar-Wei, and the notorious noche de ronda; think on those days in Duncker13, breathing the greenness of the tree covering my windows.
Nothing else than this huge rush and virulence of memories, always present in images of my mind and never vanishing out of my sight, nothing else than the persistent echo of sounds, accompaning me during years and never fading away into the labyrinth of times; nothing else has got a substance, metaphysically and at its very essence physically, as these short moments
has had induced. Air, a glance, a voice, and the smell of chilli. This is, finally, the stuff, of which we are making our recurrent dreams. They are real.
While listening in vivo to bolero classics, while jocking on our live, remembering old times in Invalidenstrasse or Weinbergpark, suddenly a call for my friend Ignacio M.: a case with two shots in the head is waiting for him in ER, then, a race to the hospital, looking at CT scann images, OR for brain surgery.
Is that really the moloch? Yes, more real than the "Reality principle".
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Density & Space
Hong Kong 2010
The limited geography of Hong Kong determines at infinitum the situation. High-rise, tiny, claustrophobia inducing buildings in unbearable juxtaposition. This is the mental infrastructure of the citizens: space as fatal lack of space. While browsing the town, anything, anyone and any building seem to be so close to you.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
Soundtrack of HCMC:
AIR (moon Safari)
Benjamin Biolay
Kean
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 1
Public transport: 1
Creative Index: 2
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
Live Report: midnight "Saigon Saigon Bar" in a rooftop of central HCMC. Salsa, Merengue, Reageton, ChaCha: LIVE and the hot sky of HCMC. Fabulous atmosphere, simulating and, indeed, replacing La Habanna.
Soundtrack of HCMC:
AIR (moon Safari)
Benjamin Biolay
Kean
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 2
Sociodiversity: 1
Public transport: 1
Creative Index: 2
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
Live Report: midnight "Saigon Saigon Bar" in a rooftop of central HCMC. Salsa, Merengue, Reageton, ChaCha: LIVE and the hot sky of HCMC. Fabulous atmosphere, simulating and, indeed, replacing La Habanna.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
While reviewing the ride from airport yesterday and exploring chaotically the city at later morning today, the first thing, evidently charakteristic for HCMC, is the lack of pedestrians in downtown.
Once someone has claimed, that Los Angeles might have no options for walker because of the lack of public transport and the dominance of intercity motorways and streams. The American and especially the Californian affinity to driving cars, BIG cars, was the second explanation. However, we know that it was never true and that today more than ever LA and California in general is doing more efficient work on transportation infrastructures than a lot of other states in USA. So LA has got pedestrians, I did it many times.
The downtown of HCMC has got, historically developed, well marked pedestrian ways in both side of all streets. You can see hardly someone walking on the space stretching between buildings and streets, let's call them pedestrian ways, which are predominantly ruled by motorcycles. At the afternoon, at the height of rush hour, which lasts from 4PM to 8PM, motorcylist are using pedestrian ways without any problem as a surrogat or alernative. It is alienating, to see how the inherent kinetics of HCMC determine exclusively daily live. Almost nobody is walking in downtown almost everyone is driving a motorcycle, sometimes a car or bycicle, the pedestrian ways are ocupied by parking or moving motorised small vehicles.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
The city is lost, in finit fatality, in her own dynamics.
The pure kinetics is the essential and the only image of HCMC:
describing it, writing it, manipulating it, vanishing it and at the end of the day making it.
While reviewing the ride from airport yesterday and exploring chaotically the city at later morning today, the first thing, evidently charakteristic for HCMC, is the lack of pedestrians in downtown.
Once someone has claimed, that Los Angeles might have no options for walker because of the lack of public transport and the dominance of intercity motorways and streams. The American and especially the Californian affinity to driving cars, BIG cars, was the second explanation. However, we know that it was never true and that today more than ever LA and California in general is doing more efficient work on transportation infrastructures than a lot of other states in USA. So LA has got pedestrians, I did it many times.
