Brian Voll: A Retrospective

Everyone.Below is a collection of books and other things from my bookshelf. A collection of unread and partly read books, a collection of purchases inspired by this class and purchases that inspired my want to take this class:

The Endless City
Put out by The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank, The Endless City is, in brief, a profile of six global cities. It’s a collection of essays by the world’s most famous contemporary urbanists discussing the phenomenon of urbanization. 2008 marked the year in which over half the world’s population lived in urban areas. Although the statistic itself has its complications, it marks a significant point in human history. They have a website.

An Atlas of Radical Cartography

For ever and ever (as long as history will allow), there has been an inherent power in maps, an assumingly innocent activity like cartography is ripe with power hierarchies. The basic idea behind An Atlas of Radical Cartography (and related books like Experimental Geography, Else/Where: Mapping—New Cartographies of Networks and Territories) is to reverse the power hierarchies by mapping information that is generally left hidden. My favorite is a map of surveillance cameras in Manhattan. It was originally intended as a guide map for protesters during the Republican National Convention in 2004 to plan a route of least surveillance but has since attributed several essays of Foucault-ian analysis on the post-9/11 authoritarian state.

A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan

I generally don’t like New York Times bestsellers. I think they’re written for the masses, and the masses are generally dumb. For some reason, though, I picked up The Omnivore’s Dilemma, loved it, subsequently purchased, read, and loved Pollan’s follow-up In Defense of Food, and decided to buy A Place of My Own. I’ve not yet read it, but the opening line is, “A Place of My Own is the biography of a building.” I like that.

Altermodern

Post-modernity is dead. Now we’re in an age of Altermodern, according to Tate Britain, whatever that means. “A new modernity is emerging,” Nicolas Bourriaud writes in the Explain section, “reconfigured to an age of globalization—understood in its economic, political, and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture.” Whatever that means.

Wait for Walk

Wait for Walk is a book of photographs by Florian Bohm of people in New York City waiting for the walk signal at intersections. Most people, as people tend to be in such situations, look very, very awkward. As a friend and I were looking through it one day, I made the comment that most of the photographs were taken in tourist hotspots, and were they photos of locals, we wouldn't be waiting for the signal. Though Wait for Walk is a brilliant idea, she retorted, photos of locals dodging traffic would be much more funny.

EndCommercial / Reading the City

Next time I run into a spare $300, I’m going to buy EndCommercial / Reading the City, another book of photos by Florian Bohm. From what I can determine from the descriptions of the book I’ve read, it’s a collection of photographs of objects in New York City. The idea behind this project is that all objects are social in nature, and by “reading” a society’s objects, one can determine some knowledge or understanding of the society.

Enjoy.