sensing capitalist space.

whilst we walked the streets of cambridge, kaitlin observed that the 7-11 smells exactly like a 7-11 in hawai`i. bear with me as i briefly comment on the sensory dimensions of capitalism.

capitalism smooths space in the sense of reproducing certain experiences in entirely different contexts; a 7-11 in cambridge offers the same aromatic sensations as that of a 7-11 in hawai`i. two starkly different spatial locales reproduce a certain smell-space.

but that is not all. enter any department store (macy’s, nordstrom, whatever). the absence of windows except at the entrance attempts to entirely partition off department-store space from the rest of the world. ridding of the outside becomes readily apparent when one simply notices that in a department store, one could be in the same department store in any other city without being able to tell much difference. step inside capitalist space and you’re in another world where one’s only worry is “spend!”

urban trust.

arriving in cambridge half an hour prior to the end of kaitlin’s class, i decided to roam the streets for a bit. passing a number of shops and restaurants, my stroll went unimpeded until i happened upon a couple of tables covered with books. this display was unattended, and a note scribbled atop a shoebox on the counter that directed purchasers to simply put an amount of cash equivalent to the price designated on the books into the shoebox. i perused the books for quite some time.

the spectacle held my attention as the level of trust astounded me – i can only think of a few places where one could abandon items to be sold and expect the cash to be available upon return. other spectators also gathered around the display for short periods of time, briefly browsed, and left. falling victim to the city’s opportunities of distraction, the traffic in bodies was momentarily arrested by this scene invested with so much trust. so much for the street as a space of passage.

surveilling the real state of emergency.

surveillance cameras cast their watchful eye upon the streets and subways of new york, weaving together the so-called emergency situation with everyday life. yet it seems that returning the recording gaze is prohibited, if not regulated. the nypd qua ‘petty sovereigns’ (a term dubbed by judith butler) suspends law through its discretionary (mis)interpretation. perhaps this securitization of the visual, in its differentiation of technologies of the gaze, implies that 9/11 and its state of emergency has not been left so far behind. rather, 9/11 is an event manifest in a variety of what m. m. bakhtin calls ‘chronotopes’, or materialized spatiotemporal dynamics; it organizes our experience in and of space and time through unpredictable and singular (because arbitrary) ways.

nonetheless, it would do good to ponder who may provisionally act as a petty sovereign. security counterintuitively reveals the weaknesses in the system it attempts to protect. recall ranciere’s description of the police message: ‘move along, there is nothing to be seen here.’ it is in that very nothing that everything is to be seen – the very shimmers of possibility illuminated within the cracks of the fragile policed order. putting surveillance itself within our focus, then, may provoke critical scrutiny of the supposed need for heightened security.

so when our gaze is centered on technologies of the gaze, we secure the opportunity to become petty sovereigns. in doing so, we may alter the trajectory of 9/11 and its organization of in/security chronotopes by heeding a lesson delivered by walter benjamin in the context of struggles against fascism: ‘the tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule. we must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency.’

action! sex and the moving-image.

the second floor of the museum of sex is hosting an exhibit entitled ‘action! sex and the moving-image’ which traces the development of sex in film. spanning over a hundred years, sex in the moving-image underwent a variety of transformations mediated by regulatory codes and laws at different points in history.

the room of ‘action!’ was illuminated with a dark blue. tiny television screens adorned a wall in the room’s center and the surface of raised blocks functioned as screens for other video clips. the visibility and audibility of films with adult content and porn queered this curatorial space by rendering indistinguishable the public and private. brianne and i navigated this perverse space by viewing close-ups of blowjobs, anal sex, and the like with complete strangers. we strangely felt discomfort and allure at the same time and as the same sensation, in the time and space we shared with others. this queer intimacy in which not a word circulated amongst strangers while erotic sensations did brought together normally and normatively private matters into public spaces while leaving each experience irreducibly singular. a heterotopia to the dominant society of sexual control, ‘action!’ thus enacts a politics of sexual aesthetics reconfiguring the proper place of sex and the curatorial to queer the traffic of bodies walking through and stopping still in a proximity too close for comfort yet too far for commonality.

prokorenko’s politics.

