Functionality Over Taste

This weekend, I attended a conference with a group called InterVarsity, which took place in enemy territory. That’s right, I went to East Lansing, home of MSU. Besides the fact that I was unable to wear anything from the maize side of my closet and I saw a LOT of green, I noticed a few things about the hotel I stayed in.

Pointed out to me by my (new) friend Mary, art student extraordinaire, the conference center and hotel was beautiful. From the way the sinks were designed, to the calming waterfall welcoming guests into what will hopefully be a home away from home, the layout was appealing, stylish, and modern. I noticed small touches, such as the way the comfortable chairs were placed near large windows, were the sunlight could filter in and provide a pleasant atmosphere when having a chat with friends. I enjoyed the placement of a revolving door, optional next to the regular door yet still an instillation that made the institution feel like a hotel. Yes, as Mary said, the architecture was great.

So that makes it artful, right?

When going to wash my hands, I had no idea where to place the complimentary bar of soap. When I found it could be tucked between the faucet handle and the raised edge of the sink, I felt proud…until it slipped of back into the sink.

Put on, slip off.

Put on, slip off.

The fountain, while gorgeous, spanned two stories. The water fell from the main lobby into the garage floor, into a pool with…what kind of sculpture? Really, what is that supposed to be? Did they actually pay money for that?

And why in the world would I want to look at a bale of hay right before I’m supposed to slip into pleasant dreams filled with friendship, laughter and rainbows? Hay is not particularly calming to me. In fact, I really don’t like hay (too many encounters on Rodeo Day. This is what I get for growing up in Texas).

All of these things culminated into a single question that both my friend Mary and another friend of mine Dean posed: Does art HAVE to have a reason?

In this case, I would solidly argue with yes, since a hotel is primarily functional rather than artful. I’m not sure if I necessarily agree all the time, but every time I’ve encountered art, either in audio or visual form, it’s made a clear statement. Deep? Maybe not. But a clear idea, theme, statement, whatever you have it? Yeah.

So I’m not sure what statement the bale of hay was trying to make. But hopefully, it was making a statement, and I just happened to miss it.

Zhan Wang: “My Personal Universe”

My Personal Universe, Zhan Wang
My Personal Universe, Zhan Wang

If you could have a superpower, what would it be? For me, I always wish to be able to stop time, when all my surroundings would freeze and only I could move. And this wish periodically gets stronger when it is the last minute before my exams or before due dates of my papers. Just kidding. Nonetheless, freezing time is definitely a cool superpower to have. As you can expect, just like my other childhood fantasies, the existence of superpowers also got denied by my science teachers back in primary school as I grew. However, an exhibition that I saw in 2012 by the Chinese sculptor, Zhan Wang, made my wish come true by showing the freezing moment of the explosion of a rock.

The exhibition was called “My Personal Universe” and it was held in Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. When I entered the gallery, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by floating and shimmering rock fragments, which were hung from invisible wires. On the ceiling, the ground, and the four walls in the gallery, there were six large screens showing video-clips of the explosion from six different angles. I felt like entering a space where time stopped; however, the videos continuously played in super-slow-motion on the screens kept me aware of what was happening around me.

According to the artist, by suspending rock fragments throughout the gallery, he was trying to recreate the birth of the universe. The explosion reminds people of the big bang theory. To do this, the artist did record the explosion of a boulder on-site from multiple angles. After that, he brought all the fragments back to his studio and made stainless steel replicas of these fragments. He installed these replicas in the gallery in a way that each fragments moved along its own trajectory, and finally formed this fascinating scene of the explosion.

I was amazed by the idea of recreating the start of the universe, and the beauty of the destruction itself. I felt as if I was experiencing the explosion, and I could imagine the tension between all the rock fragments and me. They were moving toward me. They were about to smash my face. However they stopped before they got too close, leaving me standing in the middle of the rocks adrift in the space and marveling at the beauty of this apocalyptic moment.

Interview with a Southerner: Oak Alley Plantation

For Fall Break I went on an amazing (and delicious) mini-vacation with my mom to help celebrate her fiftieth birthday in New Orleans.  Both of us are huge francophiles and relished every French detail that we took in during our stay.

On the Saturday of our trip we ventured out of the city to Oak Alley Plantation, a gorgeous estate that was built to do exactly what it did to us.  It was built by a man to lure his wife away from the thrills of New Orleans.  The guide said the wife was not impressed though my mom and I could barely keep our mouths closed as we walked wide-eyed through every hall and corridor, including the super famous alley of 28 oaks (all of which are 300 years old, which is roughly middle age in oak years).

