All good things...

The Upper West Side from the Riverside park piers

Time has come to say goodbye - to this city, our apartment, our old and new New Yorker and international friends, but also to a way of leading our daily life that we have cultivated and also cherished over these past four months. In many ways, it has been an enthralling way of life, an intense and exceptional one, which we are surely going to miss, but which may also be somewhat particular to the length and depth of a stay like ours.

At Columbia, I have had the unique chance to advance my thesis in an environment in which people partake in the questions, challenges and problems inherent to my research project. Achille and I have spent many hours brainstorming on his black board, brooding over such things as proving theorems about convexity from our axioms for segments, but also testing and re-enacting spatial scenarios to find out which four-place relations correspond to natural language uses of front, behind and left and right. When I was not in Achille's office or at one of my classes, I read, wrote and kept thinking in the Neo-Renaissance libraries of Columbia's main campus. Although I did miss my personal office in Lausanne, these spaces didn't fall short of inspiring awe.

The ever changing city with constructions on the High Line

New York City, for her part, is one of those places that can fascinate one more after a stay of four months than after a short first visit. It's an extreme place in many respects: extremely generous in its outstanding offer of cultural, personal and intellectual opportunities, extremely merciless when it comes to economic failure and success, and extremely diverse in terms of ethnicity, religion, social habits, and styles of life. It is also, somewhat less obviously perhaps, a spot of an extremely rich and instructive history. Learning more about it has allowed us to start seeing connections hitherto invisible to us. For instance, architectural language, inner-city migration and public infrastructure have all played together in creating today's social and economic outlines of the city - sometimes successfully and at others less fortunately (think for instance of the idea of public housing and the segregated sometimes ghetto-like isles it created all over the city). Maybe it is because things have always been changing at high speed in this city that so many neighbourhoods have witnessed diverse groups of inhabitants and various construction plans in their two or three hundred years young existence.

Another realisation that New York presses upon me more than any other place is the contingency of the fact to have been born at a particular place, as part of a particular socioeconomic group. Perhaps this impression is stronger here simply because I tend to interact mostly with peers when I'm in Switzerland, where I do not share twenty minutes of my daily routine with all those other city dwellers in Uptown Subway train N°1. Be this as it may, I do quite like this impression and it strengthens my idea of how much freedom we actually have to determine our existence once we abstract from expectations or role models particular to our usual environment.

Well. This to say that our stay in New York has been enjoyable and that we're fond of the idea of coming back in due course. For the time being, however, we are ready and happy to go home.

The Manhattan skyline from the northbound amtrak train

The sum of all good things

We're now arriving to the end of our stay, with less than a hundred hours to spend here until our flight. It seems like a good time to take stock of our experiences in these past four months in the big apple. What have we accomplished in our time here? For my part, I've learned that working from a distance has its perks and its downfalls, but, while I don't plan on imposing this on my teammates again anytime soon, it is definitely a workable condition. Marion has achieved what she had set out to do, namely developing the content of her thesis to the point where she now has, more or less, to just put it on paper (a process that will likely take a couple of months more, but that will not require the intense collaboration she had with Achille during our stay).

The books that have accompanied us in
our discovery of the urban development
 and architectural heritage of the city  

And in the meantime we have discovered the city and its boroughs (most of them at least) in architectural walks, guided tours, pedestrian exploration, and books and films that have given us the impression of understanding a bit of the socio-geo-economic dynamics that make up this very complex city. We have learned to appreciate the artworks and performances that are available (the former spectacular in their scope and presentation, the latter influenced by an american approach to entertainment that mars either the performance or their public), as well as the architectural wealth that can be found in the heart of midtown as in the outskirts of the Bronx.

Our grocery shopping for one week (for 2 people)

Food, much as other worldly needs, was something that occupied our minds at the beginning of our stay. But with time we have learned to navigate our way through the stores, their offers, and their prices, finding a balance of variety, quality and budget (we will have to revise our price estimations of a couple of months ago). To get an inkling of our victuals consumption, here is an image of our average grocery shopping for a week, which comprises a short stop to Zabars and Citarella for specific products (bread, bananas), with a longer one at Westside Market for the bulk of our provisions.