The downtown of HCMC has got, historically developed, well marked pedestrian ways in both side of all streets. You can see hardly someone walking on the space stretching between buildings and streets, let's call them pedestrian ways, which are predominantly ruled by motorcycles. At the afternoon, at the height of rush hour, which lasts from 4PM to 8PM, motorcylist are using pedestrian ways without any problem as a surrogat or alernative. It is alienating, to see how the inherent kinetics of HCMC determine exclusively daily live. Almost nobody is walking in downtown almost everyone is driving a motorcycle, sometimes a car or bycicle, the pedestrian ways are ocupied by parking or moving motorised small vehicles.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
The city is lost, in finit fatality, in her own dynamics.
The pure kinetics is the essential and the only image of HCMC:
describing it, writing it, manipulating it, vanishing it and at the end of the day making it.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
The first benefit of hotel's geographic position was, that I could go to hairstylist at 11.55PM, five minutes before midnight, incl. a facial treatment in order to forget the historic day in Kuala Lumpur.
The hotel is in the heart of the most touristic polluted area of the city. I did not notice it, while making the reservation in web. What the hell, I thought.
On the way to the city from airport a sea of motorcycles are surrounding me. In front, back, sideway, and certainly above and beneath the cab, they are indefinite number of cyclists, streaming through the beautiful evening.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
HCMC is pure kinetics.
The first benefit of hotel's geographic position was, that I could go to hairstylist at 11.55PM, five minutes before midnight, incl. a facial treatment in order to forget the historic day in Kuala Lumpur.
The hotel is in the heart of the most touristic polluted area of the city. I did not notice it, while making the reservation in web. What the hell, I thought.
On the way to the city from airport a sea of motorcycles are surrounding me. In front, back, sideway, and certainly above and beneath the cab, they are indefinite number of cyclists, streaming through the beautiful evening.
Ho Chi Minh City @ October 2010
HCMC is pure kinetics.
Kuala Lumpur @ October 2010
Soundtrack of KL:
Bach, cantatas
Cat Power, mixed
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability:3
Sociodiversity: 3
Public transport:4
Creative Index: 3
Kuala Lumpur @ October 2010
Who gets history?
KL during the day is mavellous. A fine, small town, with a clearly defined touristic area, a minor high rail system, and wonderefull hotels and swimming poools.
KL is, succeding the discursive statements of the former state leader Dr Mahatir during 1980/1990th, the prototype for the realisation of the new Asian spirit. Even if he did not use the term "Asianness" explicitly, it was the birth moment of New Asia, including an heavy work on defining new Asian values. In order to fix the idea of the "New", he created, in accordance to the work done in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapor, an savage, unlimited, unbound, dynamic and eclectic system of capitalist economy. He was, obviously, successful.
But what we know really about Asian values?
KL is Petrona Towers. No other architectural landmark in Asia was, at least in last two decades, so consitutive for national confidence. A pair ot two high rise buildings in the middle of the town is the SYMBOL for Kl/ Malayasia. As if they could not create any other monument or real sign than a skyscraper as a confidence building procedure. Anything in the city remembers one on Petrona Towers, their sole existence in real external world seems to disappear in favor of pictures, movies, plastic/ metal / stone based miniatures of them you shall buy everywhere. Petrona Towers are, at some stage, just a clichee. Or a template for fantasies.
Soundtrack of KL:
Bach, cantatas
Cat Power, mixed
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability:3
Sociodiversity: 3
Public transport:4
Creative Index: 3
Kuala Lumpur @ October 2010
Who gets history?
KL during the day is mavellous. A fine, small town, with a clearly defined touristic area, a minor high rail system, and wonderefull hotels and swimming poools.
KL is, succeding the discursive statements of the former state leader Dr Mahatir during 1980/1990th, the prototype for the realisation of the new Asian spirit. Even if he did not use the term "Asianness" explicitly, it was the birth moment of New Asia, including an heavy work on defining new Asian values. In order to fix the idea of the "New", he created, in accordance to the work done in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapor, an savage, unlimited, unbound, dynamic and eclectic system of capitalist economy. He was, obviously, successful.
