lance wakeling com

The following are my notes from a field visit to 375 Pearl Street and the Civic Center neighborhood in lower Manhattan. My walk was somewhat random but mostly limited within a rectangle circumscribed by Broadway, Fulton, Pearl and Worth Streets.

I left my apartment at 13:00, fully intending to focus on the former site of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc and the African Burial Ground. On the train, I read the introduction to The Destruction of Tilted Arc, a compilation of source materials documenting the sculpture’s quasi-legal path to destruction.

In the subway I found pristine advertising substrates. The smooth surface of the metal appeared weightless within the brick wall. Strangely, in this photograph, they also appear the color of skin.

At 13:50 I went in to J&R Music and Computer World and bought two 32GB Sandisk memory cards. Then I walked north on Park Row. From here I saw City Hall and ads for Client List and American Horror Story, both of which featured images of women in black lingerie.

Video: The photograph is shown severely underexposed. The exposure is increased gradually until the building transforms from dark mass to white mass. The movie posters come into light.

I stopped in front of Pace University. Here I could see One Police Plaza. The city’s canker of paranoia is an absolute cube.

I walked southeast on Frankfurt Street and turned left on Rose Street. The public spaces under the Brooklyn Bridge were under construction. I wondered where the skate park used to be.

At Avenue of the Finest, Rose Street turned into Madison and passed by Murray Bergtraum High School. The street and sidewalk were separated by a spiked iron fence. The horizontal ribbon of windows on the Bergtraum building echoed the vertical ribbons of windows on the adjacent 375 Pearl Street.

I lingered by the entrance of the high school, where the two buildings meet. One was made of brick and another of limestone.

I took a left on St. James Street and continued up the hill past Chatham Square. Here I saw that the Coen brothers would be filming with Justin Timberlake next Thursday and Friday. I considered taking the day off to come film too.

I thought about collecting a taxonomy of traffic security devices. I wanted to see a 3D rendering of a road barrier rising up and setting down. I wanted to see a road barrier in the center of a gallery’s floor.

I turned left on Worth Street and made some pictures of Central Booking and Columbus Park. There are many parks in Civic Center.

At 14:45 a man stopped and lingered next to me as I made pictures of 8 Spruce Street from City Hall Park. He asked me if I would take a photo of him in front of that building. The militancy of the landscape had taken its toll from me. I was suspicious of this man. Of The Man.

At 15:00 I ate red lentil soup and vegetarian kibbeh at Alfanoose on Maiden Lane.  Lunch was $8.98.

At 15:24 a man painted bright green and dressed like a toy soldier posed for photographs with two children at Thames Street and Broadway. Parked nearby was a car wrapped with an advertisement for The Orphan Killer. Its tagline said, “True pain is screamless.”

At 15:36,  at Morris Street and Broadway a guerrilla church choir dressed in red shirts sang hallelujahs for Jesus. Across the street, tourists lined up around a fenced-in Wall Street bull. Couples and small groups waited in line to photograph each other with the bull. Two police cruisers were parked next to the line of tourists with their lights on, apparently in response to the choir. Seeing that it was only a revolution for Jesus, they turned off their lights and drove south on Broadway.

I continued down Broadway and turned left onto Pearl Street. I tried to imagine how it would have been before the shore was artificially extended 700-900 feet into the East River. I overheard a man say, “this is my neighborhood.”

At Foley Square I watch the light dissipate. I think about federal and state architecture, especially columns and Roman kitsch. I think about what the purpose of this square is. I wonder what I am supposed to feel as I stand here.

At 16:42 I walked west on Duane Street toward the African Burial Ground. Two K-9 Department of Homeland Security SUVs were parked bumper to bumper perpendicular to Duane Street, further impeding vehicular traffic from entering the street. All entrances surrounding the burial ground were guarded and barricaded by road blockers. The National Monument was virtually empty. The small lawn was fenced off. A sign said the monument was open Monday thru Saturday from 9am to 4pm. There was a playground across the street.

As I left Civic Center I noticed tile decorations at the Brooklyn Bridge subway station. There was a ribbon of individual eyes peering out at the commuters as they filed through the partitioned hallway, which resembled the fenced-in stretch of Rose Street that runs along the north side of Bergtraum High. On the other side of the fence I saw an advertisement for the movie Hunger Games, which featured a burning Phoenix. I wondered why the Phoenix is always represented during its transition to dust and not during its rebirth? When you think about it this picture could represent just about any bird that happened to catch on fire.