“He was dressed with that incongruous mixture of casualness and refinement which the common people regard as evidence of an eccentric life, tumultuous passions, artistic aspirations, and always a certain contempt for social convention, which either fascinates or exasperates them.”

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary

The surreal Bradley Manning transcript published on Wired.com in 2011. The time stamping of the chat messages is interesting, as it shows the pace of the conversation. Fluid, relaxed - yet the content is paramount, and betrays personal conflicts. 

Recently, Facebook launched their Suicide intervention chat tool. Statistics point to people being able to express things online, that they couldn’t express through other means, like the phone. Is that because online chat has a sense of pseudo-anonymity? Or is the pacing, the ability to review and edit information before hitting return, the delete key, giving a feeling of control over the conversation?

(01:54:14 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: is that how you got the cables out?

(01:54:28 PM) bradass87: perhaps

(01:54:42 PM) bradass87: i would come in with music on a CD-RW

(01:55:21 PM) bradass87: labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file

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“I really believed… that the war against Hitler would bring the Four Freedoms to everyone. But I couldn’t paint this today. I just don’t believe it. I was doing this best-possible-world, Santa-down-the-chimney, lovely-kids-adoring-their-kindly-grandpa sort of thing. And I liked it, but now I’m sick of it.”

Norman Rockwell (c/o Jerry Saltz)

“Lying has evolutionary value to us as a species. Researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the larger the neocortex, the more likely it is to be deceptive. … Does anybody here remember Koko the guerilla (…) who was taught to communicate via sign language? Here’s Koko with her kitten, her cute little fluffy pet kitten… Koko once blamed her kitten for ripping a sink out of the wall.”

Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It’s a compelling argument against factory farming of domesticated animals.

This conversation on domestication lead to Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker article ‘Dog Story’ - an essay on the ‘co-evolution’ of dogs and man. Before the dawn of agriculture, the docile wolf was more successful in adapting to his environment, scavenging around humans without terrorizing them and creating a truly symbiotic relationship.

Maybe early Dog would have made a different decision if he could see what this forced evolution would turn him into…  the Yorkie, the Pit Bull, the French Bulldog: the free food just wasn’t worth it. I don’t think any of us would continue with our present lifestyle if learned that we were to become some type of human luxury ornament for a dominant species.

Earlier today, storm surge from the Hudson River found it’s way into low-lying areas of manhattan. The city administration had circulated maps showing areas of New York that are most at-risk of flooding. 

These evacuation areas bear a striking resemblance to the Viele map,  a “Sanitary and Topographical Atlas of the City and Island of New York,” first published in 1865, which outlines the natural coastline of Manhattan before it was expanded by landfill techniques. According to the map, the Hudson River was trying to reclaim an area that once belonged to it.

In addition, the map shows natural marshes and streams superimposed beneath the existing street grid: a pond under the New York Supreme Court and streams running through the marshes under Tompkins Square Park.

A New York Times article states that “despite its age, the map will most likely never be outdated or improved upon”, and is still actively used by civil engineers, architects and developers to troubleshoot foundations. Tracing streams now wouldn’t be possible after a few hundred years of intense development.

There are presently about 14 biennials from around the world listed on the front page of e-Flux. It’s a format widely used to focus foot traffic and increase visibility. But that visibility, from an increasing number of biennials, decreases the likelihood that any biennial will act as draw - like consumers losing interest in a product that can be found in year round fire-sales.  What would the attendance have been if these same works were presented outside of the event format?

During an Art Basel talk about the Istanbul Biennial, Jens Hoffmann quoted an article about the rising popularity of the curator, and how it is eclipsing the actor or athlete as the most desirable profession. He directed me to this article in Die Zeit - which prominently features a beaming photo of Hans-Ulrich Obrist, before stating that curators have the same function as a DJ (the dream-job of the nineties), providing ‘the right mix for us and discovered the hot new trends’.

A few months ago, in a conversation with a friend at none other than ArtNet, she referred to art as the ultimate luxury - which may be a debatable cliche - but if it’s true then the contemporary curator is the steward of this ultimate luxury, and a ‘secret creator’ of it. This can be used to explain the growing attraction of the career path, and the hemorrhaging of it’s sincerity.

The article states that ‘scientifically minded’ museum employees make up only a small percentage of the current crop of curators, however we will be focusing the majority of our attention on their perspectives.

Another new building is unveiled on Houston Street with a familiar value engineered aesthetic that has graced neighborhoods across the city for half a century. I was informed that the brick facade was indeed pre-fab panelling, which is sterile in comparison to traditional masonry work but saves on construction costs. The textile block was used in the same manner, by Frank Lloyd Wright on the Ennis House, but with much more elegant results - Wright didn’t value-engineer himself into a corner. 

This reminded me to order a copy of The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander in an effort to make sure our platform does justice to it’s content. The book proposes a theory of design that doesn’t fight with it’s environment. In my case, the neighborhood - the ‘artistic community’ - doesn’t need another example of luxury branded public housing.