#42

Articles

Buckminster Fuller thought he had found the shape of utopia. What went wrong?

Retrofuturism forecloses the true potential of the world to come.

Keeping up appearances in brownstone Brooklyn

Suddenly, the beaver cosplay is feeling very real.

Wrecking Ball

The higher the New York observatory experience climbs, the dumber it gets.

Once a sparkling fixture of New York high society, the Plaza Hotel has lost its fizz.

“Moving furniture around is a good form of procrastination when you are in a complete panic.”

Reviews

  • Mapping Malcolm, edited by Najha Zigbi-Johnson. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 304 pp., $28.

Mapping Malcolm takes Harlem as a starting place for a global project of Black liberation.

  • Jenny Holzer: Light Line, organized by Lauren Hinkson, is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through September 29.

At the Guggenheim, Jenny Holzer presides over a crumbling Babel of mixed messages.

  • Spatializing Reproductive Justice was on view this summer at the Center for Architecture.

Political art so often feels like a wish; Spatializing Reproductive Justice represented something like a real plan.

  • Life and Trust, by Emursive, is currently running at 20 Exchange Place.

Life and Trust occupies Wall Street with craft cocktails and prebatched bromides.

  • Vivian Maier: Unseen Work is on view at Fotografiska through September 29.

Vivian Maier didn’t aim to exhaustively catalog her surroundings. What her work declares is that the ordinary cannot be exhausted.

  • Dream House is a light and sound installation created by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, located at 275 Church Street. Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology is located at 21 Dey Street.

Dream House does a lot with a little. Mercer Labs does a little with a lot.

Prior Art trades in architectural alembics: spaces that distill, refine, and elucidate Christensen’s crucial triad: “creativity, novelty, and property.”

  • Manor Lords, published by Greg Styczeń (a.k.a. Slavic Magic) and distributed by Hooded Horse, was released in April.

If Sim City arguably inspired legions of thirtysomething urban planners, there’s a strong chance Manor Lords will make at least one good historian of the medieval peasantry.

Skyline

Morningside Heights — Sting’s affected holiness—endemic among British pop singers of the Live Aid generation—was a natural fit.
Chelsea — “By the time you’ve discussed it with your editor, it’s definitely not stream-of-consciousness.”
MEATPACKING DISTRICT — Liza Sylvestre described the space of the caption as “crip space,” open to the subjectivity of experience and expanded authorship.
Lower East Side — At their most cynical, these artificial ruins exemplify what urban planners refer to as “retaining neighborhood character.”
Bed-Stuy — At least in theory, tennis concessions aren’t always about the Benjamins.
Chinatown — “I obviously have a complicated relationship with this.”