NewWorLdLog: shelter

Wednesday, 14 July 2010

shelter

Shelter
in progress
with thanks to Barney
1375–1425; late ME < L contextus a joining together, scheme, structure, equiv. to contex ( ere ) to join by weaving ( con- con- + texere to plait, weave) + -tus suffix of v. action; cf. text

ofcutstems
wovenweftweave

slavagedgardenwaste
returnyourgreenbags
makeuseofyourrefuse

/task/score/
/walk with shelter down the high street/
/set-up shelter next to a pre-built bus shelter/
/place chair inside shelter for one person/

/place your stool next to your shelter stall/
/wait for passengers waiting to ask about the shelter/
/ask them to sit inside/
/and wait in the cool shade/
/while you make them a fresh lemondade/
/right there next to them/
/in as short a time as the electronic timetable says
/that the next bus is coming/
/talk to your sheltered guest/

/put on an accent/
/speak about home[lands]/
/ask them questions: where they from?/
/record their conversation/
/when their bus arrives/
/bid them farewell on their journey/
/and ask the next intriguied waiter to enter/
/repeat for as long as the community police officers/
/feel ready to move you on/

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CEP Proposal

Deleuze & Guattari once wrote that “New York is virtually a city without a language...” [from Postulates of Linguistics in A Thousand Plateaus, 1923, pp. 103]. How provocative a statement to make about a city brimming with so many languages, dialects, slang etc. I thought. New York for me has always been, as for so many before me, a city of such artistic prestige and accomplishment, vitality and possibility. It has drawn young artists to its bright lights and wide streets for decades now, and it will continue to. Surely New York is a city without any ‘without’: a city of infinite possibility and opportunity, offering itself to all whom arrive, making them never want to leave, offering everything they need.

But I was too hasty; my argumentative cry against with their provocations would have been quickly silenced, had I read a little further on: “There is no language that does not have intralinguistic, endogenous, internal minorities...” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1923, pp103). But my silence was brought with a smile, with a sense of relief, of assurance. Just as I believe[d], and have argued, New York is a city without a language- without a set, solid and all-conforming ‘language’, but rather a multiplicity of tongue, of variations of the tongue, the lingua franca, of English. New York for me is a prime example of how all languages, exchanged by so many different people from such different places is continually being shaped, changed and modified, mutating every day through common shared discourse and people trying to make sense to each other.

Having been born in one country but then being raised between two countries has brought difficulty when pledging allegiance to either. I have felt neither here nor there, not this nor that. What happens to those who don't feel a part, or feel apart, from their surroundings? They start something new; they seek out new places to live and to start again, afresh. The historical implication of New York City having been built ex nihilo by such a wide group of people(s) having travelled from their Old World in search of the New, ready to build themselves a New life in new contexts has always inspired me to travel and work there, to also become a part of the engagement with the 'new' moving away from the old, the traditional, the conventional, the usual, the obvious. I can see a direct link between this state of mind, towards progression through experimentation, in my journey to art and performance College and my future journey to New York and the USA, to frame my questions around the 'New' within city whose very name and ethos is just that.