Oak Alley was built between 1837-1839, as a typical Greek Revival antebellum-era plantation complete with massive doric columns, high ceilings, and stark white chunky crown molding around the edge of the ceilings.

This picture doesn’t do it justice.  In terms of scale, it is the opposite of the ramshackle homes that are still being revived in New Orleans.  The wrap-around second floor porch alone could fit several one-room homes around it.

We also toured their slave quarters where the names of all the Oak Alley slaves were posted on the wall, along with clothes, cooking utensils, and shackles.

Slave quarters are always unsettling to me, especially in light of the fact that 50 feet away lies an entirely different world.  I always feel guilty walking through these things.  Like I need to apologize to someone or donate some of my things to make a better life for someone.  However, it made me glad that they had taken the time to preserve the details about the lives of the people who built Oak Alley and not just those who enjoyed its delicacies.

After the slave quarters, we toured the house, which was magnificent and beautiful with its interior Greek revival style.

This was my favorite room because of the blue and green that seemed to bring nature inside.  I also loved the heavy, sweeping effect of the drapery around the beds and windows.  After learning about the history of the family, involving sickness, death, and amputations, I saw these rooms as more than paint and fabric.

Our guide that day was an amputee.  She later told us that she lost her right arm from the elbow down in a car accident twelve years ago.  But that wasn’t the first thing I noticed about her.  The first thing I noticed was that she was warm and lovely and seemed completely at ease. She had the brightest smile with a prominent gap in her two front teeth and the blackest hair that was elegantly pulled back into an intricate bun.  And she knew a lot about the family history of Oak Alley.

For one, after the Civil War, the plantation was economically not sustainable.  This did not surprise me at all. The sheer magnitude of the 25 acre plantation and the ‘big house’ as it was called could not be sustained by anything besides free labor.  In 1866 it was sold for $32,800.

The house was not restored until 1922, but when it was, a trust was established so that more renovations and also archeological work could be done.  Air conditioning, electricity, and other ‘modern comforts’ were added without changing any of the aesthetics of the house.

When our tour was done, my mom and I decided that we are glad to be out of the era of slave labor, but were grateful to take part in the preservation of architectural styles and human stories, both those of the plantation owners and the slaves.  If you get a chance to ever go, I highly recommend it!

Opposites Attract

Everywhere I turn I see myself. Well, not exactly. The popularity of reflection/illusion/kaleidoscope photography has been more prevalent than ever. The symmetry, the identical composition, the  trippy shapes are all interesting factors that play into the attraction that is literally of opposites. Professionally this artistic style of enhancing images has added interest in the photograph. From the aspect of fashion photography and selling garments, this double-view is a cheap way to market clothes more than once.  The image below caught my attention because of the way the center of the image branched off to the left and the right, creating this butterfly-woman rocking a white, lace jumpsuit. I’m a closet fashion photography lover (well not really you can catch me in Barnes and Nobles devouring a Vogue any day), and what I’ve noticed throughout time is the standardized composition and atmosphere coming from fashion photography (not including certain amazing photographers). I believe this resurgence of photo-editing and the illusion photography is a great way for these images to add interest and more sales.

trendland.com

I’ve also come across the everyday use of reflection in photography. The photo-editing applications for smartphones has made it so easy and fun to make reflective images of your personal photographs. In the everyday market, this style of doubling your own images puts you at a different level than other images. From Instagram, to Tumblr, to Pinterest, the sharing of images is all about their popularity. Who has the cooler shot?  Who can get the most likes? This mindset brings people to want to download apps like that of reflection photography, so we have something new and unique to present to the people we know.

Thisiscolossal.com

 

“No Harmonies Just Synonyms”

Quick, witty, substantive and modest, Noname Gypsy is perhaps Save Money’s most promising, best-kept secret. Fatimah Warner (who goes by the stage name Noname) came out of the same music scene as Chance, Vic Mensa and Milo & Otis, performing at the same YouMedia workshops. However, and there’s no other way to exactly put this, even amongst such a talented group of friends, Noname is unique. As a female emcee, she is already a rarity in Hip Hop, but her uniqueness stems from more than just that. Noname’s music is teeming with pointed social commentary and satire. What’s more, she uses one of the most extensive vocabularies I’ve ever heard from a rapper, and this diction expresses her sentiment. Pioneering her own blend between singing and rapping, Noname will surely be known in the future for her sharp, borderline nasally tone that delivers such rapid and concise wordplay.

