All about this guy

As far as I can tell, I've always been particularly attentive to place in the sense of a physical environment, often to the exclusion of any other people present within it. This can be quite problematic, as an attentiveness to one thing can lead to a total obliviousness of others, easily misinterpreted as hatred or disdain. But it is this awareness of environment that led me to take this course, because that awareness was largely a kind of appreciation that I had no language for and no way to communicate. A Sense of Place has truly helped me begin to organize my thoughts on the subject, and find a way to communicate what was previously an acutely internal feeling, incredibly frustrating to explain to others. It's also helped me explore the topic  On the other hand, the course has also illuminated the relationship between places and the people that inhabit them, and has begun to make me more aware of the effects others have on places and each other, in addition to the effects places have on us. 

Yi-Fu Tuan's Space and Place was for me probably the most useful and straightforwardly informative book we read for this course. Among his many insights, Tuan describes the dangers of being unable to articulate experience, that we inevitably fall back on hollow cliché, and effectively say nothing at all. This course, our readings, projects and discussions, have helped me begin to overcome this and approach Tuan's ultimate goal, "to increase the burden of awareness", and I'm glad for it. I know that this class will stick with me for a long time.

Thanks!

Steve, TruthNugget, et Moi

I do not know where to begin. I guess that’s always hard when you’re at the end. This is my last assignment unchecked on my to do list for college. The last thing to write before I pick up my cap and gown and head to Avery Fisher Hall to graduate. This post is also my final post for five classes with Steve Hutkins, the last post of four different blogged courses over the course of my academic career.

I have enjoyed blogging for these classes because I love writing, and this site has given me the perfect forum to reflect on both readings and my personal experiences of place, space, Manhattan, and Paris. I have tried to use this space as an academic and intellectual journal to document what I have learned, to capture ephemeral experiential knowledge I have gained over the years so that I may look back on it and remember. The act of blogging proved most useful for me for the abroad tutorial The Art of Travel. When preparing for my Colloquium, I looked back to my thoughts on books and films I covered in past blog posts. I was also able to remember the nearly indescribable feeling of living in Paris for four months, to remember how turned on I was by life and learning. All of these courses have enabled me to think and keep track on a serious academic level as well as a very personal, creative level. And already looking back on my time in college, I know these five classes have changed me and shaped me into who I am today.

As I have probably said many times before, I want to be a film editor. As I head out into an unscheduled, unplanned life of opportunity – the real world- I am taking my understanding of place, the concept of the city, and the artist within his or her surroundings with me. For now, I will edit anything, I just want to be better, to have this key filmmaking skill down. But in the end, or hopefully the middle, I hope to work on features that capture the essence of the city, just as Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Bout de Souffle” and John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” and so so many others managed to do. I have always loved to travel and experience new cities, but studying with Steve enabled me to hone in on my true passion for cities, and living in Manhattan and Paris during my time at NYU showed me how I wanted to process my passion and turn it into a career and life goal.

I am inspired and eternally grateful.

...space...Once, when I was younger, I took a topical film class and was never able to watch even the most mindless film without considering framing decisions, pace of editing, shot variation, lighting, and art direction, ever again. Then, I took a class about the partner concepts of space and place, and I was never able to be anywhere at any time without considering how my surroundings were acting upon me, and how I was behaving in them.

It seems strange I lived most of a whole life, having scarcely considered an idea so pervasive and omnipresent. It seems futile now to consider other countries a foreign entity, or my own so familiar. To think of my room as a rectangular space filled with my belongings, and not a place ridden with energy and happenings, seems just as misguided. I see now that we govern the role our familiar spaces play in our lives, the acts we perform in them. I see also that a place, and my sense and understanding of it, is informed—even created—by the extent to which my person remains intact in it.

If you go somewhere unfamiliar to you, and find you feel more yourself than ever, that there’s a strange and metaphysical force working on you…it may be the way the buildings are stacked, or the way the buildings are sprawled, or the ratio of green to gray, or the amount of sparkly mineral in the pavement that reminds you of a certain stretch nearby your house, or the way the people glare as you pass, or the way they give you the sensation the same language is being spoken, or the complete and utter lack of resources, or an abundance of them…there’s likely to be more of you in that sensation than the place itself.

