Exploring NYC through 26 words
All the hoping and praying
all this city
ever did was
crawl
like a tot to a tit
trying to squeeze milk, milk
and more milk
from her blemished breast.
The harbors’ mother
tarnished to reptilian green
slowly bows to the burden
shows her chameleon skin
and crawls slow
into deeper waters
leaving her pedestal, cloak
and pointed coronet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKoKf0dCreI See Bill Brand’s phenomenal moving image subway art as a brillant FOUDROYANT New York City experience.
“A Thousand Eyes” was created in conjunction with the Abecedarium: NYC project through the New York Public Library.
Of the 26 words I chose BIBLIOMANCY. My initial attraction to the word bibliomancy derives from my fascination with the absurd. I sometimes find that the most complex implications can be gleaned from absurdist expression in any form. Be it through performance, human interaction, film, literature, art, etc… Bibliomancy is the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers using a book, sometimes a bible or other sacred text is used. The book will be opened at a random page and while keeping your eyes closed you will point at a line or passage in the book. My passage was selected from Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Siddhartha is one of my favorite books sitting on the shelf and also one that has had a significant impact on my attitude towards existence. Thus, I deemed it significant enough in my life to warrant such a divination. The inspiration for the film was the following passage:
PAGE 64
“Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. Bright pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it. With a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones. How did he love this water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! In his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many other things, many secrets, all secrets.”
I really wanted to represent my own view of New York through a lens. So I went out to the Brooklyn Bridge with my camera and shot this footage. “A Thousand Eyes” is essentially my own exploration of the possibilities of the apparatus of the cinema. I really wanted to exploit the camera and force it to do the opposite of what is expected. The result: Beauty.
It was edited to my own mix of hauntingly beautiful and reminiscent sounds from the Epson Stylus 600 printer, as recorded originally by melack from The Free Sound Project Organization.
blah.
Ryan P. Nethery
2009
PLEASE WATCH IN HD at: “A THOUSAND EYES” by Ryan P. Nethery
This was inspired by Hollis Frampton’s film (nostalgia), though much simpler. When I thought about what New York means to me, I thought about all of the rooms I have inhabited over the past three years, spaces which have meant the most to me, regardless of the experiences I’ve had there. Being somewhat reclusive, I develop relationships with rooms which are often more emotionally gratifying than the superficial (or should I say “exterior”) relationships with people. I have moved many times since the age of 11, have had several rooms, all with their own personalities and energy. As you might gather from the film, I feel very ambivalent about some of them (#1), very negative about others (#2), and very comforted by the place I live now.
Like Frampton, I am, in a sense, burning all of my old memories of these rooms by revisting them, perhaps for the last time, and thus getting a kind of closure. Maybe this kind of psychological closure is the only physical way to find true comfort within a space– in retrospect once you’ve left and moved on. As far as inquiline goes, all of my rooms, especially in New York, have felt temporary because there is a constant knowledge that I will be moving on soon. I become bored and agitated with rooms, and eventually we have to break-up and I have to start fresh. There is little I like more than moving and re-nesting. In many ways, I have always felt like there is a symbiotic relationship between me and rooms: the rooms must have an occupant to become a living space, and I must have a room in order to live myself.