Now we're left with the task of closing shop, disposing of excess material (we've managed to solve the problem of our portable washing machine), getting rid of the things we won't be able to carry home, and finally packing our 3 big suitcases with everything we will bring with us back to Switzerland.

And maybe after all that we'll still have some time to pretend we're tourists who just arrived for a couple of days in New York.

Panem et circenses (the 21st century edition)

Skyrim running on a Mac via a Windows Not-Emulator

I used to play a lot of computer games. I grew up with computers, and from Zaxxon onward, up until I started my PhD, video games were something I looked for, played and enjoyed. (I had a short stint with multi-player games up until my younger brother started piling on humiliating defeats on all of his siblings in basically any FPS game.)

Nowadays it is something that I allow myself in periods of quiet or to relieve some stress when I'm overworked. Marion sometimes sees me disappearing for the evening in the medieval lands of Skyrim, or driving a truck in the surprisingly successful Eurotruck Simulator, or impersonating a coloured rectangle leading a revolution in Thomas Was Alone.

Assassin's Creed IV plastered all over Times Square

While not as up to date with every single new game, I am usually quite aware when a big Triple-A title is coming out. However I did not imagine that the rest of the people around (most of whom do not know what Triple-A denotes in this context) would have to be as well. I realised that at the very least here in New York, these games are treated much the same way as blockbuster movies and new technological gadgets. Advertisements for upcoming games take up entire street corners, or decorate the rooftops or invade the subway stations. All this elicits an eerie feeling of connection between the images I encounter while browsing the net, and the ones I see when walking outside.

COD:Ghosts all around the Times Square subway stations

Grand Theft Auto V ads in NoHo

It seems obvious in truth that it should be so. As the saying goes "If you can sell it you should market it", and it seems a notion that is put to work with gusto in a place like Times Square. And it is also true that, with budgets of several hundreds of millions of dollars for these games, years of preparation and thousands of people involved, there is a definite parallel between video games and big hollywood titles. And as with all situations where a niche starts becomes mainstream, a rift starts appearing between games that are made like movies and other, more independently made video games, that are still in the spirit of "a couple of guys working from their living room". These games, following the destiny of indie films and music, will likely remain obscure to most people, much as most video games were ten years ago.

I happen to find myself attracted more and more by these games, with their pixel-art graphics, 8-bit music, one very brilliant idea and hours of unfettered fun. I will probably keep on trying out the big names every now and then (Bioshock Infinite is one such title which was not only very enjoyable, but has also garnered attention from established media but I will likely not have their soundtrack on my iPod

Backlogs - Learning at MoMA

In-Gallery lecture on American Modernism

Last monday I attended the last lecture in my MoMA class: Modern Art and Ideas 1915-1945 (courtesy of Marion as a birthday gift). The class was a series of 4 In-Gallery lectures given by the curators of different stylistic schools (Dadaism, Surrealism, etc.), followed by a more intimate workshop with about 8 other people, roaming room to room through artists, artistic periods and continents.

The lectures were in and of themselves an interesting sociological experience, allowing to observe people with an interest in art discover, learn, ask and discuss aesthetic, philosophical and political points, in what is undoubtedly an international elite of learned people (I saw notes being taken in Hebrew, Greek, Korean and Japanese, by people sitting next to each other, while I was frantically scribbling my roman characters in the first such endeavour since my early years at university). The workshops were something to cherish for the spoiled participants that we were: wandering for hours around one of the largest collections of modern art in the world, with no other public than our handful of classmates (…and the security guard doggedly following us around).