But what we know really about Asian values?
KL is Petrona Towers. No other architectural landmark in Asia was, at least in last two decades, so consitutive for national confidence. A pair ot two high rise buildings in the middle of the town is the SYMBOL for Kl/ Malayasia. As if they could not create any other monument or real sign than a skyscraper as a confidence building procedure. Anything in the city remembers one on Petrona Towers, their sole existence in real external world seems to disappear in favor of pictures, movies, plastic/ metal / stone based miniatures of them you shall buy everywhere. Petrona Towers are, at some stage, just a clichee. Or a template for fantasies.
Kuala Lumpur @ October 2010
A nice fable for a small tiger
Arriving at the very early morning in KL, the dark heat at 4.40 AM was beating my face. Who the *F.... is flying at midnight above the coast of South Chinese Sea? The smell of petroleum in air, sleepy ghosts on streets and a rail station, which was more an empty temple in a lost and depopulated village, than in THE finance capital of East Asia, as his - former- excellency and my colleague Dr M. Mahatir never stoped to claim Malayasia to be. The holy hall was full of ATMs. But none of these cash mashines accept any Eurpean bank card, around the station is a big constructin site, almost no way out, and no way in. Good morning KL, the city what sleeped very well.
A nice fable for a small tiger
Arriving at the very early morning in KL, the dark heat at 4.40 AM was beating my face. Who the *F.... is flying at midnight above the coast of South Chinese Sea? The smell of petroleum in air, sleepy ghosts on streets and a rail station, which was more an empty temple in a lost and depopulated village, than in THE finance capital of East Asia, as his - former- excellency and my colleague Dr M. Mahatir never stoped to claim Malayasia to be. The holy hall was full of ATMs. But none of these cash mashines accept any Eurpean bank card, around the station is a big constructin site, almost no way out, and no way in. Good morning KL, the city what sleeped very well.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Soundtrack of Shanghai:
Travis
Kean
Radiohead
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 4
Sociodiversity: 2
Public transport: 5
Creative Index: 3
Shanghai @ October 2010
The issue with the verticality
Not just the architectural verticality of the town is, as a matter of fact, Shanhghai's main urbanity marker. But the will to build into the sky in despite of having enough space in horizontal dimension. The ambition for a condensed structure, the affinity for a dense spacial order is the main discursive dispositiv of Shanghai's past and, strongly promoted and argued in last two decades, the today practice of urban planning and project realization.
The claimed "greenness" is clearly a statistical technique, showing the green surfaces of the city more prominent on maps and explicitly in scientific and promotional texts.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Bar Rouge at BUND (number 18) is the hell of a club. A breathtaking, relaxing scenery of urban landscape from the huge balcony. Reflecting itself at Pudong's jungle of skyscrapers, tranquilizing in a flow of lights and games and ads on their facades. It is the name for tension, A superficial tension of lost bodies, a deep tension of found souls. Bar Rouge is long lasting one, the persistence of highly professional madames and highly disoriented messieurs under the pressure of striking beats of the DJ. Everyone wants to give the last thing he/she seems to get: passion, forgiveness, money, high heels, eyes and the self.
In Zeiten des Verrates sind die Landschaften schoen (wie immer HM)
Shanghai @ October 2010
Who was speacking about totalitarianism?
Shanghai @ October 2010
Money is beautiful.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Greed is good.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Das "Unheimliche" and envisioning the possible present
Driving down the motorway from the airport to the downtown of Shanghai, a Chinese "chanson sentimental" on your ears, coming from the car radio, with it accompanying cordially singing driver, it comes to the first dilemma. Where am I arriving? Shanghai, the always-been metropolis of 20th century, an asylum for Europeans, escaping Europe just before the two wars (the very European genocides, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945), this place of the cosmopolitan gangsters and local and international crime heroes, of best of American and European cabaret culture and often visited by Charlie Chaplin? The place of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen in the lovely house in French concession, and the first Chinese communist party founded in the same area 1921? Or the place of opium, prostitution, smuggle, and perverse British officers and noble Men, who actually made and enforce opium trafficking, widespread prostitution and royal - from London- allowed smuggle possible?