The best way to show her talent is by examining one of her tracks, of which there is only a handful. The song “Sunday Morning” starts off with the pair of lines: “All my raps whisper unintelligence/ Unrelenting irrelevance chiseled in the sediment.” Her ability to use so much assonance and alliteration in such a condensed space is impressive and unmatched by many professional rappers. Noname’s music has meaning, it has purpose and it has drive, and communicates through aesthetically pleasing rhymes. The verse continues with her alacrity for explicit social commentary: “What’s that? A massacre/ A mass appeal to apple stores and raffle scores/ I wonder who gon’ win the lottery/ If Google maps can see my house I wonder who is watchin’ me/ Satellite hypocrisy, like right up the block from me.” In just a few lines, Noname calls out large corporations, the government and the technology generation, and does so with rhythm and flair. She then moves into her most loaded critique: “Right up the doctor fees/ Another brown boy down/ Another mother crying cause another brown boy found/ And all you wanna do is smoke weed and write songs.” Noname, like Chance, exhibits tremendous maturity and skill by using her art form to not only illustrate the problems around her, but also explain how her peers react to them. She finishes this already stellar verse with a final statement: “Bang Bang sound like violins/ Poverty was made to door frame all the violence/ Knock knock and guess who’s not there- The Police/ And guess who don’t care- The people.”

Despite her mastery, Noname is still an amateur. She is yet to come out with a mixtape, and has been soliciting donations on her twitter account so she can have the funds to finish her first project. Her feature verse on Chance The Rapper’s song “Lost” has significantly helped her raise an initial fan base, but she is still very much out of the spotlight. It’s been far too long since we’ve had a prominent, noteworthy female emcee though, and my guess is that Noname will fill that void. If you’re interested in independent, conscience, meaningful music with a simple and pleasant sound, Noname Gypsy is your answer.

Noname’s “Paradise”

Mark Binelli On Detroit: The Symbol, The City, the Place To Be

Mark Binelli recently published the acclaimed book about Detroit, “Detroit City is the Place to Be,” and on Thursday he came to the University of Michigan, his undergrad alma-mater, to promote the book. That morning I was unexpectedly invited (by an old GSI and friend) to have lunch with him and two other students in the Dana Building. I knew Binelli’s name but little else, and so I spent my time between classes reading up on him – Binelli had grown up in a blue-collar suburb in Detroit, and gone on to write for Rolling Stone, later publishing the historical novel “Sacco and Vinzetti Must Die,” a take on the controversial death sentence of two Italian anarchists. His new book explored Detroit as a capitalist ‘dream town’ turned urban failure, using interviews with Detroiters to disambiguate the symbolism and stereotypes associated with the city.

I walked into the Dana Building conference room and introduced myself excitedly to a bald guy with the backpack, who turned out to be not Mark but Ian, an intensely intelligent PhD student in the school for urban planning. Ian and I were early even by non-Michigan time, so PITE staff member Kimberly Smith unloaded the Potbelly catering onto the conference table and briefed us on Binelli’s whirlwind tour of his underground alma-mater, mentioning how heavily she had booked the acclaimed author for classes, radio interviews, lunches and lectures.

When Binelli poked his head in, confirming the room number, his appearance conformed almost exactly to my uninformed expectations of a 30-something Rolling Stone contributor (an imagined melding of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous and the only other employed over 30 year old writer I had ever actually met in my life, who happened to have black hair). He exuded the easy confidence of a writer whose worth has been given a kind of nod of confirmation by spheres of circumstance and reward, at ease, uneager to prove, but quietly engaged in the conversation.
I was nervous about being unprepared, but I asked questions about Binelli’s experiences with Detroit, gave some follow-up and commentary to the other PITE student’s questions, and listened to him and Ian exchange concerns about urban shrinking, suburban plasticization, and the potential for oligarchical control of ailing cities. Binelli also talked about promoting the book in Europe – Europeans are fascinated with the idea of a failed American city, and maybe, he indicated, not without a certain amount of glee.

