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Even the undead are obsessed with this election. Photo by Andrea Silenzi

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve officially given up trying to get anything accomplished until after the election is over. I’m throwing in the towel.

But I’m also trying to avoid spending the entire day obsessing over exit polls. Instead, I am making lists - lists for you, dear reader. Below you will find lots of little clickable tidbits, always handy when your boss, sick of obsessing over polls, wanders over and wonders why your computer screen is blank.

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Driving into Floyd Bennet Field is like entering an alternative universe. One minute you are in the heart of Brooklyn, the next you’re in this bare, windswept, rather wild environment. Driving down the runway of what was New York’s first municipal airport, all you see is sky, water and a few hulking but low-to-the ground structures.

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Two weeks ago, I mentioned the film “Man On Wire” in this post, wondering if Philippe Petit’s incredible 1974 wire-walking feat between the twin towers might be “the greatest outdoor performance in this city’s history”:

Naturally, one of my dear readers, Beg to Differ, not only dismissed my “greatest” thought, but the idea of it being art at all: “And what was all the fuss about? “Work of art”? Please.”

At that point, I hadn’t seen the movie, and wondered briefly whether I was overemphasizing (memory and its tricks) the importance of Petit’s act. But I’ve now seen the film, and feel even more strongly that this was no mere stunt, or manifestation of man’s need to conquer (which is the only, totally inadequate way in which I can try to understand the inexplicable madness that might lead a person to climb K2).

“The object of my dream doesn’t exist yet,” Petit says in the documentary, of his feeling, many years ago, upon hearing about plans to build the World Trade Center.

What better way to describe the drive to make art? Petit had no why, just a need to inhabit (and disrupt) the most uninhabitable of urban landscapes with an incredibly beautiful, and human, act. The art lay in his intent more than anywhere else.

I was talking about Petit with a friend, and she brought up “The Waterboard Thrill Ride” installation at Coney Island (you can listen to WNYC cultural reporter Siddhartha Mitter’s segment on it here.), wondering if I thought that it counted as art, or protest, or both. I haven’t been out to see it, so I thought I would ask all of you …

Finally … another friend reminded me that the twin towers had inspired other acts of artistic anarchy, and told me about “The B-Thing,” by the art group Gelitin, whose members somehow, early one fine morning in 2000, managed to suction out a window on one of the WTC’s highest floors, wrangle a narrow balcony out there and pose for the camera. You have to wonder if this “unbelievable, completely illegal, and fully secret stunt” owes its existence to Petit.

Yesterday was my first full day back in the city, and I celebrated with an hour-long walk through Brooklyn from my apartment to my brother’s studio. I’m a sucker for theatricality of all sorts, which makes long walks through New York irresistible to me - there’s a performance on every block, from made-for-opera screaming matches between couples to runway-worthy walks by teenage girls wearing entirely too little clothing. It’s a veritable feast, and that’s without taking into account all of the fabulous street performers making their living here.

I would love to hear about people’s favorite walking circuits - not the big touristy ones, but the side streets and unexpected pleasures - and any street performers who are must sees. The most magical performance experience I had this summer was probably the Movement Research parade through the village.

Of course, not all New York neighborhoods are worth walking through (insert Park Slope or Upper East Side joke here), so some other outdoors things you might do this weekend include:

Listening to Michael Pollan discuss “Taking the Plant’s Point of View” in the P.S.1 courtyard tonight. This is where I would be if I weren’t working elsewhere. If anyone goes, please let me know how it went, and especially if any cranky cannibals showed up to heckle him.

Swinging by the Prospect Park bandshell to catch this Celebrate Brooklyn concert honoring Bill Withers tomorrow night - or skip the organized stuff and go find the various drum circles and capoeira practitioners who inevitably find their way to the park.

Heading indoors for an hour and a half to see “Man on Wire,” the film account of what might just be the greatest outdoor performance in this city’s history. Not all memorable walks happen at street level.

Hey Everyone … the segment I taped on Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls with WNYC’s Soterios Johnson is going to air sometime
tomorrow morning. I’ll add the link when it does…

Meanwhile … It must be ole Olafur’s week. An invitation for “It’s About Time, Man,” a new show opening at the Repetti gallery in Greenpoint, just landed in my in-box. From the release:

“Using a derelict industrial building in Greenpoint, an international group of artists reconstitute the Olafur Eliasson survey on their own terms.

This show responds to the unquestioned acclaim for Eliasson’s faux-natural creations, and inaugurates Repetti’s future home. Twelve artists each address a different Eliasson work using the squalid state of this former carriage house as inspiration. The building will undergo major renovation in the fall and become the new home for Repetti in late ’09.

Organized by William McMillin and Sam Farnsworth, this group of established and emerging artists has strong ties to the Greenpoint area, though also included are several foreign-based artists.”

The image the gallery is using to advertise the show? The cover art from the Pink Floyd album “The Dark Side of the Moon,” of course:

As Dave Shull, one of the artists in the show, put it, “It’s an ironic show. We don’t believe in him and we’re trying to analyze his work critically” by recreating the art star’s work out of garbage, and with no budget. (Of course, I thought immediately of the conversation about art and money that we have been having here.)

Dave’s contribution will be (he’s still hard at work) an adaptation of the title piece from “Take Your Time,” the giant Eliasson show at MoMA and P.S. 1 that just closed. He didn’t say whether there will be any waterfalls.

The opening is from 7 to 9 p.m. Check it out.

So, have you seen the waterfalls yet? Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls, that is, four of ‘em, to the tune of $15.5 million (the city says the public art installation will bring in $55 million, but I’m skeptical about the ways in which this is measured).