I wanted to film this and comment on it from a very detached place, because some of these rooms no longer belong to me. I felt rather voyeuristic filming them, capturing them like they once captured me. It’s interesting to be on the exterior side looking into places where I once existed in the ultimate interiority, looking out.I eliminated the sound of the street for two reasons: 1) the silence, or static, in between vocalizations feels more appropriate in terms of detachment; the sounds of the street felt too present and lively. 2) not only is the static/voice over combination recorded sound, the combination has a rather radiophonic quality, and effect I wanted to create, as this is representative of a kind of disembodiement, an acousmetric voice, in this case belonging to the images of the apartments rather than to a person. The static is literally a kind of “dead air”.Gregory Whitehead, a radio artist, has a fantastic quote, which I think can relate to this film:
“When I turn my radio on, I hear a whole chorus of death rattles; […] from voices that have been severed from the body for so long that no one can remember who they belong to, or whether they belong to anybody at all”
My body has been “severed” from these rooms for so long that they no longer belong to me, and my voice’s disembodied quality inexorably belonging to the voice-over, which in this case represents a body, which once belonged to these rooms, but now only exists as a detached voice which only exists in the dead air of the static. I will end this section with a quote by Alexandra L.M. Keller on white noise (this kind of static) and how what it contains is the interminablevoices of the dead:
“When they [the dead] come back to haunt us, they are unloading all of those afterthoughts that have accumulated in the afterworld”.
I, dead to these rooms, revisited them, and now in my film I am speaking the words to them that I’ve been able to vocalize in retrospect, in the “afterworld” of moving on.
This piece was originally a text which I modified to better fit vocalization (although I really dislike the sound of my voice, as it feels alienated from me, as it should being “disembodied” and all).
It can be viewed here: http://hroivas.blogspot.com/2008/12/night-room.html
The structure of the Coney Island Parachute Jump—planted in Queens in 1939, and repotted in Brooklyn 2 years later—has caught my eye with curiosity many a time. Yes, it evokes to some extend the Eiffel Tower, more for its metal rete than shape.
I could imagine this elongated mushroom be created by Buckminster Fuller as the beginnings of a geodesic weeping willow, designed to build the dome from within. Construction was halted at the discovery of this umbel extraordinaire. “Flowers!” begged the World’s Fair world, “Give it flowers for crying out loud!” And so they crafted flowers: humans in gondolas as peduncles growing the rachides holding the parachute as an inflorescence. Twelve inflorescent flowers pulled from Brooklyn’s soil in a 21-second journey to complete the Jump’s own inflorescence for mere moments prior to being wilted down in a 9-second drop of blossoming thrill… How I wish I’d lived here before 1968, the year the Jump flowered last. Yet, what foudroyant joy that Leni Schwendinger almost 40 years later pumped new life into the culminant carrot crown of Brooklyn, with her incandescent artistry. Gustave and Bucky would approve.
For anyone interested in above, or below ground NYC history, Forgotten NY is an absolute treasure. Curious what your neighborhood looked like 100 years ago? Find detailed street necrology and photo galleries for neighborhoods from Greenwich Village to Astoria. Whether you live in Bushwick or Jamaica, St.George or the Lower East Side, this trove of original source documents will keep you occupied for hours. Want to get even closer to NYC history? Take a Forgotten NY walking tour anywhere from Prospect Park to Hell’s Kitchen.
Happy exploring!
A great tool to find and contribute NYC cultural destinations. Add your own local favorite or explore other ‘hoods with WNYC Soundcheck’s Noteworthy New York.
imagine a world in which your eyes are so sensitive to light that blinking refers to the moments during which your eyes actually open – sporadically and involuntarily. this inverse blinking offers just enough visual information for you to orient yourself before being plunged back into darkness.
this isn’t a world devoid of light.
and it isn’t blindness.
it is neither a place nor a condition with the calm and predictability to allow for adaptation.
for that, it is too interrupted, too jarring.
this world is a tease, offering you treasures only to withdraw them as you reach out your hand. repeatedly. thousands of times each day.
you are left, then, living out your life with a looming sense of uncertainty, instability and of things beyond your grasp and outside of your control.
in a disorienting world of inverse blinking, some of us respond by essentially blocking out all glimpses of what lies beyond our eyelids. we take in only what we need to keep our balance, to avoid tripping over chairs or burning our hands on an open flame.
others of us fill in the blanks, connect the dots. we take what we see in those momentary slivers of sight and build upon it. we extend a line or color in a corner of fabric. we assemble our own narrative, hoping and sometimes believing that it actually corresponds to that which we cannot fully see.