we met prokorenko, a subway attendant, while perusing a subway map for the route to the world trade center. after directing our way, the gentleman inquired into where we are from. learning that noah, brianne, and i are from hawai`i, prokorenko pulled out and sifted through two stacks of cards. each card listed a few words/sayings in other languages that he’d be learning from passengers over the years; there must have been at least thirty or forty cards.

reminiscent of ranciere’s observation that french laborers in the nineteenth century made of themselves political subjects by using the time they had not to write, prokorenko takes his work-time to accumulate multilingual fragments. his use of work-time as hobby-time deterritorializes the liminal space of subway stations as transitory passages into social places. subway space thus becomes a polyvocal archive braking new york’s hyperaccelerated pacings by effecting a countertemporality of slowness imbedded in conversation. consequently, he became other than the work-subject required of his work position; likewise, we became other than the (always mobile) consumer-subject required of our tourist position.

in short, prokorenko disrupts new york city ’s demand of speedy movement and its corollary regulative productions of time, space, and subjects in this consumer capitalist society of control. a powerful political act.

on experiencing moma.

the museum of modern art (moma) may feel like a space of consumption. vast numbers of tourists breeze through the exhibits without extended looks on displays. purchases of memorabilia and miscellaneous trinkets may be made at several different locations throughout the museum. a cafe is located on the second floor. even the queues for bag checks wind through and out of a corridor. this disneyland experience subtracts the spectacular and sensational thrill of amusement park rides; a father answers to his impatient seven year-old son, ‘we’ve only been here for half an hour!’

nonetheless, moma also invites critical reflection across. divided amongst the museum’s six floors, iconic masterpieces and contemporary works offer a variety of styles, temporalities, and genres. accordingly, an/aestheticizing experiences inhere not in the artworks themselves; rather, they function as so many resonances between art and its viewer, thereby shattering any definitive delineation between those terms. here are several works that worked for me due to their carceral thematics.

Whilst navigating curatorial space may direct our attention inward to exhibited pieces, it simultaneously distracts us from one of the greatest exhibits of all: the city itself. this tendency to confine the proper place of aesthetics to the museum may disable a scrutiny of cityscapes themselves and how they re/structure perceptions, sensations, and experience itself.

But not everyone misses out.

an urban society of control.

one easily notices on any street those signs directing the traffic of cars; the one above conducts the traffic of bodies. part of the initiative to beautify the image of new york for the tourist eye, these signs coerce movement to rid streetscapes of beggars and the homeless. another instrument to ward off otherness in chance encounters.

similarly, the marriott marquis (currently hosting the 50th annual convention of the international studies association) averaging around $200 – 300 a night, makes good on its promise to ‘bring manhattan to your door.’ as kathy ferguson observed while looking for a place to sit, the hotel’s common areas conspicuously lack any seating arrangements. as such, they are not places for extended reflection and socialization, but liminal spaces for transit. the streets of manhattan run through the marriott as so many nodes of this urban society of control forcing the movement of bodies.

[addendum]

on the final day of the conference, noah and i sat on the floor near the conference room in which we would present our panel in about half an hour. a hotel orderly tasked with policing the hotel-order ordered us elsewhere because no one’s allowed to sit on the ground (no reason given).

on rhythmanalysis and the city.

‘everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time, and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm.’ – henri lefebvre

if rhythm is indeed the resonance between spaces and times and the forces imposing upon them a state of consistency, then it becomes a particularly useful conceptual device with which we may analyze the city. but whilst it may be an important unit for measuring the everydayness of city life, it also reveals the fractures within the urban that resist explanation by a single conceptual paradigm.

the partitioning of spaces segments off populations from each other by a variety of criteria (i.e. race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, age, and so forth). it restricts certain bodies while enabling others to move; it allows bodies to remain still while forcing others into movement. insofar as access is concerned, we may think of the city as coded and coding.

likewise, no single model of time captures the varying rhythms of those experiencing the city differently. coded bodies must navigate the city along different paths, at different times, and by different means. technology may contract space by accelerating time (email travels lightspeeds quicker than snailmail); it may simultaneously expand space (traffic jams stretch out the freeway experience). temporal sequences, paces, speeds, and stills encode bodies and the spaces they traverse and inhabit. differently.

the inhabited experience of urban space differs from person to person, so it would be a mistake to talk about a city’s rhythm in the singular. rather, urban space is multiple; there are as many “cities” as there are people experiencing it.

the city is polyrhythmic.