Kawasaki’s New Breed of Subway Trains It’s not often that you can talk about objects that both move through and contain public space. Conventionally, public space is any area in common use by converging groups of people. Only in vehicles does this convergence move, and whether on a skateboard or a motorbike, in a car […]
Ethics of Ambiguity
Ice Hockey’s New Televised Surveillance System Ice hockey is a cruel game. Unlike other international sports involving a projectile of some sort, at no point in a hockey game are you guaranteed possession of the projectile. After every goal in soccer, touchdown in football or basket in basketball, the rules stipulate that the other side […]
Collier
There once was a person named Schorr, Who thought that she’d been here before. So she called up a clerk And without too much work Got a file on the Schorrs of yore. While reading the file in her parlor, She discovered another Schorr, Collier, Whose identity it said could be easily had Through a […]
Every Man for Himself: Henry Darger
One thing is certain: commentaries on Art are the result of shifts in the economy. – Marcel Broodthaers Imagine it’s 1970 in Chicago, Illinois. It has been rough going lately for the city’s independent record labels—what with the corporate monolith of Motown and the recent buyouts of Chess and VeeJay—but a keen ear […]
The Art of Disappearing
A beautiful thing happened over the summer: Ellsworth Kelly’s Sculpture For A Large Wall came to New York. Originally commissioned in 1957 and installed in the lobby of the Penn Central Transportation Building in Philadelphia, the work was on view at Matthew Marks Gallery for the month of June. Which is to say that, forty-one […]