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.

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.

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).