In light of a seminar presented by my business school’s namesake, Stephen M. Ross, I was inundated with paranoia upon hearing about Mr.Ross’ Hudson Yards Development, a new real estate venture along Manhattan’s west side from 28^th to 43^rd street west of 8^th avenue.  With the growing popularity of the Highline, rumors of retail giants moving in, and the Hudson Yards Development, there will undoubtedly be a much needed surge to the consumer economy as tourists move in and spending increases.  But what does this mean for the residents, cultural integrity, and artistic haven that these neighborhoods once hosted? Is this an inevitable change that must take place in order to progress and improve the economy? Or is there an alternative that can dually increase spending while maintain cultural integrity?

Mr. Ross is the founder and Chairman of The Related Companies, a real estate investment firm.  He has developed a portfolio of real estate ventures in metropolitan cities nationwide, such as New York City, Las Vegas, and several others in California. He has grown his company by investing in transformative properties, such as the Time Warner Center on the Upper West Side of New York City, as well as affordable living housing throughout the city.

In 2005 the city rezoned the area from west Chelsea to herald square to convert current manufacturing space to residential and commercial developments and named it the Hudson Yards Development. The Hudson Yards area will have the capacity for approximately 26 million square feet of new office development, 20,000 units of housing, 2 million square feet of retail, and 3 million square feet of hotel space, says the Hudson Yards Development Corporation.   With the luxury brand Coach leading the pack and incepting construction of the first building in the Hudson Yards Project, retail giants such as Sephora plan to move in and draw in shoppers, tourists, and new residents alike. Local boutiques will have to compete with mass producing low mark up companies that move in.  Even now, the art spaces are strained to compete with restaurants, retailers, and luxury brand boutiques.

Even since 2009 the commercial effects of the Highline have challenged  West Chelsea’s establishments and integrity.   The restaurants became increasingly trendy and decreasingly delicious; the people migrate from uptown to counterfeit “bohemian” lofts; and slowly, the art increasingly high profile, decreasingly raw and native.  And while Mr. Ross explained in his presentation to the students of the Ross School of Business that he and his partners keep cultural integrity in mind, such as making the “Jazz at Lincoln Center” the highlight of the Time Warner Development, phrases such as “New York’s Next Great Neighborhood” on the company’s web page indicate a more transformational pursuit.

What I fear most is that the Hudson Yards  turns the area into an amusement park of sorts, as Jeremiah Moss discusses in the New York Times article “Disney World on the Hudson,” losing all integrity for the raw gritty New York feeling that tourists hate, and New Yorkers love. Native artists have noticeably begun to flee the West Side for lower-profile neighborhoods tucked away from media hounds and tourists.  And while Chelsea can already be deemed a commercialized, yuppie area, any remnants of authenticity that I know it to possess may be stripped away even further. What will become of the neighbors that envelope the Hudson Yards Development?  More importantly, what will happen to the art that spawned there?

I love the morning. I don’t love getting up in the morning, but I really love the morning. The air is different in the morning. It is dense with possibilities. Maybe I’m a gushing romantic, but the air makes getting up a whole lot easier.

This past Friday I took a bus up to North Campus, my lukewarm tea in hand, and walked to the Walgreen Drama Center. It was rainy, but not yet miserable yet. Only a sprinkle. Inside of the Arthur Miller Theatre, there was a large projection screen with the image of a man walking back and forth projected on to it. On the left of the stage was an intricate set up of electronics, to the right, a few miscellaneous items strewn about the floor in a line. I noticed two balls, roughly the size of a bowling ball. One was a globe, and the other was just black.

The Argentinian Dance Company, Grupo Krapp, has been in residence for the past couple weeks. I’ve been sick and busy (for a number of reasons) and couldn’t make the various workshops and talks they had around campus. But this Friday show was my final shot to see them. And so I did.

Grupo Krapp is named after a Samuel Beckett play, Krapp’s Last Tape. This particular play happens to be one of the two Beckett plays I’ve ever seen, which means I was able to brag about this to my girlfriend and pretend that I know more about theatre than her (I don’t). Krapp’s Last Tape is a one man show, a piece about an old man looking back at his life through a serious of tape recordings. The main character, Krapp, makes one recording a year on his birthday, chronicling the events of his life. Before he makes his tape for his 69^th birthday, he listens to one from his 39^th birthday. It’s a really remarkable and emotional play. Samuel Beckett never struck me as the most inviting or emotional playwright, but in Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett takes a firm look at life, laughs at its inconsistencies, and cries at its tragedies. I think Grupo Krapp tries to do the same thing.