However, it could be, while driving the motorway down, in a constant velocity, and listening to the same Chinese "chanson sentimental" in radio, another different place. It could be, that Shanghai is the conglomeration of anything we are able to imagine and fantasize for the term FUTURE. For what reason ever, the top of any high rise building on the way down to the city, and they are many of them on both sides of the motorway, is full of light. They seem to salute visitors and to convince them from the monolith power they radiate, or it is just an action of municipal administration during "Expo 2010", which is occuring right now. Driving down from the two time elevated streets into the city, there is an highly densed accumulation of skyscrapers in any direction and dimension. Anything else is in first instance not visibel. Glimmering high rise builldings determine the picture.
The city is a picture itself. And fresh wind.
Shanghai: The immensity of economic power, the repulsion of any utopia, the density of buildings and houses, the obsession of bodies, and finally, the irreducible convergence of capital, ambitions and fantasy makes Shanghai to a "especial cultural zone". Shanghai is not a lab, as it has been declared Shenzhen to be one, it is just the future of urban option, it is the impossibility, which get NOW possible.
Shanghai has got no references within the framework of urban theoretician machinery, it has even no link to the histories and stories, which we used to read in reportages. It is solely "the making of" the future by means of a auto-referential system of politic codes, juristic contracts, sharp narrative framework, neonlight signs, urbanistic declarations, cash flows and the endless streams of human capital.
It is quite and rainy. The omnipresence of high rise buildings radiates an informal silence. Shanghai at early afternoon is more meditative than rush place. I took the bus from central city, without knowing where it is going. We transpass the inner Circle of districts, reaching some outer areas, where I got off. The town is changing its face while increasing distance from the "center" . It' s getting less dense and more spacious on streets and in-between. I changed the bus after 45 minutes of ride, in order to change the direction within the town. Taking a bus during afternoon in big cities has got two effects: first, coming around in non-planned routes and areas of the town, thus exploring without any guidance; second, a sort of meditation during the ride, which allows me to think and reflect on some issues of daily life at home, good one and not- good one. Anyhow, the meditative effects seem to be superior at same stage.
At the end of Moamin Lu, at the corner to Nanjing Lu in central Shanghai, there is a UniQlo shop, the primarily distinguished Japanese brand of other days, which is now expanding through Asia, especially China, and partly Europe and USA. Known for a laconic and simple statement of garments and products, thus a good address for affordable cloths in good Japanese quality with innovative materials and contemporary design. The presentation, giving in where the main local store happens to be, is a different one: three stores with the complete program, but adapted to Chinese customs and expectations. The German word "Ramsch" ( bargain !?) fits for the most products. Too much of everything, to much of hybrid and mix colors, too much of shining materials, too much of fluffy softy stuff, best placed in flea markets of the city.The specials, designed by Jil Sander for UniQlo are almost neglected.
Shenzhen @ October 2010
Postcommunist Puritanism and Artificial Lives
Coming with the tube from the Hong Kong border, you see nothing from the surface than the clean subway stations. Going upstairs, huge clean shining halls of the station, which is a mall, an hotel, administration and a railway station at same time, why not. Red flags on golden walls and surfaces, men and women in service uniforms opening doors, where am I?
This town, the "retort baby" of former and almost sacrosanct chairman Deng Xiaopeng, represents herself as a perfect geometry. It is the perfect geometry, build by all-China modern time slaves, aka working class, between 1980 and yesterday. He had called them and they came and they have build the holy "New Jack City" out of a minor fisherman' village, which it was till end of 1970ties. Shenzhen is the new place.