Blissfully empty galleries, and Umberto Boccioni's
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)

During this time, I realised that the path of artistic discovery that Marion has had me threading upon these past 8 years has actually begun to bear its fruits. Not only were I able to follow most of the references made in the lectures about preceding and following periods of artistic development, but I also had the feeling I could fit what I was learning in an understanding that was, to some extent, there already. My knowledge remains sketchy at best, with gaping holes here and there and with a tendency to forget the names of half the artists the minute you hear them. And yet I am now able to gleam why a shovel hanging in the air and a white square on a white background should be in the same room in a museum.

Theo van Doesburg study (left) and painting (right) for Composition VIII (The Cow) (1918)

In addition to making me acquainted with the layout of the MoMA (which I was able to boastfully display to Marion today) the class became a routine excursion into midtown, where I now feel less of a tourist and more of an occasional visitor. And I can now leave the city with the feeling that I know at least one of its several wells of aesthetic wealth, and with a renewed and enhanced understanding of why people have been doing, watching and discussing art for such a long time.

Visiting the Bronx

The Grand Concourse boulevard in the Bronx

There is something special about the Bronx. Not only is it the only New York county bearing a definite article in its name; but it also carries the burden of what has become known as the "Bronx Stigma". Indeed, hardly anyone aware of New York City hasn't heard meaningful rumours about its dreadful and dire north-most borough, where Hip Hop culture originated, Albanian and Latin American Mafias have long been in authority, and no white people live: The legendary Bronx.

Art-deco block on the Grand Concourse

Today we have gone a great deal towards destigmatising the Bronx in our heads. Joining a walking tour organised by the Municipal Art Society, we visited the Grand Concourse and took advantage of the occasion to stop by the Bronx Museum of Art. It has been a day full of revelations about urban economics, the intertwining of public policies and personal decision making and scenarios of a living which, despite happening no more than a 20 minutes subway ride from the current center of gravity of our existence, could not be much further away from our personal realities.

Interior lobbies of art deco residential buildings on the Concourse 

The Grand Concourse, built between 1890 and 1900, is a grand boulevard of 60 metres breadth which was conceived on the model of Paris' Champs-Elysées. Its conception was the product of speculation about upcoming growth and future wealth; by the time of its construction it was nothing but a path through nowhere leading to recreational woods in the Northbronx. It was in the 1920s and 1930s, when privately built subway trains began to assure a fast and secure connection to Downtown Manhattan, that the Grand Concourse became a prosperous residential area, flanked on either side by finest art deco buildings, and inhabited mostly by Jewish immigrants resettling from Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Left: A very well traveled Lorelei sculpture in honor of Heinrich Heine.

Right: Residential Art-deco building on the Concourse

Thanks to recent urban renewal initiatives and a declaration of landmark status in the early 21st century, some of the past glory of the Grand Concourse has again become visible and was tangible to us during today's visit. Yet in between its promising beginnings and recent urban renewal, Grand Concourse went through a story of decline, which seems to have been the poisonous product of false economic incentives, unintelligent slum clearance programs for Manhattan, commercial interest in the relocation of white middle class people to suburban housing areas and strategic disinvestment in the pursuit of political interests. An insight we take home is that much of the racial and income based segregation of New York is not just the inevitable result of too much ethnic diversity in a dense urban environment, but has come about also because serious economic and political mistakes were made.

The 2006 building of the Bronx Art Museum,
on the grounds of the former Synagogue

Today the renewed section of the Grand Concourse is home to lower middle-class hispanic and African American residents, who seem to enjoy and somehow cherish their environment (as a local public initiative for the preservation of the Heinrich Heine Fountain in a Concourse park seems to suggest). And yet, extreme poverty is not far, racial segregation remains almost total, and the future seems somewhat open.

There are encouraging signs, though, not least the successful work or urban renewal activists (such as today's guide), the recent growth of the Bronx Art Museum and, above all, its warm, inviting, caring and enthusiastic staff.

