Hey that's my block!

holistic jane

sincere combo #2

sincere combination #1

AYURVEDA + NEIGHBORHOOD

AGAINST MAPS tries to understand the forces at work in urban space by abandoning the whole of the city to study the separate interlocking parts. A map assumes authority through the implied power of its maker's perspective. To see an area from above, as in a map, is not to participate in it. The goal of being AGAINST MAPS is to stay close enough to the ground to rearrange the rocks and to hide stuff in the cracks of the sidewalk. Maps systematically abstract space in order to narrate the details of a place. This science of abstraction assumes the semi-permanence of details and the value of networking them. To be AGAINST MAPS is to monitor the functionality of buildings and space by and for people that use them. To become AGAINST MAPS begins by noticing how things are going where you live.

AGAINST MAPS IS A METHOD created to evaluate the effectiveness of space for people in a particular community. This method involves analysis of a distinct area in a temporary time frame, so as to develop site specific questions that will lead to an appreciation for the many detailed and organic individual parts that compose the whole. Following the analysis of a space, AGAINST MAPS does not attempt to create permanent structures. It is more interested in adding, subtracting or changing subtle ephemeral elements that impact the ambience of a place. By focusing on unique details and independent experience, a community can be developed and maintained from within.

SITE = NEIGHBORHOOD Each neighborhood is a local community with unique characteristics made out of many different levels of activity, physical systems, and structures of varying permanence. In order to thoroughly examine and understand one place and its residents, I will focus attention on one block in Toronto for one week.


NEIGHBORHOOD = BODY As I examine the intricacies of the block I will define it as a social body and compare its functions to that of a human's. I will monitor the internal systems of maintenance and preservation as well as the impact of outside forces on the place and the people in the neighborhood. The neighborhood's human likeness depends upon necessary and constant evolution, as it is a container for many infinitely unique and changing humans. A system of evaluation must therefore be constantly adapted to analyze the health of the communal body. Commonly the well-being of a neighborhood is considered only when problems in that neighborhood demand the attention of outside authorities. Health of cities is primarily observed during situations of crisis instead of a constant and gradual pursuit of comprehensive health. Disasters, crime and poverty are likely dealt with by a government that descends upon the neighborhood. Generalizations based on these difficulties begin a cycle of knee-jerk attempts to isolate and fix singular problems instead of treating a city or a neighborhood holistically. This process reflects western medicine's lack of concern for prevention, a lack that leads to generic prognosis and a sterile system of treatment. This practice of reaction instead of prevention disconnects each natural system and organ from all the others. Problems such as crime or poverty, a disease within this metaphor, are related to a fault in the larger underlying structure and can be treated as a sign of a greater imbalance. When disease is understood as a call to explore the whole system, a higher level of wellness can be achieved.

AYURVEDA is an ancient Indian form of holistic medicine. It is a practice that incorporates all aspects of human health and well being. The eight arms of Ayurveda include internal medicine, surgery, ears, eyes, nose and throat, pediatrics, toxicology, purification of the genetic organs, health and longevity, and spiritual healing. The basic procedure of analysis of a body is similar to western medicine or city planning. Three vedic barometers of diagnosis are used: see and observe, touch, and inquire by asking questions. These meters determine the dosha, or psychological/ physical type, with particular strengths and susceptibilities based on the characteristics of universal elements: space, air, fire, water, earth. In Ayurveda, problems occur because of an imbalance in the doshas. A person is born with a unique combination of elements and as they mature, the balance shifts due to their situation and experience. This shift can cause an unhealthy imbalance, and it is the goal of Ayurveda to bring the individual back to his or her original combination of elements. Consistent attention to this balance in each of the eight aspects of an individual's health alleviates the need for medicine as a response to malady and increases the ability of a person to achieve a constant state of health.

AYURVEDA + NEIGHBORHOOD The relationship between Ayurveda and a neighborhood starts with the observation and analysis of the function of the space on the block in an unsystematic way, through sensitive observation and detailed analysis. After seeing the block first-hand, I will consult with a Vaidya to determine the dosha of the block. Based on the constitution of the neighborhood we will devise a week long program of actions and installations within the block that will encourage rebalancing or maintenance.