Riding a cab on streets of Shenzhen under the mild sun of October, no wind at all, reminds you "the best case scenario" of some artificial cities in USA. The "special economic zone" has been designed for a test procedure of consultant team surrounding the eternal second Chairman Deng Xiaoping. They had the idea of producing a CITY, against the time, which always will be different than expected, and against the space, which was at these times just the absolute emptiness beyond frontiers of Hong Kong in Gunagdong province. The idea implied the production of a CITY against all predictions of history in the West and despite of materialistic historicism of the own party hardliners.
Now, 2010, we have the CITY.
There is a almost weired meta-physical, and hopefully not cultural, connectivity between the Shenzhen, as it is new format of living and it was a concept of political economy of CPC, and re-created holy cities in the USA. Remember Salt Lake City? Or..................
Boulevards of Shenzhen, which are in most cases grand boulevards and not merely streets, are the absolute contrary of those we know from Moscow or New York, they like more Drives of Salt Lake City. While New York was build by indigenous natives with no fear from sky and clouds, in terms of playing at the heights of skyscrapers, and while Moscow was an idea of protection against the cold eastern wind and Tatars, Shenzhen is the CITY as a superficial and gliding program, there is no real code beyond it, no conspiracy, no hope, no enemies, no lovers, no refugees, no heroes, and finally no past. Nobody gave his live for this town ever, nobody has buried deaths and their memories under this earth. It is just a concept. You remember the Mormon program for Salt Lake City, the town build out of Nothingness of the desert and sky and nostalgia. What makes it unique, are lines and geometric forms, which beginn and end in absolute symmetry: pompous, sterile, flawless.
While Salt Lake City, dormant on a salt desert, reinvented Jesus Christ as a copy of Bjorn Borg, and it shines in the clarity and light of the pure believe on him. That makes Salt Lake City to a model of internalisation and of abstraction of believe, the perfect puritan place of salvation: religion as special effects. And Shenzhen, it is the lab of post- communist future phantasmagories, led by communists: flat, clear, unguilty, and NEW. There is No Mao there. His copy, which had certainly trancendet him by terms of Realpolitik, Deng, is standing as a statue alone and proud in a park, with a distance with other requisites of revolution, thus salvation. Shenzhen is a model of externalisation and of deletion of believe, the perfect communist inception of the possibel real: utopia as special effect. There is no past to grief, there is no presence to enjoy, at least for the residents emigrating from all over China. They dream in a not-real- time acceleration of richness, of golden bathrooms, fishes in living room, clean subway and blue sky, who does'nt? In this conglomeration of dreamers and dreams, Shenzhen is well prepared even for "Albträume". Buildings, high as it is possible, are filling the space above the earth smoothly and in a irreversible monotony. Anything out and in them is made out of steel and glas. The very idea of modernity of architecture of last century. In order to make the unavoidable verticality of skyscrpaers bearable they put as much kitsch as doable into the internal surfaces. Big hotels are shining in the the dust of gold, and their lobbies like antique palaces, which never have existed.
Soundtrack of Shanghai:
Travis
Kean
Radiohead
Liveablitity score (worse 1-5 best)
Sustainability: 4
Sociodiversity: 2
Public transport: 5
Creative Index: 3
Shanghai @ October 2010
The issue with the verticality
Not just the architectural verticality of the town is, as a matter of fact, Shanhghai's main urbanity marker. But the will to build into the sky in despite of having enough space in horizontal dimension. The ambition for a condensed structure, the affinity for a dense spacial order is the main discursive dispositiv of Shanghai's past and, strongly promoted and argued in last two decades, the today practice of urban planning and project realization.
The claimed "greenness" is clearly a statistical technique, showing the green surfaces of the city more prominent on maps and explicitly in scientific and promotional texts.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Bar Rouge at BUND (number 18) is the hell of a club. A breathtaking, relaxing scenery of urban landscape from the huge balcony. Reflecting itself at Pudong's jungle of skyscrapers, tranquilizing in a flow of lights and games and ads on their facades. It is the name for tension, A superficial tension of lost bodies, a deep tension of found souls. Bar Rouge is long lasting one, the persistence of highly professional madames and highly disoriented messieurs under the pressure of striking beats of the DJ. Everyone wants to give the last thing he/she seems to get: passion, forgiveness, money, high heels, eyes and the self.