It’s difficult to call what Grupo Krapp does dance. There was a lot of acting, a lot of feats of physical strength, a lot of multimedia components, but never so much dancing in a traditional sense. In one awkward scene, titled “Duet A,” two dancers paced around stage replicating the first experience they had dancing. Their shoulders were raised, their movements sharp and stiff. It was a peculiar kind of dancing, but after some observation, really quite beautiful. These performers were replicating a beautiful point in life, a point of no expectation and only passion. Or maybe lust. Or maybe boredom. I’m not quite sure. Either way, it was beautiful.

The piece they performed was called “Adonde van los muertos (Lado B).” The performers told us it was about death, but only a in few scenes did the show actually simulate death. The rest of the show was…well, it was incapable of description. It involved a game of soccer played onstage (an audience volunteer joined the cast, as they were down a member). It involved two performers below a large cloth and replicating (to an unsettlingly successful degree) the movements of a horse. It involved a performer simulating the motions of a robot, complete with sound effects. The dialogue was sparse, but biting and confounding. It reminded me very much of the twists of Beckett’s language in “Waiting for Godot” (the other Beckett play that I’ve seen). The piece opened with a projection of a short film, where several people were interviewed about their thoughts concerning death. They asked these interviewees what they imagined death would look like, should it be captured in a physical object. One person said death couldn’t be an object, that death was the opposite of an object. Another paused, perplexed by the question. He quietly answered that death looks like a black ball.

The question of meaning always comes up when I see a production like this. I don’t think I understood a lot of what Grupo Krapp put on stage. I only remarked in the beauty of it, in the entertainment of it, and in the absurdity of it. But when the production finished and all of the cast members had left the stage, I noticed that the black ball that was lying there since the very beginning was still there. They hadn’t oddslot touched it during the whole production. It was subtle. It was small. And it was terrifying. But it made sense. There was indeed a logic to this performance – that was the black ball of death that the young man in the opening sequence had mentioned. The performance didn’t have to mean anything specific. But it meant something. The fact that the work had an internal logic was the important part.

I thought a lot about Grupo Krapp this morning. How they are pushing the boundary of what dance is and what art is and what a performance is. How I would have loved to play soccer with them put probably would have done so horribly that they would have picked someone else instead and started the show over. How they are so incredibly deliciously esoteric and I love it. How the air in that theatre was dense with sunrise and dense with possibility. Maybe I’m a gushing romantic, but the air makes getting up and going off and doing work that much more inspiring and exciting.

On a recent trip to the DIA, my Art History class was pleasantly treated to a tour by the museum’s director (who is AMAZING, if you ever meet her).  If you have never been to the Detroit Institute of Art, I highly reccommend it.  Although the surrounding area can be quite dodgy, once inside, you forget all about the modenr squalor of a fallen urban landscape and transport yourself to a time of soaring white marble, vaulted gothic cathedrals, and gleaming suits of armor that demand acknowledgment.  The African art is kind of scary, the Egyptian art is mystic and abstract, and everything is full of eye-catching shapes and colors.

The layers of fabric, the folds, and the dancing patterns that were choreographed down her bodice…

Hello arts, ink-viewing people,

Apparently arts, ink is starting up again. Cool.

This is my Hello! post.

So, Hello! 😛

My name is Mark Buckner.

I am a senior double majoring in English (/ creative writing) and informatics.

I play drums in a band

I write, mostly fiction but also other less traditional forms, like I tweet a lot and Tumbl dumb image macros and stuff. And this blog, I suppose, is writing.

Here is an image macro I Tumbld, which has a picture of me. Look at my beautiful blurry face, and now you can picture who is talking to you:

I’m very interested in the internet and its culture, particularly the “art” surrounding it. With my blog here this year I intend to talk a lot about “internet art.”

I feel traditional, IRL art is losing its appeal and relevance. I feel the internet is “where it’s at.” Probably I feel this way because I am mostly interested in literature, and books are a dying art form while internet literature is rising. Maybe other art forms, like paintings or something, are still good IRL.

My favorite book is ‘the internet,’ is my clever answer to “What’s your favorite book?”

Speaking of music, the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album is sweet.

What, we weren’t speaking of music?

Well, I won’t ramble; I know your attention is a scarce resource and, statistically, you are likely to navigate away if confronted with a daunting wall of text.

It is very cool that the University of Michigan provides a space like this for students and art.

I look forward to writing at you.

I want to interact with you online. This blog is a good gateway.

Add me on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and I will literally talk to you online.

Tonight I went to a punk rawk show at Launch Skate Shop on South University ave. This band played, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is my Hello! post. What is your first impression? Arts, ink needs more commentors. I dare you to comment at me.