Art installations by Tony Feher at the Bronx Art Museum

Backlogs - Escaping the endless city (Sunday December 1st)

Deserted beach in Cold Spring Harbor 

The fascinating thing about a city this big is that I could take any subway, move a couple of kilometres up or down (one should not entirely forsake a measurement system just because people here prefer pounds and feet), come up to open air and be hard pressed to recognise that something has indeed changed… This is not truly a sentiment that is pervasive: unique landmarks appear everywhere and give different flavours to each metropolitan village, a very nice building here, a peculiar subway station there, the umpteen monument to soldiers or responders somewhere else. And yet the everyday NY street presents a unified front that is at times reassuring and at others begs for more variety in the lay of the land. 

Harbor in the eponymous Cold Spring

It was therefore with some elation that we went, this past weekend, for two consecutive adventures in Long Island and Tarrytown, in the east and in the north of the state, respectively. While not our first foray into un-urbanised land (we went, after all with Marion's family to Dia Beacon), it was the first in which we actively walked through field, beach and sand. We were privy to an insider tour of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (where James Watson discovered the structure of DNA in the early fifties) and a technical and informative elucidation on modern neurophysiological research, followed by a visit of the campus with its small two-storied houses and tranquil beach. We learned about horse-shoe crabs and understood how science-fiction films just have to look at terrestrial biology to get examples of really scary stuff. And we were able to experience first-hand what east-american highways look and feel like (we were, after all, traveling on the weekend after Thanksgiving).

The following day saw us forsake a guided tour in the Lower East Side, to give us some time to recover and prepare four our next excursion to Tarrytown, where Marion's host of past times welcomed us for an aperitif, a walk through town, enjoyable discussions on city vs. countryside life, photography, society and politics, and finally a feast in a picturesque italian restaurant where quality, quantity and choice strive to outdo one another. All this in a place that seems pulled straight out of a Edward Hopper painting, with winter afternoon lights illuminating wooden planked buildings as characteristic as they are charming.

A Hopperesque house being built on the CSHL campus

Two things struck us during these expeditions, one on an architectural level, the other on an urbanisation one. The first realisation was that while the places we visited were home to a very wealthy american population, the constructions consisted without exception of traditional american abodes, with opulence expressed by the usual mixture of wooden patios, mediterranean pillared entrances with round windows, and other architectural gimmicks. Not a single example of modern architecture, as one is want to see traveling around the european equivalent. Even in Ticino, with its ghastly disregard for aesthetic cohesion when it comes to building houses, there are always a couple of testimonials of a taste for modern spaces and forms that decorate the otherwise eye-jarring landscape.

President Teddy Roosevelt's house in Long Island

The second epiphany was that we are not used to the type of clustered colonisation that seem to be the standard here. Travel 1-2h in any direction outside a swiss city, and at no time will you see a place that is empty of the occasional farm, factory, church or residential building. The land is interspersed regularly and continuously with a density that raises when nearing a village or town, and lowers again as soon as we move on. Here the separation between land and village is clearly defined, and no buildings can be seen, gleamed or glimpsed from the stretch of road between cities, and it is hard to understand why a village was placed here instead of 2 or 3 miles down. (I suspect that a study of the lay of the land and the history of the 18-19th century would much better explain why each population centre resides on its actual location).

Industrial bridge on the Hudson river in Tarrytown

Our return to the city marked a stark contrast with the imagery we had been experiencing for the past two days, and plunged us back to another landscape, another density of inhabitants and another rhythm of existence. But for a while, we felt how the less frenzied and more laid back atmosphere of the countryside can attract people to these places just outside the City.

Back to New York on the 25A highway

Backlogs

Runners and cyclists on a wintery Riverside Park

There comes a time, in the rhythm of yearly existence, where everything comes to the surface at the same time. Projects, deadlines, administrative chores and other obligations contend to make your life miserably busy with the feeling that no time can be spared. The first half of December was one such time for Marion and me, and we are only now finding the time to resume our depiction of our daily lives and adventures. We will therefore pretend that each of the coming articles was written at the time of the experiences that accompany them, while scrounging our memories for the details, impressions and discoveries that date back to a couple of weeks.