In Zeiten des Verrates sind die Landschaften schoen (wie immer HM)
Shanghai @ October 2010
Who was speacking about totalitarianism?
Shanghai @ October 2010
Money is beautiful.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Greed is good.
Shanghai @ October 2010
Das "Unheimliche" and envisioning the possible present
Driving down the motorway from the airport to the downtown of Shanghai, a Chinese "chanson sentimental" on your ears, coming from the car radio, with it accompanying cordially singing driver, it comes to the first dilemma. Where am I arriving? Shanghai, the always-been metropolis of 20th century, an asylum for Europeans, escaping Europe just before the two wars (the very European genocides, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945), this place of the cosmopolitan gangsters and local and international crime heroes, of best of American and European cabaret culture and often visited by Charlie Chaplin? The place of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen in the lovely house in French concession, and the first Chinese communist party founded in the same area 1921? Or the place of opium, prostitution, smuggle, and perverse British officers and noble Men, who actually made and enforce opium trafficking, widespread prostitution and royal - from London- allowed smuggle possible?
However, it could be, while driving the motorway down, in a constant velocity, and listening to the same Chinese "chanson sentimental" in radio, another different place. It could be, that Shanghai is the conglomeration of anything we are able to imagine and fantasize for the term FUTURE. For what reason ever, the top of any high rise building on the way down to the city, and they are many of them on both sides of the motorway, is full of light. They seem to salute visitors and to convince them from the monolith power they radiate, or it is just an action of municipal administration during "Expo 2010", which is occuring right now. Driving down from the two time elevated streets into the city, there is an highly densed accumulation of skyscrapers in any direction and dimension. Anything else is in first instance not visibel. Glimmering high rise builldings determine the picture.
The city is a picture itself. And fresh wind.
Shanghai: The immensity of economic power, the repulsion of any utopia, the density of buildings and houses, the obsession of bodies, and finally, the irreducible convergence of capital, ambitions and fantasy makes Shanghai to a "especial cultural zone". Shanghai is not a lab, as it has been declared Shenzhen to be one, it is just the future of urban option, it is the impossibility, which get NOW possible.
Shanghai has got no references within the framework of urban theoretician machinery, it has even no link to the histories and stories, which we used to read in reportages. It is solely "the making of" the future by means of a auto-referential system of politic codes, juristic contracts, sharp narrative framework, neonlight signs, urbanistic declarations, cash flows and the endless streams of human capital.
It is quite and rainy. The omnipresence of high rise buildings radiates an informal silence. Shanghai at early afternoon is more meditative than rush place. I took the bus from central city, without knowing where it is going. We transpass the inner Circle of districts, reaching some outer areas, where I got off. The town is changing its face while increasing distance from the "center" . It' s getting less dense and more spacious on streets and in-between. I changed the bus after 45 minutes of ride, in order to change the direction within the town. Taking a bus during afternoon in big cities has got two effects: first, coming around in non-planned routes and areas of the town, thus exploring without any guidance; second, a sort of meditation during the ride, which allows me to think and reflect on some issues of daily life at home, good one and not- good one. Anyhow, the meditative effects seem to be superior at same stage.
At the end of Moamin Lu, at the corner to Nanjing Lu in central Shanghai, there is a UniQlo shop, the primarily distinguished Japanese brand of other days, which is now expanding through Asia, especially China, and partly Europe and USA. Known for a laconic and simple statement of garments and products, thus a good address for affordable cloths in good Japanese quality with innovative materials and contemporary design. The presentation, giving in where the main local store happens to be, is a different one: three stores with the complete program, but adapted to Chinese customs and expectations. The German word "Ramsch" ( bargain !?) fits for the most products. Too much of everything, to much of hybrid and mix colors, too much of shining materials, too much of fluffy softy stuff, best placed in flea markets of the city.The specials, designed by Jil Sander for UniQlo are almost neglected.