I’m grateful that this class served as my goodbye to Gallatin, as I attempt the oh-so-collegiate move to another country. It has helped me to see the move as merely a concrete shift of location, and to not assume that certain emotions and events will have any bearing on the new. The lighthearted participatory and conversational component in our class was an educational merit and privilege that was not lost on me. Voluminous gratitude to Steve, and all you radical people.

Sense of PlaceOff the grid vs. on the grid

Clusterfuck nation vs. quant European towns

NYU vs. other schools (with the community-feel)

The idea of Home……

These are just some of the memorable topics from class.

It has certainly been one of my favorites at NYU, and sadly, Sense of Place is my last class at NYU. I loved the setup of the class, from the class size to the actual material tought, and I especially loved our class discussions. Everyone seemed to have a lot of interesting things to say, and it only made me love Gallatin more for that opportunity.

Place has always been something I’ve been sensitive to. I’m always aware of how places affect me, whether that is in finding the perfect place to study or just the way I feel when traveling abroad. I don’t think I’ll ever go as far as Elizabeth Chamberlain in her quest for ultimate Feng Shui, but I will certainly consider color psychology and space relation once I get my new apartment in the city (perhaps in a week! YIKES).

This class will stay with me forever.

Thank you Steve, and thank you class for all your wonderful insight.

This is my final course at Gallatin, a place that, for over the past couple of months, I have grown to think about often. During these past four years at NYU and in New York, I have visited the same buildings, parks, streets, and shops so often that these places have become the backdrop for my experience at college and significant landmarks in my life. Thinking in the future, I cannot imagine a life where there is no subway or tourists or constant movement, lights and noise. Of course, once I am gone, the city will continue. People will continue to visit and travel to the same streets and cafes that I once frequented. Everyone's experience in New York City is as unique and personal as the sections of the city itself.

There are aspects to the city that make it uniquely its own, aspects that made it a perfect setting to learn about the physical and personal construction of a place. I have learned that love of a place is much like the love of a person. What I may find attractive and appealing in a place may not be everyone's cup of tea but love has always been a very personal experience. Places can affect one's entire being - each of the senses. When I think of New York City, I hear the sounds of a playground with car horns humming in the distance. I smell coffee brewing and sizzling chicken kabobs being prepared by a hard-working street vendor. I taste the vast variety of foods and cultures. I feel the changing seasons, people and time. When I think about my anonymous time spent in the city, I wonder what mark my presence may leave once I am gone. I realize, however, that the mark New York has left on me will be far greater and more permanent in the way that it has profoundly impacted and influenced my life.

A Chicago suburb from an airplane window: May 2008Welcome to Gerund Phrases. As expressions of action, these posts demonstrate the varied approaches I follow in characterizing places. One of the defining characteristics of "place," for me, is the evidence of activity. Activity does not necessitate human impact or mobility. An open field - or an abandoned barn - can display just as much of the impact of external forces, such as nature or time, as large-scale urban infrastructure projects or an artist's installation.

The bottom line is: something happened in that space.

For all our in-depth reading on perceptions of space and place, the concept of activity as a fundamental signifier of spaces never made it to the forefront of our discussions. I don't say that as a critique, merely as an observation. Perhaps being located in New York has blinded us to the significance of activity. Or, as a reaction to urban living, we consciously segregate "inactive" spaces from active ones - city vs. country, for instance.

Do these posts illustrate the similarities between supposed "inactive" spaces and visibly bustling spaces? Hardly. Rather, they attempt to summarize, no matter how haphazardly, the ways in which methods of "place-making" and understanding spaces take shape in context, apart from the texts from this course.

Gerund Phrases is an experiment of sorts - of design, of planning, of exploration. It is May 2009 - the course is over, I am graduating - but this experiment is just beginning.

I’m not sure what to post about for this last blog entry, so I guess I’ll just wax nostalgic for a moment (if you don’t mind.)

“A Sense of Place” was my very last Gallatin Interdisciplinary Seminar, and a few short days from now I’ll be graduating. Steve’s comments about not knowing how this class will affect us until years down the line might be true, but I’ve utilized it this semester in several ways already. Most notably, I used two of our text in my collquium. Both Tuan and Kunstler played an integral part in my discussion of how American’s create a sense of place (or rather, how, perhaps, America has no sense of place.) I guess the argument can go either way.

