Daniel Walters

FINAL LINK
https://weareherebookclub.tumblr.com/




September 11
High Line Narrative

For ballast flora and citydwellers hailing from near and far, the High Line is an Arcadia, fertile with ecological reclamation of the natural world from the captivity of industrial conquest. On no uncertain terms, the commissioned artworks which traipse the 1.45 mile spans of re-commissioned railway from Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen are clearly labeled whereas corroboration of the plants’ agency is grounded solely in their sheer existence. Propagated by chance and advantageous circumstance after uncertain decades of dormancy, there is something to be said for the role these unmarked plants continue to play in the allegorical perpetuation of migrational histories. Allegorically uprooting these anthropological context clues, the High Line is an attraction with appeals to the most primordial comprehension of nature as being incidental to the intentions of intervention.

9/25/18
African Burial Ground National Monument

Following a pleasant introduction of ‘Reclaiming Our History: The African Burial Ground in New York’ from the warm, well-informed and self-evidently inspired docent seated behind the low marble desk, I pivot and am immediately met by a particularly jarring point of immersion. Though wax tableus seemingly always elicit feelings of uneasiness in response to their disorientating lifelessness--especially so when they are unexpected--the trope otherwise reserved for Madam Tussaud’s is made especially unharmonious in cacophonous dialogue with its surroundings of conflicting medium and tone. Orbiting said wax model recreation of a group of African slaves’ funeral for a fallen family member, I begin to navigate the exhibition as subsiding apprehension and the occupation of school children on a field trip give way to the realization that nuance rightfully has no place in this exhibition enacted under the sole guise of opening the severe nature of this consecrated space to interactive education. While this is corroborated through the extensive utilization of wall text, migratory maps, photographs, video, figurative cut-outs, artifacts and even a physical activity inviting its patron to push a weighted plastic barrel along a track to get a certain sense of the enslaved experience, I continue to find myself conflicted on the degrees of effectiveness and questionable representation yet acknowledge its role in the augmentation of a greater narrative.

Perhaps more poignant an approach to the remembrance, contextualization and reinvigoration of the histories of the some 15,000 enslaved and freed Africans buried on the former site of colonial New York is the adjacent African Burial Ground National Monument itself. Equal parts highly informative and viscerally striking in its streamlined abstraction, the polished granite wall’s inscription introduces the memorial to the approaching spectator on no uncertain terms. Prompted inwards, one moves into the Circle of the Diaspora, a poetic tribute to the varied cultural tapestry of enslaved individuals, reclaiming regional and religious narratives from the homogenizing identities of “slave” and/or “African.” Completing the cyclical navigation is The Ancestral Chamber, an allegorical embodiment of the African spirit. Facing eastward and open to the sky, the introspective space evokes contemplation of its occupier before returning them to the present reality and objecthood of Duane Street and daily existence in a presumed state of higher being, more enlightened or at least more educated on the both the plight of enslaved African people and the role they played in the propagation of the city which rises before its unassuming onlooker.

10.2.18
Communities || W. 69-72
At 3:15pm on a pallid and artlessly overcast Wednesday, the four-block spans of Central Park West's 69th to 72nd street vacillates with uptown communities of upper echelon betwixt errands of late-afternoon and sporadic assemblages of construction workers enjoying brown-bagged and perhaps belated lunches on the stoops of the brownstones that line block, many of which under renovation as punctuated by sawdust, tape, orange barricades and the spoken for workers. Blanketing this ostensible class divide are the after-school gaggles of mothers and nannies balancing vacant strollers, small talk and smaller schoolchildren foregrounded yet just beyond reach. Homebound or en route to extracurriculars, their origins and destinations remain unbeknownst to me. Self-evident is the manifolded and inextricable interrelations of these local networks operating in symbiotic tandem amongst tourists and transients.

The New 72nd Street Subway Station Last week, subway commuters saw the timely opening of Yoko Ono's latest commissioned work, a series of mosaics on permanent view throughout the MTA's 72nd St x Central Park West station appropriately (if not exhaustively) entitled Imagine. Located one block away from the Fluxus artist's longtime and widely storied penthouse apartment at The Dakota and just a stone's throw from the Museum of Modern Art which too beholds its own long-winded history with Ono, this installation which presently remains under partial construction at the hand of commissioned workers is indeed a celebration of each of these facets inextricably linked to the local artist’s famed body of work to which Sandra Bloodworth, director of the public art program with MTA Arts and Design, responds in citing, “"I can't imagine anything better than seeing someone who lives close by, who has the ability to speak around the world, to give such respect to the subway by bringing her work into it.”

Albeit questionable in its emphasis on its tie to collaborator/late-husband John Lennon which seems to augment the dissemination of Ono’s independent artistic agency, recognizable and refreshing are the collaborators’ messages embedded in the cloudscapes. That said, the new addition’s timeliness is not solely that of this class but is also in purportedly unmistakable conjunction with the November release of Imagine John Yoko. Nevertheless, this is a welcomed and exceptional addition to the MTA by a major artist that is certain to remain a spectacle for years to come.

PROPOSAL || Delphic Circle @ The Newly Renovated 72nd Street Station
A celebration of intersectional society and human interaction, Delphic Circle invites sitters from all walks of life to slow down, if only for a moment (or meal), to actively engage in a greater sense of community on their own terms. Earnest in both form and function, the Delphic Circle stands to foster a safe space for the intermingling of a collective society and the subsequent exchange of ideas. However, the polyethylene-coated metal infrastructure inherently connotes a kind of perimeter within which enclosed negative space may lend itself to the open invitation of occupation by children at play or perhaps further artistic expression.