Shenzhen @ October 2010
Postcommunist Puritanism and Artificial Lives
Coming with the tube from the Hong Kong border, you see nothing from the surface than the clean subway stations. Going upstairs, huge clean shining halls of the station, which is a mall, an hotel, administration and a railway station at same time, why not. Red flags on golden walls and surfaces, men and women in service uniforms opening doors, where am I?
This town, the "retort baby" of former and almost sacrosanct chairman Deng Xiaopeng, represents herself as a perfect geometry. It is the perfect geometry, build by all-China modern time slaves, aka working class, between 1980 and yesterday. He had called them and they came and they have build the holy "New Jack City" out of a minor fisherman' village, which it was till end of 1970ties. Shenzhen is the new place.
Riding a cab on streets of Shenzhen under the mild sun of October, no wind at all, reminds you "the best case scenario" of some artificial cities in USA. The "special economic zone" has been designed for a test procedure of consultant team surrounding the eternal second Chairman Deng Xiaoping. They had the idea of producing a CITY, against the time, which always will be different than expected, and against the space, which was at these times just the absolute emptiness beyond frontiers of Hong Kong in Gunagdong province. The idea implied the production of a CITY against all predictions of history in the West and despite of materialistic historicism of the own party hardliners.
Now, 2010, we have the CITY.
There is a almost weired meta-physical, and hopefully not cultural, connectivity between the Shenzhen, as it is new format of living and it was a concept of political economy of CPC, and re-created holy cities in the USA. Remember Salt Lake City? Or..................
Boulevards of Shenzhen, which are in most cases grand boulevards and not merely streets, are the absolute contrary of those we know from Moscow or New York, they like more Drives of Salt Lake City. While New York was build by indigenous natives with no fear from sky and clouds, in terms of playing at the heights of skyscrapers, and while Moscow was an idea of protection against the cold eastern wind and Tatars, Shenzhen is the CITY as a superficial and gliding program, there is no real code beyond it, no conspiracy, no hope, no enemies, no lovers, no refugees, no heroes, and finally no past. Nobody gave his live for this town ever, nobody has buried deaths and their memories under this earth. It is just a concept. You remember the Mormon program for Salt Lake City, the town build out of Nothingness of the desert and sky and nostalgia. What makes it unique, are lines and geometric forms, which beginn and end in absolute symmetry: pompous, sterile, flawless.
While Salt Lake City, dormant on a salt desert, reinvented Jesus Christ as a copy of Bjorn Borg, and it shines in the clarity and light of the pure believe on him. That makes Salt Lake City to a model of internalisation and of abstraction of believe, the perfect puritan place of salvation: religion as special effects. And Shenzhen, it is the lab of post- communist future phantasmagories, led by communists: flat, clear, unguilty, and NEW. There is No Mao there. His copy, which had certainly trancendet him by terms of Realpolitik, Deng, is standing as a statue alone and proud in a park, with a distance with other requisites of revolution, thus salvation. Shenzhen is a model of externalisation and of deletion of believe, the perfect communist inception of the possibel real: utopia as special effect. There is no past to grief, there is no presence to enjoy, at least for the residents emigrating from all over China. They dream in a not-real- time acceleration of richness, of golden bathrooms, fishes in living room, clean subway and blue sky, who does'nt? In this conglomeration of dreamers and dreams, Shenzhen is well prepared even for "Albträume". Buildings, high as it is possible, are filling the space above the earth smoothly and in a irreversible monotony. Anything out and in them is made out of steel and glas. The very idea of modernity of architecture of last century. In order to make the unavoidable verticality of skyscrpaers bearable they put as much kitsch as doable into the internal surfaces. Big hotels are shining in the the dust of gold, and their lobbies like antique palaces, which never have existed.
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