Later that day during his lecture at the Grad Library, Binelli read from his book with the comforting tone of an NPR editorial commentator – laconic towards the audience, tender towards the subject material – and walked us through a short slide show about the city before responding to questions mediated by Angela Dillard.
Binelli read a segment from the chapter titled “The Fabulous Ruin,” in which he takes a driving tour with a Detroit native named Marsha Curic, and quotes her at length as she muses on the surge of artists and urban explorers. “Some of the people coming here bring a sort of bacchanal spirit – like they’re out on the frontier and they can do anything,” Cusic says at one point, and when Binelli concedes to a ‘degree of arrogance,” she corrects him, calling it white supremacy. For the University of Michigan students in the audience, at least the ones who hadn’t read the book, this segment seemed somewhat revelatory. Recent op-eds in the Daily have highlighted our lack of a presence in Detroit, intertwining our neglect or casual claims to the city with a similarly embarrassing lack of campus diversity. The rhetoric around the new bus line has framed it as a kind of response to the problem, an urge towards participation in the city. But as the University community tries to engage more with Detroit, we continue to wonder what ‘engagement’ really means – It’s certainly not just gawking and exploring, although many of us students don’t even take the time to do that, and it also can’t just be singular participation in once-a-year DP days.

The author appealed to this question as he implied throughout the day that the attitudes of the young, white hipster, can often be insulting on some level to the Detroit community. In Binelli’s book he elaborates on the problem: the issue isn’t the community engagement, it’s the underlying assumptions and attitudes that often accompany such engagement. The common characterization of Detroit by some as a ‘blank canvas’ is insulting; it ignores the people who already live in Detroit in the pursuit of the realization of some metaphoric dystopia or utopia. Binelli explains that many of these symbolic assumptions are based on the rhetoric that became popular after the 2009 financial crisis, when reporters and journalists flocked to Detroit to showcase the decay of the city as a kind of simplified symbol of a complicated, failing economy – the way, he elaborates, that a reporter covering a hurricane has to have the horizontal palm trees and crashing waves in the background, reporters covering the recession needed Detroit as a backdrop. This coverage made Detroit a symbol of American failure, and thus for many the most important symbol of renewal.

During the Q and A, audience members wanted to know how the University of Michigan community – or maybe, an underlying tone implied, white outsiders in general – could engage with Detroit effectively and respectfully.
Binelli didn’t offer any pro-tips about engaging in the right way, but he did give valuable observations and commentary on the dynamics of the engagement that’s already happening. Throughout his book there is a core tension between wanting to fix Detroit’s problems, and wanting to appreciate and preserve the culture that is already there. Binell I concedes that “raising any sort of gentrification fears at this earliest stage of Detroit’s would-be comeback feels like an academic luxury. And yet, when phrases like ‘the most potentially ambitious urban planning initiative in modern history’ are being bandied about…it’s hard not to grimace at the thought of the plasticized, deadening nature of planned communities.” It can actually sound like an academic luxury, but Binelli’s book doesn’t shy away from the city’s almost surreal crime rates – a chapter or so away from this quote Binelli describes a grisly murder and dismemberment that took place in his neighborhood. And he addresses this, saying “If you ask a Detroiter about saving the city, it’s unlikely that she will mention tech start-ups or urban farming. The first thing most Detroiters want to talk about is crime.” But the book also explores how amidst the crime and poverty, there exists a distinct, legitimate culture that deserves to be protected. In the chapter titled “DIY City,” Binelli explores the ‘Do It Yourself’ culture so prevalent in Detroit, where regular citizens “take it upon themselves to tauten the civic slack.” The chapter details the vigilantism of the Detroit 300, the community service provided by illicit dog-catchers, urban farming, and a series of weekly outdoor blues concerts held on a crude stage on St. Aubin. Detroit, Binelli argues, is more complicated than the symbolism that the recession has forced it to assume.

At lunch, Binelli had mentioned the problems that a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ mentality poses – the idea that anyone with deep pockets can assume make important decisions with little public accountability. He talked about cities that he considered plasticized, such as Dallas or Atlanta, and he and Ian worried about Detroit’s prospect of being subjected to top-down renewal plans by private interests.

Later, reading the section on the blues street performances, I understood how powerful that performance had been to Binelli, and implicitly how powerful the stories, the culture and the will of the people of Detroit were to him as well. The book has been well received by Detroiters, and maybe for that reason – Binelli places enormous importance on disambiguating the symbols and the rhetoric that has been assigned to the city, and focusing on reality.