Bed Stuy blooms in Spring

Thank god I survived that rough long winter. NOT.
But either way, I am ready for Bed-Stuy summer. Questionable papaya, coconut water, the island that is my roof, the surround sound effect that occurs on my block when everyone blasts HOT97 from their car stereos all at once. To celebrate, I bought new shoes at Payless and fed the compost pile while wearing the new shoes. During my hour lunch excursion to Payless, I met about 5 women from the neighborhood who were shopping for their 8-11 year old girls who, they complained, wore much larger shoes than I. Size 8! 9! 10! The general consensus is that after my generation they started putting something in the water, something in the food. 'These poor kids, the young ones are huge and the old ones never mature" -- quite a natural phenomenon! I was part of the 'old' category who never matures. Who knew?! I had a great time at Payless today, and I would like to thank the knowledgeable salespeople and fellow shoppers for helping me to select the best shoes for my feet.
So as per last spring, it is back to the garden of the fire escape and the transit authority of my bike.

"natural state" at the Heritage School

Students in Government class in their senior year of high school at Heritage in Harlem are eager to participate in a play about the social contract. Why is this subject interesting to a kid from Harlem who is about to bust out of the nyc education machine? The hook could be tacit consent. That theory, written by Locke, focused on the benefits that we accept from a source creating a relationship based on constant reciprocation. Whether we choose the benefits or not, when we are granted something, do we owe something of equivalent value to pay for what we have received? Perhaps that is a good question to ask. I can see how the attitudes of an individual about this might be linked to their generation and cultural heritage as well as every other factor.
A social contract is silent and understood in most cases. And different contexts, social atmospheres, and time connotes different readings of the same invisible rules. A sense of national pride might not translate to the same cycle of benefit and service on an interpersonal level or vice versa.
Leaving the educational system with or without an education (these kids have been awarded an honest education from Heritage), some growing up with State 'benefits' to supplement their family's basic needs, or at least being surrounded by the monuments to governmental benefits all up and down 106th st could/should have induced some strong feelings for or against the 'generosities' of the state and nation. Do they feel like they owe anybody anything? I don't feel like I owe anything for my free public education.

Politics of Vacant Land in LES

Yesterday CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy), led by Damon Rich gave a tour of the area known as SPURA or Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

We viewed Seward Park, the big brown bears of coop housing that line the east river, and the vacant parking lots that hug the South side of Delancey on the east side. How could you forget the wire fences with the tarps draped over them that say "Can you read this? Others can too! Advertise here!" as well as the treacherous moonlike ground cover- a mix of construction leftovers and the unwanted beverage containers from the cars going to Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge. Maybe you've considered throwing something at this area as well when you're riding your bike onto the bridge, jumping the curb of the ridiculously inconvenient median that serves as a ramp up onto the bridge, also known as an obstacle course or death trap. The photo on the left is of a woman (THE WOMAN) who has lived in this neighborhood for 63 years, since she was 20 (I don't have her name because my handwriting got too messy by the last part of our walk). In lavender from head to toe, she passionately defends the LES in all its diversity as well as for its baked goods and its opportunities for working class living. I wonder if her kids know what a nearly extinct breed of revolutionary she is.
We were almost able to go up inside one of the coop buildings, which would have been cool. I had totally misunderstood these buildings, and I offer my apologies. They look like an army of evil bears from my ride on the bridges and from above the island they are so stark and, brown. I didn't realize the concentration of parks and culture that has evolved around and because of them. Of course there are the stories of tenements being leveled and people being displaced by less than generous private companies, but the people we met on the street were happy to show off their affordable NY residences. Yes, the idea of the buildings is frighteningly close to a Le Corbusier insular brutal-box of city with its own commercial, spiritual, health and recreational institutions, but this version worked. They have a strip mall of bakeries and several synagogues and shoe repair stores. It is the real old New York that me and my contemporaries 'missed', but the fact is that I didn't recognize it for the two point something years I have been in NY.
Keeping with the high threshold for acronyms that any government agency maintains, a new and novel one (for me) is what some of the coops have been titled: NORC = Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Aka old people are holding tight to their affordable soon to be priceless apartments. And so the neighborhood caters to them. It's quiet. Each coop has a mural in the foyer
by Hugo Gellert of important socialist visionaries (and Einstein). Prices for big apartments seem to be in the half a million dollar range, insanely inexpensive for Manhattan, and the LES seems to be a hotbed for a continued battle for affordable housing while it isn't even a conversation piece in most other parts of Manhattan.
The final moment of the walk'n'talk was standing in the vacant lots on Delancey with no particular destiny. The conclusion for the area seems to be a constant borrowing of space. The LES is a visual battlefield where the dialogue between old and new, wealthy and working has overwhelmed a lot of landscape in proportion to the relatively small island. Luckily they still have a couple ladies in lavender who are old-fashioned-fearless.