Colloquium aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase, “sense of place.” In two weeks I’m leaving New York to search for a new place to get a “sense” of. I’m not exactly sure why I’m leaving other than the feeling that I’ve “conquered” New York. Been there, done that, and shamefully bought six T-shirts for $10 on Canal Street. In short, I want a new sense of place.

It’s funny to think about especially at this age. This week was my birthday and in the mail I received cards from Mississippi, Alaska, Washington D.C., New York, and places in between. I find it amusing to think that we, as graduating seniors, are finally at a point where we can go out and create our own sense of place. Those cards were from friends of mine who have moved on to new towns, new jobs, and new lives. This side of five years ago all of my cards would have come, undoubtedly, from Tupelo, MS. (I warned you I would get nostalgic. I feel like I’m writing a graduation speech.) None the less, I’m moving on with that phrase in mind, wherever I may land in the next few months.

A Short Poem…

Sense of Place, oh what a class…
Remember the time we all sat in the grass?

We talked about Whitehead, Jackson, and Tuan
Also, why was the clock on the computer always wrong?

But despite the constant confusion of time
I clearly liked the class enough to rhyme…

More specifically, Frazier was definitely a favorite
Bags in trees, the Holland Tunnel—I enjoyed all his wit

And who can forget the apropos youtube clips
Like Elizabeth Chamberlain and her feng shui tips

But I think we can all safely agree
One of the best parts was the final project about 4-20

So now it’s all over. Could it really be true?
I just hope none of us catch the swine flu.

If I Can Make It Here, I'll Make It Anywhere!: courtesy of Jess Combs

Though I will clearly not fully appreciate the effect this class has had on me for another decade or so, I can, with confidence, say that Sense of Place has been one of the most inspiring and educational experiences I've had at NYU. As someone who knew little about Place Studies save what I had read on this website, the course opened my eyes to countless facets of the discipline, many which I had never considered before. I was able to approach topics such as architecture and urban planning in a critical and analytical way, though I knew very little about either of them. I feel that walking around New York or any other city, I know have another level of awareness that kicks in, thanks to the course.
In fact, the more aware I become of my surroundings in New York, the more I look forward to leaving. I love New York, but we spend day after day saturating this place with memories (especially at our age) and eventually the city needs a break or risk overflowing, swallowing us all. Picking up and leaving a place that has become your home is by no means an easy feat, and I've done it enough times to know that it doesn't ever become easy, but at some point the challenge of creating a new sense of place somewhere began to be exciting in addition to being daunting. And anyone can come back to New York at any time - it's not going anywhere. It's a static place despite the constant construction and destruction and the wave of bright eyed people who arrive every year and the trickle of those who leave. Not many places in the world are as static as New York, in that, the essence of the city doesn't change. It still feels the same, essentially, to my father who lived in New York almost 30 years ago. I wonder if it will feel the same to me if I come back in 30 years and revisit my old haunts? I doubt any of the places I visited in Africa will feel the same in 30 years!
A Sense of Place has encouraged me to leave my comfort zone, physically, educationally, perhaps even emotionally. A sense of place can be created anywhere by anyone (if they try hard enough). And as Sinatra said of New York, "If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere".
My favorite books were Kunstler and Frazier. Each dealing with very different subject matter, but perhaps a slightly similar tone at times. Kunstler was a great introduction for me to the course and the field and Frazier was a great way to wrap up the semester, allowing me to see the creative outcome of the study of a place.
Though there were other books I enjoyed less, I felt they were necessary to the development of the course and for leading students from Kunstler to Whitehead. There was certainly a sense of progression. The videos we watched in class were a great resource and added to our experience of the books effectively. I particularly enjoyed the documentary dealing with public space (such as plazas in NYC).
I now have a strong base from which to pursue Place Studies and other related disciplines. The class also challenged me to be creative, think critically and participate constructively in class discussions. It was well structured, had a great curriculum and was a lot of fun. I definitely laughed more in A Sense of Place than in any of my other classes this semester, and everyone knows laughing increases your life, so thanks Steve and peers, for adding a few years to my life.

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.