the village

Cultivating a spot

in Gotham Handbook, Paul Auster

"People are not the only ones neglected in New York. Things are neclegted as well. I don't just mean big things like bridges and subway tracks, I mean the small, barely noticeable things standing right i front of your eyes: patches of sidewalk, walls, park benches. Look closely at the things around you and you'll see that nearly everything i falling apart. Pick one spot in the city and begin to think of it as yours. It doesn't matter where, and it doesn't matter what. A street corner, at subway entrance, a tree in the park. Take on this place as your responsibility. Keep it clean. Beautify it. Think of it as an extension of who you are, as a part of your identity. Take as much pride in it as you would in your own home.
Go to your spot every day at the same time. Spent an hour watching everything that happens to it, keeping track of everyone who passes by or stops or does anything there. Take notes, take photographs. Make a record of these daily observations and see if you learn anything about the people or the place or yourself. Smile at the people who come there. Whenever possible, talk to them. If you can't think of anything to say, begin by talking about the weather."

"Personal instructions for Sophie Calle. How to improve life in New York City (because she asked)". as outras três instruções são sorrir, falar com estranhos e olhar para os mendigos e sem abrigo. Sophie escolheu um spot: “During the night of tuesday, September 20, 1994, I take over the phone booth. I start by dusting and polishing. Two men are watching me . One of them asks , ‘Do you do windows too?’ Am I supposed to inaugurate my smiling task? I choose to postpone it until tomorrow. I don’t answer, for, as you said yourself Paul, men are pigs. Only five minutes after I started, my fears are confirmed. They are taking me for a nutcase. Too bad.”, da página 246 do seu livro, Double Game.

"Auster later challenged Calle to create and maintain a public amenity in New York. The artist's response was to augment a telephone booth (on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison streets in Manhattan) with a note pad, a bottle of water, a pack of cigarettes, flowers, cash, and sundry other items. Every day, Calle cleaned the booth and restocked the items, until the telephone company removed and discarded them. This project is documented in The Gotham Handbook (1998)" (da wiki). entre a arte e um caso de nutcakismo conceptual. assim: "When a boyfriend dumped her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 100 women to read it - and became the star of the Venice Biennale."(daqui)

ou como eu dizia, "deixa a compostura".

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gostei disto, no burburinho. e tudo pela village guest house, ou o que faz ter um livro para ler e fazê-lo. pisar chão deste é danado.