Vanauley St., Toronto

FROM THE RAP DICTIONARY
PROJECT ORIGINALS: A violent Bloods set hailing from the Vanauley Walk complex in Alexandra Park; a Co-op housing community in downtown Toronto, Canada. The P.O. Boys, as they're referred to, are said to be major players in the crack/cocaine trade in the downtown area, but are also known to be involved in break-n-enters, robberies, theft, fraud, extortion and juvenile prostitution. It is believed that this gang has been in existance since the mid 80's and are in their third generation of gang bangers. Traditionally, their enemies include street gangs from the Regent Park area, who have been so since the 80's. What sparked the conflict between the two groups, and continues to cause tention to this day, is unknown. The Project Originals have clashed with gangs from Parkdale as well as Regent Park, and are known to have ties with known gang members from the Esplanade area.

So, Vanauley St. above Queens St. is the block where I will work on my Ayurvedic Urban Planning Project. You can see it here. A stream of images, photographed by Jim Ruxton at Subtle Technologies are available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilarchitexture/
Here is a "blog devoted to examining how immigration and multiculturalism are changing Toronto and Canada": http://hogtownfront.blogspot.com/search/label/Vanauley%20Walk
Le Corbusier Strikes Again!: This image is of Vanauley Walk, swiped from a website: Master builders
meet citizen activists
where we are reminded that:
"The harmonious city must first be planned by experts who understand the science of urbanism. They must work out their plans in total freedom from partisan pressures and special interests; once their plans are formulated, they must be implemented without opposition."
Plans to "blow my little system to smithereens," she wrote, "make my blood boil slightly." It seems in and around 1964 the major redevelopment of downtown Toronto 'slums' took place around Alexander Park.

you can eat dinner with my art in amherst, mass

we've been here a long time, we cannot abandon it

THE REALIZATION OF SELF THROUGH ARCHITECTURE: So anyone starting out that morning in search of princesses to save, Holy Grails to quest for new countries to be discovered, souls to save, lands to conquer, or lost paradises... to all those who leaving the comfort of daily routine, were searching for themselves through the magical and heroic acts of creation, architecture appeared unexpectedly, after the first bend in the path.
It loomed enormous and immobile, full of years of glory, of dreamt-of perfection, of marble and chrome, of polarized glass, of corner stones, of dried mud.
It consisted of innumerable geometric forms, as in an infinite polyhedron, out of which grew organic excrescencies, tensile structures and pneumatic appendices. Innumerable libraries were contained within its body, and the golden mean and divine proportion were not sufficient to describe it. This was the great animal and the mirror which hunters had created and followed after for as long as memory could tell. It was said that whoever ate of it would become immortal. It was also said that only from the mystical union of the subject with his representation could the existence of the subject himself derive. There was therefore dramatic problem of self realization, since the hunter had to create the beast in his image and likeness (the mirror) in order to recognize himself therein, and on the other hand, it was diccicult to create an image of oneself wihtout a mirror. Several other efforts had been made in the past, through mean statistics and the trial and error system. Naturally, all the creators of the creature had died, leaving erronecous descriptions of the creative process, as an ultimate mystification, in order to render the way more difficult for the other hunters...
-Superstudio

Chris

He is living a music video.

3rd St., Gowanus