zaterdag 8 juni 2013

In real life 01 - March 24th - Arrival

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A fellow PhD student called Lynda Hallmark picks me up from the airport. She studies informal adult learning in relation to autonomous art just like me. Since 2010 she has been interviewing people who took part in the famous art exhibition/performance "The Artist Is Present", by Marina Abramović. (go to website) She will graduate this autumn. I'll publish a link to her dissertation when it is ready.

We travel by train from JFK. On our right side to the North lies Queens. It is a vast industrial suburbia with wooden houses between rusty factories and dusty warehouses. On our left to the south lies Brooklyn. It has an urban landscape with old brown stones amongst a little more shops and a little fewer factories. We arrive in Manhattan at Penn station and take a cab in front of Madison Square Garden.


The cab rushes up Park Avenue along the jewelry stores and million-dollar-condo's. The further we get up north the more the city seems to run down. When we pass 110th street the neighborhood gets "funky".

We arrive in East Harlem at 116 street and Lexington. This neighborhood is also known as "Spanish Harlem". Here jewelry is sold in the streets next to the "cuchifritos", and the drivers wear bandanas behind the wheel while playing salsa on the car radio. Being blond and tall I never felt so aware of my race ever before.

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