You should Gchat or email me! sooooooooooometa@gmail.com

What brings you here, to arts, ink?

Hello again, Arts, ink readers! I hope your summers were a fresh bite of relaxation and that your Falls have galvanized the start to another year. My name is Alex Winnick, I’m a sophomore in LSA studying English and Community Action/Social Change. Clubs with which I am involved and subsequent people who inspire me include: rEDesign, (an organization that aims to involve college students in K-12 public education) the Prison Creative Arts Project, TedxUofM and 826Michigan. I enjoy drinking cold water from my washed out Tomato Sauce jar and riding my bike with gloves on. I found at an early age that music has a tremendous influence over my life, and am delighted that I get the opportunity to share its energy with you.

I return to this blog with a renewed drive for updating you all on new (or perhaps old) music that I have been listening to recently. Last year I focused my attention mostly on additions to my Hip Hop universe; this year I not only want to continue that effort but also bring in new releases to a multitude of other genres. I try my best to stay relevant in the music world by following a few different blogs, including Hypem, Sunset in the Rearview, Pigeons and Planes, Earmilk, and by using Spotify. I highly recommend using Spotify if you don’t already; it is an application that streams practically every album ever created for free. Legally. You pay nothing and the artist still makes money. It is the absolutel best way to listen to music.

As Fall is always, in my opinion, the most prime season for cutting-edge music, a number of terrific albums have already come out in the last month or so. Kanye West’s label Good Music released its compilation album Cruel Summer to mixed reviews. While I concur that it is nothing special, and absolutely nowhere on the level of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, there are a number of stellar tracks including The Morning, To the World and Clique. An unfortunate trend in the Hip Hop world lately, Kanye’s decision to reveal basically half the album before the release date left little anticipation for the real thing. Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor 2 also arrived in a cloud of disappointment. While I think we can all agree that it was marginally better than his last effort, it is almost insulting to attach the “Food and Liquor” label to it, as it doesn’t even slightly compare to his debut release. Mumford and Son’s second studio album Babel is just as cohesive and impressive as their first; they managed to maintain their specific style while also varying their lyrics and tempos enough to keep the entire album interesting. Finally, one of the best albums to appear in the last few months dropped almost two weeks ago. The debut record from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has swept across the country in a wave of party jams and emotional videos. (See below picture) Until next week when I go into more depth, download Spotify and listen to The Heist on repeat. It will soon become the soundtrack to your Fall.

The last time my parents visited Ann Arbor, we took a walk in the chilly weather to the Ross building. Though I’ve lived in Ann Arbor for a while, my parents had never really visited until then and I was eager to show them the interesting and beautiful architecture around campus, especially the school I studied in.

As we were approaching the building, I pointed out the bronze sculpture next to Lorch Hall that vaguely resembled bones. I asked my dad what he thought it was and he immediately walked up to the corresponding plaque to read the provided information. He was surprised that it only contained the author’s name, not his intentions or his core message.

I asked him why the author’s intentions mattered. And I pose the same question to you.

The artist is the creator of a provocation. A piece that represents, challenges, or illustrates something he or she has observed. It is a direct interaction with society. But it has nothing to do with you.

Art is not meant to be a definite, a concrete the way we prefer things to be, a constant that is reliable, or a fact we can memorize. It is fluid and abstract and that is the most terrifying and breathtaking thing about it. It can mean everything, anything, and nothing, all at the same time. It is not the physical piece itself but the emotion and thought the viewer or participant feels and thinks upon experiencing it.

My room, without a doubt, at any time, on any day, is covered with newspaper, tubes of paint, charcoal, and baubles I use to express myself. When I make something, I do it almost intuitively – my hands know what colors I want to use, where I want the lips to go, which buttons to use to form human hair – and when I am done, I am done. I no longer have a part in it and neither does any artist. They are transformed from being a creator to an observer of their art and their opinion of what it means and what it represents are as important or as arbitrary as anyone else’s.

We have the innate desire to look at something and understand everything about it. We look to figures of authority to do so, people with experience and knowledge. In art, we turn to the artist. But this would imply that there is something about art that is a fact. Something that remains constant no matter who stands in front it. This is wrong. As much as the concept of universal human emotions is touted as some unquestionable truth, it is not. While something beautiful like a smile can invoke the same warmth in my heart as it can in the heart of someone from a completely different background, it has different implications, different effects, and is the manifestation of different thoughts.

An artist stating what their art means is an artist telling you what you should think and feel when you experience their art, which defies the inherent purpose and essential quality of art. The interaction between the physical piece and the participant that is art is tremendously intimate and cannot be explained.

The plaque did not lack information. In fact, it had more than what was necessary.