I’m going to be talking about them later this week, during an on-air segment for WNYC, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Turns out, many of the fine citizens of this city are less than overwhelmed:

Agree? Disagree? Can’t be bothered to truck over to the river? Sound off at will - about the waterfalls or other public art works you’ve seen lately.

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The Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney may be all the rage but there are a few other Fuller events and exhibits around the city as well. At the Center for Architecture you can spend some time in the Dymaxion Study Center (open untill September 14th). And across the street at LaGuardia Park you can check out the 25 foot Fly’s Eye dome. But hurry, the dome comes down this Friday.

I spoke to Beth Stryker of the Center for Architecture and a few neighborhood residents to learn about the Dome and how it shook up the neighborhood. Listen:

Friday night’s Performance Rampage, led by Circus Amok’s Jennifer Miller (right, on stilts). Photo by Jeff Larson

I didn’t get around to watching the “The Passion of Joan of Arc” this weekend, but I did participate in a Performance Rampage, which was part of Movement Research’s excellent spring festival. Immediately following Chase Granoff’s “thank you boredom” (for the Culturist’s take on that show, go here), the Rampage snaked its way down Eighth Avenue from 219 West 19th Street, where Dance Theater Workshop is located, and across the Village to Judson Memorial Church, the epicenter of MR’s activities. Along the way, we took in a moving feast of site-specific happenings, including this piece by Miguel Gutierrez et al:

Photo by Jeff Larson

These encounters, more like brief guerrilla actions than performances, were magical, but the best part, for me, was seeing how passers-by reacted to these impromptu events, and this exotic collection of people following behind them. People applauded, stared slack jawed, cracked comments and even joined us. The entire city felt charged, and activated - it felt, for an hour or so, that we were inside that mythical New York, a city of electricity and possibility, not bricks and mortar.

My three favorite moments were:

1. when a young woman yelled through an open bar window that it was her birthday, so we all serenaded her;

2. an irritating girl asked what we were doing, and one of our guides, without missing a beat, said we were “taking a cross-country walk.” The girl then turned to her friend and said, “I think they’re, like, making fun of me.”;

and 3., when Will Rawls and Kennis Hawkins of Dance Gang held up traffic to do a sexy little street dance and the cabbie, at the front of the stopped cars, patiently sat and watched without once trying his horn.

As Will said later, “The whole city came alive. That’s my ideal New York … a city of action and movement.”

And, speaking of Will … he needs your help. What are you doing tomorrow night? Maybe you would like to head to Monkey Town, where Will and some other contemporary artists have organized the interdisciplinary “Gang Up!: A Creative Congress.” Featuring the likes of Karinne Keathley, Neal Medlyn and Adam Matta, all of whom have donated their time, the benefit’s proceeds will help Will, Milka Djordjevich and Nohemi Contreras attend the prestigious ImpulsTanz festival in Vienna this summer. Will has received a scholarship to attend, but it doesn’t cover all the costs. Funding in America being what it is for young independent artists, he has had to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.

“The donation of all of this work is amazing because it indicates a real commitment from artists to support other artists with art,” Will explained via email. “It represents a kind of manageability
of economics that is possible for performing artists - if we help each other out we can all survive. Even people that I don’t know very well responded to the call for work, even people I have never met.”

He continued (long quote warning, but it’s good stuff): “there is a real spirit of generosity that
we can benefit from and that is thriving across disciplines. And disciplines and their boundaries are changing. A local, sustainable model of economics has always been alive in this community, but it is ever more present now. Funding is still incredibly hard to procure, especially with short notice, and a lot of work that is being made now seems to be made on short notice, or in an experimental and improvisational spirit. This has a lot to do with breaking the mold of dance, but also has to do with breaking a mold of inertia that I have seen and felt since I have been in New York. It is time to make performance the way that visual artists make series of drawings, impromptu, small-scale studies. There is less of the exhausting gestalt-mindedness of having your own major show at a major theater….this work has had to find outlets beyond the outdated systems of producing work that exist now.”

Guerrilla action, indeed.

Howdy y’all.

Movement Research is throwing a little Memorial Day bash to kick off its spring festival . If your life is in need of some bbq, grab something to grill and head to Prospect Park’s long meadow from noon to sundown on Monday. The Culturist is planning to be there:

…just so you know what I look like. Come say hi - and don’t worry, I don’t refer to myself as “The Culturist” in person.

Yet.

Thanks to everyone for posting such thoughtful and welcoming comments. What do you all think of Counter Critic’s assertion that Art, by definition, is false? Or Andy’s belief that The very notion of re-staging a “happening” - either historically accurate or updated - seems like an exercise in nostalgia and irrelevance? Or Sarah M’s musing that maybe there’s nothing wrong with choreography that is either dated, or that can only come to life in the body of a particular dancer , that this doesn’t make it less important work than something that is, supposedly, “timeless”?

I will respond to your thoughts in fuller measure in the future, but for now you’ll have to cut the Culturist some slack: I may be young in real time, but in blogosphere terms I am old. Very old.

Anyway, it’s a whole new adventure for the little Culturist. Well, sort of - I go back and forth on whether blogging counts as a distinct literary genre or sub-genre , or whether it’s the same thing we’ve always done (communicated, searched for meaning and connection, sought escape from ourselves), just in a different mode (in the same way that setting my iPod to shuffle seems exactly the same activity as the endless radio station surfing I did while driving aimlessly around as a teenager in rural Maine - except the frustration quotient is significantly lower).

Anyway … happy Memorial Day, everyone. Maybe I’ll see you in the park.