The New Abnormal
During my first semester in NY I lived in a shabby hotel in Brooklyn Heights (the one where Travis Bickel bought a gun in Taxi Driver). I kept a hammer near my bed. Every morning at 3am my neighbor would blast a religious radio station. I’d bang on the baseboard a few times and he’d turn it down. It was a working relationship.
At the time I was a student at the School of Visual Arts. On Thursdays I’d walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, eat lunch in Chinatown, see galleries in SoHo and arrive at SVA in time for my 4pm class with Carter Ratcliff. It was a ritual.
Carter was a quiet, low talker kind of guy so I always made sure to sit in the front row. One day I fell asleep in class, head on desk. I awoke to find Carter pacing back and forth across the room, seemly holding a conversation with himself. Embarrassed, I groggily turned around to check on my classmates. All were sound asleep, heads firmly planted on their desks. Carter kept on talking, pacing back and forth.
In those days a classroom full of sleeping students might have been the ultimate nightmare for instructors, especially in a small classroom. Now it’s texting. No one sleeps anymore, they’re too busy texting. It’s an addiction.
Sometimes I teach in a classroom, sometimes a sculpture studio. The studio can be abuzz with materials being cut, noise levels high, yet students, standing near a band saw, or dangerously close to some other tool actively being used, will be texting, oblivious to their surroundings. Safety anyone?
In classrooms students are often texting as a discussion is in progress. What goes on here? Is this the new abnormal? Not long ago there seemed to be a concern about attention deficit, now it’s attention elsewhere.
In casual conversations with other instructors they all reported similar experiences. I eventually decided I had to tell students that I was considering counting texting in class as being absent. Remarkably everyone said that it would be a fair thing to do and acknowledged that if someone is texting, then clearly that person is not present and therefore absent. What? Were they admitting to their addiction? Was this a cry for help?
This semester I’m teaching at Haverford College. No texting issues there. It was formed by Quakers and has an honor system that students abide by. Somehow cell phones don’t rule their classroom lives. It’s true, miracles do happen.
Through Haverford’s Distinguished Visitors Program, I was able to invite the architect Jonathan Kirschenfeld to visit the campus and talk about his work in designing “supportive housing” and why he founded The Institute for Public Architecture. http://instituteforpublicarchitecture.org/
Other musings:
Although Film Forum provides consistently great programming it’s not really a great place to see films. Small, tightly fit seats with no legroom in narrow quarters and small screens. It has the unfortunate feel of a miniature 1980’s multiplex. I went there recently to see Jodorowsky’s Dune, a colorful and fascinating documentary of his efforts to make a movie about Frank Herbert’s book Dune. Although he failed to make the film, his well-known efforts to do so influenced many future sci-fi films.
Throughout the documentary Jodorowsky is shown to be a man of passion. Conceptually he envisioned his approach to filming Dune as “raping Frank Herbert, but…with love”.
Yes, he’s a man of passion.
Ida, a great Polish film I wrote about in a previous post, will be playing at Film Forum in May. It’s a starkly beautiful film in which black & white cinematography, austere means and extraordinary acting combine to confront a dark and difficult subject matter. As with most Polish films, no happy ending required. Can’t get any better.
Upstate Alert!
I’m putting together a survey exhibition of drawings and paintings by Susan Hartung. In the fall it’ll be at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. Spread the word.
PS. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is closing and dispersing their collection.
How about remaking the building into a factory or mill, thereby reversing the trend of turning former industrial spaces into museums?
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